Scorpion, page 21
“I got so much more,” Jemma says, a voice in the blackness, and pushes into the building and the Ark—and pinches all the lights out.
“Did you kill all the power to the machines?” James says, a little panicked.
“Just the lights,” she says. And Isaac can see the glowing screen of the scanner.
The lights come back.
“She did that on her first try,” Isaac says. “I can’t do that, even after all these years. She has control over the Haze, over the machinery, in minute detail. And that means we’re going to take our chances.”
“If you think it’s the right move,” James says, wearily, and Isaac feels like he’s won something from him. A hundred years, and he’s finally being allowed to grow up. “We’ll start planning.”
“We gonna need Muscle,” Jemma says.
“Most of our team have been trained as soldiers,” James says. “And Athena and Lady will be completing their Reboot, which will make them fierce fighters.”
“No. Not whatever Supermuscle you’re cookin up down there,” Jemma says. “Just Lady.”
“She’s past the stage where she can come back easily,” Isaac says. “Her memories are mostly gone.”
“Then you better figure somethin out,” Jemma says. All three of the Mayflies look fierce and resolute, as if this is something they’ve been planning. “We only doin this with Lady.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
THE FADING GIRL
She starts to feel herself living forever. She doesn’t remember her own name.
The chemicals in the Reboot hurt going in, then leave her weak for days. The molecular scissors make her feel like someone is rummaging inside her body for socks, then not putting them back in place. It would bother her, but almost from the beginning, she could see the changes.
Her cheekbones are sharper, higher, her posture is better. Her hips shrink and balance her out for once. She misses the hips a little. She seems to remember liking them as much as the boys did.
“Check it out,” she says to the girl next to her. Athena, maybe? “I look like a boy.”
“Why you want to be ripped, anyway? You looked great as you were. I think,” Athena says. A little dreamily. The Reboot tends to bring out that side in people. They feel as if they’ve been wrapped in cottony sleep for the past weeks.
“I don’t remember why I wanted it. I just remember that I did,” she says. She touches the pin in her hair, and wonders why it is there. She doesn’t need it anymore.
She takes the pin out of her hair and lays it on the table. There’s something about letting go of that pin, a weight lifting from her heart. It feels like she’s cut free from a part of her life she doesn’t quite remember. Doesn’t want to remember. The memories rise up to space like dust on a ray of sunshine.
She dozes a little, thinks of a friend that came with her to the Ark, a friend before memory. Each time she sees the friend, she knows her a little bit less. Her friend has a name, but she doesn’t know it.
“I don’t remember my friend’s name,” she says.
Athena doesn’t respond to that, but finally says, lazily, “You’re going to get a new name soon. I think I used to have a name.”
Lady stirs. “Like, a different name?”
“I think I must’ve. I ain’t thought bout it in years,” Athena says. Her accent changes slightly to one that’s more familiar to Lady. It’s the sound of the Angelenos, of Tinos and Korenos and Whiteys all mixed together. It’s the sound of baked brown hills. It sounds like her own childhood, and it tugs her toward it.
“What do you remember of your old place?”
“It has to be a dream. But I remember … Olders, maybe. I remember hunting horses in brown hills, on top of an old boneyard.”
She remembers those hills, too. It feels familiar. “Do you remember running away from something?”
“From a bad roll, or something like it. I ran away, but then I got sick. Lost. Until some Old Guys helped,” Athena says, and Lady remembers, suddenly, why she wore that hair pin. Lady remembers why it’s important that she never forget it. She remembers that she’s Lady, and that her friends are Jemma and Pico and Grease. She remembers why she can never forget those names.
Then the next wave of the treatment kicks in, and she forgets.
* * *
Lady is just coming out of her fifteenth treatment when the Mayflies and Isaac burst into the room. While Jemma crouches down by Lady’s chair, Isaac explains to Brian K what they’re doing.
“Lady,” Jemma says. The girl in front of her looks like Lady, a little bit, but there’s no recognition in her eyes.
