True North Read online

  I’m jolted from my train of thought by a knock on my door. The knob twists before I can even say get lost.

  “Lucy,” says Jared Price, trying on a reasonable tone to start. His blond head glints as he crosses over to me, tossing a wavy lock from his eyes. He looks like an avenging angel in this light. Perfect lips and chiseled cheekbones accenting eyes that would make the gods swoon. Beautiful and deadly. And with two words, he shatters the peace: “You can’t.”

  So, Storm has told him, then. A burst of anger grips me. “Can’t what? Just what can’t I do?” I ask, wrapping my voice in that same reasonable tone. It’s a calm I don’t really feel.

  “Stop this, Lucy. While you still can.”

  I push at his granite chest, the huge googly eyed O on his ridiculous T-shirt rubbery beneath my palm. “No, you stop it. Who do you think you are, barging in here and telling me what I can and can’t do?”

  I’ve caught him by surprise. His eyes flare green before banking back to blue. But he doesn’t touch me back. “You have a choice,” he says finally, flatly.

  “What choice is that?”

  “You can go back. Stay with the Uppers.”

  I suck back breath like I’ve been punched. It hurts that he wants me to go back— that he would even suggest it. To go back…that would mean I would disappear from his life. Doesn’t that matter to him—don’t I? I know he only wants to protect me. Somehow Jared has convinced himself that I’ll be safer surrounded by my own kind, the rich and suffocated ranks of the Upper Circle. Still, his careless words make my heart hurt in places I didn’t know it had. I rub at my chest as if it will help and bark a laugh. “You think I can just call up one of my old pals—maybe Senator and Mary Kain, eh?” I say, and watch him flinch. He remembers full well the last time I saw Mary Kain, when I all but realized the Kains knew of my sister’s kidnapping. The night Mary Kain slapped the daylight out of me. “You think I can just go on the way I have before…as a houseguest?”

  I shake my head in disgust. Jared knows nothing about the Upper Circle. If he did, he’d understand that they’ll never truly permit me, now a penniless refugee abandoned by her family, to cozy up in their ranks. Oh, certainly, while people are trying to decide whether my father will return, they’ll be very polite to me. They’ll still tell me things, because they can’t help themselves. But they are all talking. Weighing my fate. Waiting.

  Nolan Storm doesn’t know how bad a bargain he’s really made.

  “You can’t keep doing this,” he says again stubbornly.

  My back sags, the fight gone out of me for now. “How can I not?”

  I can handle being the tool Storm uses in his meetings, his entrée into the glamorous and cold world of the Splicers. I can sit beside him, using my skills to uncover the information he needs. I can sell my dignity and my freedom. But only for the price of our bargain: my sister. Margot’s rescue is more important than my comfort or humiliation.

  Lock and key. What happens when the key goes missing?

  The lock doubles the bargain.

  I can’t keep this up, I’d told Storm earlier that evening, hating the way my voice had trembled as I spoke. I’d already shoved my hands behind my back so he couldn’t see them shaking.

  “I see,” was the entirety of Storm’s reply. He paced the room, his footsteps slow and measured across the white shag rug.

  “Unless you help me get Margot soon, I’ll—I’ll go back to the Upper Circle.” It was a foolish bargaining chip but one of the only I had.

  Suddenly he was before me, eyes blazing. I stood there, holding my ground despite the aching desire to hide. “And what makes you think you have anything to go back to?”

  Honesty is always the best bargaining position, my father had told us often enough. I nodded. “You’re right. Maybe I don’t. But I’m sure I could convince someone to help me look for her.”

  Storm considered me for a long moment. “All this—this isn’t enough?” He swept his hand out, encompassing not just the luxury of the room but maybe the dark diamond of Dominion down below.

  But no, it wasn’t enough. We’d made no progress. And I was out of patience.

  “You know better,” I chided him.

  His bony crown dipped, hiding a small smile before he looked up at me, eyes lit with amusement before turning serious again. “She went willingly.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. Lucy, your sister left of her own volition. She wasn’t kidnapped.”

