UnBound - Neal Shusterman Page 0,41

through them. Isn’t that better than this pointless suicide?”

“Shut off all frequencies,” she says.

The voice cuts off, leaving a strained silence. He’s still there, a red blip on her readout, mute but relentless.

Anissa steels herself. The mine stretches impossibly before her. Her feet are heavy, hard to lift, and the heatsuit’s getting uncomfortable. She’s in a race she can’t win, burdened by infection, unwilling to surrender.

A part of her wants to amputate the hand and be done with it. It makes sense, because it would neutralize the infection. Amputation wouldn’t cure her—the sepsis in her blood would have to heal gradually, over a period of time. But surgical intervention would help to kick-start her body’s own recovery system.

There’s just one problem: She can’t bring herself to do it.

My dad wouldn’t, and I won’t either, she thinks, gritting her teeth. These suits were designed for firefighters ready and willing to receive unwound parts. Accepting amputation would make her complicit. This is the line she won’t cross, the very thing she won’t do, even if it means she’ll die in this awful mine. Her one consolation is that they can’t harvest her if she’s dead. By the time they drag her body out of here, it’ll be in no shape for organ donation.

So she keeps walking. She’ll walk until she keels over from septic shock. This is where I die, in a tunnel of fire that feels like damnation.

Then an idea dawns.

A stupid idea, something she’d never have the nerve to try under any other circumstances. She’s not sure she has the nerve to do it now. But her options are narrowing. It’s either give in and let the machine amputate . . . or this.

She breaks the seal on her left-hand glove. Peels back the reinforced fabric, exposing her flesh. It’s sickly red-raw, sticky and oozing, and the superheated air strikes her nerve endings, making her cry out in pain. But the worst is yet to come.

“If this doesn’t work, Dad,” she says, “I’m sorry.”

And she jams her bare hand palm-first against the red-hot wall of the mine.

OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD

Don’t faint, she thinks. If you faint, you won’t get up again. But the ground is unsteady, lurching and heaving like a ship at sea, and the shock threatens to claim her because OH MY GOD IT HURTS, worse than anything she’s ever imagined. She wants to curl up and die, wants it badly, but that merciful surrender is something Anissa can’t afford and won’t permit herself; she has to keep going.

The flesh of her hand is seared, but she tries not to register that. She pulls her glove back on over the ruined flesh, nearly screaming as the pain reignites, refusing to stop until the hand is covered again.

Her faceplate reads THIRD-DEGREE BURN and SEVERE TISSUE DAMAGE and, once again, AMPUTATION RECOMMENDED. But the “sepsis” message flickers and fades. Because I burned it out of me, like putting a torch to an open wound. She hasn’t cured herself, not entirely; her blood is still tainted. But she’s removed the primary source of infection and begun the process of healing. Her immune system will do the rest.

“Amputation refused,” she says.

She takes a step forward. Then another. And another.

• • •

Two miles later she’s still going. So is her pursuer.

With the nerve endings in her hand burned away, the pain has settled to a powerful, but manageable, throb. Her pursuer is getting closer, gaining ground. She realizes there’s one last chance to lose him. Up ahead is an overhanging rock shelf, slicing across the tunnel at a place where it narrows to near impassability. Probably from a cave-in, where the support beams were burned through and couldn’t carry their load. Whatever the reason, it gives Anissa the advantage. The man behind is larger and stronger, normally an asset, but here it works against him—he’ll never get past this obstacle.

But can she?

She crouches, gauging the dimensions of the opening, planning her approach. The trick is not to touch the walls, because of their furnace heat—something she knows all too well. The heatsuit can survive the heat of the mine, but not if it’s pressed against the near-molten stone. Anissa sidles forward awkwardly, crouching to clear the overhang. Her balance wavers and she nearly topples but manages to keep her footing. Her injured hand brushes the wall just once, with a sunburst of pain, but she bites her lip and keeps going.

She’s clear. The obstruction is past. Her pursuer