These Broken Stars Part 16

He blinks, and his head turns toward me. The barrel of the gun wavers and dips. His eyes focus, and my heart leaps. He swallows, speaks through dry lips.

"Sarah," he croaks.

"It's me," I say pathetically. I sound like I'm begging. I am begging. "Please, Tarver. It's me. It's Lilac. Your Lilac, you know me."

He groans and collapses back again, the hand holding the gun dropping. "G.o.d, I've missed you."

"I haven't gone anywhere." I should get close, feel his temperature again, but it won't do any good. I know he's burning up. The makes.h.i.+ft pillow under his head is soaked with sweat.

"Sarah, I feel rotten."

In his fever, he thinks I'm some other girl. His girlfriend, maybe-does he have one waiting at home? I realize I've never even asked.

"I know you do," I whisper, giving in. I can't reach him. The only thing I can do is get back inside that wreck, clear a path to the deeper, less intact parts, and find the sick bay.

He mumbles something else, and I slip in close enough to ease the gun out of his grip. He doesn't even twitch. I tuck it into the back of my jeans, my skin crawling at its presence. I don't know the first thing about guns, but I know I can't leave it here with him and risk him shooting me in his delirium.

I take a deep breath, locating the flashlight-and after a moment of hesitation, Tarver's notebook and pen. I need to make a map. It's going to be harder to navigate the labyrinth of sharply slanting corridors and broken staircases in complete darkness, but I can't afford to wait. Tarver can't afford for me to wait.

He's so thin now. I hadn't even noticed, seeing him every second of every day, but here, while he's asleep and flushed and delirious, I can see how lean he is. I brush the damp hair back from his forehead.

"I'll be back," I murmur. "Hold on."

He calls out for Sarah as I make my way back toward the s.h.i.+p, and it breaks my heart. I'd sit with him and be his Sarah if I could, if there were someone else to go look for his medicine. But I leave him with his ghosts and descend into the wreck, ignoring the voice behind me begging me to return.

In the darkness, the s.h.i.+p is a maze.

Over the last few days of searching I've still only found the one entry point, so every time I come back I have to retrace my steps, spending precious time going over the same ruined pathways. I try every possible turn, and each attempt ends in a crushed floor or a dead-end room.

I found an emergency fire station a few hours into that first night, with a fire blanket, an ax, an extinguisher-and a handful of chemical glow sticks. I've discovered that they s.h.i.+ne steadily for about an hour and a half before they start to fade, and so I've been using them as timers. An hour and a half, and then wherever I am, I turn back. To check on him.

Three hours in and back, and then I can make sure he's not dead.

I've lost track of how many trips I've made. The flashlight is growing dim after so much use, so I turn it off, relying on the light of the glow sticks instead. I know this particular corridor, the pattern of its destruction, by heart now. I don't need light here.

To the right is the laundry room. I go straight. Farther along are more corridors branching off into dormitories for the staff. I discover a tiny gym with equipment so smashed it takes me long moments to realize what it is. What hope is there that, even if I can find the sick bay, there'll be anything remotely usable?

The darkness spins, exhaustion briefly threatening to steal my balance. I shut my eyes, stretching out a hand to grab on to the wall. I can't afford to think hopelessly.

I wait until the dizziness pa.s.ses and make a mental note to eat something the next trip I make back to camp. When I open my eyes I realize I've made it to an intersection where I turned right, last time. This time I go straight ahead, into new territory.

Exposed steel spars and wiring make it impossible to move without deliberation, and debris strewn about threatens to drag me down at every step. I saw the Icarus dismantled like this once before, nearly a decade ago. She was my playground once, when she was little more than a steel frame and a sketch in the minds of my father's engineers. But then she was new and clean, bare with unrealized potential and promise. Not smashed beyond recognition.

I try to visualize the s.h.i.+p I played in. Did I know then what the rooms would be used for? I don't remember. Did I ever know where the medical wing was? Was I ever sick?

No. But Anna was. For the first time the thought of my cousin doesn't fill me with guilt so tangible I want to throw up. Instead, a tiny flicker of memory floods my mind, and with it, something like hope.

I remember the smell of soap as I brought Anna to the sick bay. And not the astringent scent of medical cleanser, but light, airy, clean-scented soap. The laundry.

I can't be far, then. Can I?

There's no smell of soap now, though I can smell something else. Perishable food, I think. It smells like a meat locker that's been without power for a week. But very faint.

The glow stick is getting dimmer. I have to move more quickly. Soon I'll need to go see if Tarver's still alive. Check his bandage, force some water down his throat, and hope he doesn't mistake me again for a threat. The bruise on my cheek throbs at the memory.

