And wait.
It’s not long before I hear the front door bang open. The irony is not lost on me. I’m cowering in a bathroom again, a knife in each hand. Shoot, maybe I can make this one fall in love with me too.
Fall in love? Did I just think that? Do I really think August is in love with me?
I hear metallic footsteps approaching down the hardwood floor in the hallway.
Of course August is in love with me. Of course he is. What the hell have I been thinking?
“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” I whisper, not sure whether I’m panicking about the girl Nahx who is coming down the hall to kill me, or the boy Nahx who is out there in the city somewhere, in love with me. How did I let either of these things happen?
The bedroom door opens. I make a rash and stupid decision. This girl will be expecting me to cower in hiding, like I did when August found me. But I’m going down slashing. As quietly as I can, I slide the glass door open and step out of the bath. A shaft of moonlight through a frosted window is all the illumination I have to work with, but it’s enough to guide me back to the bathroom door. I doubt I can slowly ease the lock back without making noise, so I decide to go for fast and loud. Click, bang! I throw the door open.
The Nahx is bent over, looking under the bed, her rifle lying on the coverlet. She barely has time to turn her head before I leap on her back, bounce down onto the bed, hooking one foot through the strap of her rifle, and then plow into the sliding door, my arms crossed in front of my face. The glass shatters around me, and I land on my knees, my face smacking into the railing. That will hurt tomorrow, I think, spinning back to see the Nahx climbing over the bed toward me.
She moves slowly at first. I’m sure she knows that the only way out for me is down, but I’m counting on her aggression taking over at the last minute. My other encounters with Nahx have all been about a slow stalk culminating in a high-speed hand-to-hand assault. I’ve lost track of where her rifle went. She doesn’t have it and I don’t have it—that’s all I know. She steps down off the bed. I crouch, gripping my knives. With a swish, she produces her own knife. The polished blade glints in the moonlight.
“Oh shit,” I say. I don’t really care if she knows how scared I am. Bravado is going to get me nowhere at this stage. I have one chance to end this in my favor. I try to frame my plan into words in my head. They should be very familiar words to me, martial arts prodigy that I am, but I can’t quite think. Glass crunches under the Nahx’s boots.
“AUGUST!?” I yell into the night.
Something about using my enemy’s momentum to do something. I have no earthly idea. She steps onto the terrace and, with lightning speed, lunges at me. Dropping the knives, I dive down and grab her ankles. She smacks into the railing as I roll onto my back, still holding her ankles, and get my feet under me. Then, knees trembling with effort, I press up. She gives a nasty growl as I flip her over the railing. One of her hands shoots out and grabs the metal as she falls. She swings down, hanging by one hand.
Damn it. This is like one of those movie scenes where the good guy stupidly helps the bad guy not fall to their death. The second it takes for me to think this is enough for us to both realize where the dart rifle is—right under the railing, right in front of her. She flings her knife away before her fingers close on the rifle. This time I don’t even think. I swing around and kick, neatly swiping her hand right off the rail. She lets out a wild hiss as she falls.
I look over the railing as she disappears below me, and something zips past my ear.
Bitch actually fired that dart rifle as she fell thirty-nine stories straight down.
I fall to my knees on the terrace, the snow pants cushioning the impact somewhat. Something trickles down my face. I reach up and find blood dripping from a cut on my eyebrow. I’m cold now too. Now that the adrenaline is wearing off, I realize how bitingly cold it is out here. I have no hat or gloves or coat, either, and I’ve just smashed the window. I struggle to my feet. Leaning over the railing, I can see the Nahx girl splayed out, a dark speck on the road far below. I stumble back into the apartment and sit on the bed.
Now I have to decide what to do. Do I go and look for August, risking running into this girl’s partner, or do I hide for a while and hope August can find me? Hide or fight? Hide or run? Hide or search?
And then there is the whole thing of August being in love with me. I’m not as sure of this as I was a few minutes ago, when death was so close. Now I think maybe that was just my brain twitching in the heat of the moment. He cares about me, cares about my survival, but love? I think it’s possible he loves me about as much as Topher does, which is to say not really at all. He feels an obligation to me, a perverse attraction, and a good deal of the old-fashioned hormonal confusion brought by grief and fear and being a boy. Yes, that makes more sense. Grief and fear turn us all into morons.
I wish Topher were here, so I could tell him that killing a Nahx doesn’t feel as good as we thought it would. In fact I feel sick to my stomach. She was wild and determined to dart me, for whatever reasons the Nahx have, but some part of her must have been like August, a thinking being. He can’t be the only one who thinks like he does. Did she like sunsets too? Snowflakes? Was she afraid of her own reflection? He was driven like her once too. He stormed into that trailer planning to kill whatever he found there, but changed his mind for some reason. If he could change his mind, then can’t they all? The strength of this revelation makes me dizzy. I lie back on the bed and stare at the dark ceiling. If I made August change his mind, then why can’t I . . . do something . . . you know? Save the world or something?
Why does my life have to be so complicated?
AUGUST
I encounter the boy on the fourth floor. He turns at the sounds of my footsteps on the stairs behind him. We can’t show emotion. We aren’t supposed to feel any emotion, but I can tell he’s surprised to see me.
Rank? he signs.
Sixth, I lie.
My mind spits up a piece of procedure. Something Sixth may or may not have told me. Split up. I start at the top, you at the bottom. We meet in the middle. Though I never searched a high-rise with her, I know what this means. There is a girl on the top floor; this one’s Offside is up where Dandelion was. Right now. And I can’t move from dreading she’ll dart Dandelion and this will all be over.
Too late I remember I should have asked for the boy’s rank too. He’s a high rank. A Third maybe. His armor is shiny clean.
What are you doing? he asks me, impatiently, because I’ve been standing there staring at him like a dull-witted Twelfth.
Preparing, I sign. I have searched this building.
Where is your Offside?