“May I help you?” Lady says. It doesn’t sound a bit like Lady. Jemma looks at Pico and Grease, but they look as helpless as she feels.
“If you were having second thoughts, you probably should have done this fourteen treatments ago,” Brian K says.
“We only been thinkin bout the End and the Haze,” Jemma says, burying her head into Lady’s hand. “We ain’t been thinkin bout each other.” She saw Lady falling away. She should have put all her energy into pulling her back.
“That first Reboot, before I had the Haze,” Isaac says. “How’d they bring me out of it?”
“You were never this bad,” Brian K says. “You resisted the memory loss.”
“But they did something,” Isaac says. “What?”
“Adrenaline,” Brian K says, remembering. “It stimulates the fight-or-flight instincts. Sometimes they get memory flashes.”
Isaac turns to Jemma, who nods. “We’ll try anything,” she says.
Jemma watches as Isaac injects Lady with a large syringe. There’s a moment’s delay, and then Lady’s eyes fly wider open. She gasps and thrashes against her constraints. After she calms down, Jemma says, “Lady, you there?”
“May I help you?” Lady says.
“We have to make her remember,” Pico says. Jemma sees desperation there. The two of them have always been close, antagonists and allies from the beginning.
Jemma squeezes her hand. “You were named after Lady, goddess of the Holy Wood,” Jemma says. “She could sing, she lived on the Teevee. It was the name you were born to have. You shone even brighter than her.”
“You was the first person to give me a nickname,” Pico says. “You hated me but you didn’t. I liked you a lot.”
“You thought the Kingdom were idiots to depend upon force, and you called me out for believing it,” Grease says. “You were right.”
They repeat memory after memory, hoping to nudge her. She smiles and listens but her eyes don’t change. Finally Jemma sobs and says, “You are Lady. You are our heart. You’re the reason we keep on beating.”
Isaac taps Jemma on the shoulder. “I’m sorry. The memories just aren’t in there anymore,” he says. “We should probably let her rest.”
He’s right. She knows that. The time to talk to Lady was weeks ago, before she got caught up in the Haze. Before she got caught up in an Apple that wasn’t there.
She freezes. Apple wasn’t there, but his memories were. The Haze had them. Somehow when people go, the Haze retains them like an echo.
“Her memories ain’t gone,” she says to Isaac. “They just missing. We gotta find em.” She can’t explain it, so instinctively she shows him, mind to mind. She grabs his hand, and together they reach out into the Haze.
At first she doesn’t know what she’s looking for. The Haze is full of every sensation in the world, every memory, and it’s hard to bring them to order. But then she sees it: a shimmer of silver pulsing light. That has to be Lady. It has to be. She reaches for it, and feels it: Lady’s birthday her seventh year, when a boy named Carlos gave her a bow. She used it to shoot a deer through the heart. She felt like the greatest hunter, the greatest warrior, to have ever lived.
Jemma blows the memory toward Lady, and looks for more. There are so many. Soon she and Isaac are grabbing for the silver flashes, getting shivers of pain and joy as they return them to Lady. But there’s not enough time. Some of them are drifting further away, as if blown by the wind.
Help us, she says to Pico and Grease, in their minds. If they’re surprised, they don’t show it. Once Jemma shows them how to look, they grab on to the memories, too.
Jemma finds a dark memory, filled with Li. She can’t look at it, not even for a moment. She wants to hurl it out into the void, a gift for her friend. But she can’t make that choice for Lady. Lady will have to treat the memory the way she needs to for herself. Sorry, mija, she says, and returns the darkness to its place in Lady’s mind.
They become aware of a shining presence next to them, calling the memories. And the memories begin to return to Lady on their own. Soon, there are none of them left in the Haze. They’re all with Lady. When Jemma returns to the room, Lady is there, too. Taller and stronger still, but unmistakably Lady.
