Page 34 of The Infinite Glade (The Maze Cutter #3)

“. . . Para el Senado de los Secuenciadores . . .” He tried to say that last squiggly word again, “Secuenciadores?”

She repeated the same word back but made a rolling sound with her throat at the end. “Secuenciadores . . .”

“So what’s that mean?”

She lowered her head. “Last chance for the Sequencers, or last chance for the Senate of Sequencers . . .”

“Oh . . . so, what Cian and Erros were saying is true? About the Sequencers?”

“It’s bullshit.” Ximena got to her feet in a huff.

“But true bullshit,” he said as she paced the bank of the island. “Right?” Dark water softly swished in small waves against the dirt leading up to where he sat.

“If it’s all true, then my Village got wiped out, my mother killed, all for some separate under-earth society that may or may not want to rejoin the world?

And you . . .” Isaac prepared himself for her to snap at him about being a naive islander.

“How does that make you feel? Knowing you came here for some fake Cure and your friends are all dying for nothing?”

He peered down at Kletter’s notebook. There weren’t words for how he felt, at least not in his language. He looked back to the Villa where Jackie, Miyoko, and Frypan were all still alive inside, and he planned to keep it that way.

“I don’t know how to honor my friends’ lives and make their deaths have meaning, other than to try to find the truth.

” He paged through Kletter’s journal. “Maybe we were lied to about the Cure, and yeah, maybe we came out here and it’s not what we thought.

” He looked over to the still-burning remnants of the Maze Cutter.

“But maybe . . .” He took a deep breath of cold Alaskan air.

“Maybe we’re the only ones who can unearth this. ”

Ximena dropped her shoulders and softened. “I do want the truth. The world deserves the truth.” She held out her hand for the book from Isaac, and he was happy to give it to her. “I guess no one’s been naive enough to think they could find it until now,” she teased.

“Or crazy enough,” he teased right back.

“But after eighty years or so, it’s been long enough.

” He slowly stood up. Ximena helped him balance.

The cut in his right calf was starting to make his whole leg stiff.

Isaac looked up at the sky. The stars looked the same as the ones on his island, but the auroras made everything so different, so ethereal.

The greens and purples shone bright through the clouds of smoke that traveled overhead.

“You ever see these colors in the sky before?” he asked, but she was staring at the water.

“Isaac . . .” Ximena slowly moved backward. “There’s something out there.” She pointed, but the water was too dark for Isaac to see anything, and the moonlight was shielded behind the clouds of smoke from the war.

“It’s probably just debris from the Maze Cutter . The whole thing looks like it’s falling apart. It’ll be driftwood, washing up on the shore somewhere.” He had a sudden pang in his gut, thinking about the driftwood necklace he’d helped Sadina make for Trish.

“It’s not . . .” Ximena looked absolutely terrified. “It’s not driftwood, Isaac. But I do think it might be from the Maze Cutter. ”

He looked out to the ocean waters again. Nothing on the Maze Cutter was important enough to have her make this face she was making.

But then he saw it.

Splashing against the current, a body floated and moved back and forth near the bank.

“Oh.” Isaac took a step back. The other dead bodies he’d walked over weren’t moving, but this one did just that, shifting with the current, and it creeped him out.

“It looks like a young soldier. An Orphan probably.” He glanced back at the others behind him, dead on the cold snow.

They all appeared to be around his age or even younger.

Ximena was shaking her head adamantly. “But the wrist . . .” She rubbed her own wrist.

Isaac stepped closer to the body, floating face down, and the arm at its side. His brain couldn’t process what he was seeing. A braided palm bracelet wrapped around the floating wrist, just like the one Trish had made Jackie.

It couldn’t be.

Letting out a sound, somewhere between a whimper and a scream, he tried to pull the body ashore.

It was heavy, water-logged, slimy. Ximena came to help, pulling on the body.

They finally succeeded in flipping it over, only to see the driftwood necklace that Isaac had helped Sadina make for her precious, loving, kind, funny, wonderful girlfriend.

The face removed all doubt. Swollen and purple, it was still all too familiar.

Trish.

Isaac released a wail from deep inside of him, a noise that pierced the night and shattered his heart.

Más remedio tiene un muerto.

The dead have no choice, but Abuela said that even the dead had something to hope for.

Frypan stabbed the sharpened end of his walking stick into the wet dirt next to the dead girl’s bloated body.

Isaac helped console Jackie and Miyoko as best he could, though he seemed to need it more than they did.

Ximena stepped back and let the islanders mourn their friend, knowing the grief they held wasn’t just for Trish but for their entire world as they knew it.

