“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.
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.
I twisted to look over my shoulder, whispering under my breath for the air current to come rescue us. It happily agreed, tousling my hair before wrapping itself around me, Saffediene, and Jag.
“Land,” I whispered to the wind, meeting Saffediene’s eyes as we began to soar across the water.
“So you can control the elements, huh?” she said, not really asking and not really accusing either, which I appreciated. We stared at one another for a few long breaths. Long enough for me to notice the smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Long enough for me to forget I was a twenty-minute hoverboard ride from safety. Long enough for me to wonder why I’d never seen her properly before.
Then the moment broke. “Yeah.” I cleared my throat and directed the northerly to take us away from prying Freedom eyes.
Vi launched herself at me and cried into my neck before bustling off to sit with Jag. She and Pace disappeared into the hospital nook, leaving me and Saffediene alone in the war room.
The cavern permeated sadness. It seeped from the very rocks themselves, clogging everything and everyone with melancholy. I inhaled slowly, but the thought of staying in the confines of this sadness choked me.
I turned and strode toward the exit, desperate to escape. Escape the cavern. Escape the sadness.
Escape my life.
Saffediene found me a half hour later, my back against a skinny tree trunk, facing away from Freedom. She sat down without speaking. She picked at the wild grass, and strangely, I didn’t mind her presence.
“Gunner asked me to go with you to Harvest. We’re leaving at dusk,” she said.
“Yeah, sure,” I said.
Her skin felt startlingly cold; her hand was dwarfed by mine. I loved Vi, but this was the first meaningful human contact I’d had in a long time, and I didn’t want to let go.
So I didn’t.
We sat that way under the tree, palms pressing together, until the sun started its arcing descent to the west.
