The Gender End Read online

  “I have a trajectory mapped out,” Thomas reported after a few long moments, snapping my attention back to the task at hand. “According to my calculations, if the ship was still flying on the heading Morgan pointed out, and using Desmond’s body as a reference… as long as the trajectory hasn’t changed, it would cross over a small part of the city in Matrus, and then… just keep going. Into The Outlands.”

  The pit of my stomach dropped. I fought the urge to collapse. I couldn’t afford to—there was still time, either to stop Violet from getting out there… or just to follow her into it. There was still hope, too: Desmond’s body confirmed that Solomon had gotten on board, or at least that there had been struggle enough for someone on our side to get rid of her once and for all. The fact that nobody had reported a ship going down, and Owen hadn’t seen it either, meant they could still be flying. And even if we would have no way of knowing what was happening with the ship once they were past Matrus City, I had to go after her.

  “Great,” I said. “Now what do we do about our gas problem?”

  “Well, I have an idea,” said Henrik through the comm, and something in his tone hooked me immediately. His voice practically exuded the level of confidence I needed for this mission to succeed.

  “I’m all ears, Henrik,” I replied, trying to keep the impatience from my voice.

  “We can get it from the Matrians.”

  “That’s brilliant, Henrik,” transmitted Ms. Dale. “The airfield is just over the river, so it should be within range of the fuel we have left, near the border between the city and The Green. It’s also more isolated, so it’s perfect.”

  I paused, and then felt the corners of my mouth pull up, even as Vox came back on the line. “You’re insane!” he said. “That’s a suicide mission.”

  “Not if it’s done right,” replied Amber calmly over the line. “Actually, I think it’s genius. Elena certainly wouldn’t see it coming, not so soon after we stopped her again. She’d be expecting us to try and put out fires here—”

  “Something we should be doing,” added Drew, one of the other rebel leaders, into the comms. I looked over and saw him leaning against a truck sixty feet away, his arms crossed over his barrel of a chest.

  “And we will be doing that,” said Henrik without worry. “We only need a small force of pilots to double as our assault force. Think about it, Logan. While we’re at it, we could steal some of their heloships and cripple the rest. That’ll keep Elena out of our hair for a little bit, and get us a bigger advantage for the next engagement.”

  “My pilots are ready for this,” said Amber. “And I can get us to their airfield on the fuel we have left.”

  “Like hell I’m going to let some amateur pilot who thinks she knows best assume command over this thing,” thundered Vox.

  “Considering you taught me everything you know, I think you better just sit down and shut up right now, Logan,” Amber snapped waspishly back, and I blinked. Was Logan Vox the heloship pilot who had taught Amber how to fly, ultimately setting off the chain of events that had caused her father to decide to marry her off to repay his gambling debts? If so, that was… a remarkable coincidence. And also odd. After all, Logan was an heir to the Deepvox legacy, or he would’ve been, had things not gone to hell in a handbasket. Why wouldn’t Amber’s father have just tried to pressure Logan himself into marrying her to help cover his debts?

  There was a stretch of silence, followed by, “Amberlynn?”

  Amber really hated that name, so I doubted very much that she would respond to it. But this time I was wrong—which meant something. Like she’d had more of a relationship with this guy than I’d imagined.

  “Oh, have you finally realized it’s me, you thick-skulled moron?”

  There was another pause on the line. Then Vox’s voice came back. “Of course I knew it was you. But it didn’t seem like the kind of thing to discuss over the comms during the mission, thank you very much. I didn’t think you’d remember me, anyway.”

  “As if.” Amber’s voice was deeply scornful, making it clear to all that the memories she was discussing weren’t pleasant. “Whatever. I have bigger fish to fry than dealing with your spoiled butt. Viggo, I’m rounding up my pilots and heading to Jeff’s location. Meet me there.”

  “Dammit, fine! My men will be there too,” declared Vox, his irritation evident.