Maybe they’d finally understand Ximena’s anger now that every death the islanders experienced could be blamed on one person: Annie Kletter.

Ximena walked over to the open doorway of the Villa as Erros carried out two air canisters.

“We’re packing up some stuff, then we’ll be ready, okay?” he said as he walked by.

She looked over to the islanders and back at him before nodding. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Hey, Cian, watch these Remnants. . . . They’re everywhere and it’s hard to see out here.” Erros squinted in the dark, stepped over a dead soldier. “I’ll meet you at the Berg.”

Ximena wasn’t ready to get back to the Berg yet. She needed more time to figure out where to direct Cian to fly to “find” the Sequencers—a group of people she hadn’t heard a single whisper about until earlier that night.

Cian exited the Villa with an overflowing box of supplies. Something toppled out and he set the box down at his feet. She helped him reorganize the items so that they all fit. Such mundane activities after finding the body of a friend, bloated and dead.

“I told you there’d be stuff for the Sequencers,” Cian said.

She actually had no idea why anyone would want the things he had packed: old plastic containers, glass vials, weird measuring tools. Nothing of value to Ximena, but sometimes her inner-knowings surprised even herself.

“Some of this, the Sequencers have never seen. I’ve never seen.” He held up a tool and made a face before stuffing it into the box of supplies.

Jackie’s and Miyoko’s cries grew from the bank, hurting Ximena’s heart. They were all so devastated. “We can’t leave them here,” she said to Cian, motioning to Isaac and the others. “Not after their friend got killed by the Remnant Nation and?—”

“No. They stay here.” Cian looked up at Ximena for only a second before his attention fell back down to the box. “That boy almost killed us.”

“I could have killed your brother, too.” She put her hand on her knife.

“I still could if I wanted to.” She tried to make her young voice sound threatening, menacing, but it came out as a pathetic, empty taunt.

She was more exhausted from the day's events than she’d thought. It was all catching up with her.

Cian picked up the box of supplies, now looking more balanced but still very heavy. “No. Not even up for negotiation.” He walked over the first dead Remnant. “See you at the Berg.”

“Isaac has the captain’s log, and there’re things in there you should see. He’ll share it if?—”

An arm seemingly came out of nowhere and swept Cian’s feet from under him; the box of Villa supplies flew out of his arms with a crash. Cian landed flat on his back, now held at knife point by a Remnant Soldier, still alive.

“Erros!” he cried. “Help!” His arms flailed as he tried to free himself; his feet kicked at the arms of the soldier. The Remnant appeared disoriented, stabbing at the air, the ground, and what he could of Cian’s moving body.

Ximena pulled her own knife and went at the Orphan soldier.

He was distracted enough that he didn’t see her coming—she jumped on him, placed the tip of her blade on his bare neck.

She blew the air and the fear out of her lungs, focused all her attention.

She slid the knife into the Orphan’s flesh, at least an inch or two, watching as his arms slowly stabbed at the air with less energy and movement.

Cian still struggled beneath him, having at least one wound himself.

“Bring the islanders with us, and I’ll end this.” She could let the soldier stab Cian as many times as he wanted to, if the man wanted to be stubborn. Cian tried to regain his footing but the snowy earth gave way. He shook his head at Ximena, refusing despite his desperate situation.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll give you the Cure if you let them come.”

“You already said you would!” He wiggled his body around to face her.

“I said I’d take you to the Cure, but I wasn’t going to give it to you.” She scoffed. “Why would I?”

“You lied.” He grunted and struggled.

“I’m telling you the truth, now. It’s in my backpack, front pocket.

Let them come with us to safety, and it’s yours.

” She could easily let the Orphan soldier go, let him die a slow and painful death, bleeding out from gunshots and a stab wound in the cold.

Or she could give him mercy, slit his throat like she had so many chickens back in her Village.

“Okay, alright!” Cian shouted as the soldier’s blade neared his chest in a wild swing.

Ximena flicked her knife, choosing the way of mercy.

“They can come. And the body of their friend, too,” she negotiated.

Cian sighed as he crawled to his feet. “Fine. Whatever. But you’re in charge of that kid, and if he tries anything like that little stunt he did again—you’re both getting thrown from midair without a parachute.”

“Reasonable enough.” Ximena pulled her knife, the one that used to be Kletter’s knife, out of the dead Remnant’s back.

“If anyone has a right to visit the Sequencers, it should be them.” She looked Cian up and down.

“Unless you’re the one lying. About Frypan’s family being a part of it all, this whole under-earth thing? ”

Cian just smiled. “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”