Limerence: Book Three of The Cure (Omnibus Edition) by Charlotte McConaghy
Most of the adults come to join us and we sprawl once again on the mats, entangled and enjoying the first moment of shared happiness in weeks.
“Will, my man, roll it!”
Will starts the old projector, which he and Luke sneakily set up this afternoon, and we watch the fantastic black and white film unfold on the sheet before us. Despite it lacking color or effects or even 3D let alone holo tech, it scares the crap out of just about everyone. Most deal with this by giggling hysterically, and for once Lawrence doesn’t say a word except to shhhh everyone. He takes his cinema very seriously, apparently.
When it’s over I have to be the bad guy who tells them to go to bed. They bitch and moan about it but eventually acquiesce, since I threaten no more films unless they earn them. I spend a few hours walking the tunnels, on the look out for danger. I come across one of the boys sneaking into the girls’ barracks and punish him with extra chores. I feel like a warden but I can’t stop. I’m terrified of all the bad things that can happen to them, terrified of my own responsibility. When the hell did I agree to parent dozens of unruly teenagers? I’m barely more than a teenager myself.
Eventually Luke finds me at one of the Fury gates, where he mostly knows to find me these days. I’ve been standing here thinking about that awful journey from the Inferno, hunted and on the run. We lost so many in those brutal days, fighting to keep the Furies back long enough for the others to keep going.
“Baby, come to bed.” Luke yawns now, bringing me back to the present.
“I’m just—”
“Patrolling, I know. But it’s Blue’s shift, not yours.”
I don’t move. For some reason I can’t. There’s a male Fury and from what I can see of him, he might once have been a very young man. Younger than me, maybe. His mouth opens and closes with a snap. He keeps sniffing through his nose like a dog. His fingers clutch at the metal bars of the cage keeping him out. Several of them are broken and twisted but he hasn’t noticed. Old blood stains his mouth and neck.
I hold the creature’s eyes and say softly, “I hate them.”
And it’s so true it eclipses everything else. I draw the knife from my boot and stab it straight into his eye, his red, burst eye.
“Josi.”
I watch the dying Fury before me. He grunts and flails and then sinks oddly to his side. The others of his kind don’t turn to him until he’s completely dead, but the second he is they tear into his body. I reach through and stab as many as I can, gouge my knife into as much flesh as I can find.
Strong arms pull me away and my knife clatters to the ground on the other side of the cage. Luke lets me go and we watch the feeding frenzy. My eyes rest on the fallen blade, unnoticed among the fray. It was a good knife; I’ll be sad to lose it.
“I want them gone.”
“I know that. We’re trying to work out how.”
I breathe out and shake my head.
“You’re reckless, Josi. It’s starting to scare me.”
I frown and look at him. To my ears it sounds like he’s describing someone else. “Am I?”
He frowns right back at me. For the first time in our lives I think it’s an uncertain look, a searching look, one that might not necessarily yield any answers. It unsettles me, as I think it does him.
I try to explain. “I feel … wary. Nervous.”
His eyebrows arch. “You hide it well.”
I swallow and look again at the Furies. Was that reckless? Yeah, maybe, I suppose. Guess I could have lost a hand. But it seems worth it to me, to kill a few of the fuckers.
“The cliff with Malia. Climbing down there before the gear had arrived …”
“I had to. You knew that.”
“If it was my op I would have waited.”
I stare at him. “It was your op. It was our op and we decided together.”
“No, you launched yourself down that cliff before I could weigh in.”
“We take calculated risks. You taught me that.”
“And the risk in that situation was too high. You lose the coin toss and you both would’ve died.”
“I win it, and we both would’ve lived.”
“Did you both live?”
I recoil as if he’s slapped me and touch the cage for balance.
“I’m not trying to hurt you,” he says. “It wasn’t anywhere close to your fault. The point I’m making is that you’re too willing to risk your life.”
“For our people? I can’t see that as a negative.”
“You’re a leader now. You have to start thinking about yourself as an asset.”
“Luke, Jesus. You sound like a fucking Blood.”
“I am a Blood.”
“What?”
“I don’t think it goes away, as neat and tidy as that would be for us. I understand risk and reward and the value of lives—”
“Woah, stop.” I stride away.
He follows me to our room and even though there’s no door and no sound-proofing and half the resisters are within a stone’s throw, he says loudly, “Don’t walk away from me.”
“Keep your voice down.”
“We’re talking about this, finally, so let’s talk about it. You think it’s your job to save everyone, and you’ll die to do it. But that’s not good leadership – that’s immaturity. It’s an inability to make tough choices.”
“I’m not in charge of this place,” I hiss. “If anyone is, you are!”
“Avoiding the topic.”
“I don’t need you to attack me about character flaws, alright? I don’t need that from you.”
“It’s not a character flaw!” he snaps, exasperated.
“Immaturity? Inability to make tough choices?”
“It’s a learning curve, Josi. I’ve got a shit ton to learn too. What I do understand is how to remove myself from my emotions and my personal attachments in order to do what’s better for the community as a whole.”
“Well, great, aren’t you just perfect.”
He rolls his eyes and it only infuriates me more.
