11 – 'No Harm Done'
Will tried to open his eyes, but he couldn't.
No, his eyes were open, but only to a perpetual, eternal blackness. It went on for… hours, miles, weeks? Just how did you measure darkness?
Then there was a voice.
"He don't look so bad to me."
"He's been through a lot, Jareth. Don't be a dick."
The Pyro's tone turned sour. "You better check who you're talking to, medic. Unless you want me to toss you out as Grounder bait."
The room came into focus at last, his eyelids heavy under the weight of so much sleep and pain. The first thing he saw was Flo, visibly biting her tongue so as not to snap back at their leader. Will could understand the frustration. He tried to smile at Flo, a show of support for her precarious position, but he was stopped by a sharp stab of agony. It began deep in his chest, and splintered horribly down his arm. It confused him until he remembered the sight of the arrow sticking out through his shoulder blade. He started to panic, to sweat. He tried to move his arm, but nothing happened. Just pain, searing and hot.
"Whoa, whoa! Don't move!" Flo's hands were on his chest, somewhere below the point of agony. "Will, I need you to stop moving now, okay? Just be calm, take some deep breaths."
He breathed, long and deep. The air felt like knives. He tried to make a sound, but instead choked and spluttered on it.
Somewhere far away, The Pyro was laughing. "How the mighty have fallen – eh, Chancellor?"
Will's annoyance gave him something else to focus on. The pain subsided and he became aware of Flo's hand again. This time she was stroking his forehead.
"As fun as it is to watch him squirm," The Pyro continued, uninvited, "is there a point to you draggin' me here? This camp don't run itself, you know."
"If only it did," Flo murmured, just loud enough for Will to hear, before she turned to face The Pyro head on. "My sister says you've been giving her a hard time about this business with the weapons. I just wanted you to see that we've got more pressing concerns right now."
"Like this pathetic sack of shit? I'm sorry if the Chancellor's boo-boos aren't exactly my number one concern. I ain't his mommy."
"You know what I mean, Jareth. It's not just Will. We need painkillers, we need food. We need clothing and clean water. Half the camp doesn't even have tents. We need Mount Weather."
Jareth's hands shot up in a gesture of innocence. It was as false as his affront. "Hey, it ain't my fault the valiant crusaders failed in their righteous mission to save us all." Will felt a stab of guilt more painful than the hole in his chest. "There's a mob of Grounders right outside our wall looking for any opportunity to murder us while we sleep. My hands are tied."
"And weapons will solve that?" Flo retorted.
"They'll help us blast our way to Mount Weather. If your sister does her job right, that is."
"That's right, Jareth. Pin the massive loss of life on to Aggie. Marlow thinks we'd be better off using our resources to try and contact the Ark."
The Pyro made a short, sharp sound that was half-way between frustration and amusement. "Does she now? Well I've got two words for Marlow and the Ark-"
There was a clamour outside, and Jareth was cut short by someone bursting into the tent. "Something weird's going on! You gotta get out here!"
The Pyro left without so much as a glance in their direction. Will was relieved, but Flo looked concerned. "Here," she said, pressing a container of something warm and sweet-smelling into his hands. "I'll be right back."
"Wait, what's going on?" Will asked, his voice hoarse.
"I'll let you know after I've checked it out."
"Wait! Sascha…"
"She'll be fine. Stay put."
And she left. In the sudden silence, Will could hear the rising sound of panicked shouts and screams. Frantic footsteps passed right by the opening of the tent.
His first thought was of arrows, like the ones that had chased them from the forest. Maybe they were raining down on the camp as he lay there. Maybe Sascha was right in an archer's line of sight.
He pushed himself upright. Only one arm had the strength to do it. The other hung lifeless yet painful at his side. He couldn't move it, but his horror at the fact was only background noise to his fear of what was happening outside. Body stiff with lack of use, he swung his legs with difficulty on to the ground. They struggled to take his weight at first, and he swayed, falling back on to the pile of blankets that had served him for a bed. The shouting was getting louder, and it encouraged him to try again. Someone fell sprawling right outside the tent, but they wasted no time in resuming their desperate sprint.
Will pushed aside the tent flap with his good arm and the chaos outside presented itself in full. People were gathering up belongings and diving into the dropship. Some had stopped to help others. The air was tingling with fear. There were no arrows, so Will took an unsteady step outside. It was slow progress, walking against the flow of the milling crowd. Every face he scanned over was not Sascha's, and in a pain-fuelled panic, he made his way to the perimeter wall. He didn't have time to wonder where it had appeared from. The Pyro was bellowing orders somewhere near the gaping mouth of the dropship, and everyone was too busy piling inside to pay Will any mind as he slipped through one of the gaps in the half-built wall. If Sascha was inside, she was safe. But if she wasn't… Where had he left her? Who was she with? What kind of big brother was he?
