“I’ll think of something.”
“Me too. I’ll think of three or four.”
Outside, there’s no sign of the Chairman, Dr. Yang, or their Menghu guard. Howl creeps behind the rows of tents just ahead, and I wait for Tai-ge to go first before following closely behind. Once we’re past the Chairman’s flag, about halfway to the fence, Howl straightens from his Menghu slither to put on the rigid, royal demeanor I remember from the Mountain when he was facing down someone who didn’t agree with him. Shoulders square as if he expects the whole world to bow and bring him a hot drink.
There are three Reds at the gate now, and when they see Howl’s single red star, his white smile, his Chairman-like disdain, they don’t wave him through. The first Red grabs him. The second pushes him away from us. The third levels a gun at Tai-ge and me, his hands shaking.
“No one is allowed in or out.” The man with the gun seems unhinged, ready to shoot rather than ask for an explanation. He nods to the one standing between us and Howl. “Take him down to the helis.”
“These two have vital information I have to get to my father.” Howl picks himself up, standing a few inches taller than the Red with the gun, who seems to shrink back as he recognizes Howl. “He was supposed to meet us in his tent. What is going on out there?”
“We don’t know. It started over by the paddies.”
My stomach drops. June.
The Red who was holding Howl lets go, his hands held contritely at his sides. “I’m sorry, sir, but we need to get you to safety right now.”
“This is too important. Put your weapons down and open that gate. Now.”
The three seem to wish the ground would open them up and swallow them, the angry sounds of fighting rumbling closer. There are shots so close I can almost feel the aftershock, the zing of bullets through the frozen air. The cries of men and women gasping their last breaths.
“Please, sir. It’s not worth your life. Or mine.” The Red who grabbed Howl steps forward. “We have orders, and we can’t break them. It’s not safe out there. Not for you or us. I’ll escort you to—”
“These two are my escorts.” Howl waves a hand at me and Tai-ge without really looking, steps back from the gate, and walks into the tents without checking to see if we follow.
The moment we’re out of reach of the gate’s glaring lights, I grab Tai-ge’s arm and pull him through gaps between tents toward the fence’s length. “This way. We’ll have to go over. Or through.”
“You don’t think they’ll shoot anyone they see on the fence?” Howl is just behind us.
“Even your First mark can’t get us through the gate. Have a better idea, Sun Yi-lai?” Tai-ge asks. I almost want to laugh at the irony in the question, the barb behind Howl’s assumed name. Firsts are supposed to be smart.
Howl actually smiles. “Nope. Let’s go. Grab your wire cutters and your bulletproof skin. I’ll be standing next to you, so I suppose I’ll be the one they take down first.”
Tai-ge slides to a stop in a shadowed place along the chain link, glancing up nervously as a group of Reds run down the aisles between tents parallel to the fence, lantern light catching here and there on City uniforms. Howl and I hover over Tai-ge as he brings out the pliers and cuts through links until there’s a hole big enough to squeeze through. He tugs the jagged edges up to allow me to go belly-flat underneath, the sharp ends of the metal ripping into my coat’s padding. He comes next, then grabs my arm and takes off into the tents before Howl can follow.
CHAPTER 21
I LOOK OVER MY SHOULDER to see Howl scrunching and twisting to fit through the hole, losing sight when Tai-ge wrenches me into a tent. Our breath streams from our masks in a fog, clouding the close air inside. Tai-ge edges up to the door, lamplight streaming in through the narrow gap between the flap and the tent wall to mark his face with a line of gray.
“Is he following?” I whisper, feeling in my coat pocket for the empty canister of inhibitor spray, only to have my hand close around the knife’s handle instead.
“I don’t think he saw us come in here.” Tai-ge flinches back from the door as footsteps tromp closer, shadows flashing across the tent’s canvas. A black sea of arms and heads, soldiers looking for whoever is responsible for the barrage of shots still echoing through the camp. Or perhaps the ones who are doing the shooting.
“What about the encryption key?” I whisper.
Tai-ge reaches into his pocket and pulls out a metal disk, holding it out in my direction. He doesn’t look back to watch me take it, too busy squinting out at the shadow soldiers as they flit past.
The disk fits in my palm, a glass window in the top and a series of lines cut into the outer rim of the metal leaving prints in my skin. “How did you get this?” I ask. Tai-ge isn’t the type to pick pockets. At least, I didn’t think he was.
Tai-ge doesn’t answer, pointing up toward the mountain, where the rice paddies are sketched against the sky in stripes of darkness and moonlight. “I knew we needed it, so I took it—”
Orange light blooms in the trees, the sound of the explosion taking a moment before it blasts over us. June’s distraction. Tai-ge hardly blinks. “Great. We can go out toward the fields and circle back into the mountains.”