“Jesucristo,” Lady says. “This’s what it takes to get you pendejas to care about me?”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
THE ICE CREAM MEN
Alfie clangs the bell of his ice cream bike and hears it echo off the Valley of Cars. He’s visited the stadio of the Downtown twice before. The moment they heard the bell, the kids would come bolting out through the gate and swarm the cart.
Today, they don’t. The gate is closed.
Alfie waits patiently. Gates don’t stay closed against the Ice Cream Men for long, and this is worth his patience. For the second time in days, he has to ask for a new home.
The gate finally swings open, without a challenge, and a swarm of Muscle wait on the other side. In the middle of them are three girls—one a wispy blade, one seemingly immovable, and one with the flintiest eyes he’s ever seen.
“I ain’t sure which one of you’s the Oldest,” Alfie says.
“We all are,” the heavy one says. “I’m La Madre of the Downtown. This is Tala of the San Fernandos, and this is Trina of the Holy Wood.”
“Din’t know I’d get all the Angelenos,” Alfie says. This’ll make his job easier or harder.
“You ain’t the old Ice Cream Man,” La Madre says.
“I’m the one that’s left,” he says.
“You guys never came to the Holy Wood,” the sharp-eyed one, Trina, says.
“That hill’s too damn steep,” Alfie says. “Even for our legs.”
A thin boy in a black suit and a penciled mustache steps forward. He holds hands with a girl in a flowing gown. Alfie knows who that mustache belongs to. He knows it through the mirrors. The Half Holy.
“You ain’t been answering all your signals,” Half Holy says.
“There ain’t no one left to signal,” Alfie says. He tells them of the attack on the Ice Cream Men, of the guns and eggs that are now in the hands of the Palos, who are now joined with the Newports, who are now joined with the Last Lifers.
“Like I saw,” the girl in the gown says.
“You get tired of braggin bout your visions, Pilar?” Trina says, but she’s smiling.
“Was it Little Man?” Pilar says.
“I saw him,” Alfie says.
“What does he want?” Trina says.
“He wants it all,” Alfie says.
“He raided us before,” La Madre says. “It didn’t turn out so good for him.”
“It ain’t no raid. It’s the last war,” Alfie says. “When Little Man come, there ain’t gon be nothin of the Angelenos left. Ain’t gon be nothin left a none of us,” Alfie says.
“So, what do you want, Alfie?” Trina says.
“What I want? I wanta help you,” Alfie says. “We the Free Peoples, all of us. We should work together.”
Alfie pulls out three long packages, wrapped in oiled cloth. “We got some guns left, to give to our friends,” he says. “You wan better friends, maybe the kind that stay in your fortress, we come back with more.”
Trina looks sharply at him. “How many people you got left, Ice Cream Man?”
“Twenty-three. Mostly the youngs.”
“So you got guns but nobody who can fight with em,” she says. “We looking for an army.”
“You want an army? I can bring you a whole kingdom,” Alfie says. He rings his bell three times, and in thirty seconds Tashia and X come into sight, pedaling through the towering stacks of cars. He could have brought them with him, but he thought they might get shot before they could get close.
“Who they?” La Madre says.
“The people who know more bout fightin the Biters than anyone else,” Alfie says. “They’re the rest of the Free Peoples.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
THE WEAVERS
Tommy had forgotten how to use his hands, and now they won’t let him forget it. His skin bleeds and cracks. It’s not the skin of a Lord.
Because of course he is nothing here among the Weavers. The Weavers are led by a council, like the Chosen’s Cluster. It has no name, and no rules for membership. Members are picked at random from the Weavers.
“Don’t you trip all over each other?” Tommy asks Nora, thinking how quickly it would fall apart with the Chosen.
“We think everyone should be trained to lead the Weavers. Someday Scott won’t be here.”
“No one had to train me,” he says.
“They shoulda,” Nora says, looking at his first attempt at a watertight basket that he carries in his hands. The weave is wobbly, the waterproofing tar is smeared and uneven. “If they did, maybe you coulda made a real basket.” He smiles at her, surprised he doesn’t want to smash her face. Another day, maybe.
