Chương 90: Polaris Inverted (3) [August 1st, Age 15]

The subway itself was a welcome respite from the bustle, even though it was still a busy, shaking metal tube. The space itself wasn't all that large, there were only twenty or so people packed inside, and I didn't need to pay attention to anything aside from the interior. And nobody was moving. Everything was still. Finally, after what felt like two hours but was in reality only thirty minutes or so of panic, I could rest.

And even with that, there was still the breathing: in two even lines along the walls of the subway, the gasping monoliths with their red-swirled exhalations. I had the time to define them now, and I did so, if only to practice—if only to do something outside of pay attention to Ava, who'd resumed her borderline manic mumbling at Cygnus and Bell.

"I wonder how long I have left," she said.

"Not long, with that attitude," Cygnus said. He had a seat until an old lady hobbled onto the full train, and he—as the one sitting closest to the entrance—rose instinctively to let her have it. He had been sitting next to Ava, which was lucky for the old lady, since she cast a glance at Bell before taking Cygnus's old seat that I could only imagine was some flavor of stink-eye. We found that we had very little to say to each other. Everything we'd needed to say had been said on the bus—now, we only wanted silence.

That was okay with me. It gave me plenty of time to fully define every inch of the man sitting across and two seats left of me—my eyes cast down toward my feet so he wouldn't know I was prying. I had no reason to be so nosy, but it gave me something to do in the thick of our silence, and I took advantage of that time to practice. He was an older man. Old enough to be wrinkled and have wispy hair, glasses like the bases of wine cups.

I didn't know who he was, but I went through his entire life—rifling through the pockets on his long velvet coat (the contents of which were a wallet, a small house-key, a pen, a lighter, but no cigarettes) and sizing up the contours of his body. He had a crooked knee, by my estimation, and I figured it'd take him a long time to get off the train. He didn't notice me—or if he did notice that something was amiss, he didn't know where to look.

I watched him—or felt him, rather, as he shifted to a slightly more comfortable position, laying a leather hand over his thigh. For the second time his eyes swept across the subway car, briefly examining everyone there was to see, and then he reached into his coat and produced a small book. His breathing tilted downward, the red spiral from his mouth billowing against the open pages. I closed my eyes. This was as calm as it'd be until we got to the hotel.

Once we were inside—in the lobby, really, not even in the rooms—I'd be okay; but first we had to get out of the subway, first we had to get out of the station. Walk down that street packed to the gills with spiral-spouting monoliths in moving in all directions, cars coughing hot red, open doors casting out cool dry air breaking into the omnipresent humid orange haze— I knew I'd go insane if I kept thinking about warmth and moisture in terms of colors.

I couldn't keep contextualizing the now in terms of what I'd lost—but it was easiest that way. I didn't have time to relearn how I saw the world. So I kept my eyes closed. I let myself see the colors and feel the shapes—and I felt a hand close around mine. 0 0 0 We left the subway. It was exactly as bad as I thought it'd be. I couldn't speak. I didn't try to. I kept silent, stiff-walking, all the way to the hotel, which was thankfully only a few blocks. Outside of the station, it was even worse.

I described it correctly—it was exactly how I imagined it would be, chaos-red and buzzing and all—and somehow even though I'd perfectly anticipated it, it was still completely horrible. I swallowed and swallowed again and followed Cygnus, whose head I kept perfectly outlined, all the way to the hotel. In hindsight, I know that if the New York gang was willing to put it all on the line, they could have ended us right there. Bell and Ava had no way to defend against a sniper.

Cygnus was half-focused on making sure I didn't have a panic attack, and I was entirely focused on that. By the time we were halfway to the hotel, crossing the street after a pause at the light that felt like an eternity, I was just able to start stretching the droplets beyond my immediate surroundings in an attempt to do my job. I was barely able to push through the noise.

And by the time we got to the hotel, I'd reached an uneasy truce with it—but as soon as the glass double-doors closed behind us and the world was cold and blue and comfortable again I exhaled and found myself tired. Not from physical exertion—the droplet-movements themselves were easy—but just from the mental effort of tuning in and tuning out to hundreds of different things, one per second, for as long as I had been. The subway had only been a brief respite.

The hotel lobby was the first time I could properly relax. There were two hotels we had to check into—this one, and then another about a half a block down the street, on the other site of the target building. We had a room picked for us—Prochazka had called on our behalf, made some kind of under-the-table arrangement.

In this hotel, we had two rooms, both facing the target building, but one was close to the street, a corner suite, and the other wasn't quite a corner suite on the other side, deeper into the block, but it was one room in from it. In the other hotel, we only had a single room in the center of that side. We all had to be present for all three of the check-ins. Bell was checking in by herself, as she looked the oldest, and then Ava, Cygnus, and I would check-in for the third.

I had to be there for the walk to the other hotel (snipers, et cetera) and then Bell would check in there, too. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Then she'd stay there and I'd accompany Ava and Cygnus back here. We'd take an elevator up to our rooms, Ava would go down the hall to hers, and I'd go with Cygnus to his, and then I'd start the timer and sit with him for two hours until it was time to rotate.

That was going to be our lives for the next few days. 0 0 0 The whole process went on without any issues. Having a chance to sit in the relatively-quiet hotel lobby and gather my bearings—and now equipped with proper knowledge of what being outside was like—I was ready to go out again. There was an ice-water dispenser with oranges and some complementary paper cups on a table off near the check-in desk, so I made sure to drink a few cups.

I took a few deep breaths and focused on something easy—the condensation-armored water cooler—just to get a small win I could use to raise my confidence. It was absolutely sopping wet. Felt like there was half as much water outside it as in, and it was cold enough to show up cyan in my mind's eye. Bell returned to the three of us after a moment. We'd taken seats with our small bags on a circle of loveseats in the center-ish of the lobby.