  I chewed on my lip in frustration. He didn’t understand. “What does that even matter? She wasn’t bound and gagged, no. But was she coerced? You know she was. I’ll not pretend to know what my parents are up to, Storm. But Margot is a pawn in this game, and I’ll not leave her to that fate. Help me. Now. Or I walk.”

  “I see,” he repeated thoughtfully. I crossed my arms and waited as Storm considered me. “Not many people would have the gumption to bargain with me like this,” he conceded.

  “I’m not most people, Mr. Storm.”

  And then Nolan Storm, leader of the True Borns, slowly extended his hand to me. “No, indeed you’re not, Miss Fox.”

  It was a desperate play, I muse now as Jared watches me from under a bank of curls. I’d never go back to the false prison that makes up the world of my childhood. But Nolan Storm need never know that. Jared, though—somehow I can’t hide from him.

  “I need to find her, Jared. I can’t be apart from her.” I’m not whole without my sister at my side. Margot is my everything, my sun and my moon since the day we first drew breath. My best friend. My constant companion. My true north.

  I jump a little when Jared sighs and inches closer, the gap between us disappearing until he’s so close I wonder if he can smell the weight of my sadness. “I’ll do whatever it takes,” I croak. “You know I’m telling the truth.”

  He nods. He’s not pleased about it, but he knows. He understands what I need to do, accepts it as an integral piece of me—another layer to my complicated being. I’ve never seen a man look at me the way Jared looks at me now. It’s far too intimate, as though he’s seen beneath my skin. I can read it there, in his moody, unhappy eyes—the distance he’s putting between us is making him crazy, too. But how much longer can I live with this hot and cold?

  He nods again. “Yes.” His mouth catches on the word. “But now you need to understand something, Lu. I’ve been assigned to protect you. I take that duty more seriously than anything. It’s not just your body I need to protect. And—and this could hurt you, Lu.” His hand goes to his chest, his expression naked and raw. How could I have ever thought this man was cavalier? “How do I protect you through this?”

  “Well,” I reason, “if I were to go back, you’d have no means to protect me. At least this way you get to do what you must.”

  His smile is small and sad in return. “Are you sure you won’t reconsider?”

  I hold out my hand and he grabs it, the touch so shocking that for a moment I lose track of my thoughts. “You work for him,” I finally tell him, “but you can help me. Help me, Jared,” I plead.

  I am not above pleading, groveling, begging.

  He keeps hold of my hand, reeling me gently forward. With his other, he cradles the back of my head before pressing a long, lingering kiss to my forehead. I want more, I realize as he moves away. I want more.

  But as he slips out, silent and quick as he waltzed in, I realize that isn’t my only regret.

  Because Jared didn’t answer me, either.

  4

  They say Splicers sometimes feel this way once a diseased limb or organ has been removed. Phantom pains, they call it. For me, that is my sister, a bright, terrible loss within me.

  It used to be a living thing stretching between us. When the Protocols nurse sank her needle into Margot’s flesh, the stinging pain invaded me and I reached for her hand. When she fell and scraped her knees, I bled. When they strapped her down on an examination table and plucked from her body the seeds of her future, my
own guts writhed with sympathy.

  There were times in our childhood that I detested that ghost flesh. When she kissed Robbie Deakins inside Grayguard’s quad, I wanted to wash my mouth with bleach and hated with a passion the traitorous heat lighting up my body. Every month our cycles flowed at exactly the same moment, although my own was compounded with the aching echo of Margot’s cramps.

  Sometimes I wonder: Did our parents know? Did they suspect? Margot and I kept our secrets locked tight within us. But she is so far away now. And for the first time in our lives, I can’t feel her. They could be doing any number of despicable things to her to get what they want. And what do they want?

  Another question as mute and empty as Dominion’s white skies.

  I watch with a sigh as the streets flow past. The scavengers have been busy lining their nests with the debris of a ghost town. The rubble from the last insurgency took only a week to disappear. The blue sneaker with the golden lighting bolt I’d seen lying on its side a few days before has gone, as has the red handkerchief that once lay on a concrete block, tumbled from the half-eaten building to the left. It may be easier to get around, now that the preachers have gone to ground, but Dominion is no easier to look at.

