The Gender End (The Gender Game #7)

“Never compare me to those women,” I said stonily, a violent rage blossoming to life under my skin. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“ENOUGH!” Kathryn shouted. “Belinda, I’m sure Francis is fine. Violet… I’m sure you feel you’re on the right side of things. But neither of those things matters right now! What matters right now is that we need to turn this bird around, and get home!”

Her words—the same words I had been trying to get into them both not too long ago—slammed into me. Belinda and I had baited each other, and I’d lost sight of the big picture in the process, letting my pride get the better of me.

Not that I regretted saying it. Nor did it stop me from wanting to plant a boot in her face. But at the same time, I hated all the death on my hands. As much as I blamed Elena, I also blamed myself. I had pulled the trigger. I had used grenades. I had pushed a man off a flying motorcycle, and I had set a woman on fire… every time making a choice—them or me.

And I had nightmares. Awful, terrible things. And I knew I would carry them with me forever. Yet if that was the price I had to pay to put an end to the madness Elena had caused, then so be it.

“I’m sorry,” I said, after taking a long moment to calm myself. “I sincerely hope we did not kill your sister.”

Belinda’s mouth tightened, and she nodded. “I’m not sorry, but I’ll… try not to bring up the war.”

It would have to do. Kathryn nodded to us both, and then sighed. “Now that’s over with, let’s see what we can do about that interface.”





5





Violet





Twenty minutes of brain-wracking later, I stood over Belinda as she carefully peeled away a wire’s plastic casing, using a knife I had provided from my boot. Belinda clearly hadn’t been happy about that, but hadn’t commented. I was trying to keep myself awake as we went through the mind-numbing task of attaching the multitude of wires to the handheld. Silence seemed to be the best way forward after our brush with violence, and I, for one, was grateful to contribute.

She carefully pulled the wire, freeing a bit more slack from the panel it ran on, and then began to twist the exposed wire around a metal contact under the handheld’s hard plastic case. I dutifully held out the wire solder tool—a white tool with a metal ball at the end that emitted heat when the button was pressed, warming the metal end and melting the wire to the contacts on the back of the handheld.

I was glad I had thought of it. Kathryn said otherwise the only option would’ve been to land manually (something she had added she wasn’t sure she could do without the computer to read elevation), but it had taken some time to find it. And now, it seemed it was going to take time to get the computer interfaced with the handheld.

“Violet, I need you to flip the page.” It took a moment to register, but I leaned over to flip the page on the flight manual lying in front of Kathryn, ignoring the small stab of anger at how surly her tone was. Maybe it was petty, but it wasn’t like I liked this situation any more than she did.

I looked up at her and realized she was sweating again, and I could tell the pain was beginning to overcome the patch I had given her. She fought through it, so I had to give her some respect—which meant I needed to let this irritation go. It could be that she was so focused on trying to carry through that she didn’t have time for politeness. And I would almost buy into that, too, if she weren’t giving the instructions to Belinda with all sorts of polite words, like “please” and “thank you.”

As she began to read the next bit of instructions out loud to Belinda, prefacing them with a “can you,” I refrained from rolling my eyes in annoyance and moved away a few steps.

A part of me was just frustrated that I wasn’t doing anything at the moment. We needed two good hands to get the handheld interfaced, which meant Belinda, and Kathryn was the only one who could quickly decipher the more complicated terms in the manual and deliver the instructions in a clear way. So until they were finished, I was sort of a third wheel. I had managed to do a quick inventory of our food, water, and any other supplies that might be useful, which had been frustratingly small, and then checked on Solomon. His condition was the same, as best as I could tell. God, I wished Dr. Tierney was here.

Scratch that—I wished we were back there. Belinda and Kathryn included, if it came down to that. Sighing, I moved over to the window and stared out. The sun was now over the horizon, rising up over the edge and brilliant yellow in color. The light was so intense that I had to shield my eyes to block it out. The area below revealed itself under the growing dawn—bright yellow dirt, cracked and dry, like a mosaic on the floor. I’d never seen the earth such a color, so raw and naked.

How could anything survive out here? Was this what we had sent all those explorers out to—bone-dry wastes where nothing seemed to move? I shuddered, thinking about what it might be like down there.

I searched the wide expanse of the horizon and frowned when I saw a slim green line shimmer into sight just off to the right. Leaning toward it for a better view, I squinted and watched it approach, trying to decipher what it was as we drew closer to it.

After a few minutes, I stepped back into the cockpit and away from the bright light streaming through it. “Hey, Kathryn, can you take a look at this?”

“Uh, yeah. One sec. Just strip the wire and attach it to the third prong to the right. I’ll be right back.”

I shifted to one side as the pilot moved into the window, her hazel eyes searching. “What is it?” she asked.

“On the right. Is that a river?”

She craned her neck, squinting and awkwardly holding up her hand to block the incoming sunlight. “Looks like it. So?”

“Look at it. It’s heading in the direction that cuts farther north… What if that’s the beginning of Veil River?”

She gave an incredulous laugh and leaned back, her laugh dying when she saw I wasn’t joking. “There’s no way that could be Veil River,” she said, her brow furrowing.

“Why not? Maybe it feeds into it, or connects to it. It’s at least a landmark.”

Kathryn bit her lip, her eyes staring out the window. “You’re suggesting we try to turn this thing toward the river?”

I nodded, and she tilted her face up toward the ceiling, her eyes and lips moving silently as she performed some unexplained calculation in her mind. “We can only move at a fifteen-degree rate of turn right now,” she said after a pause. “We’d need to start turning now, but I’m not sure if we should prioritize it over the handheld.”

“If we don’t do it now, we lose any chance of doing it after the handheld comes up. It’s a source of water—”

“Which is probably toxic,” Belinda interjected, having climbed up off the floor to squint over the top of Kathryn’s head. “Especially if it leads to Veil River.”