Time for target practice.
They don’t give trainees guns, but I can improvise. I bend down for a couple of stones that are just big enough to fit my hand. There’s a felled tree with its roots sticking up that I’ve been using the last few days. From my angle, the roots form an almost perfect circle.
The first rock hits the tip of a root about an inch from the center, sending a rain of dry dirt shaking off; the second clips one off the outside ridge. I reach for a third and pitch the rock high, but it must have been cracked. It splits into pieces that drop to the ground, except for one that bounces off something midair. Suspicion creeps up my neck, ticking the back of my ears.
It hit a tiny root, I tell myself. Or a knot on the trunk that’s just out of sight .
I crouch for another stone, then fling it sideways, two feet off the ground. This one hits something, too, but not my stump. The rock bounces off something beside it. Something invisible.
“Bring up the lights,” I whisper into my radio, standing slowly, my eyes skimming the Grey for any hint of shimmer that would tell me a Fade’s using the fallen trees for cover.
“We’re still checking other sectors, Tobin.”
Anyone from Marina’s hive can walk safely up to the boundary now. The curious ones come every night. So why would it hide?
“Is this a drill?” I ask
“These are the same tests we’ve run for the last week. I’m not sure—”
“Not the lights—out in the Grey,” I say.
“Did you see something?”
“I didn’t see anything—that’s the problem.”
Maybe it’s shy, I think, or scared . It could be a kid, like Marina’s little sister, but staying camouflaged is asking for trouble. It’s not even full dark. Why would it be here so early?
What if it’s more than one? We could be surrounded.
I’m going to kill Silver for skipping out on patrol and leaving me alone. Then I’ll have my new invisible friend heal her, and I’ll kill her all over again.
I take another shot at the stump, aiming for the opposite side—nothing but air, so I turn back to where I’d hit before. The rock goes sailing, but at the point I expect an impact, it changes direction. Something’s batted it away.
A stick snaps in two, displacing the dust around it, though I can’t see the foot that must have stepped there.
“If this is you getting back at me for joking around, tell me now,” I say into the radio.
“I’m not doing anything,” Mr. Pace says.
Maybe it’s him, come to keep an eye on me.
“Hey!” I shout. I move forward but don’t cross the Arc. Staying on my side of the line makes me feel better, lights or not. “I know you’re there!”
I pick up another stone.
“We’re the same height, Nanobot. The next one’s coming straight at your head!”
The invisible something moves again, shuffling away so fast that it bumps my target, snapping several of the roots. This isn’t Rueful. If he wanted to screw with my head, he’d have dropped the invisible act right beside me, just to prove he could get close enough to do it.
“Tobin!” Mr. Pace is shouting. I must have tuned him out.
“I’m here.”
“I heard. Can you confirm it’s Marina’s buddy with you?”
The lights come up.
“It’s not him, but there is something,” I tell him.
“Sykes is headed your way. Scope it. Tell me what you see.”
When Rueful came for Marina in the hospital, Mr. Pace was able to track him with the infrared from his rifle, so each trainee was assigned a light to use in situations like this. I forgot, the stupid thing’s been hanging off my wrist the whole time.
I aim the beam at the stump.
“There’s . . . nothing . There’s nothing there.”
I sweep the light side to side, up and down, but I never see more than the targeting dot against rocks and brush. Another dot appears next to mine, and I turn to find Lt. Sykes has joined me.
For a second I think he’s on my side. He’s got his rifle tucked in tight to his shoulder, with serious concentration on his face. He gives the Grey a much more thorough check than I do, turning the search into a grid and covering each section in a square pattern, but ultimately, Sykes drops the rifle to his side and picks up his radio.
“It’s clear,” he says. “If there was anything out there—”
“There was! I swear.” I sound like a kid throwing a fit.
“It’s gone now,” Sykes says, staring at me, but he’s not listening to me anymore. “No trace.”
“The stump has plenty of traces,” I say, pointing to it.
Sykes turns around and walks a few feet off, but my hearing’s a lot better these days.
“He’s exhausted, Elias,” Sykes says. “The kid’s got circles under his eyes dark enough to pass for Fade-marks, and his posture’s shot. Anything he saw, if he saw anything, could have been in his head. I don’t want him on the perimeter. Not like this.”
“Agreed. Send him home.”
When Sykes turns to deliver the message, I’m right behind him.
“You shouldn’t eavesdrop, kid.”
“You’re not old enough to call me kid, and I’m not hallucinating!”
“No one said you are.”
“That’s exactly what you said!”
“I said you’re exhausted, and that’s the truth. You’ve been covering your duty and Silver’s for days—we’ve noticed. It’s burning you out.”
“I can—”
“You can find your friend and tell her to pull her share of the weight, and then you can take a nap. But first show me which stump, so I can scrape for samples. Being exhausted doesn’t make you wrong.”
Maybe not, but the possibility of being right makes me never want to sleep again.
MARINA
I chose to work in the Arbor, I remind myself. It makes me happy .
But right now, it makes me annoyed. Someone took my stepladder—again . Every time I have to track it down, I end up off schedule, so I thought using an upturned bucket made sense. But it was stupid. Really, really stupid and wobbly.
I still have to stand on my toes and stretch to reach the branch I need to sample, but if I can tip myself just a little bit more, my shears should be long enough to—
“Ow!”
The bucket topples out from under me, and the falls sends the points of my shears into my hand. But I got my trimming. Ha! Take that, ladder thief !
I can’t stop myself from checking the blood.
It’s red. Nearly two months from my last breath off my old inhaler, I still bleed human red.
I hold my hand down, watching