The list on the microcard is exactly the same as the one he concealed in the tablets; it’s what Xander wanted me to see. Look at me, he seems to say. As many times as it takes.
I don’t know how he added the extra line on the scrap Indie found. Could she be lying? I don’t think so. And I wonder why he didn’t just tell me his secret that day when we visited the Archivist. I thought we might not see each other again. Did he think differently?
But he didn’t mean for someone else to read all about him. I click back through the records. The microcard wasn’t only viewed last night; it was viewed the night before, the night before, the night before.
Indie’s been looking at this all along. When? While I was sleeping?
“Do you know Xander’s secret?” I ask her.
“I think so,” she says.
“Tell me, then,” I say.
“It’s his secret to tell,” she says, echoing Ky. Her voice sounds unrepentant, as always. But I notice something; a softening around her eyes as she looks at the picture on the screen.
And then I see. It’s not Ky she loves after all.
“You’re in love with Xander,” I say, my voice too hard, too cruel.
Indie doesn’t deny it. Xander is the kind of person an Aberration can never have. A golden boy, as close to perfect as they come in the Society.
He’s not her Match, though. He’s mine.
With Xander, I could have a family, a good job, be loved, be happy, live in a Borough with clean streets and neat lives. With Xander, I would be able to do the things I always thought I would.
But with Ky, I do things I never thought I could.
I want both.
But that’s impossible. I look again at Xander’s face. And, though he seems to tell me
that he won’t change, I know he will. I know there are parts of him I don’t know, things happening in Camas that I don’t see, secrets of his that I haven’t learned that he will have to tell me himself. He makes mistakes, too—like giving me the blue tablets, a gift that was given with great risk and care but was not what he thought it would be. It didn’t save me.
Being with Xander might be less complicated, but it would still be love. And I have found that love brings you to new places.
“What did you want with Ky?” I ask Indie. “What were you trying to do when you showed him that scrap and gave him that map?”
“I could tell he knew more about the Rising than he’d say,” Indie says. “I wanted to make him tell me what it was. ”
“Why did you give this back to me?” I say, holding out the microcard. “Why now?”
“You need to choose,” Indie says. “I don’t think you see either of them clearly. ”
“And you do,” I say. Anger wells up in me. She doesn’t know Ky, not like I do. And she’s never even met Xander.
“I figured out Xander’s secret. ” Indie moves toward the entrance of the cave. “And it never occurred to you that Ky might be the Pilot. ”
She disappears through the door.
Someone touches my arm. Eli. His eyes are wide with worry and it shakes me out of my trance. We have to get Eli out of here. We have to hurry. This can all be sorted later.
I am tucking the microcard in my pack when I see it there among the blue.
My red tablet.
Indie and Ky and Xander are all immune.
But I don’t know what I am.
I hesitate. I could put that red in my mouth and I wouldn’t wait for it to dissolve. I would bite down, hard. Maybe even hard enough that my blood would mix with the red and it would truly be my choice, not the Society’s.
If the tablet works, I will forget everything that happened in the last twelve hours. I won’t remember what happened with Ky. I wouldn’t have to forgive him for lying to me because I wouldn’t know that he had. And I wouldn’t remember what he said about my sorting him.
If it doesn’t work, I will finally know, once and for all, if I’m immune. If I’m special like Ky, and Xander, and Indie.
I lift the tablet to my mouth. And then I hear a voice from a place deep in my memory.
You are strong enough to go without.
Fine, Grandfather, I think to myself. I will be strong enough to go without the tablet. But there are other things I’m not strong enough to go without, and I intend to fight for them.
Chapter 41
KY
Carrying the boat is like carrying a body; it’s heavy and bulky and awkward. “Only two can fit inside,” Hunter warns me.
“That doesn’t matter,” I say. “It’s still what I want. ”
He looks at me as if he’s about to say something but then he decides against it.
We drop the boat in the little house at the edge of the township where Cassia, Indie, and Eli have gathered to wait for us. The boat hits the ground with a heavy thump.