“No, seriously – you are, aren’t you? You’re good at everything, everyone loves you, you seem to have all your shit together, you don’t hesitate, you don’t question, you just act and it’s always right, right?”
He shakes his head impatiently.
“Sometimes you’re so perfect, Luke, that it’s impossible to even reach the stratosphere you inhabit. You can build fucking cellos with your hands and create perfect boundaries. I’m an emotional ugly mess around you. I’m imperfect and it gets to you, doesn’t it?”
Luke’s eyes widen. He stalks toward me. “Come off it. That person you’re describing has nothing to do with me.”
“Liar.”
“I’m so far from perfect it’s not even funny.”
“True. A girl dies and you want to criticize me about it.”
He grunts and is suddenly upon me, forcing me back against the tunnel wall. “No, Josi. I’m scared!”
I pause, surprised.
“You’re so brave it terrifies me.” My breath is coming quickly and his hands pin me to the wall. “You’re fragile,” he says and his face is so close to mine, his words against my lips.
I breathe out. My edges have scattered like in Will’s painting. I lift my chin. “You came down that cliff too. With a broken hand and an unfastened harness.”
“For you,” he snarls. “And maybe that’s the problem. You make it all blurry. You make everything blurry, when it used to be so damn clear. Now I’d climb down any cliff for you. But you – you climb down cliffs for everyone because you don’t value yourself.”
“Fuck off,” I breathe, and shove his chest.
He moves closer.
“Sometimes I could just throttle your stupid, perfect neck.”
“I just want you to hear me, for once in your stubborn life. You’re precious, Josephine Luquet. You’re fragile. We both are.”
One of his large hands lifts to my jaw and holds it firmly. My te
“We’re fragile,” he repeats, and then his lips take mine.
I lift my hands to his neck and clench it tightly as though I might just squeeze. My mouth opens so our tongues can trace. His damaged hand has found its way beneath my shirt to my breast, his warm finger to my nipple. I bite his lip, angry at the simplicity of desire and the ease with which I’m consumed by it. For a second I hate it and I hate him, and then the second after that I don’t hate him at all. I know something very well.
I say, “You’re wrong, Luke Townsend. We’re not fragile.”
*
September 16th, 2067
Josephine
I abseil down the sheer face of the wall. My hands grip and release as I control the tension of the rope and the velocity of my descent. Wind whips up and my stomach bottoms out continuously, but I love the feel of sliding down through the air; I love the thought that I could be falling and it might feel almost the same. On either side of me are half a dozen kids all managing with varying degrees of fear – I’m pretty sure none of them feel as inclined as I do to drop eight hundred feet to the ground.
“That’s it,” I call over the sound of the wind at such altitude. “Nice and smooth. Relax your muscles.”
No matter what I say it’s a gut-wrenching activity. The earth is so far distant that were there people down there I’m not sure I’d see anything but dots. We wouldn’t be doing this if there were any other way to get the kids out. This happens to be a blind spot in the city’s surveillance. There are no blind spots inside the wall, but there are a couple outside it, which makes it relatively safe to escape this way with our freshly rescued teenagers. Relatively being the key word.
One of the boys – Patty – is weeping continuously and Ziyi, who is a grown woman, lets out a scream every time she has to let go of her tension rope to swing a couple of meters. Which is often. But she’s doing it. She’s damn well doing it. Pace and Will are way ahead of us, moving with lightning speed in order to reach and check the bottom, while above us Blue and Eric keep an eye on the top of the wall as they descend.
My focus is keeping the kids calm, while wondering what’s taking Luke so long to get here. My earpiece delivers Teddy’s message as though he’s inside my head, and sometimes it really feels that way. “Still all clear. But hurry it along, would you? This whole thing is nerve-wracking.”
“Says the kid fifty meters safely below the ground.”
“I can’t do this!” Patty announces at that point. He’s to my left, with a girl called Ange in between us.
“Yes, you can, you already are,” I tell him. “Take it one second at a time and just keep moving.”
He stops altogether and I do the same, shouting for the other kids to keep going. “What are you afraid of?”
“Are you insane? Falling!”
“You’re afraid of dying,” I supply.
He nods and I can see him reconsidering the wisdom of leaving with a group of strange rebels he knows nothing about, most of whom aren’t much older than him, and who point out very obvious facts.
“You fall, you die, right?” I say. “But here’s another equation. You stay where you are, you die. You try to climb back up, you die, guaranteed. The only way not to die is to keep descending and reach the bottom.”
“Oh my god,” he whimpers.
“Toughen up, get moving.”
I hate telling him to toughen up, and in any other situation I wouldn’t, but when being tough saves your life you gotta be tough. He starts moving, more slowly. Blue and Eric have nearly caught up to us. Right down there on the ground is the opening to a tunnel that will eventually lead us to our tunnels. Abseiling down the wall means not having to cross the highly regulated city with a bunch of stolen teenagers in tow. It does, however, suck when said teenagers are afraid of heights.