The trees were just as confusing and astounding as when he saw them last. He stumbled over the roots even more often than before. The forest was eerily quiet, as though the wind did not even dare disturb the trees. The world was holding its breath.
"Sascha?" he called out, the words sticking in his dry throat.
A loud horn sounded in answer. No, not one, but several, blaring up in one continuous note from every side. The sound made his bones shake, but he clutched his injured arm tighter and carried on. The further into the trees he ventured, the more alone he felt. The cacophony of horns died suddenly, all at once, and an uneasy silence followed. A solid sense of dread settled into Will's stomach – the kind he could remember from his days on the Ark, whenever his father had cracked open another bottle of ancient whiskey and stumbled back into their quarters.
A skitter of leaves came from up ahead, followed by a rabbit who sped beneath his feet and off in the opposite direction. Its ears were shot back in fear. Will called out again, "Sascha?"
He didn't see it at first. And once he did, it didn't particularly register. A thick yellow mist, creeping across the ground, and slowly, slowly towards him.
Something came thundering through the brush, and Will dismissed it as another frightened animal until that same something grabbed at his shoulder. He felt skin, heard someone talk but didn't understand the words.
He turned, only to find himself staring into the face of a girl. She said something else, unintelligible, then tugged at him again. She threw a warning glance at the fog and when he didn't react, she looked for a moment like she might give up and go without him. But he followed, hesitantly at first, until he noticed the desperation with which she fled. He tried his best to match her pace. Each frantic step brought a fresh pain that ripped through his chest. It took him a while to realise that what they were running from – what the whole forest seemed to be running from – was that acrid yellow gas.
"What is that?" he called out to the girl.
She didn't reply. A glance backwards revealed that the fog was hot on their heels. He suddenly felt afraid and pushed on, focusing instead on the dark curls of her hair as they bounced against her head. She was leaping and hopping around the trees as naturally as breathing, while he stumbled and floundered and struggled to keep up.
Without warning, she ducked. Will nearly went sprawling over her and she quickly set about parting some moss. She gave him an urgent look and he took it to mean that he should probably be helping. The sharp smell of the fog burnt his nostrils as it crept quietly on top of them. His skin prickled, and he would have called out in pain if he had to wait a moment longer. Then the moss came away all at once. Underneath lay a gaping hole. He didn't have time to wonder where the darkness led. The girl swung herself inside, and Will followed blindly.
He hit something, hard. It winded him and he lay sprawling inside the shallow hole which sounded oddly metallic now he thought about it. The girl was fumbling with something up above. Whatever she did seemed to rob the hole of light, and when she sat down beside him he could hardly see her at all.
He felt around him, trying to gain some sense of his surroundings. The thing he had landed on was solid and long, protruding from the ground with no warning at all. It was a gear stick, he decided, and they were in a car. He let a laugh escape him – a chuckle of relief and bewilderment at the whole bizarre situation.
"Why do you laugh?"
Will looked up in surprise. He could see some of the girl's features now his eyes had adjusted. Her eyes were large and expressive. Right now they were brimming with something that looked like curiosity.
"I just… a car. I never thought I'd see one of these things, much less be hiding in one." He laughed again, his relief so great that he didn't immediately realise what was amiss. "Wait, I don't know you. And your accent… you can speak… Are you-?"
She nodded, a sharp movement with no room for misunderstanding. "Trikru. You are… Skaikru."
"What does that mean?"
"Sky people. You fell from the sky."
"I suppose we did. And you've… you've been here this whole time? Here on Earth?"
She turned away, occupying herself with the steering wheel in front of her. She held on to it as though she was about to drive the car right up out of the ground and far away from there. That image was the only thing more ridiculous than his question.
He realised he was sat in the passenger's seat, though thick vines and moss covered the seat, the controls around him rusted and broken. The hole they'd come through had been the sun roof, now sealed shut by the girl. The glove box was in front of him and he fiddled with it absent-mindedly. The lock was broken and it remained tightly closed.
"Are we safe in here?"
"For now."
"What is that stuff out there?"
"Yela trikova. It is a terrible thing."
"It doesn't look very dangerous."
In answer, she rolled up her sleeve and gestured for him to look. Hesitantly, he leaned closer, unable to see much in the dark. Then the burnished tones of her skin began to take shape, and he could see that her delicate forearm was littered with tiny blisters. The patch looked like the surface of the moon, mottled with tiny, darkened craters. The damage spread around her wrist and on to her hand, where it softly faded. The wound was decidedly old, but to Will it was obvious how painful it had once been.
"The fog," she said. "I was lucky. The fog can kill."
"Then you saved me. Thank you."
The girl replaced her sleeve, and gave a shrug. "You were hurt another way."
