Icons. Margaret Stohl

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СКАЧАТЬ A DECISION

      “Four dots. You know what this means? There are more, Ro. More than us.” I look at Ro.

      Ro studies the boy in my arms. He doesn’t put down his blade. He doesn’t put down the Sympa gun. He grips each more tightly.

      I feel a red-hot blaze of pure hatred that I have never felt before. Not from Ro, anyway.

      “Three,” Ro finally says.

      He points to me. “One.” Himself. “Two.” The boy. “Four. What about Three? What did they do to him?”

      The boy says nothing. The boy only looks. He moves his head restlessly, and a moment later I hear why.

      Embassy Choppers overhead, closer than before. The blades flap, low and loud. They want to make sure we know they're coming. In force.

      “Damn. Damn. Damn,” Ro mutters, wiping his sleeve against his face. “We need more time.”

      I look down at the wounded boy and feel his rising panic. “We have to get him out of here.”

      Ro’s voice is cold and hard. “Why?”

      “Ro.”

      “He’s one of them.”

      “Look at his wrist, Ro. He couldn’t be one of them, not even if he wanted to be.”

      “Why not?” He looks as stubborn as the rock he wants to throw at me right now.

      “Because he’s one of us.”

      Before Ro can respond, the boy struggles to get to his feet. I push him up from behind, but I can barely pull myself up along with him; he’s all but deadweight.

      “Give me my gun,” he croaks. “Now.”

      Ro laughs. “I must have hit you harder than I thought. You’re talking nonsense.”

      “Give me back my gun. It’s your only chance to survive.”

      “Really? What are you threatening me with? The gun you don’t have?”

      “I’m trying to save you. They see you with my gun and you’ll die. Both of you.” He doesn’t look back at me. I slide my arms down, letting go of him. Now, just barely, he is standing—swaying—on his own.

      “What’s your name, Buttons?” Ro smiles, without a trace of friendliness.

      The boy hesitates.

      I let my arm fall on his shoulder. “It’s all right. We know you’re from the Embassy. Just tell us who you are.”

      “My name is Lucas Amare.”

      I bite my lip so as not to gasp aloud.

      Ro bursts out laughing. “Oh, very good. That’s excellent. You’re human contraband like us, and your own mother is the Ambassador?” He grins at me as if we are sharing a really exceptional joke. You know, have you heard the one about the three Icon Children and the Ambassador?

      He says it again, shaking his head. “Lucas Amare is an Icon Child? And you thought we had secrets to keep, Dol.”

      All I can do is stare.

      Ro’s right. We aren’t contraband, not exactly, but it feels that way. Whatever we are is something the Padre went to great lengths to conceal, not just from the Embassy but from everyone, even from Bigger and Biggest. And now we find this Sympa, who’s also an Icon Child, living right in the Embassy itself?

      It makes no sense at all.

      I understand what Ro is thinking. There is no way the son of the Ambassador, the devil herself—the Hole’s only earthly link to the General Ambassador to the Planet, GAP Miyazawa, and beyond him, the House of Lords—can have anything in common with the two of us. No matter how many markings we share.

      And with that, the world is back the way Ro likes it to be. A world of two.

      “It’s not a secret. Not from my mother. She knows I’m here.” He sounds defensive.

      “Here, in this miserable water cave? Or here, out poaching innocent Grass children?” Ro is almost laughing. He can’t believe our good luck, that we stumbled upon something so valuable.

      Someone.

      “I found out you were being brought in, both of you. I wanted to—I wanted to help.”

      “Help us? Or help them?”

      The boy lowers his eyes.

      Ro smirks. “I see.”

      The Choppers are growing louder. It sounds like they’re landing right on top of us. I inch my head out from under the lip of the bluff, and I can see the edge of the blades, maybe fifty feet up.

      “That took too long. The Choppers.” The Sympa boy—Lucas—says what I am thinking. “They’ve gone back for reinforcements.”

      “Good. They’ll need them,” Ro says darkly.

      I step between them, placing both hands on the muzzle of the gun.

      “Move, Dol.” Ro shakes the gun, exasperated.

      “I can’t. Lucas is right.”

      “You’re listening to Buttons now?”

      “His name isn’t Buttons, and I trust him. I can feel him, Ro. You told me to.”

      Ro’s mouth tightens into a scowl. He doesn’t like the idea of me poking around in Lucas Amare’s mind, that much is clear. I ignore him.

      I try again. “You have to believe me. We can trust him.”

      “You don’t know anything, Dol. We don’t know how he works, what he can do. Maybe those marks are fake. Maybe he’s controlling you with some kind of Embassy endorphins—they have every scientist in the Hole working on one Classified weapon or another.”

      “Your new Grass Rebellion friends tell you that?” He’s angry, but now I’m angry too.

      “Maybe. But either way, he’s been sent here to bring us in—he already admitted that much himself.”

      The Embassy Choppers are so loud now, he has to shout. Even then, I can barely hear him. I pull on the gun with both hands.

      “Let go, Ro.”

      “Don’t, Doloria de la Cruz. Please.”

      “Let go, Furo Costas. Please.”

      I’m begging you. That’s what his eyes say, even if he’s too proud to ever use the words himself. I’m begging him too, with every tug on the gun barrel.

      Lucas watches us. “I give you my word. СКАЧАТЬ