“Yes, Gaia,” I manage in a low voice.
“Good, then it’s settled. Professor Lyon will see to everything you need.” Their eyes meet as she sweeps past him, close enough for their hands to brush. From the corner of his eye, Lyon watches her go. He lingers, waiting for me.
My feet are rooted to the spot, the walls closing in around me as I watch the smaze throw itself against the orb.
Gaia’s assistant enters the room, carrying a broom and a dustpan. She bends to sweep the remains from the floor, then dumps them into a waste bin without ceremony.
In the cloud of dust that billows from the bin, all I see is Fleur.
Lyon touches my shoulder. I turn to find his blue eyes creased with compassion, his lips pursed, as if holding on tightly to something he desperately wants to say. “Fear not, young lion,” he whispers. “Winter’s crown may be heavy on your head. But you hold eternal spring in your heart.”
And with a reassuring pat, he’s gone.
7
Legends and Fables
JACK
A rope of beef jerky dangles from Chill’s mouth as he pulls a smuggled box of assorted contraband into his lap. “Check it out! Your new thermal scope came in.”
I peer out from my blankets at the shiny new gadget Chill’s unpacking. He’s been like a kid at Christmas ever since our meeting with Gaia. The crate Boreas delivered to our room this morning hasn’t helped.
“It’s light,” Chill says, weighing it in his palm. “I’ll be able to mount this one on a drone. We’ll see Fleur coming a mile away next spring. And Amber won’t stand a chance.”
The drones, the sensors, the stupid night vision goggles Chill stuffed in my luggage last year... none of it matters. Fleur’s sleeping just in the next wing and I still can’t see her, and I’ll find and kill Amber with or without the crazy devices Chill buys for me. Seasons have been killing each other for eons, since before transmitters and stasis chamberseven existed. Time is fixed. Death is inevitable. Everything else—the operating accounts and allowances Gaia pays, the technology Chronos commissions, the contraband Boreas smuggles in—is all just an illusion to make us feel in control.
“Where does Boreas get all this stuff, anyway?” I grumble.
Chill shrugs. “Electronics dealers, mostly. Military surplus. He charges me extra for the Twizzlers and Doritos and stuff. He has to order them from back home.”
Back home. After thirty years, this place still isn’t home for Chill, either. I don’t have the heart to tell him that “back home” doesn’t feel much like home anymore anyway. The best we can hope for is eternity here, smuggling nostalgia in cardboard boxes and coming up with slower ways to die.
“Don’t let anybody catch you taking out the trash,” I tell him, sucking down the vitamins he’s left for me on the table beside my head.
“I won’t. Boreas’ll get rid of it, the same way he brought it all down.” Chill spins the propellers of a new drone with the tip of his finger. “It’s vegetable day. The kitchen will be chaos for the next few hours while they bring all the crates down the service elevators. No one will notice a few extra boxes coming or going.”
“Lucky for you.” I stare begrudgingly at the faux window. Chill reprogrammed the menu of images the same day we got our new assignment. They rotate by the hour: a cityscape of Anchorage, the railroad through Grandview Valley, the northern lights over the Chugach Mountains, and the occasional moose. I bury my head in the sofa so I won’t have to look at them anymore. But every time I close my eyes, all I see is a mountain of ash. And all I hear is Doug’s warning.
...you’d better hope she buries you.
Fleur has one season left. One chance to scramble over the red line and save herself. To do it, she’ll have to outperform every other name below that line. She’ll have to come at me hard and fast and end my season early—but will she? Would I stand still long enough to let her, knowing this is the last time I’ll see her?
I owe her that much. More.
She stayed with me on that mountain. She held me and kept me from permanently burning out. She risked her own neck for me, and now she’s going to die and I’m going to Alaska, and I’ll probably never understand why. I wish there were a way out of here for both of us. I wish I could stuff her in a vegetable crate and wheel her out of this place without anybody noticing. Without killing us both.
“Did you unplug my battery charger?” There’s an exasperated edge to Chill’s voice. It’s the one he reserves for me when I’ve done something wrong, or when he’s assembling toys with too many parts.
I draw the blanket back from my face to find Chill frowning at the drone’s remote. He pops open the battery compartment. Even from here, I can see the connections are backward. “Try turning them around, Einstein.”
Chill shakes them onto the floor. One by one, he loads the four batteries back into the compartment, careful to line up the connectors this time—positive to negative, negative to positive. When the last battery slides into place, the drone lights up.
Chill sets the drone down on the lid of my stasis chamber and fires up the propellers, turning my human-sized battery charger into a launching pad for his new toy. I guess things could be worse. Before the invention of the stasis chamber, Seasons were disposable, designedfor one-time use. They fought until they expired or died in battle. But thanks (or no thanks) to modern technology, I get to come back and screw things up with Fleur over and over again.
Over and over again.
Like Chill’s batteries...