  I exhaled. Any other moment I would have been floored by the amount of hidden drama between these two, but right now, I couldn’t keep my mind on anything but getting to Violet. I pressed my fingers together. “Henrik, Ms. Dale? Can you—”

  “Keep things together until you get back?” asked Ms. Dale dryly. “Do you even have to ask? Go get our girl and get her home. And give Elena a black eye for me while you’re at it. I’m going to be restructuring command anyway, taking those still willing to fight and hitting the posts leading out of the city. We’ve already got groups heading out to check the known contaminated water sources. And some people who drank the tainted water to catch up to as well. We’re going to try and round them all up to keep them from hurting anyone, maybe even stop them from hurting themselves, if we can. That’ll take some time, but those heloships will make it faster, so hurry up and get out of here, boy. Us old-timers have got this.”

  “And I’ve got their backs while you’re gone,” added Owen.

  I found the thought of all of them handling it comforting, even after everything that had happened, and I confirmed their transmission, already heading to a nearby vehicle. Tim followed me, his eyes wide.

  “You coming?” I asked as I slipped into the driver’s seat and turned over the engine. Tim hesitated, and then shook his head, looking back at where Jay was still lying on the ground, April working on him—her expression grim.

  “I stay. Jay needs help. Henrik and Ms. Dale need help. You find Violet—bring home. I help here.”

  Pride burst from my chest, and I reached out and gently took the young man’s shoulder. “Take care of them while I’m gone, okay?”

  Tim nodded, his dark curls bouncing. “Be careful.”

  I waved a hand at him, dismissing the thought. If Violet was heading to The Outlands, then there was no telling what dangers we would come across. After all… nobody who had gone there had ever returned.

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  2

  VIOLET

  “You know, the next time you want to save my life, could you please avoid getting twenty thousand bullet holes in the process?”

  I was back to talking to myself. Solomon was still unconscious, but was also still breathing, no thanks to my considerable efforts. Well, possibly thanks to my considerable efforts, but not if I couldn’t get us back to Matrus in time for him to be saved. I had no idea whether he was bleeding internally, although I had accounted for each bullet’s entrance and exit in my very thorough but nowhere near professional first aid.

  “I just wish I could remember if exit holes were good or bad,” I said, completing the thought out loud. I ripped off another long length of electrical tape using my teeth, and then carefully attempted to drape it over the cotton pad I had fixed to his shoulder. Placing it was tricky—with my right hand still in this stupid cast, it was a painstaking labor. I’d already lost several pieces of tape as the wind caught them and made them stick to themselves.

  The wind was still screaming through the bay, and I shivered in the heloship’s glacial temperature. My jacket helped me shrug off some of the cold, but my fingers were slowly going numb and my teeth chattered from time to time. Even though the cargo door was now closed, Solomon had definitely destroyed whatever seal there had been before, allowing the wind in.

  Carefully, I applied the strip of tape, using the wind to sort of catch the end and keep it from dragging against anything until I had it where I wanted it. I worked quickly—periodically yawning as my body reminded me of how long it had been since I had slept, or even rested—pressing the tape down and then smoothing it over the contours of Solomon’
s chest, collarbone, and neck. I slid my cast against the tape as well, trying to create a seal around the white cotton pad, enough to put pressure on the wound, helping the blood to clot and stop the bleeding.

  “See, I know what you’re asking me,” I said conversationally to the unconscious man. “Why didn’t I attend Dr. Tierney’s medical training when I had the chance? Well, I didn’t have the chance, thank you very much! I was busy with planning a move, and, well, you know what? It’s a pretty crappy excuse, and honestly… I’m sorry, Solomon. For… For everything.”

  Tears welled in my eyes unexpectedly when I got to the apology, and I quieted, trying to quell them, tamping down another piece of tape with shaking hands. I couldn’t cry right now. There was too much to do. I just had to keep doing one thing at a time, as though this were all normal. That was what talking to Solomon had been about—keeping things light, keeping my mind off everything—but maybe it wasn’t helping.