Will realised she was staring at the bloody bandage on his chest. The reminder of it made it sting anew. "Yeah, when we first got here. It was an arrow." She looked confused and he tried to draw one in the air. He only got halfway through the charade before she reached forward, gently brushing his hand aside. She went straight for the bandage, pulling it away to get a better look at the wound. She muttered something to herself before retreating. "It will not heal. Foto jus. Poison."
The word scared him. "I can't move my arm," he said, the words tumbling from his lips in a panic.
"The poison is in your blood. It will not kill. Just… stop." She mimed her arm being stuck to her side. "Then more and more." She made the same motion with her leg, then her head, then, in a soft gesture that chilled him to the bone, covered her eyes, and then her heart. "All will stop."
He swallowed the lump in his throat. "Can I be cured? Healed?"
"We can heal it. Sky people cannot."
"Please, you have to help me," Will said, feeling a surprising lack of shame in begging to a stranger, one that had saved his life once already. "I have a sister. If I die…"
The girl nodded again, brusque and strangely reassuring. "I can help you. But not now." She pointed up, towards the blocked sun roof.
"Right. The fog." He thought of smoggy tendrils creeping their way through the cracks in the car's rusty exterior, filling up the small space until his lungs were choking with it. It would have been easy for him to sink into panic, but he couldn't. Not then. "I'm Willard," he told the girl. Anything for a distraction. "I'm glad we met."
"Willard," she repeated, taking a moment to absorb the knowledge. Then she added, "Isadore."
The word, like many of her words, sounded strange, but somehow he knew that what he had learned was her name. "Isadore," he repeated, just the way she had. "Do you think your people did this to me?"
If he was expecting her to be secretive, he was quickly surprised. "Yes. Only my clan has this poison."
"Why would they try to kill us?"
"Some do not want you here. You are strangers. You are in our land. Some are afraid, but more want to fight."
"And you don't feel that way?"
Isadore shook her head. "No. But I am no warrior. I am only… teacher. To kill you would be final. No chance to learn. Learning is important to understand each other. Understanding means calm. Peace."
It was an uplifting thought, that there was at least one among the masses willing to give the young criminals a chance. But it was hard to image that Isadore could dissuade a whole army from descending on the camp, if they really were out for blood. Even she didn't seem too confident in that, for all her apparent bravery and smarts.
"How many of your people are there?"
"In our clan, hundreds. In all of the Trigeda, there are thousands."
"How many know we are here?"
"When your ship came, there was fire in the sky. Every person saw it fall."
He hadn't given much thought to how it must have looked when the dropship hit the atmosphere and burned up, bright as an exploding star. Their arrival had been a signal flare, a sign that had apparently been mistaken for war. These people knew the forest better than the delinquents ever could, they had weapons, food, poisons. And towards the One Hundred, they were a vicious mixture of fearful and hostile.
The gravity of the situation overwhelmed him and he could do nothing but wallow in silence under Isadore's searching gaze. She didn't wait long for him to speak, and instead climbed up on to the seat to inspect the sun roof. Will could only watch her numbly as she moved the cover aside and said, "We can go."
He tried to be pleased as she pulled herself up out of the car by the strength of her arms alone. He inhaled deeply before he attempted the same movement with only one good arm. He caught the edge and winced. The pain sprang up in his chest and he kicked out to try and find some footing. His boot connected with something and he heard a loud crack. The next second, his grip failed and he landed in a painful twist back in the passenger seat. He sat there gasping, clutching his paralyzed arm defensively.
Isadore's face appeared above. "Are you hurt?"
"I'm fine," he managed to answer, though he felt anything but. It was only when he scrambled upright, wincing, that he realised what he had kicked. The glove box was hanging open like a gaping jaw. At first he couldn't see anything of interest – some papers, old road maps, a case for glasses which was old and cracked. And then he saw the corner of a bag. It was clear and unassuming, made of plastic. He couldn't say what intrigued him enough to tug it free, but he did.
Suddenly, there in his hands, was a gun. It was black and compact, and had been placed in the bag along with a single cartridge of ammo. Will stared at it, dumb-founded. He had never held a gun in his life, not even by the corner of a plastic bag.
"Here," he heard Isadore say from above, and her arm extended through the sun roof. "I can help you up."
He panicked, oddly guilty about his new discovery. A sudden image of a thousand blood-soaked warriors descending on the camp flashed through his mind, and he glanced hastily between the gun and Isadore's outstretched hand. He stuffed the weapon into his waistband before she could see it.
"Th-Thanks," he stammered, before reaching out to take Isadore's hand. They emerged into the bright stillness of the day, an eerie silence the only clue that the fog had ever been there. He trailed behind Isadore as they picked their way through the empty forest, the feeling of the gun burning a darkened hole in his subconscious. He tried to pretend that it made him feel safer.