7.
Outside is nothing and everything. I think what strikes me first is the silence, the complete absence of noise. Back in the Field there were people and machines and always constant motion. Here there is a calmness, a stillness. Peace. And yet I know that even the air carries a weapon, every second is potentially fatal.
“We need to hurry, we won’t last long,” Kai tells me as he artfully weaves his way through the underbrush. He’s part of this place, belongs here. I chase after him, following every footfall with one of my own, trying to prove that I can belong here too.
“Do you think we’re being followed?” I ask, resisting the urge to look behind me, afraid of what I might find.
He whips round, still walking backwards and to my amazement, he doesn’t even stumble. His infamous grin makes another appearance as he says, “Maybe.” The glint in his eyes says that he doesn’t mind the threat of action one bit. “But we all went in different directions to throw them off so probably not.” Somehow his easy going confidence has me feeling a little better.
Though only a little.
“This still seems so surreal, I can’t even explain it,” I confess, speeding up to so we can walk side by side.
All around me there is something new – something strange. Trees that reach right up into the clouds then others which bow down to claw at my clothes. Small creatures striped black and yellow land on exotic flowers with petals blooming colours I’ve never even seen – stingers as sharp as a knives guard their behind. This place is almost too stunning to look at but everything is stained with ever-present danger; every delicate beauty as fatal as the Sickness itself.
I stick to Kai like his shadow, seeking safety in a boy I barely know.
“I’m Lyra by the way,” I tell him after a little while of walking. It isn’t strange to be walking with him, silence as our only conversation – but maybe that’s exactly why I feel the need to speak. To feel normalcy right now is strange in itself.
“Lyra,” he tries it out, rolling my name with his tongue like a sweet new flavour. “Pretty.”
I have to look down to hide my blush but his fingers find my chin and force my face up to look at him. I squirm, aware that this boy, this stranger, shouldn’t be standing so close. Shouldn’t be touching me so softly. Shouldn’t be causing my heart to beat faster.
“You can’t go home, Lyra,” he tells me slowly, his deep voice punctuating the hush of Outside. “Once we get there and you’ve seen us, we can’t let you leave.” The blood from where I cut his cheek has mostly dried but it still clings to his skin. At that moment his easy grin has turned into a serious line, all laughter drained from his eyes. He’s confirming that if I don’t turn back now then I never can.
“But my clips won’t last forever, I’ll…” I’ll get Sick. I can’t bring myself to say it.
“We can help, you won’t need your clips. But this isn’t just some day-trip so that you can go back and tell your little Fielder friends about what it’s like Outside. This is serious.”
“I know that,” I protest, jerking my face out of his grasp, only making him see me as more of an immature little girl.
Before he can stop me, I’m running off in the direction of the striped creatures, further into the legion of blooming flowers. Scents tickle my nose: lavender, honeysuckle, rose – all laced with other aromas as strange and sweet as this place. Kai calls my name but I don’t stop, instead focusing on the velvety caress of petals under my fingertips.
“Lyra stop, you don’t know where you’re going!” he yells but the sound slides right off my back, replaced by the therapeutic buzz of the striped creatures. Only once I’m fully immersed in the flowers, far out of the way of the imposing trees looming above my head, do I finally stop.
The creature stirs as I unstrap the jar from my belt and hold it up to the light.
“Do you know what this is?” I ask Kai once he’s caught up to me. His muscles are bunched and corded and his brows reach together in agitation. Once he sees the creature, he softens slightly.
“It’s called a butterfly,” he tells me, the creature’s wings flutter. Yes, Butterfly, gentle and fragile and beautiful. It suits it.
I wipe by hand on my trousers to clean it of the blood and then I press my thumb to the bottom of the container. The light changes from green to red and the lock releases. With a ceremonial twist I take off the lid and the butterfly flutters out. It lands on the end of my nose for a moment, those gossamer wings beating as if to say thank you and then it flutters away. We both watch, even after it flies completely out of sight.
