Unbroken

resigned, I thought. Resigned to defeat, and willing to compromise at every step to postpone that defeat by another hour, another day. Rejecting Pearl was the right thing to do, but it meant hastening an inevitable death struggle.

And he, as all humans before him, would bargain to remain in play for as long as possible, in search of a miracle.

Pearl counted on that. Feasted on it.

But why hadn’t she killed me? What could she want more than that? I will make you a weapon, she’d said. Always, she’d wanted me to join her—not as an equal, as a tool to be used.

I looked down at myself and saw the fading spots of countless injuries she’d inflicted on me with the cool, emotionless precision of a machine.

Ashan had been right all along. One day soon, it would come down to the two of us, facing each other over the heads of innocents… and I would have to make a choice that I, like Lewis Orwell, had been delaying in the face of the inevitable.

I finished in the bathroom, limped to the closet, and found fresh clothing—all new, still with the tags hanging on them. Either the Wardens had made arrangements, or Luis had gone shopping; either thought made me smile, because they had—whether through luck or skill—chosen soft, pastel colors, the kind that I most preferred. The pale pink leather jacket was buttery to the touch, as were the pants. Dressed, I felt much less fragile and helpless, though I was well aware how long it would take to recover fully.

Luis arrived a few moments later, as I was zipping up the calf-high boots. “Damn,” he said, cocking his head. “You look scarily sexy. Look, are you sure you shouldn’t be—”

“I was healthy enough to go to bed with you,” I pointed out. “I should be well enough to get out of bed; it surely follows.” He started to say something, then thought better of it and just shook his head. “Did you find where we are to meet Warden Baldwin?”

“That’s a little problem. She’s moving fast, and it’s tough to guess where, and why; communication’s been spotty at best. It looks as if she’s heading toward our home base—into the Southwest. If we start in that direction, we’ll be able to course-correct when she does.”

“She must have fared well enough if she’s still alive,” I said. Luis shrugged.

“Well, she’s got her powers back after whatever happened to them out at sea, but she lost one of the Wardens who was with her. Kevin, the kid. He’s dead, killed by Djinn. All she’s got now is one friend traveling with her, not even one with any powers, so she’s totally on her own.”

“David isn’t with her?” I couldn’t imagine a circumstance that would part him from her, in time of trouble. Not of his own accord.

“Yeah, well, that got complicated. As long as they both had no power, he could stick with her, but once she managed to get them both recharged and ready… Well, he’s a Djinn, and not just any Djinn. A conduit to the Mother. He had to get the hell away from her, for obvious reasons.”

David, once granted back his power, had been pulled into the mindless fury of the Mother. Of course. I didn’t know why I’d thought that he, of all the Djinn, would be different—none of us could resist her.

That was part of why Ashan had exacted his complicated, painful, wonderful toll on me, to make me human. In a sense, he’d protected me, left me free to act on my own when he could not. I hated to give him the credit, but it seemed likely now that he’d foreseen much of what had passed, and might still come.

I used a hospital-provided hairbrush to tame my fly-away hair, just a little, and looked at myself in the mirror. I seemed ready. There was a slight rose-colored flush in my cheeks, a lingering glow, and my green eyes were clear and steady. The punctures were healed and fading.

We will do this, I told myself. We must do this. Joanne Baldwin held almost as much strength as Lewis Orwell; the Wardens needed her, desperately. Orwell himself had told me that indirectly; what they were fighting was not a war. Wars could be won.

We stood an excellent chance of not living another day.

And yet I looked… peaceful. Ready. Alive.

“Humans,” I said aloud to the mirror, shook my head, and went to join Luis.

Chapter 10

WE DROVE THROUGH THE DAY, into the night, and saw the morning while still on the road. One benefit of being Earth Wardens: We had the ability to channel power to keep ourselves awake and alert, and although we’d need sleep eventually, it was simple enough to keep ourselves going on this journey. I rode my motorcycle, and Luis had appropriated a truck from a car lot; he’d found one that looked a great deal like his own, which made me raise an eyebrow and ask him how long it had taken to find that. He’d responded that if he was going to stand a damn good chance of dying in it, he wanted a truck that didn’t embarrass him.

I couldn’t argue with that. I was quite attached to the Victory.

We gave Portland a wide berth; the smoke of the dead city was a smear on the horizon, still burning. I kept my attention on the aetheric, watching for any signs of trouble ahead. The Djinn continued their relentless and unpredictable assaults; today, it seemed, they were focused on eradicating cities in Alaska and returning the entire state to wilderness.

There were few Wardens in Alaska. By midday, there were none. A night passed, and we kept moving.

We stopped, finally, as noon blazed in a cloudless sky; winter had lost its grip by the time we coasted to a halt in the small community of Farmington, New Mexico. Luis leaned out of the truck’s window and said, “Time to stop for food. Once we get hooked up with Baldwin, there’s no telling when we’ll have time to eat again. That girl is even more of a trouble magnet than you are.”

I shrugged, killed the Victory’s engine, and dismounted as he climbed down from the truck. We were in the parking lot of a small restaurant that still flickered a red OPEN light in the window, although there was only one other vehicle parked there. The town had seemed deserted; there’d been almost no traffic on the roads, and we’d seen no one out on the streets on foot, either.

But this little restaurant seemed to be carrying on despite all of the evidence around it that perhaps it was time to take a day off.

A bell rang softly as we entered through the glass door, but that seemed to be the only sound, until I heard some metal clattering, and a woman rushed out from the back, wiping her hands on a towel. She was dressed in plain blue jeans and a checked shirt, and she had the look of a woman used to hard work and disappointment—but for all that, her smile was brave. “Welcome!” she said. “Things are a little strange out there today, but I’m still cooking. You folks grab yourselves a seat anywhere. I’d bring you menus, but really, it doesn’t matter. I’ll make you whatever you’d like.”

Luis smiled at her and said, “How about a hamburger and a Coke?”

“Bread’s a couple of days old, if you can stand that, but my produce comes out of the back garden, and it’s still fresh,” the cook said. “Best hamburgers in the Four Corners area, and that’s a promise. You want cheese on that? And fries?”

“Sure. Cass?”

I ordered the same, which seemed to unreasonably delight the woman. She hustled off, and came back to deliver us drinks, frosty in mugs and fizzing with energy and sweetness. I sipped mine and watched as she hurried back to the kitchen. “Why is she so eager to serve us?” I asked. “Surely she knows how bad things are. And will become.”

“Oh, she knows,” Luis said. “Bet she doesn’t even charge us anything. Sometimes people just like to feel… normal. Like everything’s going to be okay. She likes to cook, and it makes her feel steadier. Gotta say, it makes me feel steadier, too. A little normal life in the middle of chaos—it’s not a bad thing.”

I didn’t think so, either, but it alarmed me a little that in the midst of chaos humans clung so strongly to the lost normality of their lives. Her smile was bright and friendly, and she seemed so desperate to make us part of her circle of safety.

The food, when it came, was excellent; she brought a plate of her own and put it on a separate table.