Here Skies Surround Us Read online

  My eyes fill up with tears, and I push myself away before I lose control. Everyone wants me safe, but what about what I want? I manage a smile as I hold in my emotions, and look back to see tears running down Grandfather’s face.

  “I told Alec before he left that he is to look out for you,” Grandfather says. “Not that I don’t think Evan can.” He smiles. “The more people who are looking out for our little Nat, the better.”

  “Alec left?” I’m shocked. Why wouldn’t he have said goodbye? I barely got to talk to him at supper last night.

  “He came by this morning and said goodbye. Don’t look so worried, he’s coming back.” Grandfather squeezes my hand. His grip is weak, but at least he’s still here.

  I’m disappointed Alec didn’t say anything to me before leaving, but right now I need to focus on Grandfather. I lean over and hug him, being careful not to put too much pressure on his injuries. “I love you.”

  “I love you too, Nat.”

  I let go and walk away, not looking back. The nurse pulls the curtain closed behind me. Holding in tears, I try to fight back my worry. When I reach the elevator, I remember I wanted to ask about Tassie. I turn back to the nurse’s station only to find Jak standing there, staring at me.

  My anxiety returns. I wasn’t prepared to meet up with him like this. Even though things didn’t end how he had hoped, Jak and I still shared a close friendship for the last fifteen years. He’s a piece of me and the thought of never talking again makes me feel empty.

  “Were you trying to leave without saying goodbye?” His voice startles me.

  “Jak,” I whisper, my voice catching in my throat. My heart starts to race. I’ve missed him terribly but still haven’t forgiven him for what he did.

  “I should have known you’d be here.”

  “I wanted to come see you. How’s Tassie doing?”

  Silence hangs in the air between us. The elevator doors open and we both step inside. When they close, he turns toward me. Sadness plays around the edges of his eyes. I tear mine away and focus on my hands, which have started playing with a loose string on my shirt again.

  “They say Tassie was targeted.” His voice surprises me as much as his words do.

  “What? That makes no sense. Tassie wasn’t a threat to anyone.”

  His eyes grow dark, and pain lines them. “It’s my fault. People feel like I’m hiding something. There’s a rumor that someone has a vial of the virus in the colony. Because I’m the one in charge, they think I had Tassie sneak it out.” I jump as Jak slams his fist on the elevator wall. “I’m sorry, I’m just so angry.”

  “It’s okay.” I swallow and try to calm my nerves.

  “I’m sorry, Nat, I am. I’m sorry for all the pressure I put on you. I’m sorry for the lies. I should have kept you in the loop instead of just assuming you needed me to protect you. I see that now, how it must have looked to you, like I was trying to control you. I’m—I’m sorry.”

  The elevator doors open and we step into the lobby.

  Oh, Jak. The lies seem so long ago, but really, it’s only been a couple of months. You betrayed me every way a person could, and then hated me for not wanting you.

  What would he do if he knew I was the one with the virus, the reason why someone had bombed the Outer Colony and Tassie was hurt? I look back at Jak, staring at his familiar face. Like Xara, he was like family. Nevertheless, I know I can’t trust him any longer, so I offer the only thing I can.

  “I miss you,” I say quietly. He inhales sharply. “I think about you sometimes. I wonder what you’re doing now. So many times, these last few weeks I wanted to find you and talk.”

  “I wish you would have,” Jak says, reaching for my hand. His touch snaps me out of my stupor. What am I doing? I pull my hand away, and he shrinks back.

  “As friends,” he says quietly.

  “Yes, of course.” This is the thorn in our friendship—Jak, who I continuously reject in love.

  “I get it,” he says, forcing a smile. “I do. I promise. I’m with Tassie now. She’s full of energy. She’s—different from you.” His voice cracks.

  “She’ll be okay.”

  “Who would do this to her?” he asks, his face growing dark again.

  I regurgitate Grandfather’s wisdom. “Fear brings out the worst in people.”

