The Sky is Everywhere

Chapter Fifty

He pulls it from his pocket, taps the screen and holds it to his ear.

"Okay, we'll come down," he says.

He taps the screen again and puts the phone back in his pocket. I wonder how long it will take me to learn to use one of those things.

"That was Rosie. She wants us to come downstairs so she can check your tracker," he says.

My hand flies to the back of my neck, to the little bump where the tracker still sits. "I thought she had disabled them."

"She has, but not in the way she originally wanted to, and she didn't have a chance to thoroughly test it out before she gave it to me to use. She just wants to make sure that they're permanently disabled."

"What if they're not?" My stomach lurches with panic.

"Even if they're not, the CC can't hurt you anymore." He wraps his arms around me. "I won't let anyone hurt you, okay?"

I nod, but I really hope that the tracker is dead. Even if the CC can't use it against me anymore, if it's active I will still feel like I belong to them.

We head back down to the infirmary, and I pause in the doorway, because Rosie's not there.

Cole is.

She's dressed in a clean CC uniform, standing by one of the cabinets, idling looking over its contents, and she turns to us as we come in.

Her face is as pale as I last saw it, and her eyes are still haunted, but she manages the ghost of a smile that quickly turns into a wince when it pulls on the stitches in her face.

I stare at the wound. Whoever stitched her up did a better job than they did with me, but Cole will be left with a nasty scar.

"Pretty, isn't it?" she says, reading my stare. "I guess that's karma for you."

But there's no bitterness in her voice.

For years, she bullied me and Taffy about our facial scars, and now she will know exactly what it's like to be us. She understands that.

Maybe someone else would agree with her, feel that karma has given her exactly what she deserves, but I can't take any satisfaction in what Fletcher has done to her.

"I'm sorry," I say.

Cole touches the stitched-up wound. "Don't be silly. I like to think I'm going to look even better with a scar on my face."

I can't help but smile. Maybe, like me, she will carry the horror of the Trials for a long while yet, but she's not beaten. And now, free of the CC, free of Fletcher, maybe she can truly start building herself into a better person.

Rosie bustles into the infirmary, almost hitting Roan with the door.

"Oops, sorry," she says, and her voice is a cheerful as ever, but her face is subdued.

She watched the Trials.

She saw all the horror and slaughter firsthand, and it has scarred her too, just not in a way that most people can see.

I throw my arms around her and hug her. "You are a genius," I tell her.

When we pull apart, her expression fades even more. "You look like you've been to hell and back," she says.

"I feel like I have," I say, grimacing a little.

She leads me over to the nearest bed, and pats it, encouraging me to sit down. I do, watching as she produces the little scanner she used on my tracker the first time.