I can only see about a foot in front of me by the dimming light of the glow stick. Tomorrow I'll have to remember to set the flashlight out in the sun to recharge. Tomorrow? It is night, isn't it?

Maybe it's tomorrow already.

Go back, I tell myself frantically. Just go back now.

I have the strangest feeling, almost a superst.i.tion, that if I leave him for more than my arbitrary three-hour limit, those few minutes will be the death of him. And yet, the time it takes to go back and forth checking on him, instead of locating medicine, could be just as deadly.

I keep moving.

The path is clear enough here that I can break into a slow run. All that hiking has paid off, and though it's been a couple of days now since I slept more than an hour or two at a time, I still have enough energy for this.

Ahead of me yawns sudden blackness, not the grid of the floor. My mind, sluggish with lack of sleep, fails to process it. Before I realize I have to stop, I'm falling.

Something soft breaks my fall with a m.u.f.fled crack. I drop the glow stick, gasping for breath as a sudden wave of nausea shudders through me. It's the meat-locker smell, not the fall, making me sick. The smell is stronger here. Too strong.

I roll away from whatever I landed on and push myself to my feet. Half in shock, my mind runs through an oddly detached checklist of my body, making sure everything's still working. Tarver would kill me if he knew I'd been so reckless. If he'd been here.

I turn back for the glow stick, which clattered out of my hand when I fell. I stoop to reach for it and freeze.

It's a face. A tiny patch of sickly green glow s.h.i.+nes from the stick, lighting the hollows of the cheeks, the empty, staring eyes, glinting off the teeth just showing between parted lips.

I scream, flinging myself away until I hit the floor. My face presses into the cold iron gridwork, and I gasp for breath, trying to inhale shallowly through my mouth. The meat-locker smell-G.o.d, and it is rotting meat, isn't it?-is so overpowering I think for a moment I might pa.s.s out. I can taste it on my tongue.

I lurch to my feet and into a run. In darkness and fear, I keep colliding with walls and ricocheting around corners. I step on something that gives beneath my heel, and my ankle rolls, but I keep myself upright. I know that if I fall, what I fall on will be the end of me. Soft things. Rotting things. Dead things.

This s.h.i.+p isn't a maze-it's a tomb.

Exposed debris slices at my clothes and my hair and my face. Still I run, deeper and deeper into the dead part of the s.h.i.+p, helpless with the knowledge that after such a long fall, I can't climb back up to get out the way I came in.

A jagged rebar catches my arm and jerks me sideways, flinging me against a wall. My scream is a hoa.r.s.e, desperate noise.

My hand finds a door handle and twists, and I lurch into the closet-like s.p.a.ce behind it, dragging the door shut behind me. I slide down to the floor amid the clanking of buckets and mop handles and fumble for the flashlight. Its beam is warm and golden, if dim, and lights the inside of what seems to be a janitorial cupboard. It's strangely intact, mops and brooms neatly lined up.

My heart threatening to slam its way out past my rib cage, I put my head down on my knees and focus on my breathing. Anything but the thought of what waits for me outside, the dead eyes and bloated corpses.

One. Oh, G.o.d. Two. Three. Four. Something snapped when I fell on that body. I broke something in it. It was like a wet branch. No. No. Five. Six. Seven. He would have despised me for running. Eight. What if one of those bodies was Anna's? Oh, G.o.d. No. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Pull yourself together, Miss LaRoux. Twelve. You're no use to anybody cowering in a broom cupboard. Thirteen. Fourteen. Don't sell yourself short. I don't know many soldiers who'd have done better. Fifteen.

I make it to twenty before opening my eyes again. The beam of the flashlight shudders with each breath, the effort still enough to shake my whole body. But the darkness is no longer trying to strangle me.

Tarver's a liar, but he lies to keep me moving, and I can't fault him for that. The least I can do is try to prove him right.

I'll take the girl I know, thanks.

I force myself to stand up, opening the door again with an effort. I take a long breath through the collar of my s.h.i.+rt, trying to filter out the stench of decay, and step back out into the hallway.

The flashlight dies.

A tiny sound catches in my throat, but I keep from screaming again. Instead I stand still, gazing into the darkness and forcing myself to breathe.

I catch a whiff of something fresher, something untainted by the smell of death all around. I move toward it, picking my way in utter darkness slowly and carefully through the bodies and wreckage littering the floor.

It turns out to be coming from a tear in the side of the s.h.i.+p, where something ripped a long, narrow gash along its hull. I squeeze my body through, careful not to slice myself on the exposed metal and wiring nearly two feet thick in the wall.

