Page 107 of The Mars House

He waited for the last people before he started running for the warehouse, but even in that time, the blood on his shirt had frozen. A bullet smacked into the grass next to him.

“The praetorians are shooting at us,” he said, for the footage in his lenses. “We’ve got—ten kids with us, and six or seven old people who can’t run fast. Uh—I don’t feel too good, I’ve been shot . . . we’re trying to get to the warehouse where the cold weather gear is, it feels a lot further away than it did yesterday.” He had to slow down and stop talking, because his lungs hurt. The cold was too much. He’d read somewhere that in temperatures like this, you lacerated all the tissue inside your lungs and coughed them up after about five minutes if you were lucky. His shoulder was throbbing now.

He set Yuan down. “Run. Over there, to the light.”

“What about you?”

“I’m right behind you. Go, go . . .”

Yuan didn’t go. He was too little. He hovered anxiously, even though he had no coat and the cold was razoring.

Stars burst greenish over January’s vision. At first he thought they were real lights somewhere up ahead, but then realized what was happening. He’d been running too fast and losing too much blood and not getting enough oxygen. You got blurry vision then, didn’t you? And then . . .

He went down hard on his hands and knees. It jarred his shoulder, and slowly, he understood that he couldn’t get up again. He coughed. The dust was getting into the back of his throat. It felt like it was making cement in his insides. He wanted to think he just needed to rest for a few seconds and then he could try again, but he could feel that wouldn’t work. If he didn’t get up now, he wouldn’t get up.

“Jan, January . . .” Yuan was patting his shoulder.

He couldn’t talk. He was going to be the death of a toddler because he couldn’t stand up . . .

That had happened, part of his brain complained, stupidly quickly. He’d always thought he’d get more warning. Ten minutes ago he’d been fine and now he was dying. He blinked hard, trying to clear the green spots and get a message to Gale, but he couldn’t see the letters inside his lenses any more.

Someone knelt down beside him and fitted an oxygen mask over his face. The green stars faded, and he could move again.

“Not much further,” Gale said, and lifted him upright. They were already holding Yuan.

He’d never known what it felt like before to be willing to die for someone, but he would have done it now; if a praetorian had come out of nowhere, he would have stood in front of the bullet, even if it only bought Gale another couple of seconds. As Gale got one arm around him to help him along over the frozen ground, he had another of those out-of-body moments where he might have been looking at the three of them from above somewhere, and an entirely objective, detached part of him said: Well, that’s it then. You’re just going to have to be in love with Aubrey Gale now, for better or—and this seems a lot more likely—worse.

There were lights inside the warehouse, but dim; just lamps. The power was out here too. It was full of people, Earthstrongers—and Natural people. January jolted back without meaning to, vision still hazy and mind still sure that Natural must mean a gun, but Gale caught him.

“It’s okay. They’re just getting gear together.”

They were. They were passing out backpacks with emergency supplies, and helping people into heat suits. Gale eased January down onto the edge of a crate near Dr Okonkwo, who winced at the gunshot wound and started to peel back the frozen bits of January’s shirt to see. Gale tucked Yuan into a heat blanket.

Sasha was there.

“I will take that off you,” Gale said to them when Sasha touched their gun.

“Do you realize what he did? He started all this, he called the Consul—”

“All right, hao de,” Gale said, the mix of English and Mandarin the softest thing they could possibly have used, but Sasha backed down like Gale had slapped them. “We need to get into the forest, it’ll be harder for them find us, and then we need to follow the railway.”

“The railway—”

“Yes, we need to get down to Tharsis and somewhere safe. Maybe the naturalisation centre.”

Sasha gave January one last homicidal look and prowled away.

Dr Okonkwo had got the bullet out, but January still felt hazy and strange. He wasn’t sure he was going to make it so far as the railway, never mind Tharsis. It took him a moment to notice that Gale was watching him, plainly thinking the same thing.

“Leave me here,” he said.

“Shut up,” Gale told him.

“He’s not going to be able to go far,” Dr Okonkwo said quietly.

“We’ll go as far as we can,” Gale said. “I’ve got camping gear.”

January swallowed hard and tried not to think what he was dreading more: the idea of slogging twenty miles to the Valley edge like this, or sitting in a tent in this weather. There was no use saying it, though, so he let Gale pull him upright, and zipped himself into the heat suit.