  Storm barges into my train of thought. “There’s a meeting tonight I’d like you to come to.”

  I don’t want to talk about more parties. “What Colonel Deakins said last night,” I say instead, gazing at the lifeless streets. “So it’s true. They’re all gone.”

  The moment I say it, I grasp what’s been bothering me. We’ve been traveling to the tree at least twice a week for the past few weeks. But now there are no bodies in the streets. They’re bare. Unless the Plague has diminished—unthinkable at the moment—Dominion has become a ghost town, and it has taken its ghosts to the grave.

  Storm shakes his antlered head. His silver eyes regard me with preternatural intensity, though the smile is sweet and kind.

  “I think this is a tactical retreat. They’re planning something. Which is why I need you to come with me tonight. We need to shake some trees.”

  It’s not an expression I’m familiar with. People don’t “shake” trees in Dominion. They tear them down for firewood. I’m unable to ask Storm what he means as we pull to a stop at Heaven Square. Mohawk, this morning’s driver, jumps out and opens my door. Today she’s pulled a necklace through the multiple holes in her ear, held open with weights. With her cut-off shirt and tight black crop shorts, strange against the stripy pattern of her skin, she looks like an exotic dancer from another dimension.

  “Have fun, Ducky.” She winks. “I’ll be here, keeping an eye on you.” She stabs two fingers to her eyes, then points them at me, startling a laugh out of me.

  I follow Storm over to the Prayer Tree where Doc Raines looks up from a pile of wet earth. It rained last night and drizzles still.

  “You’ve got to see this,” she calls over to us with a wave.

  The doctor is a throwback from another age. A tailored cream rain slick that screams Upper Circle covers up her khaki pants and crisp linen shirt, yet her frizzed curls bob everywhere. She scoops a handful of coppery corkscrews restlessly away from her face as she stares at us with sharp eyes.

  “Hello, Doc.” Storm stops in front of an excavation site bounded on four sides with planks of wood that the doc will pack up and take with her to keep from being stolen. Beside the hole, the doctor has set up a makeshift lab: a few beakers and vials of solution beside a field microscope.

  Doc Raines rattles her curls impatiently. “Look,” she says without preamble, pointing to her makeshift lab. Storm hitches up the leg of his monstrously expensive trousers and bends down beside her. We watch as she pours the contents of one beaker into another. She takes a pipette with a dirt-smudged tip and drops something into the beaker. She stirs once, twice. Something happens; the formerly clear liquid turns a cloudy red.

  The doc turns to Storm with a sharp, expectant look.

  “You’re going to have to draw us a picture, Dorian,” drawls Storm.

  “I’ve been shipping the samples back to my lab and having the damnedest time getting a read on anything. With each sample test, the roots were inert. Like looking at rock. Which didn’t make any sense, since they’re roots. At the very least, there should be evidence of organic decomposition, if not some trace of chemicals or just—something.”

  The doctor grabs at Storm’s hand, something I’ve never seen her do before. Doc Raines doesn’t do touching, unless it’s to heal. She turns to us with a beaker filled with clear liquid. She throws in a pipette of dirt. Even before she begins to stir it, the liquid turns stormy and red.

  “I’m using a biosensor assay. In the presence of active nanoparticles, it changes color. The more active the nanoparticles, the faster and more complete the color change.” She looks around, eyes lit with fear and wonder. “Do you understand what I’m saying? It’s full of nanotech.”

  “Does it test for any particular kind of nano, Dorian?”

  “The kind that targets biological agents. It must be loaded with some variation of a growth factor I’ve never seen before,” the doctor replies with a wry smile. “My guess is, once the organic compounds begin to die, the nanotech is programmed to self-destruct, leaving no trace of its existence or the organic composition it was targeted to.”

  “Which is why you can’t find it in your lab.”

  The doc nods at Storm like he’s been a star pupil. “Which is why I can’t find it in my lab.”

  I stare at the vial in her hand, the bright-red color fading as the technology kills its host. “What the hell made that?”