  I sniffed hard once and leaned back to examine my work, sighing. It wasn’t pretty, but it would hold. Leaning over the large man, I grabbed two packets out of the first-aid kit, examined their insignia, and then ripped the foil linings open. I had to use my mouth to peel away the plastic tabs on the back, but as soon as I managed it, I affixed one of the blood rejuvenation patches to Solomon’s neck, as close to the carotid artery as I could manage. Then I placed the other on the opposite side.

  It would have to do for now. I needed to remember to check on him in thirty minutes and apply another blood patch if his color wasn’t any better, or if it had gotten worse. “I gotta go check on the flight path,” I told him. “And see if I can get the pilot up. If I can’t… Well… Let’s not think about that.”

  I stood up, grabbing the pistol and the first-aid box. I had made Solomon the priority, reasoning that the geography east of Matrus was just deep canyons and gullies, supposedly like “up north” beyond The Green, where the boys who had failed the Matrian screening for aggression were sent to labor in the “mines”. All lies.

  Below us, there was actually nothing but rocky wasteland. At least I hadn’t been forced to let my friend bleed out while I tried to steer a broken ship around a massive mountain range. However, there were no guarantees how long that would last.

  Tucking the pistol into my pants was awkward, but I managed it as I turned and made my way back toward the cockpit. The other guns I had found were secured in the bathroom, on top of a panel that was clearly intended for some sort of ship maintenance. It wasn’t the best hiding place in the world, but it would have to do. The other guard was unconscious and handcuffed to a part of the heloship’s frame—I doubted she would be able to do a very thorough search at the moment.

  I looked down at my watch as I passed her, which was good, because it meant my eyes happened to be looking in the right direction to see the “unconscious” guard’s foot whipping sideways. I sidestepped, hopping up on the opposite bench and back down again, over her leg. I yanked out my gun, as casually as I could, as I looked at the larger woman, my exhaustion disappearing behind a rush of adrenaline and caution.

  Her eyes opened to slits, and she sat upright, using her cuffed hand as a brace to pick herself off the ground. “It doesn’t matter that you escaped,” she said, smoothing back the wisps of hair that had slipped free of her neat bun with her other hand. “We’ll catch you again, and this time you’ll pay for your crimes.”

  I gaped at her. Was she slow, or just that determined? Either way, I wasn’t having it. “Before you get all high and mighty issuing threats, I encourage you to think about the position we’re in.”

  The warden—her sky-blue uniform marked her as a royal guard—looked around the bay, seemingly seeing it for the first time. My eyes drifted to the patch over her breast pocket, where the surname Carver was embroidered. The insignia above it marked her as a lieutenant.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  Glancing at the cockpit, or rather, the damaged remains of the cockpit, I sighed. “Desmond is dead. The controls to the ship are damaged, and we’re flying into the middle of nowhere, and have been for the last”—I consulted my watch, trying to remember the last time I had looked at it—“hour or so. I’m on my way to wake up the pilot, hopefully, so that she can help us get out of this mess.”

  The woman squinted up at me, a frown line creasing the space between her thick eyebrows. “You’re lying.”

  I resisted another sigh, unsurprised by her mistrust, and considered my options. Frankly, they all sucked. Tucking the gun back into the band of my pants, I pulled a tiny silver key out of my pocket—the one I had gotten out of her pocket a few hours earlier, while she was truly unconscious—and tossed it at her. She made no move to catch it, and it bounced off her chest and landed with a ping on the hard metal floor of the bay.

  “I don’t have time to earn your trust,” I politely informed her. “So that’s the key to your handcuffs. Use it or don’t, I don’t care, but if you become a threat to me or make this mess worse, I will shoot you.” I made to leave, and then paused, as if a thought had occurred to me. Honestly, I was playing with dramatic timing on this one, but hopefully it would garner me a small amount of support from a woman who was, for all intents and purposes, an enemy. “Oh, and I tossed the rest of the guns overboard, so feel free to waste your time and search for one. Or don’t. I really don’t care.”

