There isn’t much light and Razor can’t hold him perfectly still, so I tell Bob to chill or I might sever his spinal cord, adding paralysis to the problem of a broken finger. I pull out the pellet, toss it onto the tarmac, yank Bob’s head back, and whisper in his ear, “I’m not the enemy and I haven’t gone Dorothy. I’m just like you—”
“Only better,” Razor finishes. He glances through the window and says, “Uh, Ringer . . .”
I see them: The glow of headlights expanding like a pair of stars going supernova. “They’re coming, and when they get here, they will kill us,” I tell Bob. “You too. They won’t believe you and they will kill you.”
Bob stares into my face, tears of pain streaming down his.
“You have to trust me,” I say.
“Or she’ll break another finger,” Razor adds.
A deep, shuddering breath, shaking uncontrollably, cradling his wounded hand, blood trickling down his neck and soaking into the collar of his T-shirt. “It’s hopeless,” he whispers. “They’ll just shoot us down.”
On impulse, I reach forward and press my hand against his cheek. He doesn’t recoil. He becomes very still. I don’t understand why I touched him or what’s happening now that I am, but I feel something opening inside me, like a bud spreading its delicate petals toward the sun. I’m freezing cold. My neck is on fire. And the little finger on my right hand throbs to the beat of my heart. The pain brings tears to my eyes. His pain.
“Ringer!” Razor barks. “What the hell are you doing?”
I pour my warmth into the man I touch. I douse the fire. I caress the pain. I soothe his fear. His breath evens out. His body relaxes.
“Bob, we really have to go,” I tell him.
And two minutes later, we do.
72
AS WE ASCEND, the truck screeches to a stop and a tall man steps out, and his face is a study in deep shadows thrown by the floods, but I see his eyes with eyes enhanced, bright and hard like the crows’ in the woods, polished blue while the crows’ were black, and it must be a trick of light or shadow, the small, tight smile he seems to wear.
“Keep us low,” I order Bob.
“Where are we going?”
“South.”
The chopper banks; the ground rushes toward us. I see the magazine burning and the spinning lights of the fire trucks and recruits swarming around like ants. We pass over a river, black water sparking in the spillover light from the floods. Behind us now, the camp is an oasis of light in a desert of winter dark. We plunge into that dark, skimming six feet above the treetops.
I slide into the seat next to Teacup, lean her into my chest, and pull her hair to one side. I hope this is the last time I have to do this. When I’m done, I crush the implant with the heel of the knife.
Razor’s voice squawks in my headset: “How’s she doing?”
“Okay, I think.”
“How’re you doing?”
“Good.”
“Glitches?”
“Minor. You?”
“Smooth as a newborn baby’s ass.”
I ease Teacup back into the seat, stand up, and open compartments until I find the chutes. Razor rattles on as I check the assemblies.
“Anything you want to say to me? Like, I don’t know, Thank you, Razor, for saving my ass from a lifetime of alien servitude after I punched you in the throat and generally acted like a douchebag? Something along those lines? You know, it wasn’t exactly like taking a walk in baseball, secret codes embedded in bogus games and slipping laxative in pudding and rigging explosives and stealing trucks and kidnapping pilots with fingers for you to break. Maybe Hey, Razor, I couldn’t have done it without you. You rock. Something like that. Doesn’t have to be word-for-word, just something to capture the general spirit.”