  Jak turns to me and steps close. I back up and bump against the elevator’s control panel. He leans toward me, putting his hand against the wall to stop me from leaving. Between the darkness of the lobby and the dim lights of the elevator, his features look practically mad. “You don’t know anything about the virus being on the outside—hidden somewhere—do you?”

  I shake my head. Can he tell I’m lying? Has enough difference been put between us that he can’t see the truth hiding deep inside me? A shiver runs down my spine as Jak leans in, forcing me to meet his gaze.

  “Keep your eyes open, Nat. You’re not the innocent daughter of the Greyes scientists anymore. You’re the girl who gave everyone the truth. The girl who started a revolution. Be careful of what people want from you.”

  I want to give Jak a piece of my mind, but I pause as I realize there is some truth to what he says. Is that who I am? No, that’s my mother. She started this revolution. I just helped her get her message out there.

  Before I can answer, Evan interrupts my thoughts.

  “Well, hello,” Evan says coldly. “What do we have here?” The last time Evan caught Jak pinning me against a wall in an elevator, they ended up in a brawl. Ah, boys.

  “Jak and I were just saying goodbye,” I say, as he backs off.

  Jak smiles at Evan as he walks away. “Remember what I said, Nat. Be careful.”

  “What did he want?” Evan asks, as Jak leaves the Axis.

  “He wanted me to know he was moving on,” I say, partially lying. “I already knew he and Tassie were together.”

  “That’s all?” Evan asks.

  “And that he’s sorry,” I add.

  Evan grabs my hand. I can’t imagine what he’s thinking. Does he know there was more? Is he worried I might have feelings for Jak? Why, amid all this turmoil, do I find my biggest problems are with boys?

  “I came to find you,” he says. “We’ve got trouble.”

  On our way out of the dome, we pass crowds of people gathered in the streets. Children are crying and people look lost—people whose faces I recognize as those who moved to the outside. What’s happening?

  “They’ve just opened the doors for everyone to come inside,” Evan explains.

  “Were there more explosions?”

  “No, but some places have been ransacked and set on fire.”

  “I don’t understand why this is happening.”

  “I warned you, people aren’t happy. They get paranoid when there’s too much change.”

  I look around at all the people displaced. At least the homes they left a month ago should still be intact, waiting for them to return. Maybe it was a good thing we didn’t start tearing down one of the apartment buildings.

  “Nat!” Xara’s voice calls from the crowd. She pushes her way through, joining us in the street.

  “You weren’t going to leave without saying goodbye, were you?” Her head shakes slowly as her eyes widen under her furrowed brow.

  “Leave? We’re not going yet.”

  Evan’s gaze snaps to mine. “Nat, you can’t seriously think of staying now.”

  I clutch my stomach and shoot back, “We need a few days to prepare.”

  “I don’t think you realize how bad it is out there,” Xara explains. “It’s total chaos. If you don’t go now, you might not get another chance for a long time.”

  I cross my arms against my body to hold myself together. Is she right? Now or Never? How long can we hold off Evan’s mother without her showing up on the doorstep of Dome 1618? “Okay.” I shake my head, unable to accept what I know must be done. “Let’s go.”
/>   She grabs me in a tight bear hug before I can resist. I wrap my hands around her and hug her back. “I’ll be waiting here when you return,” she whispers in my ear before letting me go. “Take care of her.” Xara punches Evan in the shoulder. “Or I’ll find you.”

  “I know you will.”

  I watch as she disappears back into the crowd. My friend. How long will it be until we’re together again?

  I follow close behind Evan, watching the gates of the dome up ahead. Where once a double gate secured our inside world from the dangers outside, now the two doors are open, welcoming those who abandoned the dome’s steel grid and glass panels for blue skies and dust.

  Now destruction and flames are all I see past those doors. Houses everywhere are on fire, spreading as the flames cross from one shack to the next. We don’t have the means to put them out. The Outer Colony is toast.

  Someone is searching for something.

  “We need to get back home.” Even I can hear the panic in my voice.

  “Shhh,” Evan warns. “Not out here. Come on.”