  Indifference would work, or at least I hoped it would. With luck, it would make her more likely to believe the severity of our situation, but also make her cautious about trying to attack me. Truth be told, I didn’t want to have to kill either of the women on board. It wasn’t their fault they viewed me as a criminal—they’d been fed nothing but lies. Not that it bothered me how they looked at me. I had been a criminal before. But it was much harder to take knowing that this time, they were condemning me for crimes I hadn’t committed.

  Anyway, none of that mattered now, and I needed to show them that it didn’t, that we had to put aside our politics and differences to get a grip on this situation. We were going to have to work together. I didn’t know much about heloships, but I damn well knew there was no way it was flying, landing, or anything as it was. I needed Lieutenant Carver to be up and walking. I needed her to not be a burden, but to actually help me of her own free will, because I wanted to get home alive. That meant I had to give a little early on, so that when things got hard, she’d hopefully be more willing to work with me.

  I left the warden to her own devices and finished making my way into the cockpit. The pilot was where I had left her, still belted into her seat. Her seat, however, was lying opposite of the cockpit, just a few feet from the bathroom door, tipped on its side. The back of it was to me, but I could see her legs sticking out from the seat cushion, and they didn’t seem to have moved.

  Carefully and cautiously, I stepped around her. Her eyes were closed, but the warden in the cargo bay had been pretending before. Yet she hadn’t been injured, and the pilot undoubtedly was—her left forearm was clearly broken, and there was a gash in her forehead. It had stopped bleeding some time ago, but dried blood was caked to her forehead, trailing down her nose and under her eye. The patch on her chest revealed her last name to be Durnell.

  Reaching out, I took her pulse, relieved to find it still beating strongly, and then opened the first-aid kit. I sifted through the packets, and found the one marked with a hollow red square. Checking the list on the back of the lid, I confirmed it was the ammonia inhalant, and then cracked it open. Immediately a smell that reminded me of feline urine hit my nose, and my eyes began to water.

  I held the packet under the pilot’s nose, and her eyes twitched, and then snapped open. She jerked against the belt buckling her in, and then cried out in pain as she jostled her arm.

  “Easy,” I said soothingly, placing the opened packet into the box. The ammonia smell was still heavy, but it would fade quickly. “Take it easy.”

  “What happened?” she asked, panic thick in her voice. “Ah, G
od… My head.”

  “Wait, I have something for that.” I consulted the itemized list on the back of the lid, and then pulled out a purple packet with a black circle in it. Opening it up, I pulled the backing off with my teeth and applied the adhesive side to her right temple, the one pointed at the ceiling. She winced—I wasn’t gentle, but I wasn’t being intentionally rough, either—and then a second later sighed in some relief.

  “Thank you. That’s better.” She kept her eyes closed for a moment more, and then opened them again. “You’re Violet Bates.”

  “I am, although if I were you, I wouldn’t believe anything you’ve heard about me. But we don’t have time to go through the rumors. The controls to the ship are busted, and we have been flying straight for the last hour.”

  The pilot frowned, and then her right hand began fiddling with the buckles keeping her in the sideways seat. I noticed immediately that several of the fingers on that hand were swollen, and I held up my hand, stopping her. “Your hand is hurt as well,” I pointed out to her, and she stared at it as though she hadn’t noticed earlier, her hazel eyes wide.

  “I can’t even feel them,” she whispered, as if that thought frightened her, and I immediately empathized, while recognizing I didn’t have the time to really show it.

  “I’m sorry for that,” I said. “But I need you to focus. Let me help you out of this.”

  The pilot nodded, but her gaze was still fixated on her hand. I reached for the buckle, and her head snapped over at the movement, her eyes bulging. “You can’t! What if I can’t feel my hand because I have spinal trauma? You could make everything worse!”

  I hesitated, and then nodded. “Wiggle your toes?”

  She blinked, and then her booted feet began to twitch slightly. “Are they working?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.

  Smiling in what I hoped would be interpreted as a reassuring way, I nodded. “They are. I doubt you have spinal damage. Can I undo this?”