“All my life I’ve been stuck behind the Field, helped them to build up the walls that seal us all in,” I say and then I let the container slip from my fingers. When it hits the floor it shatters into a million tiny pieces. “Right now I’m free; I don’t ever want to be caged again.”
I don’t know whether it’s me that’s changed or him but when we set off again, it feels different - like there’s been a shift in the air, a change in the direction of wind. I’m sure he feels it too. We travel slower now; taking each step as it comes, knowing that if this is my life now then I’ll need the chance to take it all in. My thoughts travel to Vixen, the girl without a choice.
“Why did you take us?” I ask Kai, my voice barely carrying across with the breeze.
For the first time since we started, his footing falters. He quickly recovers but it’s indication enough to tell me that what I’d surprised him. He surveys me judiciously, gaze running from my frizz of red hair to my dirt-caked bare feet, lingering on my TAP-free palm for a little longer than necessary.
“To save you,” he says simply and when his green eyes spark with shadows, I know this is all the answer I’m going to get.
Just like he’s been doing for the past hour, he examines his bracelet. Every time he does his brows dip even lower and he walks a little more brusquely – leading me to wonder…
“What’s with the bracelet?” I ask, reaching out to pull his wrist closer so I can inspect the thick band of metal. Surprisingly, he doesn’t resist.
“It’s a filtration device, sort of like your clip but a bit more long-term. It filters my blood so any trace of the Sickness is removed before it can fully infect me,” he explains. For a moment I wonder how Outsiders could possibly possess technology more advanced as the Field and if anyone knows of this device. If they did wouldn’t they tell people?
“So you aren’t immune?” I ask. But of course he isn’t, he wouldn’t need the bracelet otherwise. Outsiders can get Sick too; it’s something no one at the Field has ever considered. If they weren’t immune then how did they survive the initial outbreak?
Kai points at two sections of the bracelet positioned on either side of where the veins of his wrist would be. Both are shades of deep red: blood.
“See how this blood is slightly darker?” He points to the left compartment containing liquid more russet brown than red and thicker than honey. “That’s the blood that’s being filtered and the other compartment holds the healthy blood that’s transferred back into my body.” I examine the black strip that circles the bottom of the bracelet with a single red light blinking frantically.
“What’s that light?”
“That,” he says with a wistful sigh, “Is the power gage.”
“I take it that it’s not a good thing that it’s jumping about like a lab bunny on a sugar high.”
Kai’s lips break into a smile and I feel like an idiot for the flash of pleasure I get at having been the one to cause it. “Nope,” he says contradicting the grin, “Which is why it’s a good thing that we’re nearly there.”
“We are?”
He nods, “Ready?”
Am I? I would pass the point of no return. For some reason Cray pops into my head and I send I silent apology that I couldn’t find his mother. That now I never can. Do they know that we’re gone yet? I’d like to think so, to think that someone misses us – cares. And then another part of me tells me that it’s selfish to think that – I am, after all, the one who couldn’t care enough about them to stay.
Kai holds out his hand, like I did for Bon back at the Field. He’s there with me, and I think that’s enough right now. With the sun on my cheeks, the wind in my hair, the sound and sight and feel of Outside whipping around my shoulders like the warmest hug; it’s enough.
Forcing all thoughts out of my head, I take his hand.
His grin hitches up a few inches; his eyes lighten to match the sun-soaked leaves above our heads. Everything about him is irresistibly outlandish and mischievous and so much like a dream. My hand fits into his comfortably, as if it’s where it’s meant to be.
There’s a shot in the distance.
He looks at me, eyes darkening as he shouts, “Run!”
Cutting, scratching and shredding my feet as I move, he drags me through the forest too fast to process what is happening. All I can feel is his hand tightening on mine, branches biting chinks out of my arms and the sounds of Fielder soldiers chasing behind us.
