“That,” says Connor, “is the last thing I want to do.” He takes a deep breath and shifts in his chair. “Don’t worry, everything will be fine.”
“You don’t sound too sure.”
He looks at Risa, then looks at the hatch, making sure they’re still alone.
Then he leans in close to her and says, “Now that the Goldens are . . . no longer around, the Admiral’s going to be looking for replacements. I want you to promise me that if he asks you to help him, you’ll turn him down.”
“The Admiral doesn’t even know I exist. Why would he ask me for anything?”
“Because he asked me,” Connor says in an intense whisper. “And I think he’s asked Emby, too.”
“Emby?”
“All I’m saying is that I don’t want you to be a target!”
“A target for what? For whom?”
“Shhh! Keep your voice down!”
She looks again at that book he was reading, trying to piece it all together, but there just aren’t enough pieces. She gets close to him, forcing him to look at her. “I want to help you,” she says. “I’m worried about you. Please let me help you.”
He darts his eyes back and forth, trying to find an escape from her gaze, but he can’t. Suddenly, he bridges the small distance between them and kisses her.
She did not expect it, and when he breaks off the kiss she realizes from the look on his face that he hadn’t expected it either.
“What was that for?”
It takes a moment for him to get his brain functioning again. “That,” he says, “is in case something happens and I don’t see you again.”
“Fine,” she says, and she pulls him into another kiss—this one longer than the first. When she breaks it off, she says, “That’s in case I do see you again.”
He leaves, awkwardly stumbling out and nearly falling down the steel steps to the ground. In spite of all that just went on between them, Risa has to smile.
It’s amazing that something as simple as a kiss can overpower the worst of worries.
Lev’s troubles appear to be of a different nature, and Risa finds herself frightened by him. He comes to infirmary call that morning with a bad sunburn.
Since he’s a fast runner, he’s been assigned messenger duty. Mostly, it involves running back and forth between the jets carrying notes. It’s one of the Admiral’s rules that all messengers wear sunscreen, but it seems Lev is no longer bound by anyone’s rules.
They make small talk for a bit, but it’s awkward, so she quickly gets down to business. “Well, now that your hair is longer, at least your forehead and neck seem to have been spared. Take off your shirt.”
“I kept my shirt on most of the time,” he says.
“Let’s have a look anyway.”
Reluctantly, he removes his shirt. He’s burned there as well, but not as badly as on his arms and cheeks. What catches her attention, however, is a welt on his back in the faint shape of a hand. She brushes her fingers across it.
“Who did this to you?” she asks.
“Nobody,” he says, grabbing the shirt back from her and slipping it on. “Just some guy.”
“Is someone on your team giving you trouble?”
“I told you, it’s nothing—what are you, my mother?”
“No,” says Risa. “If I were your mother, I’d be rushing you off to the nearest harvest camp.”
She means it as a joke, but Lev doesn’t find it funny, “Just give me something to put on the burns.”
There’s a deadness to his voice that’s haunting. She goes to the cabinet and finds a tube of aloe cream, but she doesn’t hand it to him just yet. “I miss the old Lev,” she says.
That makes him look at her. “No offense, but you didn’t even know me.”
“Maybe not, but at least back then I wanted to.”
“And you don’t want to anymore?”
“I don’t know,” says Risa. “The kid I’m looking at now is a little too creepy for my taste.” She can tell that gets to him. She doesn’t know why it should, because he seems proud of his new creep factor.
“The old Lev,” he says, “tricked you into trusting him, then turned you in to the police the first chance he got.”
“And the new Lev wouldn’t do that?”
He thinks about it, then says, “The new Lev has better things to do.”
She puts the tube of burn cream in his hand. “Yeah, well, if you see the old one—the one who always thought about God and his purpose and stuff—tell him we want him back.”
There’s an uneasy silence and he looks down at the tube in his hand. For a moment she thinks he might say something that brings a hint of that other kid back into the room, but all he says is, “How often do I put this on?”
There’s a work call the following day.
Risa hates them, because she knows there isn’t going to be anything for her, but everyone must attend work call. Today, the gathering isn’t run by an Unwind, it’s run by Cleaver. Apparently he’s temporarily taken over the job, since no one’s been found to fulfill Amp’s duties. Risa doesn’t like him. He’s got an unpleasant, slimy look about him.
There are only a few calls for work today. Someone wants a plumber’s assistant in some godforsaken town named Beaver’s Breath; there’s some farm work out in California; and the third job is just plain weird.
“Prudhoe Bay, Alaska,” Cleaver says. “You’ll be working on an oil pipeline until you’re eighteen. From what I hear, it’s one of the coldest, most brutal places on Earth. But, hey, it’s a way out, right? I need three volunteers.”
The first hand up belongs to an older kid who looks like punishment is his middle name—like he was born for brutal work, right down to his shaved head.
The second hand raised catches Risa by surprise. It’s Mai. What is Mai doing volunteering for work on a pipeline? Why would she leave the boy she was so attached to back in the warehouse? But then, come to think of it, Risa hasn’t seen that boy around the Graveyard at all. While she tries to process this, a third hand goes up. It’s a younger kid. A smaller kid. A kid with a bad sunburn. Lev’s hand is held high, and he gets chosen for the pipeline job.
Risa just stands there in disbelief, then she searches for Connor in the crowd. He’s seen it too. He looks at Risa and shrugs. Well, maybe this is just a shrug to Connor, but it’s not to her.
When the meeting breaks up, she makes a beeline for Lev, but he’s already vanished into the mob. So the instant Risa gets back to the infirmary, she calls for a messenger, and another and another, sending them each off with redundant notes reminding kids to take their medications. Finally, after her fourth call, the messenger they send is Lev.
He must see the look on her face, because he just stands there at the hatch not coming in. One of the other medics is there, so Risa glares at Lev, pointing toward the back. “That way. Now!”
“I don’t take orders,” he says.
“That way!” she says again, even more forcefully. “NOW!”
Apparently he does take orders after all, because he steps in and marches toward the back of the plane. Once they reach the storage room at the back, she closes the bulkhead door behind them and lays into him.
“What the hell are you thinking?”
His face is steel. It’s the door of a safe she can’t get into. “I’ve never been to Alaska,” he says. “I might as well go now.”
“You’ve barely been here a week! Why are you in such a hurry to leave—and for a job like that?”
“I don’t have to explain anything to you or to anyone else. I raised my hand, I got chosen, and that’s all.”
Risa crosses her arms in defiance of his defiance. “You don’t go anywhere if I don’t give you a clean bill of health. I could tell the Admiral you’ve got . . . you’ve got . . . infectious hepatitis.”