  From memory, we weave down the makeshift roads until we reach my one-room shack. The flames haven’t reached this far yet, but there’s evidence all over that someone has been here. My drawers are emptied and my bed has been tipped over.

  The immune serum and microchip are gone.

  “Evan,” I gasp, covering my mouth with both hands.

  “Shhh,” he warns me again, holding a finger to his lips. “Just grab what you can, we need to go.”

  I find my bag in a corner of the room. My hands shake as I stuff a few things in; I’m not even paying attention to what I’m taking. Why isn’t Evan rattled? That box held everything we needed to help Evan’s people. Who did this, and how did they know I had the serum?

  Voices come from outside. There are three, maybe four different people, a mix of men and women. Evan stands next to the door, holding a hand out in my direction. I stand, frozen, listening to their conversation.

  “It’s not here,” a man says.

  “It has to be,” a woman pipes up. Her voice is familiar, but I can’t put my finger on it.

  Richards’s voice carries over. “You two, round back to the other side of the colony. I want each shack you look through burned. Be thorough. We need that serum.”

  Richards? He’s responsible for this? He was always a rebel, fighting against the Director and his Delegates after his parents went missing. But that world is behind us. What does he want access to? What’s so important he’d destroy lives to find the serum?

  “Darling,” the woman’s voice speaks again. Now I can pinpoint it—it’s Richards’s wife. “Maybe it’s gone? Someone could have taken it already.”

  “No one else knows about it,” Richards says. “It has to be him—he’s the only one who had a reason to take the serum. He’s not one of us, he’s an Outsider.”

  Oh, no. They’re talking about Evan. I drop my bag and it scuffs against the dirt floor.

  “Did you hear that?” Richards asks. “Over here.”

  Evan reaches back and grabs my hand, jerking me out of the shack. We run into the darkness. I let go of his hand and try to keep up.

  “This way!” Mrs. Richards yells after us.

  My biggest mistake is looking back. In that microsecond, I tear my eyes away from Evan and lose him in the darkness. I stumble for a second, trying to sort out my surroundings. I don’t even know where we’re headed.

  A hand latches onto my arm, and I’m spun around face-to-face with Mrs. Richards. Her hair is wildly flying around her face, haloed by the flames that rise behind her. I try to wrestle out of her grasp, but she’s stronger than I am.

  “Over here!” she screams. “I’ve got Natalia!”

  “Let go of me.” I struggle, panic rising as the sound of footsteps grow closer. “I don’t have anything you want.”

  “You have no idea what we want,” she hisses, her spit catching my cheek.

  “You’re mad!” I yell.

  Mr. Richards’s voice comes from behind his wife. “Not as mad as I am, right now.” His dark features are further amplified in the night, and his face is twisted into a scowl. Goosebumps ripple across my skin, and I try to step back but Mrs. Richards only tightens her grip.

  “What do you want?”

  “The truth,” Mr. Richards says. “Where did your boyfriend hide the serum?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t have it.”

  “So, you admit you’ve been hiding it all along?” Mrs. Richards twists my arm, and I cry out in pain.

  “It’s just the immune serum, it’s not a threat.” I groan against the sting as my skin twists like a screw.

  Mr. Richards starts to laugh. “I’m sure that’s what every scientist who’s played with the virus has said to themselves. The immune serum is still made with parts of the virus, you foolish girl. Are you trying to let the past repeat itself?”

  “But I’m on your side,” I plea.

  “Give us the serum, then,” Mrs. Richards says.

  “I don’t have it!”

  She twists my arm again until I fall to my knees, where gravel pierces my skin. “Liar!”

  From the ground, I can make out a silhouette behind them, outlined by the flames. It’s Evan. If only I can distract these two a moment longer, I might be able to escape.

  “You can’t blame all of this on Evan,” I say. “People have seen him inside since the explosion.”

  “People won’t remember who they saw, after we remind them that Evan had access to explosives. That’s the whole reason he came here in the first place. To blow us up. Jak will back our story. Evan blew up the trench in an attempt to stop us. Then we stopped him before he could take the virus back to his dome.”

