Aeralis Read Online Free PDF Page B

asked.
    “People are worried,” I said, speaking carefully now. I didn’t want to alarm him. “There are disputes about quota, about sharing what we have with the newcomers among us. Some are talking about illness. They don’t know that the Sickness has come again, but they’re worried. Some are blaming the Aeralians in our midst. They want them gone in case more become infected.”
    “It hasn’t come again,” Jonn said. “Not like that. Besides, it wasn’t the fugitives’ fault.”
    “But how did you contract it? It must have come from somewhere.” I stopped. It wasn’t the fugitives’ fault , he’d said, as if he knew the real source. “Whose fault is it?”
    Jonn cleared his throat. “Mine. I contracted the disease on...on purpose.”
    I rose from the chair. “What are you talking about?”
    “I read it in one of our father’s notebooks. Those who contracted the disease but didn’t die—they were stronger, better. They recovered from disease and injury. They were new again. Whole. No longer crippled.”
    My throat was dry. My tongue stuck to my teeth as horror filled me. “What are you saying?”
    “The package I asked you to bring me from Borde.” He traced one finger in slow circles over the quilt across his chest. “It was a dead mouse, infected with the Sickness. I handled it, allowed myself to become sick. But no one else will. I burned the corpse, and I’ve been quarantined.”
    I was shaking. Shaking with horror and rage. “How could you do this? To Ivy? To me? To all of us!”
    He just looked at me, and I read the anguish in his eyes.
    “Everiss is dead, Lia. I have a wasted leg, I get sick often, I have seizures. I’m weak. There’s no place for me in this world.”
    “That isn’t true!”
    “I’m weak,” he insisted. “Too weak.”
    “So you decided to kill yourself?”
    “With any luck, I’ll recover and be stronger. Healed...”
    “Jonn, you’re dying.”
    His head snapped up, and he stared at me. His mouth opened and closed. A stream of emotions crossed his face. He didn’t speak.
    “It didn’t work,” I said. “Whatever stupid plan you had, it didn’t work. You didn’t recover stronger. You aren’t going to recover at all.” I paused, the words choking me. “How could you do this?”
    He didn’t have an answer.
    I left. I didn’t speak to the others in the hall. In the bedroom, I washed and changed out of my nightclothes before grabbing a cloak and heading for the stairs. I needed to be in the clear, cold air of the Frost.
     
     

FOUR
     
     
    WIND BLEW THE scent of snow blossoms across my face as I ducked beneath tree branches and skirted fallen limbs. It was good to be out and moving. It helped me think.
    I reached the place I sought and paused to catch my breath. Ahead, the outline of Borde’s ruined lab shimmered at the edge of the forest. I shook the snow from my boots, and slipped down the hill to the hidden path that led to the front door.
    The floorboards creaked with my every step as I slipped inside. I hadn’t been back since we’d overthrown the Farthers and driven them from the Frost, and I didn’t know what drew me back now. I walked through the rooms slowly, running my fingers over the ruined furniture and the dust-covered devices that lay forgotten and rusted now, feeling the grimy metal and aged wood and remembering the nights I’d spent there. I stopped in the center of the room and shut my eyes. Perhaps if I concentrated, I could recall everything Borde had told me about the Sickness, about the search for the cure. Had he mentioned anything offhand that might help my brother?
    But I could think of nothing new.
    As I stepped toward the kitchen, one of the floorboards clattered beneath the heel of my boot.
    I paused.
    The floorboard was warped, perhaps, or simply loose. I studied the ground below my feet. The board I’d stepped on sat a little higher than the rest of them. Maybe...?
    I crouched down, gripped it with both hands, and