The Vault (A Farm Novel) by Emily McKay

know she is. Internal bleeding. Surely. All that blood.
    That blood.
    I jerk away, throwing myself back from her so hard I roll down the hill, before catching myself and scrambling into a crouch. My every muscle tenses, poised to flee or to destroy. To destroy myself and not to destroy her.
    I can’t let myself become that. To lose my mind. My will. My everything that makes me human. I cannot lose that. I will not.
    That’s when I hear it. In that moment that I’m completely still and feel nothing but the thundering of my own heart and the wavering of my resolve. That’s when I hear the crying.
    It’s not my father. I’m sure of that. It’s younger than that, but not a baby. Not an animal. Not the mournful keening of someone out of control, but a soft, fearful crying. The noise of someone hurt and hiding.
    I tip my head to the side and listen for it again. It’s gone. Almost. I hear a sharp, trembling breath from near the helicopter. I lope around the tail and then stop short when I see the kid huddling close to the crumpled end of the helicopter.
    He sees me and instantly cringes away, arms upraised to block my attack. He’s younger than I am. Maybe fifteen. Maybe younger. Latino. Short cropped hair, dirty clothes. I’m sure I don’t know him and yet I do. I know this boy. Or someone who looks like him. Exactly like him. But older.
    Ely.
    This is Ely’s younger brother. It must be.
    As sluggish as my brain feels, seeing this boy still brings understanding.
    Ely had been one of Carter’s best friends from the military academy. Carter had asked Ely to keep McKenna and me safe when we’d left Base Camp to search for somewhere that McKenna could have her baby. Carter had trusted Ely. We had trusted Ely. He’d been so damn good at staying alive on his own no one had thought to ask how he did it. No one thought to wonder if he’d survived by forming an alliance with Roberto. Now I know why he did that. He did it because Roberto had his younger brother.
    I crouch down beside the boy, but he cringes away from me, scuttling deeper into the shadows so that he’s almost back inside the wreckage. His fear pulls at something deep inside of me. No one has ever been afraid of me. Not in the Before. Not on the Farm. Not even at Base Camp, where people thought I was an
abductura
. But this boy. He fears me and what I’m becoming.
    What do I look like that this kid is afraid of me?
    Except he’s not a kid. He’s a teenager. In the Before, he was probably the kind of kid who was scared of nothing. And now I terrify him.
    Which means two things: one, he doesn’t yet know that he’s been exposed also, and two, I’m far enough gone that I must look like a Tick. At least to him.
    I should just leave. I haven’t found anything in the wreckage that I could easily use to kill myself. Maybe I would be better off just running into the wilderness. Leaving him alone with his fear, rather than making it worse.
    But there’s this: what is he going to do if I leave him?
    No matter how tough he was in the Before, he’s just a kid. If he’s terrified of me now, then how’s he going to react when the mercenary-Neanderthals wake up? And if my father is right, when they wake up, they’ll be violent. And they’re a lot less human than I am. They’ll turn not long after they wake up. Then he’s dead.
    I can run or I can try to protect this kid. It’s not really a choice.
    I crouch down lower, ducking my head so my hair falls forward, covering part of my face.
    “Hi,” I say. My voice sounds lower, rougher than it normally does. The kid doesn’t respond, so I add, “I’m not going to hurt you.”
    He shifts then, to peer at me over his arm.
    His palpable fear mingles with confusion, but he doesn’t say anything, so I add, “You’re Ely’s brother, right?”
    He jerks back, clearly surprised to have heard Ely’s name from me, but after several heartbeats, he nods.
    “I’m a friend of Ely’s.” The lie nearly catches in