Kai knows the forest better than they do; I think it is this advantage alone that gives us a fighting chance. My lungs are churning out fire, my muscles are stiff as tree trunks and my skin is splattered with black bruises and bloodied scars. Kai pulls us into a hidden crevice under winding tree roots as thick as my arm; I hear the stomps and whoops of the soldiers as the barrel past.
Another shot fires and I hope it’s just for show.
It’s dark here in this little pocket of earth, and it’s barely wide enough to fit us both. Kai is hunched right up, body curled in to make his hulking male frame as small as possible. As it is, I’m pressed close against him, just the thin material of our clothes separating us – close enough to feel his heart beat in ragged time with mine. Being this close to him is a strange sensation but it is a decidedly welcome distraction to the fear.
“Are you okay?” Kai whispers after a while, sure the soldiers are well gone by now.
I attempt to nod in response but it’s too cramped and all I manage is to rub my cheek against his shoulder. “Yes, a little squashed but still breathing.”
“Good,” he says. “Looks like we drew the short straw there but don’t worry, they’ll be long gone by now.”
I worry; I can’t help it.
Those soldiers came from the Field, I knew them once, all of them. Really I know them better than Kai and yet here I am, hunkered next to the Outsider I’ve been trained to fear instead of running back to my own. Could one of those soldiers have been him? Somehow I feel like a traitor, like I’ve left him behind – replaced him with this strange boy who I’m trapped against so close it’s hard to distinguish the difference between our two bodies. Will they find us and force me back? I worry.
“You’re elbow is digging into my stomach,” Kai complains, wriggling back for room that isn’t there.
“Sorry,” I mumble, cheeks flaming as I try to readjust myself into a different position. “This isn’t exactly the most comfortable situation.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I can think of worse.” I don’t so much see as feel his grin. I’m certain that if I could see past his broad chest towards his face, I would have seen him wink. All of a sudden I am very aware of his hand pressed against my waist and his gentle breath disturbing the strands of my hair.
Sounds from beyond our makeshift hideout waft in with the air, the thump of trampling footsteps long replaced with a melodic hooting from far above.
“Owl,” Kai says matter-of-fact, as if this is something I would know. “It must be getting dark.”
The flashing light of his bracelet illuminates the darkness with sporadic bursts of harsh red light.
“How long have you got left?” I whisper, afraid of the answer.
“An hour, could be less.”
“Is that enough to get us there?”
He hesitates before answering. “If we hurry… Maybe.”
Maybe. It’s that uncertainty, that unknown that has me, for the first time since I left, really feeling fear.
“Kai?” I shimmy back, sure from the blast of cold on my back that I’m half way out of the crevice but at least now I can see his face. In the bloodied light, he’s all sharp angles and lines. His smirk is gone.
“Yeah?”
“This is my last clip.” For a second his whole body goes rigid, as if the news that I could get Sick troubles him even more than the news that he could. But then again, maybe it was just the light. “Do you think it’s clear yet?”
He nods, “Yeah. Yeah, let’s get going.”
Already half out, I shuffle free of the mouth of earth fairly easily. I imagine Kai, who barely has room to breathe let alone move, will have a slightly harder time.
“Hey, do you need me to…” Help, I was going to say but before I have a chance he’s executed a smooth barrel roll out, stopping just shy of me. His face rests mere inches from mine. Nervously, I lick my dry lips and his eyes follow the path of my tongue as if entranced. Despite the icy night air, the blood in my veins ignites.
There are hands on my waist, tracing slow circles on my skin. Lips are on my hair, my nose, my cheek – soft, sweet and familiar. I never want to be anywhere but here, with these lips on mine. His lips.
Ryker’s lips.
I jerk back, landing hard on my hands and the wound on my palm burns. In the dark my blood runs black. Kai sits up, confusion clouds his expression.
“We uh, need to go. I don’t much fancy dying here, do you?” I mutter stupidly. He looks at me for another moment, I don’t dare to move. Then he gets to his feet, offering me his hand. I take it and he helps me up, his easy smirk spreading across his lips. For the first time, I don’t believe his smile.