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I’d been expecting him to ask me to promise not to leave him. Instead, he wanted me to sacrifice him to save the people he considered his family. I heard the words clearly but they didn’t quite register as a concrete idea in my head. The thought of martyring myself for anyone was so foreign he might as well have made his request in Russian or Aramaic. Was there anyone alive that I’d sacrifice myself for?
Rabbit. The name popped into my head so fast I didn’t have time to consciously realize I’d been the one to think it. Icarus and Dare had had my back a few times and I theirs, but if shit went down I’d save myself over them every time. But Rabbit was different. In the months since I’d joined the rebels, I’d grown to care for the scamp as if he was my own younger sibling—or child. Like the child the Troika had ripped from my belly because it had the misfortune to lose the genetic lottery and have a desirable blood type. I’m sure the psychologists who worked back before the Blood Wars would have had a field day analyzing that relationship, but I didn’t give a damn. I would put myself in front of a bullet to make sure that kid had a chance at a future. He was the only one, though.
But Zed? He had protected and worried about Bravo and the children under his care for years, like a father, despite his young age. I couldn’t begin to imagine the protective instincts I had for
Rabbit increased by a factor of years and multiplied by seven souls.
“I told you I’d do everything in my power to avoid having to make that kind of choice on this mission.”
His hand touched mine. “Meridia—”
I flinched. Hearing my Troika name—the one the rebels now used to rally humans to their cause—coming from his mouth was like a slap. I didn’t want him to see me like that. Like the pawn everyone else believed me to be.
“What’s wrong?” His voice was low, as if in the dim light everything took on the import of a secret.
“Can you call me Carmina?”
“Is that your real name?” he asked carefully.
I suddenly felt like the awkward one. “Meridian Six is what the vamps called me.”
He paused for a moment. “Carmina it is, then.”
I didn’t trust myself to speak. There was something about this guy—a kindness—that I wasn’t used to and wasn’t sure I wanted to get too comfortable with.
“What I was going to say was whether we want to make tough choices or not, we’ll have to make them. It’s inevitable. I need you to promise me that you will get my family out of the camp.”
“I said I would,” I snapped. Just like that, the fragile bubble that had surrounded us imploded. “But you need to understand that blowing up that mine is my ticket to freedom. It has to be my priority.”
His silence damned me.
“Don’t you get it?” I carried on. “That’s why I agreed to let you come. You focus on getting your family out and I’ll focus on getting my freedom. We both win.”
He smiled at me, but the expression was patronizing rather than agreeable. I suddenly felt like the worst sort of failure before the damned mission had even begun. Luckily, a hot flare of anger burned that shame off quickly. “Don’t look at me like that,” I said, my voice lowering to a mean register. “You don’t know me or what I’ve been through.”
“I know enough to know that you’re a damned fool if you think Icarus and Saga are going to let you go if you succeed.”
I crossed my arms. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that if you manage to blow up that mine, it will only make you a more powerful tool for the rebels. You think they’re using you now? Just wait until they can parade you in front of hungry humans as the woman who took down Krovgorod.”
I turned away from him. A large gap between two boards in the car’s wall gave me something to stare at to avoid my discomfort. The void was filled with a blurry landscape of the Badlands—a desolate landscape of gray dirt and skeletal trees. For an instant I thought it looked a lot like how I felt inside: barren. I wanted to yell at Zed and tell him he didn’t know what he was talking about. Icarus and Saga would keep their word. They had to. The alternative was unthinkable—
Cold air from the opening lashed at my face. The thin material of the prisoner’s uniform did little to protect my skin from the temperature. I looked down at the ground speeding by. At my feet, which were only eighteen inches from freedom.
“Carmina.” Zed’s voice was quiet, as if he worried that a louder tone would startle me into action. “Don’t even think about it.”
It would be so easy. So simple. So final. No more scratching out a pitiful existence, and for what? In the vain hope that one day I’d know the sweet flavor of freedom? I’d been so young when the vampires enslaved us that I couldn’t say I even knew what it tasted like. I imagined it tasted a lot like grapefruits—like sunshine and sweetness. But I was lying to myself, wasn’t I? Because if I were being honest, I’d also admit that there was plenty of sour too.
Freedom meant I couldn’t blame anyone else for how shitty my life was. It meant I had to make my own decisions. God, I was so tired.
“Carmina.” A warm hand touched my arm. A single spot of heat in a world gone totally cold. “Come here.”
I looked away from the blur of gray to the face of this boy I barely knew but was now bound to for survival.
“We can do this,” he said. His hand squeezed my arm. The touch felt real, more real than the nightmare out there—the desolation, the gray, the dead-end world. “We can and we will.”
I turned my head to look out the door again, but his hand grabbed my chin, refusing to let me be wooed by the promise of nothingness. He turned my chin, forcing me to look at him. “You have more power than you know.”
