She was supposed to be brave. But the girl was only eight years old, and she wasn’t brave, and when the operatives from the orphanage came to get her, no one had bothered yet to clean the blood from her hands.
FLYNN’S GRIP ON MY WRIST is ice-cold and unyielding. I try to focus, to understand where we are, what’s happening—my mind automatically tries to run through the checklist that’s been drilled into me since basic training. Taking stock of the situation, location, hostiles, injuries, obstacles…It all blurs together, my eyes streaming and my breath gasping in and out of my lungs. He breaks off from the corridor and pulls me through a narrow fissure in the rock, the stone scraping my chin, my arms.
My thoughts keep reaching for images where there are none; I see the hospital bed where I left Flynn, I see myself deciding to take a patrol boat to look for him. But the only thing beyond that is blood; blood burning in my pores, metallic on my tongue, singing through my own veins. When I close my eyes I see the cavern, painted with blood, more than I’ve seen in a lifetime of fighting. Blood like art, declaring victory over the Fianna, the hardened, monstrous rebels too young or too crippled to fight back. Blood glues our hands together, Flynn’s and mine.
All I can see is that child, half curled under another rebel who must have been trying to shield it. I don’t know if it was a boy or a girl. I don’t know—I don’t know.
My body sags with the weight of the empty holster at my hip, the weight of what I’ve done. My knees give way and I go down, dragging at Flynn’s hand. He’s forced to halt, nearly jerking my arm out of its socket trying to get me back on my feet.
“Stop,” I gasp, choking on the smell of blood on my skin. Now I understand that metallic taste, the shaking in my limbs; now I know what the Fury tastes like. Blood. “Stop—Flynn, please. Let them take me.”
“Like hell,” he says through gritted teeth. His face is unreadable.
He won’t listen to me. Right now I don’t have the strength to argue with him. He’s made his choice, and if I keep slowing him down he’s going to die for it.
I drag myself to my feet, leaning on him heavily. He grunts with effort, or pain, or acknowledgment, and we set off down the corridor once more.
The shakes hit me like a mag-lev train, ten times worse than on the island Flynn showed me to the east. Worse than after my first combat mission. Because this is nothing like that. No part of my training told me how to comprehend the massacre of unarmed innocents. Of children. My mind is tight and cold, like Flynn’s hand around my wrist, and I can’t break out through the narrow bands of panic and horror. Everywhere I look I see blood, smell blood. On my skin, my clothes, in my hair. I fight down my nausea, simply because I can’t stop, not while we’re running for Flynn’s life from people who think he’s turned on them.
Abruptly I see the end looming, the point at which I can’t function—exhaustion, shock, guilt, and grief tangled together. It’s like a rapidly approaching cliff, and I know that if Flynn pulls me off the edge I might never find my feet again.
I wish he’d just let them have me, and go. Anything would be easier than this.
And then he does pull me forward, wrapping his arm around my waist and leaping from a ledge. For a wild, confused moment we’re falling—and then we hit frigid water. It closes over my head, and my mind goes numb.
In her dream she’s choking, gasping for air where there is none, the vacuum of space closing around her. There are no stars, because there are never any stars here, only a thick darkness that rushes down her throat and into her heart. She dreams of drowning.
I KEEP AN ARM AROUND HER, struggling through mud and water as I drag her forward. Dimly, I hear McBride shouting some distance back, trying to find someone who can fit through the same crack I pulled Jubilee into. Silent but for soft splashes, we disappear into the dark.
I can almost feel Orla with me as I find my way to our rock. She had me rehearse the route so many times when I was a child, so I could get here with my eyes closed if there was ever a raid. The rock is about six feet long and only a couple of feet above the water. Not even Sean knows this secret.
I pull Jubilee closer in the water, inspecting her face. There’s still more shock than sense there; bracing myself, trying not to recoil, I cup a hand under Jubilee’s chin to turn her face toward me. I keep my other arm wrapped tightly around her, afraid she’ll sink beneath the water if I let go. Her eyes open when I squeeze her.
“Jubilee, are you listening to me?”
She doesn’t answer, her eyes darting around in the darkness, panic making her tremble in my arms.
“Soldier!” I bark, keeping my voice as quiet but tense as I can.
Her eyes widen, and I watch as the soldier takes over, her chin lifting a little.
“This rock here is hollow inside. I can pull you, but when we go under you have to hold your breath. Understand?”
She nods again, lifting one hand to rest it against the rock for balance and leaving a red smear behind it. The water hasn’t been enough to wash the blood away.
I suck in a lungful of air, my throat threatening to close or catch in a coughing fit again. The water closes over my head, and I keep hold of Jubilee’s wrist as I guide her in with me. The water carries the distant shouts of my people directly to my ears until we surface, choking, inside my tiny shelter. There’s only a small space that’s water; the rest is the natural rock and the ledge Orla built for me when I was Fergal’s age.