  We stay at the Prayer Tree for hours, culling samples from different areas of the root system and the bark, and subjecting it to the same test. The results are always the same: The clear liquid turns a deep, rich red in an instant. At one point the doctor calls over Mohawk to help her jerry-rig a tent over her makeshift lab. Maybe it’s the rain, zigzagging down in a wet blanket, that makes the streets so eerie. Or maybe it’s that we don’t see or hear a single soul. I keep half an eye out anyway, waiting for the urchins from the kid gangs to make an appearance, and especially the little girl I met the other day. I’d hoped she’d be looking for more food.

  No one shows.

  If it weren’t for the new graffiti on the walls, now bleeding down in rich crimson streaks, and the jingling tokens newly left in the branches since our last visit to the tree, I’d have said the city was empty.

  It must be ten minutes later that I catch a slight movement, quick and light as a bird, from the corner of my eye. I swivel my head, hoping to catch whatever it is, but it disappears. Feeling eyes on my back, I turn toward the tree and Doc Raines, who continues to school Storm on DNA-based nanotech. There—again. Just to my right, around the side of the building colored over with the largest set of circles.

  “Just stretching my legs for a moment,” I murmur to Mohawk, who busily chews on a stick with her sharp teeth.

  Mohawk barely glances at me as she pulls up the collar on her trench coat. The rain has been relentless all morning, leaving us soaked. “Uh-huh.”

  I throw the strap of my bag over my shoulder and slowly pick my way across the rubble of the Square. Like a good merc, I scan the tops of the buildings. Nothing.

  A brown head of dreadlocked hair flashes and disappears. I hurry my steps and turn the corner.

  She’s slinking away, her body tight against the building.

  “Marta,” I call softly, “wait.”

  The girl looks back over her shoulder, eyes wide and watchful. She’s soaked through, her black wool sweater liberally dotted with gashes and holes where a dirty shirt peeks through. Her thumbs poke holes in the sleeves so that the rest of the cuffs dangle uselessly from her hands. She lifts one hand to her mouth and bites at her nail.

  “Remember me?”

  She doesn’t say anything, but at least she’s not running away. I approach slowly, cautiously, as I would a street dog. I r
each into my bag and note her flinch. “No, no, just food.” I pantomime biting into something. Her eyes spark with interest. “Want some?”

  She nods. I come closer, the bag of food I’ve packed outstretched in my hand. She lunges at it and tears at the plastic, biting into the bread and meat as though it’s her last meal. Little snorts of breath come from her too-thin body. “Slow down,” I tell her gently. “You’ll choke. Slow down, Marta. There’s more here.”

  She chews and nods as I lean against the building and watch her.

  “Not the nicest day,” I say conversationally. “Do you have a warm place to stay?”

  Marta doesn’t answer. She hardly needs to, though. Her upstretched eyebrow says it all.

  “I can’t stay now. But I’ll bring you more food. Tomorrow, right? Early morning. Meet me at the tree.”

  Marta stares back at me, her eyes dulling with the unexpected weight of food in her belly. She nods, a shy look stealing over her fine features.

  “Good. Good.” I throw out another apple from my bag. She raises her hands to catch it. And in another instant, I’ve disappeared.

  The Square looks deserted. I know it’s not. Cold rain drizzles down bullets, washing my face as I reach the Square. The tiny bells embroidered onto the branches of the giant tree jingle with the weight of the rain, as though the tree is alive and laughing at us all.

  I look over my shoulder. The faint, creeping feeling of being watched itches my neck. I’d expected that, prepared for that. I’d made enough noise to wake the dead, after all. When I reach a wall with the scrawled red Evolve or die, I slow to trace the letters with a finger. What would Margot think of what I’m doing? She’d not be happy. Then again, she’d probably do the same thing.

  It’s not that I don’t trust Storm to help me get my sister, exactly. I expect he’ll live up to his side of our bargain. Eventually. But there’s other information I need, and the kid gangs are the only place I can think of to get it.

  When I figure enough time has passed, I turn, putting my back to the hard stone behind me, and wait.