I know how hard Nahx armor is, how it burns to touch. How fast they are. Our disarming tactics, our disabling and neutralizing techniques, are more likely to be useful on one another as our sense of community starts to fray.
Almost no one turns up for the increasingly meager dinners in the cafeteria. There is certainly no music or dancing afterward. Liam and some of his friends run NKVs sometimes on the big screen, gasping and hooting their approval. One evening Emily finds me there, facing away from the screen, working on a list of things we’ll need if we’re to make the mission to Calgary. She leans over, perusing the list before sitting.
“So. You know, huh?” she says, toying with her small plate of food. I stare at the space between us. “I didn’t realize how serious you and Tucker were until . . .”
“It was too late?” I ask. But I find I can’t muster up much emotion. I should hate her, but what would be the point of that? “It’s not your fault. You weren’t the first.” Saying it out loud makes it true.
Emily loads her spoon with a pea, pulls it back, and flicks it precisely, across half the room, right into the back of Liam’s head. I can’t help but smile as Liam turns and glares back.
“Xander told me Topher says your name in his sleep,” Emily says, now loading her spoon with a carefully coiled noodle.
“He’s just confused. It doesn’t mean anything.” I wonder whether she plans to flick the noodle at me. “You’re welcome to him, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
She shrugs.
“Aren’t you and Liam a thing?”
“Apparently not anymore.”
Her tone is casual, but I can see it’s more than that. And I actually feel sorry for her. I suppose when Tucker died she was grieving too, but she couldn’t tell anyone. And now she’s been dumped by a douche bag in the winter palace of the damned. I shake my head as I watch her aim her spoon. My capacity for empathy and forgiveness surprises even myself sometimes. Tucker used to call it my superpower.
Emily flicks the coiled noodle so expertly that it lands in the hood of Liam’s sweatshirt. He doesn’t even notice. Emily smirks at me.
“What are we doing?” I ask her.
“Making peace,” she says, standing. I notice she hasn’t actually eaten any of the food she’s been flicking around. “No sense in dying with bitterness in your heart. Your soul should go back to the universe as clean and naked as when you arrived here.” She doesn’t take her plate with her as I watch her leave. She’s just a girl like me, I think. She has a family too, all the way in Australia, which might as well be on another planet now. God.
I look back to see Liam approaching, a fierce expression on his face. Turning to a fresh page in my notebook, I pretend to start a drawing.
“What do you want?” he snaps as he reaches me. His friends turn and trail toward us, drawn by his tone. Disturbingly, I see Topher and Xander among them.
“Nothing,” I say.
“Why are you throwing food at me?”
“I wasn’t.”
“Who was, then?”
I could pin it on Emily, but since she just tried to reconcile with me, that seems a bit cold. So I get up to leave. Something tells me it’s time to exit this situation. I’m irritated with Topher and Xander for being part of Liam’s testosterone party. And I need to think. Maybe I’ll find Sawyer and we can do some proper planning.
“It was just a noodle.” I tuck my notebook under my arm. “Don’t be so sensitive.”
Liam, astonishingly, simply steps forward and shoves me hard on the shoulders. I step back, keeping my balance easily and feel my body go into a defensive stance, legs apart, knees slightly bent, arms hanging loose but engaged at my sides, like I’m about to start a seriously competitive spar.
Behind Liam, Xander chuckles. “Wow, dude, you really don’t want to get into it with her.”
“I’m not scared of you,” Liam says. He’s drunk, I can tell. I could drop him and gut him like a fish, but I want to find Sawyer. So I turn to leave, and he charges. I see Topher dive forward in my defense at the same time as my instinct kicks in. Both my arms shoot back and take Liam by the neck. I curve one leg back around his knees. With a quick twist, he crashes down on the floor.
“Bitch!” Liam yells. “Fucking half-breed!” My fist shoots forward and cracks into his mouth. He doesn’t have the protective reflexes that Topher does. Blood spurts from his lip.
This would be the moment to step back. I’ve won this bout, but I’m on fire now. I have him pinned down on the floor, bloodied and dazed. My arm is drawn back to hit him again. I could beat him unconscious and barely raise a sweat, and I want to. Badly. I haven’t heard that word he called me in years, not since I smacked a kid who slung it at my little stepcousin. It’s like a curse from an ancient fairy tale that awakens a monster. I could kill Liam.
Someone grabs me from behind, pulling me off him, pinning my arms to my sides as I struggle to get free.
“Enough, Raven.” Topher’s voice vibrates in my ear. “Enough. Stop.”
I exhale, going limp in his arms.
We’re now surrounded by Liam’s friends, as well as a few spectators. It is one of those scenes that make me look really cool and Liam look really dumb. I feel a twang of regret, not for his pain—I couldn’t care less about that—but that I let him get to me. I have a feeling I’m going to have to pay for this one day.
Liam’s friends drag him off to the bathroom to clean up. Xander trails after them, chuckling. The rest of the crowd drifts away—the entertainment over.
As I tug at Topher’s arms, he releases me, and I catch my balance on the back of a chair.
“You okay?”
I flex the fingers of my right hand. They’re a bit tender, but I’ve felt worse. “Fine.”
“I didn’t mean your hand.” He lets a few seconds tick past. “No one else thinks of you like that.”
I just shake my head. Like a “half-breed,” he means, as though that’s such a terrible thing. The word is pretty offensive—that much I know about my stepdad’s history—but what’s so wrong with being half this and half that anyway? Topher means most people think of me as white. I don’t think that’s true, but that doesn’t matter either. What matters is that he thinks it’s a compliment. I don’t look white. Is he saying I act white?
You’d think at the end of the world I could get away from this crap, but I guess not. As for Liam, he doesn’t know the first thing about me. And I don’t care either, if he thinks I’m Métis, or Native, or Black. He can kiss my round, brown ass.
“I’m going to bed,” I say. Topher lets me go without another word.
Mandy is not in her bunk when I get to our quarters, which means she’s probably in the infirmary—maybe holding an ice pack on Liam’s nose.
Looking over at the small desk, I realize I don’t have my notebook. I must have dropped it when Liam jumped me. Now I’ll have to go back for it, and I was so looking forward to maybe getting some sleep.