The morning stretches into a frigid, never-ending drizzle as we head for the river he spotted from higher ground. The mountains we’re aiming for are concealed behind a soggy gray curtain. Darker clouds line the horizon, and Tarver glances over his shoulder to track their movement. I’m looking over my shoulder too, but there’s nothing for me to read in the weather patterns. I simply can’t keep myself from searching for the sources of the sounds I keep hearing. I keep turning to scan the plains behind us before I remember we’re alone out here.
It’s the rain, I tell myself. The wind, flattening the grass. One of the grassland creatures like that thing we ate last night.
But can an animal cry?
The sobs that surge over the rain shatter my heart, sounding for all the world like Anna, like me, like any one of the girls in my circle. With rain rolling down my cheeks and brokenhearted weeping so close at hand, I almost believe that I am the one sobbing so hopelessly. Head spinning and muscles shaking, I can barely put one foot in front of the other. It’s no longer one voice—now I’m surrounded by a desperate, heartrending chorus. My eyes blur and I stumble again and again, muddying my ruined dress beyond recognition. More than once Tarver has to come back and haul me to my feet.
I despise him for how easy it is for him, the way surviving this ordeal is second nature. When he catches me staring across the plains, he grins as if to say, Yeah, it’s no big deal, I’ve been there. His eyes, though, tell a different story. He’s worried. Worried in a way he hasn’t been since we crashed, not when the pod started to fall to the planet, not when I told him the beacon wasn’t working, not even when we saw the Icarus fall.
And that scares me more than anything else.
Though the strange moon has set again, it’s not far from my thoughts. It has to be a structure made by the corporations that terraformed this place—but what is it? Some kind of surveillance system, perhaps. Something to keep track of the colonists, should they rebel.
Only there aren’t any colonists here. There’s nothing to track.
There’s just us, waterlogged and freezing, trekking endlessly across this planet, lives depending on finding the search parties when we reach the wreck.
Neither of us suggests stopping for lunch, despite our exhaustion. There’s no way to make a fire in the steadily increasing downpour, no way to warm up if we stop moving. I wish I’d listened to his repeated suggestions that I put on the spare mechanic’s suit he brought with us from the escape pod—my dress is so ragged by now and so soaked that it’s as though I’m wearing nothing at all. Worst of all, I’m so cold and so tired that I don’t even care about the way it clings to my body and winds around my legs, outlining my every feature.
The river swims into sight as a black smear in the distance. Tarver stops and raises a hand to shield his eyes from the rain, the picture of a soldier saluting some commanding officer. I drop into a crouch, wrapping my arms around my knees and trying not to shiver so visibly. He’ll be making some mental calculation about how long it’ll take to get there. This isn’t a real break, I know. But it’s all I have.
I don’t open my eyes until I feel his hands on my arms, trying to warm skin so chilled it makes him grimace at me. “Not much farther,” he promises, water cascading from jaw and nose and brow. His features have become so familiar in only five short days. I’m staring bemusedly at the rivulets meeting under his chin when he gives me a little shake.
“Lilac? You in there?”
I blink, trying to remember how to speak. My lips are sluggish, refusing to obey me. “Yes. At least I think so.”
Tarver grins, that lightning-quick shift of expression, and pushes my soggy hair back from my forehead. He’s about to speak when I hear something behind us, a low, rising susurration like a thousand different voices.
I’m turning before I remember that he’ll see more evidence of my descending madness. It’s a half a second before I realize that he’s staring in the same direction too.
I open my mouth, heart constricting with sudden hope, but he beats me to it.
“More rain,” he murmurs, so soft I almost can’t hear him.
Not my voices, then. I cast my gaze back toward the horizon, and this time I see the thick gray curtain advancing across the plains toward us. More rain. If there’s any more rain than this, I think, we’ll need gills. We could swim up to the sky and leave this place with no need to wait for a rescue ship.
I want nothing more than to lie down in the mud, but as my knees buckle, his grip on my upper arms tightens, holding me up. When he stands, he pulls me with him.
“Can you run?” His face is close to mine.
“What?” I can’t do anything other than stare.
“Come on, Lilac, focus. Can you run for it? That rain is too heavy. We need shelter.”
Heavy? How can rain be heavy?
I know there are blisters on my feet because I saw them there this morning, but right now I can’t feel them. I can’t feel my feet at all. I keep staring at him, at the water running down his face, never the same path twice. It ought to follow the same pattern over and over, but instead it splits and cascades and dances off his cheekbones. Like it wants to touch all of him.
“Goddammit,” mutters Tarver, glancing at the advancing monsoon over my shoulder. “I’ll pay for this when you warm up enough to hate me again.”
What? I don’t have time to consider the words any further before he’s wrapping his hand around my wrist and jerking me forward, forcing me to break into a run before I’m yanked along after him like streamers on a parade car. I get my heavy legs moving somehow, reaching inside myself for one more effort.