As I wait for Patty to catch up I take a look out at the world behind me. I’ve told the kids not to do this under any circumstances, but heights don’t bother me. In fact being up here is kind of like coming home. The air smells different, feels different against my face. Far out on the horizon sinks the golden sun. The enormity of the world reaches something inside me: it is the hugeness I find comforting, my tininess within it reassuring. Despite the general anxiety and the not-wanting-anyone-to-fall part of all this, I’m happy. That slowly rising red moon has no hold over me. I’m free, and I’d do this for fun.
Which is why, of course, the universe decides to give me a great big middle finger.
We’ve made it to within about fifty meters of the ground and we’re in the home stretch when it happens. Along the wall, at its base, is an old gate that has long since been out of use. A wall doesn’t need a gate if no one’s ever supposed to go through it, after all. It’s been barricaded and guarded from the inside, so I’m somewhat surprised to see a car explode through it into the barren beyond with us.
“What the hell?” Blue exclaims.
I squint to see that part of the metal gate has been ripped off and entangled with the car, which has rolled several times and now rests on its roof not all that far from where we’re descending. Who the bloody hell would be driving a beat-up old car out through the Blood-guarded wall into a wasteland of nothing? At sunset, no less. How did they get through? And why?
I don’t stop to think. Because in my appraisal of the strange occurrence I’ve spotted further cause for concern. In the distance something approaches. Many things – human figures, in fact. And in the world as we know it human figures in the beyond means one thing: Furies. I am abseiling to the bottom with more speed than I’ve ever descended with – I am basically falling. I leave Patty with Blue and Eric and I high-tail it to the ground, my hands burning on the ropes, my guts in my mouth. The ground rears up to connect heavily with my boots, causing my knees to buckle. Pace is wrenching me upright and unclipping me from my harness before I have a chance to blink. I can see the lid to the tunnel is open and kids are already being shepherded down the ladder. We’ll make it with time to spare, we’ll be fine.
But whoever is in that car will not.
I take a long, deep breath and make a decision.
“Get everyone into the tunnels,” I order Pace.
“Duh.”
“I’ll meet you at home.”
“What? Why?”
“The car.”
“Dual, no!”
“I can make it. There’s time.”
“They don’t matter! They’re not ours!”
But they all matter. And anyway, Luke’s on his way. When Luke’s around, Furies die. I can’t take them on my own, not that many, but we can definitely take them together. He’s probably already started his descent behind us.
I take off at a sprint, barking over my shoulder for Pace to get below. She’ll do as I say. That’s how it works on ops: you obey whoever’s in charge or people get killed. To Teddy I say, “Send Luke after me but make sure everyone else gets below.”
“Aye aye. For the record this makes me even more nervous than the abseiling.”
“For the record that’s not high in my priorities right now, Teddy boy.”
My feet pound over the hard earth. I don’t draw the two pistols from my thigh holsters, not yet. I pass the opening that was once a gate and see a crowd of Bloods working like an army to get it blocked up. They don’t give a shit about who’s gone through because whoever’s gone through is toast. They certainly don’t care about one girl sprinting across their line of sight – she won’t last long. Their concern is the horde of snarling cannibals headed their way.
Sometimes Furies get inside the walls. I don’t know how, but I suspect it has to do with the tunnels. When I first encountered them a few years ago Luke and I were in an abandoned building right in the middle of the city. They were myths to us then, a story with which to scare children. Then I saw them again the night I carried him unconscious from the asylum – in fact, they s
I reach the smoking car. It looks less like a car than an artfully abstract metal sculpture at this point. Rusted red curls amorously with shining silver; steel hands rear up from the earth and clasp together. Inside this mess are seven people, I think. Seven, all crammed into a tiny vehicle, even tinier since it got squished by the gate. My heart thumps wildly as I make out body parts belonging to children in the mix. The body parts move, though, so they’re still alive. I have to use my boot for leverage to wrench open one of the dented doors.
“Help,” an adult voice pleads.
“I’m here, it’s alright,” I assure the voice, still trying to work out who is where and how to get everyone out since nobody seems to be doing it themselves. I should have brought Pace with me, dammit – I could have used the help but I can’t stand the thought of endangering any of the others. And let’s face it: this is one hell of a risk.
You’re reckless, he told me. You’re fragile.
“No response from Luke’s comm., Josi,” Teddy warns me.
“What? What do you mean no response?”
“I mean he’s not responding! What the hell else do you think I mean?” Teddy’s voice sounds mildly hysterical but I’m currently dealing with the child I’ve managed to pull from the wreck. She coughs and blinks awake so I leave her to drag her brother free.
On the other side an adult woman has climbed out the window and is trying to get the seatbelt from a third child.
“Hurry,” I tell her calmly, because I don’t want to freak her out completely but she really needs to hurry.
There’s a man upside down in the front seat. I check his pulse and find him still alive but he doesn’t wake when I shake him. The knife in my boot saws through his seatbelt and he falls on his head, which sucks but is unavoidable. I drag him inch by slow inch out of the mess, but something gets caught and stalls me. Shit. I crawl over his fleshy body and into the car to try and see what the problem is. Part of the gate has completely mangled one of his feet. Both feet are now twisted into the body of the car, trapping a fourth child who is wailing in terror.