Roberto is next to him. They’re gathering shells for the white coating on the insides of the huts. There are outcroppings of the white rock, limestone, but they’re a day’s walk away. For quick fixes, it’s easier to gather shells on the beaches and pound them into dust. Tommy has read enough to know the stuff is called cement. The Weavers just call it the White.
“We used the White to make the walls stronger, but then we realized we could paint it, too,” Nora says as they pick up the shells. Tommy nods. He’s heard this from almost everyone. He focuses on the clam shells, bigger and whiter so his bucket fills easier, so he can disappear when it’s done and rest his aching fingers. But still he finds himself looking for abalone to bring rainbow-oiled flecks of color into the White. He could embed the shells in cement like tiles, make swirling shapes—
Stop making things pretty, he thinks. You have real work ahead of you.
Even as his body busies himself with work, his mind flies off into the Haze. His visions have broadened as he checks the pulse of the world. He sees how life is failing the Children all over Ell Aye. The hunger, the disease. He can see cattle slaughtered in the Kingdom, an empty watermelon field in the San Fernandos, babies dying because of lack of milk. It only steels him for what’s next. It will take strength.
Scott allows him to see Jemma now, because Scott needs Tommy to see the Mayflies as allies. Tommy knows now that Jemma was missing the Haze, but has it back, more powerful than ever. More powerful than him, even. He hides himself from Jemma with the Haze. Part of it is instinct, part of it is a fear that Jemma will never see him as he is now. To her, he’s evil. Part of him wonders, even after all he’s gone through, if she is right.
Tommy looks at the new cut he gave himself with a scallop shell, willing it to close. He’s started to understand why it was so difficult for him to guide the Haze. He’s always carried out the will of the Haze, following its directions to repair guns, to build Giants. Trusted its judgment. It never occurred to him that he could direct the Haze. To have that kind of power? He could be a ruler like no other.
He manages the Haze that surrounds his wound, blue fizzy outlines. He shows the Haze where to line up, and it does. He presses with his mind again, a slow swipe of energy knitting together the edges of his flesh. This time the wound closes.
Then he opens the wound again. It slices like a fingernail through a ripe mango. Like an enemy’s skin. It’s not how Scott probably intended him to use this power. But Scott has the luxury of always being good.
Tommy thinks about Scott’s power of sensing when someone is using the Haze. Little Man has developed that power in reverse. Instead of sensing others’ activities, he can now hide his own.
It was easy to master, once he tried. Not even Scott could tell. He’s beginning to think the ability to learn new powers may be his most important use of the Haze. If it’s true the Haze speaks in his native tongue, then Tommy’s native tongue is lies. It’s the ability to shape-shift. It’s not surprising that he can mimic the powers that others have. And make them better, he thinks.
He turns his mind back to Jemma, securely masked. He hears her conversation with the Old Guys. He turns his focus to the Old Guys, and is fascinated by a machine that fills up a whole room. The Long Life Machine, he hears. That, he can use.
Roberto has found his own mastery of the Haze, instructed by Nora. Not in an obvious way, but in a way that Tommy still hasn’t managed: Roberto can control his own thoughts. He can find peace. The more he’s found peace, the more he’s accepted Tommy as a friend. The more Tommy values him as one.
“We can’t stay here forever,” Roberto says.
“Why? You bored?”
“Your people gonna attack my people, whether we there or not,” Roberto says. “I ain’t gonna let that happen, not so you can sit here and make baskets. Really shitty baskets.”
Tommy looks at him. He’s been feeling restless himself, wondering when the right moment is to return to the world. “We can remake the Chosen,” Roberto says. “Remake the world. That depends upon you—and a little bit me.”
“I depend on you,” Tommy says.
“I’ll help you, on one condition,” Roberto says. “You have to say goodbye to Little Man.”
Tommy feels a surge of panic. Let go of Little Man? He’s the strongest of them all. But it’s something Tommy can do. He understands what the Haze needs from him now. What the world needs from him.
