August reaches up to his helmet and pulls on something. There’s a loud crack, almost like a gunshot, and when black fluid drips down his shoulder, I panic for a moment that he has been shot, but he just reaches over and snaps something on the other side of his helmet. Another loud bang. Xander twitches under me.
August slowly leans forward to rest on both knees, with one hand on the ground. Reaching, he grabs the back of his helmet and pulls. There’s another noise, a wet squooshing sound, and the helmet splits in two, front and back, and falls to the ground. His head emerges, wet, covered in the same fluid that leaked out. It looks like what I’ve always thought of as his blood.
He holds there, his head hanging down, and I can see that the helmet is still connected to him via a dripping tube, which splits into three as it seems to originate in his mouth and nostrils.
“What the . . . ,” Xander says.
August starts to cough and choke. With a shaking hand he grabs the slimy tube and pulls about a foot of it out, then another few inches until finally the whole thing slithers out, along with a stream of sludge. He hangs there for a moment as I watch him cough and gag. Then he ejects a torrent of black vomit onto the snow. A few seconds pass. Finally, he takes a wet, wheezing breath.
“August?”
He sits back on his knees and does something to his wrists. With two more cracking noises and more sludge his gloves come away. He gathers a handful of the fresh snow and rubs away the fluid from his hands, revealing pale, almost gray skin beneath. Clambering over the puddle of vomit, he returns to my side and looks down on me.
“Oh my God,” Xander says as August takes me, sliding me back to cradle in his lap. August wipes his face and scrapes some of the fluid from his eyes. He bows his head, looking down at me from inches away.
“You’re . . . you’re . . .” For a moment I’ve forgotten the word. When it pops back into my head I almost laugh. “You’re human?”
Repeat human, he signs.
“Can’t you speak? Now that you’ve taken the mask off? You can’t speak?”
No. Cut voice. He tilts his head back to show me a mass of scars and some metallic implants that form part of his neck.
“But you’re human? I mean apart from . . .” I reach up to touch the implants on his neck and jaw. “You look just like a human.”
Repeat human.
At first I think he’s agreeing with me, because repeat means “alike.” But then I realize it can also mean something else.
“Copy human? You mean, like a clone?”
He nods then, and moves one hand up to touch my hair, my brow. A little sigh escapes him. And he smiles.
Human. But not. There are things about him that don’t look quite right. His teeth look sharp. His irises are pure black, and larger than they should be. And his skin, where I can see it as he wipes more of the black gunk away, is actually gray. When I run my fingers over his lips and teeth, and he opens his mouth, I see that his tongue is black too. His face is smooth and hairless and what hair he has on his head looks messily shorn and mashed and matted with the oily fluid.
But somehow, despite all this, he is unspeakably beautiful. If I had to guess, I would say at least one of his parents or grandparents was Chinese. He has a delicate nose and angled eyes along with a strong jaw and prominent cheekbones—one of them marred with a bright white scar from his temple to his bow-shaped upper lip.
I use the sleeve of my hoodie to wipe more slime from his pretty face. He looks so harmless for how frightened I’ve been of him, for the things he’s done, the people he’s killed. He looks innocent.
“How old are you?” I ask.
August shrugs, never taking his black eyes from mine. I become aware that his breathing is a bit forced. “Are you okay? Can you breathe like this?”
Don’t worry about me.
And saying this seems to release something in him. His eyes fill with silvery tears.
I’m sorry sorry sorry.
It’s getting hard to think through the throbbing burning from the broken flesh inside me and the ache in my heart, but dimly, I’m aware that Xander is crying too. Strange that I don’t think I’ve ever felt as loved as I do this moment. Two beautiful boys crying over my imminent death. I couldn’t have dreamed up a better scene. I feel like Juliet.
“Xan-Xander? Will you tell . . . my parents what happened to me, if you find them?”
He nods, sobbing.
Dandelion. I promise I will take that black-haired boy to the humans.
I laugh, but it turns into a moan of pain.
August gulps air and clings to me, pulling me close.
“Put your mask back on if you can’t breathe.”
He shakes his head, and gasps.
“Dude, come on. . . .” Xander reaches for him, but August shoves him back.
No!
“August, please. You just promised to take Xander home. You promised.”
He shakes his head, his beautiful face now streaked with gray tears.
Live. Live. Live?
“I’m sorry. I don’t think I will.” My vision is starting to turn dark at the edges.
Live forever?
“No. No one lives forever.”
August takes a raspy gulp of air, leaning down to me, clutching my chin in his warm fingers. With his other hand he points to his eyes and ears.
Look! Listen! he signs with a low hiss.
“I’m listening,” I say, trying to maintain focus on his face. Trying to fix all his expressions of sorrow and frustration in my mind. After so many months never seeing him like this, of having to guess his emotions, it’s precious.
He signs slowly, adding punctuation with firm hand movements.
Do. You. Want. To. Live. Forever?
“Everyone does. But that’s . . .”
He presses his hand over my mouth. Yes or no?
In my fading vision I see a small spark of light, like a firefly. I try to reach for it, but my arms are too heavy.
Yes or no!?
“Yes,” I say, more to the firefly than to anything else. It’s buzzing closer now. If I could just lift my hand . . .
August hoists me up roughly and reaches to his thigh under my back. When he lowers me down, I see what he has in his hand.
A Nahx dart.
His face is a mask of regret and sadness, eyebrows drawn together, his sharp white teeth digging into his top lip, his eyes streaming with tears. He bites something off the end of the dart, revealing the needle tip.
Yes? Say yes.
“Yes,” I say. To him, to the firefly, to Xander, who is nothing but a muttering ghost at the edges of the light. To Topher, who walked away. To someone . . .
August jams the dart into my neck. The firefly explodes, sucking away the light like a collapsing star.
“What . . . ,” I say, but fire is coursing through me. My body spasms, spine curling backward as I try to escape the inferno inside. I open my mouth to scream, but nothing comes out, the light of my voice sucked away with everything else.
“What was that? WHAT DID YOU DO?” I hear Xander screaming.
I begin to shake, and as August holds me up, I see that the blood leaking from my stomach is changing color. Everything is changing color. The black at the edges of my vision becomes hard and thick. I look up and meet August’s eyes. He shakes his head and presses the side of his hand into his chest.