Crossed

CHAPTER 33 KY

Hunter reaches for another tube and snaps that one in his hand too.

“Get out of here,” I say to Cassia and the others. “Go.”

Indie doesn’t hesitate. She turns and runs for the entrance to the cave and slides into the rocks.

“We can’t leave him here,” Cassia says, looking at Hunter, who sees nothing and hears nothing but the tubes he breaks in his hands.

“I’ll try to get him to come with us,” I promise. “But you have to go. Now.”

“We need him for the climb,” she says.

“Indie can help you. Go. I won’t stay long.”

“We’ll wait at the crossing,” Cassia promises. “The Society might take a long time to get here.”

Unless they’re in the area already, I think. Then it could be a matter of minutes.

Once they’re gone I turn to Hunter. “You have to stop,” I say. “Come back with us.”

He shakes his head and breaks another tube.

“We could try to catch up with the farmers who went across the plain,” I say.

“They could all be dead by now,” he says.

“Did they leave to join the Rising?” I ask him.

He doesn’t answer.

I don’t try to stop him. One tube, a thousand — what’s the difference? The Society will know of this either way. And part of me wants to join him. When you’ve lost everything, why not take what you can before they come down on you? I remember that feeling. Another, darker part of me thinks, And if he doesn’t come with us, then he can’t tell Cassia about the Rising and how to find them. I’m sure he knows.

I go back to the entrance of the crevice and find a stone. I carry it back over to him. “Try this,” I say. “It will go faster.”

Hunter doesn’t say anything but he takes the rock from me and holds it over his head. Then he brings the stone down fast over a row of tubes. I hear them break as I slide into the crevice to get out.

Once I’m outside I listen for the sound of the air ships above us.

Nothing.

Yet.

They waited for me. “You should have gone on ahead,” I say to Cassia, but that’s all I have time to say before we’re all clipped in and climbing. Up. Across. For a moment on the top on that bare plain of rock I wonder if I should run behind or ahead — which is the best way to protect her — and then I find us just running side by side.

“Are they going to find us?” Eli gasps once we reach the other canyon.

“We’ll run on the cobble when we can,” I say.

“But sometimes it’s all sand,” Eli says, panicked.

“It’s all right,” I tell him. “There’s always rain.”

We all look up. The sky above us is a delicate early-winter blue. Gray clouds hang in the distance but they are miles away.

Cassia hasn’t forgotten what Indie said in the cave. She comes up next to me and puts her hand on my arm. “What did Indie mean?” she asks, out of breath. “About Xander’s secret?”

“I don’t know what she’s talking about,” I lie.

I don’t look back at Indie. Her boots sound on the rocks behind us but she doesn’t contradict me and I know why.

Indie wants to find the Rising and for some reason she thinks I’m the most likely to know how to get there. She’s decided to cast her lot with mine even though she doesn’t like me any more than I like her.

I reach for Cassia’s hand and listen for the beats of the Society’s ships above us, but for now they do not come.

Neither does the rain.

When Xander and I took the red tablets that day long ago, we counted to three and swallowed them at the same time. I watched his face. I couldn’t wait for him to forget.

It didn’t take long to realize that it didn’t work and that he was immune, too. Until then I’d thought I was the only one.

“You’re supposed to forget,” I told Xander.

“I didn’t,” he said.

Cassia told me what happened that day in the Borough after I left — how she learned that Xander was immune to the red tablets. But she doesn’t know his other secret. And I’m keeping that one because it’s the fair thing to do, I tell myself. Because it’s his right to tell her. Not mine.

I try not to think about the other reasons I don’t tell Cassia Xander’s secret.

If she knows it, she might change her mind about him. And about me.