Zenn
10.
After our return to the hideout, Vi had attended to Raine, who’d lost consciousness on the flight.
Then Vi turned her attention to her father. Neither of them looked good, but at least Vi was alert, which was more than I could say about Thane.
Now she chewed her nails as she paced the length of the war room. Back and forth, back and forth. I couldn’t watch Vi anymore, worried about her beloved boyfriend. I returned to the hospital nook, where Pace was working over Raine. “How is she?”
Gunn wouldn’t leave Raine’s side, and he didn’t glance up when he answered. “She thinks she’s Arena Locke.” His sigh came out in bursts. “She seems to remember me, though. She called me by my name. When I said her name was Raine Hightower, she . . .”
“She’s been Modified,” Pace said. “It’ll take time.” He put his hand on Gunn’s arm and gently pushed him back a step so he could administer meds to Raine. She lay on the bed, her eyes closed. Her skin looked like white plastic, and her hair like translucent strands of wire.
Raine and I may not have seen eye-to-eye on some things, but she was a dedicated Insider. A friend to Vi. A friend to me. “What can I do?”
Pace stepped back and Gunn filled the empty space next to Raine. He stroked her hair and leaned close. “Your name is Raine Rose Hightower,” he whispered. “I’m Gunner Jameson, and I love you.”
Pace swallowed hard and wouldn’t look at me. “Gunner is going to stay here and tell her what her life used to be like. Sometimes the unconscious mind can recover more than when it’s awake.” He returned to his medical tools, leaving me with Gunner and Raine. I’d spent the better part of the last two months with them. My chest felt so tight. What would I do if that were Vi?
I knew what I’d do. I’d do exactly what Gunner was doing. I’d hold her hand and tell her I loved her and beg her to come back to me.
“Gunn,” I said. He glanced up. “Come get me if you need me.”
He nodded and returned his attention to Raine. I strode back to the war room, catching Vi’s hand as she paced past me and looking her in the face. She opened her eyes in surprise as I leaned forward. I didn’t want to kiss her—fine, I did—just get close enough to achieve some measure of privacy.
“I love you,” I whispered, in case she had forgotten, or didn’t know, or just needed to be reminded. She didn’t say it back, but her icy demeanor melted a little. She searched my face for an answer I couldn’t give, and then collapsed into my arms. I comforted her without words while the minutes ticked by. I wondered how long we’d have to wait for Jag to come back. If he came back at all.
Vi pushed away from me, anger in her features because of my thoughts. “He’s going to come back.” Vi extracted herself from my embrace and resumed her pacing.
“Maybe someone should fly out and see if they can find him,” Saffediene suggested from her position at the table.
“I’ll go.” I practically leapt toward my hoverboard. I couldn’t stomach staying in the cavern for another second, with Vi’s anger and the equally awful and exciting promise of becoming Jag-less.
“I’ll come with you,” Saffediene said. I didn’t care. I just had to get out—now.
After flying for twenty minutes over open water, my nerves had settled. But now my gut was rolling with uncertainty. Jag had been missing for an hour and a half. He could be anywhere. He could be dead.
Saffediene voiced my thoughts. “We should’ve seen him by now. The barrier should’ve ended back there.”
I slowed to a hover, turned, and searched the distant city skyline. Dark clouds engulfed the sky, blotting out the sunlight we could’ve used to recharge our boards.
“Where are you?” I whispered. True, the General Director was in Freedom, and no one had been expecting him to be so far from his stronghold. But Jag was notorious for being able to get out of any and all situations.
But he got caught in the Goodgrounds, a doubtful voice said in my head. And who knows where he’s been for the past eight months.
He certainly hadn’t been on vacation. When Gunn and I busted him out of his holding cell last month, Jag was covered in blood and could barely stand. He’d also refused to say anything about his whereabouts or what had happened. Anyone else would have to report, tell every little detail. But not Jag.
He lived with his demons, just as I lived with mine.
But where was he now?
“Wouldn’t Starr alert Gunn if Hightower or Darke had him?” Saffediene asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “If she could.”
The city stood serenely against the storm clouds rolling in, all smoke from the explosion erased. Seconds became minutes became who knows how long. I half expected to see Jag come careening from one of the tall buildings, but he never showed.
“There,” Saffediene said, pointing out toward open water. “Come on!”
She launched her board farther out to sea. I followed at a slower pace, scanning the endless water and finding nothing. We flew toward something only she could see. “Can you see him now?”
I couldn’t. But I trusted Saffediene.
Finally, after another few minutes, I saw a flash of light on the horizon. “Is that . . . him?”
“That’s him,” Saffediene said.
The glimmer got bigger and bigger, until I could make out a hoverboard holding a white blob, which became a board with a bleeding, unconscious Jag riding it facedown.
The blood was dry, the hoverboard stationary.
Jag looked dead, what with the whole back of his white jacket shredded and plastered with dried blood.
A hot wind blew over the ocean, unsettling me further. Wind should be cool, refreshing. This wind stank of death and the promise of horrible things to come.
“Jag,” I whispered, silently pleading for him to take a breath, wake up, anything.
Saffediene hovered next to him, her fingers pressed against his neck. Tears streamed down her face, her hands fluttered from his shoulder to his back, and she hiccupped when she turned to me. “Zenn, help him.”
I snapped to attention, tearing my eyes from Jag’s limp body. I descended next to her and slapped her frantic hands away. “Let me,” I said. “Let me.”
She sobbed, but withdrew her hands enough for me to see the gentle rise of Jag’s back. Relief flooded me. “He’s alive. But he needs help.”
I didn’t know how much charge I had left in my board, but it couldn’t be much. Jag’s board was dead in the water, literally hovering inches above the waves, and Saffediene’s board probably had less charge than mine. Even the weather was against us, as the clouds continued to block the sunlight we needed to recharge. I cupped my hands around the charge light, and felt my stomach lurch.
The red light blinked, which meant I had less than 10 percent of reserve power.
“Let’s go,” I said, quickly pulling Jag’s board onto the front of mine. I shifted to a sitting position so I could assess his wounds while we flew.
“My board is almost dead,” Saffediene said. At least she’d composed herself. I didn’t know what to do with crying girls. Non-crying girls either, for that matter.
“Mine too.” I opened the emergency first aid kit from my board’s storage compartment and set to work cleaning the dried blood off Jag’s face. “I’m gonna use the wind. Tether your board to mine.”
She followed my directions as I found the head wound a few inches behind Jag’s hairline. It looked like a clean cut. Pace could stitch him up when we got back to the cavern. There was a flesh wound on Jag’s leg to tend to. The series of slices on his back spoke volumes about why he’d passed out.
Jag also bore burnt tracks along his arms. Black streaks spiked over the back of his hands, like claws reaching for his fingers. He’d been tech-shocked.