Chapter 7
Mara
“Commander!” June and Elliott jumped to attention. My brother swept past them. Before they could do anything else, he had both hands on my shoulders. He turned me one way and then the other. His chest rose and fell under his jacket. How far had he run on my account?
“I'm all right.” I patted his hand. “You could've taken your time.”
Only when he'd satisfied himself that I was still in one piece did he let his breath out. He'd gone to press Central for progress on the old-stock antibody research, which they had very little reason to finish. The only people who could save his sister were also the people who benefited from keeping him desperate. River understood that perfectly well. He'd been away a matter of days, trying to make them move, and this was what he'd come home to.
“I should've been here, Mara.” He hung his head. “As soon as Caesar told me a test subject got loose, I came straight back. He said you were there.”
“Commander,” June said carefully. “Was that all Caesar told you?”
River turned. “What else was there?”
June's jaw tightened. Apparently Caesar had passed on just enough information to bring River running, then generously left the rest for someone else to explain. Even Director Hart seemed at a loss. Everyone here knew what my brother had done to keep me alive, and how much the Vanguard had paid for it. They might resent his sister, but his strength was what had kept A-001 safe. Telling him their lab had turned me into a Devourer couldn't have been an appealing prospect.
River wasn't a tyrant. Where I was concerned, though, his judgment went to hell. The lab could answer for losing 256. I'd been the one to go after it. And whatever they might tell him, I hadn't become a Devourer.
I smiled at them and put a finger to my lips. Let me.
“Director Hart, are we done here? River and I would like to get going.”
She blinked. “Yes. We're done.”
June
Nobody moved until the door shut behind them.
“Miss Arkwright wasn't quite what I expected,” I said.
“Me neither,” Elliott said. “I've barely seen her. I pictured the princess and the pea.”
“Elliott. That's not what I meant. And she's hundreds of times more fragile than that princess. How little do you know about old stock?”
“What would I do with that information? They're practically extinct.”
Our new recruit could have talked about aberrants for a week without coming up for air. He had a few things to learn about the shelter.
“Say that where the commander can hear you and he'll put a hole in your head.”
“She was too calm,” the director said.
“Yes! That's what I meant.” Imagine finding out that a monster was going to live inside you until it killed you. Nobody had even asked her. I couldn't have sat there and made polite conversation. For all the stories we'd heard about Miss Arkwright, how many of us had actually spent time with her? “She's got some nerve.”
“Maybe when you're old stock,” Elliott said, “you get used to knowing you could die any minute.”
Put that way, it made sense.
Mara
“Mara. What aren't you telling me?”
So he'd noticed something after all. I held out a hand. Thread vipers rose from my palm and twisted into a lash. I gave it a little flick and drew them back in.
“What was that?” His voice caught.
“The aberrant inside the Devourer that got loose. I fused with it.”
For a good while he didn't speak. A cure for old stock wouldn't save a Devourer. By his reckoning, all that work had bought me precisely nothing.
“It's okay,” he said at last. “I'll find a way.”
He'd offered me the same reassurance when I first arrived, as naturally as if saving me were something he could promise. Hearing it again made keeping quiet harder. I hadn't worked out a plausible explanation for my ability, and there was an even worse explanation behind that one: I wasn't his Mara. Add up every minute we'd spent together and it wouldn't make half a day. The rest of what I knew about this devoted younger brother came from a game. If I told him who he was actually trying to save, would he still look at me that way?
I remembered the scene that had divided practically everyone who played the beta. The Vanguard had taken heavy casualties again. Caesar caught River coming back from Haven with Mara and asked him to cut down on hunting trips to the perimeter. She took her brother's face between her hands.
“River, we're family. You wouldn't give up on me, would you?”
“Of course I wouldn't. I'll find a way to save you.”
Poor Caesar. There went his answer before he'd even had a chance to make his case. From the outside, some of River's decisions had seemed insane. As if somebody had written obedience into the protagonist and forgotten to give him a choice. Yet when everybody cheered her death, he was the one who cried.
“River,” I said. “You trust me?”
“Of course.” No hesitation.
“I didn't make a bargain with the aberrant. And I can't hear them whispering. You don't have to worry about them digesting me the way they would a Devourer.”
“Really?”
Anyone else would have wanted to know how I could possibly have fused with an aberrant without making a bargain. River didn't ask. There was no suspicion in the question; he sounded as though he only needed me to confirm it, and then he could believe me.
Instead, I took out the scalpel I'd cleaned. He caught my wrist before the blade touched my fingertip.
“Mara!”
I looked at him. He let go, looking thoroughly put upon. I nicked my fingertip. Blood welled up at once. I sent the thread vipers over the cut until there wasn't a mark to show for it.
I'd have to go see Ellis again in a few days.
I held up my perfectly good finger for my brother to admire. “It does have its perks, don't you think?”
