Reached

Then, slowly, she turns away from me and lifts up her shirt. Red lines run around her back.
    “You don’t have to say it,” she says. She tucks her shirt back in and turns around. “I already know.”
    “We should get you hooked up to one of the nutrient bags,” I say. “Right now.” Thoughts race through my mind.
You shouldn’t have stayed, you should have left like the others did until we
knew
we had something that worked—
    “I don’t want to lie down,” Lei says.
    “Come with me,” I tell her, and this time I do take her arm. I feel the warmth of her skin through her sleeve.
    “Where are we going?” she asks me.
    “To the courtyard,” I say. “You can sit on a bench while I go get a line and a nutrient bag.” This way, she won’t have to be inside when she goes down. She can stay outside as long as possible.
    She looks at me with her exhausted, beautiful eyes. “Hurry,” she says. “I don’t want to be alone when it happens.”

    When I return with the equipment, Lei waits in the courtyard with her shoulders slumped in exhaustion. It’s strange to see her with less-than-perfect posture. She holds out her arm and I slide the needle in.
    The fluid begins to drip. I sit down next to her, holding the bag higher than her arm so that the line keeps running.
    “Tell me a story,” she says. “I need to hear something.”
    “Which one of the Hundred would you like?” I ask. “I remember most of them.”
    I hear a faint trace of surprise in her voice under the fatigue. “Don’t you know anything else?”
    I pause. Not really. The Rising hasn’t had time to give us new stories, and it’s not like I know how to create. I just work with what I have.
    “Yes,” I say, trying to think of something. Then I borrow from my own life. “About a year ago, back in the Society, there was a boy who was in love with a girl. He’d watched her for a long time. He hoped she’d be his Match. Then she was. He was happy.”
    “That’s all?” Lei asks.
    “That’s all,” I say. “Too short?”
    Lei begins to laugh and for a moment she sounds like herself. “It’s you,” she says. “It’s obvious. That’s no story.”
    I laugh, too. “Sorry,” I say. “I’m not very good at this.”
    “But you love your Match,” Lei says, no longer laughing. “I know that about you. You know it about me.”
    “Yes,” I say.
    She looks at me. The liquid drips into the line.
    “I know an old story about people who
couldn’t
be Matched,” she says. “He was an Aberration. She was a citizen and a pilot. It was the first of the vanishings.”
    “The vanishings?” I ask.
    “Some people inside the Society wanted to get out,” Lei says. “Or wanted to get their children out. There were pilots who would fly people away in exchange for other things.”
    “I’ve never heard of anything like this,” I say.
    “It happened,” Lei says. “I saw it. Some of those parents would trade anything—risk everything—because they thought sending their children away was the best way to keep them safe.”
    “But where would they take them?” I ask. “Into Enemy territory? That doesn’t make any sense.”
    “They’d take them to the edge of Enemy territory,” Lei says. “To places called the stone villages. After that, it was up to people to decide whether they’d stay in the villages, or try to cross Enemy territory to find a place known as the Otherlands. No one who went on to the Otherlands ever came back.”
    “I don’t understand it,” I say. “How would sending your children out to the middle of nowhere—closer to the Enemy—be safer than staying in the Society?”
    “Perhaps they knew about the Plague,” Lei says. “But obviously your parents didn’t feel that way. Neither did mine.” She looks at me. “You almost sound like you’re defending the Society.”
    “I’m not,” I say.
    “I know,” she says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to tell you history. I meant to tell you a story.”
    “I’m ready,” I say. “I’m listening.”
    “The story, then.” She lifts her arm and looks at the liquid running in. “This pilot loved the man but she had obligations at home, ones that she couldn’t break, and obligations to her leaders, too. If she left, too many people would suffer. She flew the man she loved all the way to the Otherlands, which no one had done before.”
    “What happened after that?” I ask.
    “She was shot down by the Enemy on her way back,” Lei says.