  “Jak?” My head swims with confusion. “What does he have to do with any of this?”

  “When he found out your boyfriend was hiding part of the immune serum, he enlisted us to help,” Richards says with a smirk. “He knows how much we care about preserving the Outer Colony of our dome. He knows the risks we took when we helped form the rebellion. Providing another dome with a copy of the virus is like handing them a weapon.”

  “You’re all insane.” I shake my head.

  Here I thought Jak had stayed by Tassie the entire time, when really, he was plotting ways to get control of the only immune serum on the outside. He knew he was sending me into a trap when he met me at the elevator. But, Tassie? I still can’t believe he would risk her life to stop us.

  I tilt my chin up to them and hope they can see the smile that spreads across my face. My voice comes out cold and mocking. “Jak’s not stupid. In fact, he’s the smartest person I know. He sent you out here to do his dirty work, and when you hurt Tassie, you went too far. When you return empty handed, he’ll punish you for the bomb Won’t he?”

  “It was supposed to be you that got hurt, not Tassie,” Mrs. Richards whispers in my ear. When she leans forward, she loosens her grip on my wrist enough that I’m able to push myself back and out of her reach.

  “He’ll stick to the plan.” Her voice shakes. “He promised us access to the old Microbiology department so we can destroy the virus once and for all.”

  “You think he’d let you get rid of the one thing that gives him power?” I ask. “You screwed yourselves the minute that bomb went off.”

  Mr. Richards’s mouth drops, as if he’s about the say something. Instead, he collapses to the ground and Evan appears behind them, holding a shovel that I know has AGRICULTURE carved into the handle. Evan lifts it in Mrs. Richards’s direction, but she turns and runs off screaming toward the fire.

  Evan tosses the shovel and steps over Mr. Richards’s body. “Are you okay?” he asks. The flames light up worried lines and stretch them across his face.

  I grab his hand and stand up. “I’m fine. But what are we going to do now? They said Jak sent them—I just can’t believe it.”

  V
oices call out in the distance.

  “We really need to go now, Nat. We can talk about this later.”

  “What about the immune serum and the microchip?” I ask. “We need to go back inside the dome and get a new sample to take back to your home.”

  “No.” Evan shakes his head. “I have it hidden.”

  “When? How come you never mentioned this before?”

  “I told you, we needed to go. After you were safe with Xara, I ran it out into the hills. That’s where I’ve been all this time. Not helping Roe. I could see the flames before I got back.”

  The voices get closer. Right now, Jak has backed me into a corner. I could return to the dome, and face whatever consequence he has waiting for me. Or, I could go with Evan, like we always planned, and then come back once Jak has calmed down.

  “All right, let’s go.”

  We run away from the Outer Colony, toward the hills that we visited during expeditions. My lungs ache with every breath as I push them past their limit. Along the dusty broken roads, what took half an hour at a slow pace by car is over an hour on foot. By the time we reach the hills, my feet ache and I need a rest. The flames are far behind us now, and the shape of the dome is nothing more than an object reaching from the horizon into the night sky.

  “We have to keep going,” Evan warns. “We’re not safe yet, Nat.”

  After we cross the meadow, we make our way through the hills. The moon has moved across the sky by the time we finally reach a truck hidden at the edge of the trees, the only witnesses left of our escape the stars above us. How long have we been running? Two, maybe three hours?

  As Evan rifles through the back of the truck, I can’t help but feel panic tighten in my chest. Will I ever be able to return home now? In an instant, everything seems to have fallen apart, taking our hopes and dreams of an Outer Colony down in flames. Why would they have risked everything to stop me?

  But Jak must always be in control.

  “Don’t look so down,” Evan says, turning and passing me the box that holds the immune serum and microchip. “The time will pass quickly. You’ll see.”

  “I know,” I say. “It’s just that everything’s gone wrong. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. All that destruction for this stupid virus. You should have just left without me, then none of this would have happened.