I hadn't even noticed that Bell had gone up to the check-in counter until she came back, and then it was our turn to go up and speak. All I had to do was stand there. I knew I wasn't quite back to normal yet. This place should've been easy to explore and define, but small details kept eluding me—the specter of where I'd have to go looming hard and black over me.

This was coming— this; not just the stretch of time where I'd be back in the city proper but the impending fight I was half-certain only half of us would survive. I wouldn't have said it to her face—I was just too damn civil to do that, even with how many times she'd shown me she wouldn't be—but I knew Ava was right. I knew that if anyone was going to die here, it'd be her. Even though, if I'm being fully honest, she was stronger than Cygnus. I swallowed hard and tried to let the fear evaporate from my face.

The story was that the three of us were on a little church-group vacation and Bell was our chaperone. I personally didn't like that explanation much, but I didn't offer a better one, and it didn't much matter, so I didn't push it further. Ava took point and went through the check-in motions, with Cygnus offering small-talk and supporting details where needed. I wasn't really paying attention—this didn't have much to do with me.

I was more focused on practice—feeling the contours of the arches in the high lobby ceilings, trying to not get distracted by the glittering cyan water cooler. Ava and Cygnus kept talking to the clerk—I think Ava gestured to me once, but didn't say my name so I didn't look up. I didn't have a part in the check-in, so I didn't make one for myself.

I kept my mouth shut except for a short, inadvertently brusque "thanks" at the end of the encounter, when Ava took the room key envelope from the desk and said her concluding remarks. Ava took my hand as we walked back to the couches, and the touch of her fingers in mine made this whole scene we'd created make more sense.

"Did you—" Ava cut me off.

"People who pity don't ask as many questions." I flushed hard.

"That's really—um—" I couldn't convey the feeling in time before Cygnus jumped in.

"Ava, that was completely unnecessary."

"What? You saw her smile as we walked away, didn't you? You might not've realized this, but we needed a reason why three unrelated looking people are travelling with a random twelve-year-old."

"I'm not twelve," I said.

"You look like a middle-schooler," Ava said.

"So while we're in eyeshot of hotel personnel, you're my little sister. Okay?"

"Your retarded sister," I corrected. Fists clenched.

"Yep," she said, brightly.

"Nobody asks weird questions of caretakers. It's great."

"Are you trying to make up for lost time?"

"Right again," Ava replied.

"Boy, you're on fire today, aren't you?" Bell watched this interaction occur and didn't say anything. I could only imagine what she was thinking, if anything at all. Maybe she didn't care enough about the petty whims of mortals. After a moment more of smoldering, Bell interjected, "Let's go to the next place." I sucked in a breath, and again. Tried to calm myself down.

"Okay," I said. We stood up and Ava reached for my hand again—and instinctively I slapped it away. Turned to her and whispered, "Don't touch me." Ava shrugged. Louder than she needed to, she said, "Just stay close, okay?" 0 0 0 We went to the other hotel and booked that last room without another word said between us. It wasn't particularly set in stone who'd be staying where, but Ava volunteered to be alone in the second hotel.

That seemed like an astronomically bad idea to the rest of us, who—despite not really having strong opinions one way or another on Ava's continued life—all concluded independently that it was in our best interests to stop her from doing anything too outright stupid. She was going to die anyway—that much we were all pretty certain of—but the least we could do was make a token effort. As such, Bell was the one who ended up going it alone in the second hotel.

Ava walked me back to the first hotel after we'd dropped Bell off (Ava's hand in mine, long strides I couldn't keep up with, passively smiling while I stumbled after her), and once inside the blessed calm lobby there we went straight to the elevator and she hit the buttons for ten and fourteen. I know now that there was Braille next to those buttons, so I could have read it, but I still wasn't very good at Braille yet so Ava's remark of "Let me get that for you" stung just as hard as it was intended to.

When the elevator stopped at 10, Cygnus handed her a room key and said, all calm, "Take your key and fuck off."

"Gladly," Ava replied, turning and walking down the hall. The doors closed and separated her from Cygnus, but I still had a passing awareness of the droplets I'd scattered down the hall, instinctively, so I felt her demeanor change as we left her, rising above. I felt her shoulders slightly sink, the skip in her step slow, the limpness in her hands. But—God—I just could not bring myself to feel bad about her. Of course she was going to be sad deep down. Obviously, right? What was I expecting her to do?

Skip into her hotel room like it was Christmas morning, throw on a telenovela and get sloshed at the hotel minibar like it was any other Saturday? No, no. Ridiculous. She knew as well as we did that she was going to die here. If Ava had done one thing in the past few hours, it was make that purely and abundantly clear.

"What the fuck is her problem?" Cygnus asked to the wall as we rose above Ava like some kind of heavenly specter. I had no awareness of the ceilings or the walls, only the rapidly fading droplets that I was using to keep track of her—so as we went up it felt like dawn, or—better yet—it felt like how the dead must feel when they leave the mortal world behind and ascend. Ascend until they have a high enough vantage to see their death for what it is—small, localized, controlled.

Nothing, in the grand scheme—and Ava was just as much nothing, shuffling and fading as the elevator pulled me away from the droplets I'd left in her care. By the time we got to floor fourteen, I couldn't feel her anymore, and I didn't even want to. It occurred to me that Cygnus asked a question, but it'd been way too long since that'd happened, so I couldn't answer it anymore. I just had to let it sit in the air between us.

Not that we needed to answer it out loud, anyway—we both knew perfectly well what the problem was.