It's night outside, but it's like walking out into the sunlight. The air has never smelled so sweet, the sky never seemed so full of stars. The clouds have cleared and the mirror-moon s.h.i.+nes down, coating the world in its pale blue luminescence. I drop to my knees, gasping for air, as though I can wipe away my memories of what waits inside the s.h.i.+p with enough fresh oxygen. I can't go back in. How can I go back in? I can't. It's a tomb. We knew not everyone could have made it onto the pods in that frantic press of people, but now, faced as I am with the proof, the thought of returning to the s.h.i.+p makes me want to retch. I must have been near one of the evacuation points when I fell.

I let myself crouch in the darkness for the count of five, breathing deep, before I get to my feet and follow the outer hull of the s.h.i.+p back to camp.

Tarver's unconscious. It's almost a relief, though I don't know if unconsciousness is a bad sign, or if the rest is good for him. But it means he doesn't look at me with those burning eyes, doesn't reach for me unseeing, shout nonsense, speak to me as if I'm his mother, his lover, his corporal, anyone but me.

I bathe his face and chest in cold water, then lift his head and trickle some water from the canteen into his mouth. He swallows a few times, then moans and pushes me away. Angry red lines have begun to march their way from underneath the bandage up the inside of his arm. I trace them with my fingertips and swallow my dread.

He's so quiet, so still. I smooth his hair back from his brow, run the backs of my fingers along his cheek, rough like sandpaper with the stubble of the past few days. He looks younger than usual, no older than I am. I dampen my fingertips with water and run them across his mouth, which is dry and chapped. Even his lips are hot, flushed.

"Tarver," I whisper, cupping his burning cheek with my hand. "Please don't-don't leave me."

My whole body seizes up, my insides clenching with a horror and helplessness more profound than any I'd felt when confronted with the corpses in the wreck. Unable to breathe, unable to move, I crouch over him, my hands shaking as they try to somehow smooth away his illness.

"Please don't leave me here alone."

My fingers fan through the damp hair at the nape of his neck. My lips find his forehead, then his temple. I'm shaking, and I force myself to stop, dragging air into my lungs.

"I'll be back," I whisper in his ear. I say it every time I go. It's as much a promise to myself as to him. I try to make my feet move, make that promise real, but I'm so tired. All I want is to curl up beside him.

I stagger away, and as I wipe at my eyes, I spot something lying just inside the firelight. Something I know wasn't there a moment ago, because a moment ago I'd been stretched out in that spot, at Tarver's side.

It's a flower.

I pick it up, my fingers trembling, though I already know what it is. Two of the petals are grown together, a mutation, one in a million. Unique. Except that I've seen it before. And that flower is gone-it was destroyed in the downpour, crushed against my skin. I left the pieces behind where we camped by the river.

How is it here now?

I cup the flower in my hands, closing my eyes for a long moment. I brush a fingertip along the joined petals, and abruptly I see Tarver's quiet smile, the beauty in the moment he gave it to me. The memory spreads like a fire through my limbs, feeling and strength coming back to me. I can do this.

Whoever or whatever is watching us, I realize that this is a gift, just as the canteen was. I don't know what they intended, but I know what it means to me.

I'm not alone here. Perhaps I never was, even in the depths of the dead-filled wreck. These whispers, whoever, whatever they are, can see into my thoughts. They can see into my heart.

I shut my eyes, turning away from the empty s.p.a.ce at his side.

Behind the camp looms the black monstrosity of the wreck, darker than the night and blotting out the stars. The tomb. The meat locker. I force myself not to look back at Tarver asleep in our bed again. I know that if I do, I might not go. That this time might be the one where I fail, and fall down, and can't get back up.

I walk back into the tomb.

"How did you divide up the labor?"

"What do you mean? The salvage?"

"Yes."

"She did most of it."

"Your sarcasm is uncalled for. How did you divide up the labor?"

"According to our strengths, I suppose."

"What were Miss LaRoux's strengths?"

"Hairstyling, eye makeup, spotting a faux pas at fifty paces."

"Major. Your lack of cooperation is being noted."

"She could fetch and carry, small tasks like that."

"And you?"

"I found that very helpful."

TWENTY-FIVE.

TARVER.

I KNOW IT'S STRANGE WHEN MY BROTHER Alec shows up beside me, but I can't remember why. It tickles at the back of my brain like an annoying little itch. I give up for now and let my eyes close again.

I was watching Lilac before, but I think she's gone now. She keeps coming and going, coming and going, always carrying things. So many things. Where do they come from? This world doesn't have that many things in it. No things, no other people, no idea, no hope. Just her.

I really hope that when it comes down to it, she dies first. It'll be bad for her, if it's me.

"That's a pretty morbid thing to think, T." Alec's lying beside me on the bed, reclining on his elbows the way he always did when we lay outside on summer nights.

That doesn't make it any less true. What else should I hope for her?

"Don't look at me, she's your Girl Friday."

She's not my girl anything.