Arclight. Josin L McQuein

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      “Jove! Knock it off.”

      “Shut up, Annie.” Every emotion from anguish to hate to terror shows on his face. But his eyes are pure misery, locked on mine, as though staring will somehow transfer his pain to me so he can be rid of it. “How many of those things out there used to be our people? You think William Bryce is out there? Or Elaine Crowder? Colonel Lutrell?”

      Jove’s mouth just outran his brain.

      He could have antagonized me all night, and no one but Anne-Marie would have said a word, but he should have left Tobin’s father out of it. Jove slams sideways, hit full force by someone a lot bigger.

      “Get off me,” Jove yells. Tobin pins him to the floor, sitting on his legs. “I didn’t mean it. Get off!”

      I assume the broken nose means his apology isn’t accepted.

      One punch comes, then another, until they blur so fast the impact sounds like perverse applause. Jove gets out one good scream before his mouth floods with blood, sending flecks of crimson to pepper the front of Tobin’s face and clothes.

      “Stop it!” Anne-Marie cries, but her feet are still stuck to the ground. Dante and Silver hurry the babies away from the fight.

      This is something else the drills never prepared us for. We’ve never been locked in long enough for friends to become enemies.

      “Toby, don’t!” Anne-Marie tries again, but he doesn’t hear her.

      I don’t think Tobin even sees Jove anymore. He’s hitting his own agony, exorcising his own mourning.

      He’s crying.

      “Tobin, stop.”

      I grab his arm on a backswing and go along for the ride when he pushes forward.

      “Tobin!” I splay both of my hands on his shoulders as I duck my head into the space between his arms so we’re face-to-face. “He said he didn’t mean it,” I say, knowing Jove meant every hateful word. “Enough, he gets the point.”

      Because of me, Jove lost his mother the same way Tobin lost his father, and he’s just as much an orphan. He doesn’t need a beating to understand that hurt.

      So many here only have one parent; they’re not forgotten so much as never mentioned. Anne-Marie won’t discuss her father even when I ask. She says it’s not the sort of thing people talk about, but she can’t tell me why. If I had a family, I wouldn’t keep quiet about it.

      Jove moans, unable to get away. Tobin’s still on his legs; I’m bent over his head, keeping myself in the line of fire.

      “Get out of my way, Marina,” Tobin snarls, fist frozen at midswing.

      “Look at him, Tobin. You’ll kill him. You cannot murder someone in the Safe Room, okay?”

      It’s weird what arguments your brain comes up with at the worst possible moments.

      “Move, or I’ll move you.” Tobin shifts his position for better leverage.

      Desperation and lack of ideas make me stupid. I grab Tobin’s face with both hands, close my eyes, and kiss him on the mouth.

      Anne-Marie says guys don’t think straight if you kiss them out of the blue; I guess she knows what she’s talking about. Tobin drops his fist. His body goes rigid; he even stops breathing. When I open my eyes, his are wide and bewildered.

      That’s a good word for the whole room, because there’s nothing but silence until the babies start to sniffle and someone drags Jove out from under us.

      In total, the kiss buys about ten seconds before Tobin snaps back to reality and pushes me away; we sit there for another five on our knees. He stands, wipes his mouth, and goes back to his corner without even glancing in Jove’s direction.

      But he looks at me.

      His eyes are clear and focused, without anger now, only loss and confusion. He collapses in on himself, so we’re back where we started. Me on my side, Tobin on his, both isolated in a crowd. This isn’t Purgatory. It’s Hell.

CHAPTER FOUR

      It’s too hot in here, too close.

      Anne-Marie sits with Jove’s unconscious body, trying to clean him off as best she can with her bare hands and shirttail. I unbutton my jacket and bunch it up under his head to help him breathe while she strokes his hand.

      “Someone’s going to have to set his nose,” she says. “I don’t know how.”

      “Doctor Wolff will fix it,” I answer. Besides the nose, Jove’s lost a couple of teeth. The rest of his face is swollen; he winces when I touch his side.

      “But what if they lose Doctor Wolff?”

      “They won’t.”

      “I think I should get help,” she says. “Don’t you think I should get help? Someone needs to know what happened—or is happening—or could happen. I don’t think Toby meant it. Oh . . . how did this happen?”

      She ends up gasping. Anne-Marie always seems to forget that she needs air.

      “And how do you plan on getting out of here? The door’s locked.”

      It’s the wrong question to ask.

      She starts in on the horror of being locked in a small space—which she never thought was small until now—straying from one extreme to the other until she comes to the conclusion that we’re all going to run out of oxygen and collapse.

      She’s abandoned her gloves, and the only two of her fingernails that managed to survive the run brush over Jove’s swollen eyes. She pats his hair down over his forehead, but all that does is leave it tacky against the drying blood.

      “I should have made him stop,” she says. “Jove’s really not this bad . . . at least he didn’t used to be, but he lost his dad three years ago, and now his mom . . . I didn’t know he’d gotten so—I’m sorry.”

      “It’s the Fade’s fault, not yours,” I say quietly, but her attention’s still on Jove.

      “He’s bleeding on the floor.”

      Untold years have left the cement surface cracked, and each spidered line acts as a thin channel for Jove’s blood to travel. Anne-Marie shakes her shoe to clear what’s pooled by her toe.

      “I never thought he’d do something like this—Toby, I mean. He only ever hits walls, and I thought he’d stop that when the last one wrecked his knuckles.” She worries the edge of her sleeve with her teeth, leaving it with tiny holes along the cuff. “I should have stepped between them, not you. But I—”

      “Anne-Marie, stop!” I cup my hand over her mouth. “Help me get Jove’s jacket off. He’s too big for me to maneuver on my own.”

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