The calluses on my fingertips snag against the key’s rough exterior as I trace the lines around its edge. “What about June?”
“If she managed to get that explosion off, then she’ll meet us under the owl’s nest like we planned.”
A chill runs through me. Under the owl’s nest. Whose grave will it be calling for us to dig when we get back?
I shove the key into my pants pocket next to the knife, thinking I should probably zip it into one of my outer pockets, but worried I’ll somehow lose it if I can’t feel it pressing into my skin.
Tai-ge tenses. “They’re coming this way. Let’s—”
A shot cracks through the air, splintering my ears and sending the shadows dancing across the tent wall into chaos. Tai-ge pushes me back from the tent’s mouth. My feet catch on something, and I fall into the back canvas wall, the divider between the tent’s outer room and an inner one pulling free. Wood clatters, and there’s a plasticky crackle of tarp as I go down, catching myself on one hand. It comes down on something soft.
Hair.
A scream curdles the air inside the tent, and the hair yanks out from under my hand. Canvas is twined around my arms and over my head, but I still try to grab the woman screaming, as if I can stop the footsteps now headed in our direction. How was she sleeping here, after the gunshots, the explosion?
But then I pull the canvas free and find her staring at me, her mask pulled askew to leave her mouth naked and exposed. The broken tubing spills down the side of her face like a gushing wound, her mouth suddenly empty of screams as she stares at me. Her eyes close, squinching shut tight, then opening again to bore into me.
Was she Asleep? Only now waking up? Sleeping with a mask on couldn’t be easy. . . . I don’t know how the new strain works, only that it’s fast. The woman seems to be frozen, as if she still can’t quite move.
The shadows lined up outside are a snaky mess of limbs and shots, shouts and curses. Tai-ge grunts from the tent’s mouth, tearing my horror-filled gaze away from the woman to find him scuffling with a soldier. Before I can do anything, the man he’s fighting pulls free and runs, shouting about unfriendlies. Boots crash into the icy ground toward us. Tai-ge turns, searching for some sort of escape, but his eyes shudder to a stop on me. No, just behind me.
Fingers touch my arm. The woman is standing too close, her open mouth a black gash in her face, her breath hot against my cheek. I jerk away, fumbling for something to use as a weapon, my fingers shaking as they close around the empty inhibitor spray. She grabs at me, hardly flinching as the empty cannister hits the side of her head with a tinny ping.
The woman lunges at me, her fingers twining into my hair and jerking my head back, completely oblivious to my elbow as it jabs into her stomach
or my boot when it smashes down on her bare foot. She pulls me in closer, her teeth bared.
The knife comes out, heavy in my hand.
Tai-ge crashes into my side, attempting to knock the woman away, but her fingers grasp tighter, her nails against my scalp sending sharp stabs of pain through my skull. I pull the knife free of its sheath, but with Tai-ge in the way, I only manage to land the flat of the blade across her arm with a fleshy slap.
She recoils, letting go of my hair, giving me a split second to slash through the tent wall. I stumble through the opening, Tai-ge only a breath behind. I can hear the woman behind us as we run, but she’s not going fast enough to keep up, her run lopsided and painful-looking. When we duck between two tents, then zig and zag between the silent canvas structures, she doesn’t follow.
I pull Tai-ge to a walk, trying to catch my breath. There are flashes of flame in the darkness, guns being fired into the night, shouts from all directions. I cover my face with my hands, wishing I could wipe away everything I think and feel. “The fields, right?”
Two bright flashes and an eardrum-bending crack echoes just a few rows of tents away, between us and the rice paddies.
“We’re almost to the edge of camp. I can see the silos just over—” My words cut in two as Tai-ge wrenches away from my side, a shadowy form slamming him into the ground. I can only stare for a second before my body responds, slingshotting me back toward my friend, knife out.
I land on top of the attacker, grab the ties holding the mask to her face and slash them apart. The woman rolls off Tai-ge into a crouch, grasping the mask against her nose. Our eyes meet, the knife blade between us shining silver in the moon’s glow. Just as my muscles tense to throw me toward the woman, my hood wrenches back from my head, and the snap holding my collar closed twists up tight against my windpipe. My knees hit the ground, and I drop the knife, fingers scrambling to find the zipper key, the two-star pin at my collar stabbing into my throat. My brain seems blank, nothing left but the zipper stuck against my windpipe and the hand pulling it tight at the back of my neck, choking me.
“The City won’t touch another Menghu ever again,” a woman’s voice snarls into my ear. “We’ll leave you all to die. Burn your precious Chairman and leave one big Seph-dead camp.”
A hand tears my mask sideways, the air cold and metallic against my nose. I try to suck air down into my panicking lungs, but it only seems to be leaking out, squirming free of my mouth in reluctant gasps. My eyes start to blur. My brain feels like it’s exploding from the pressure. There’s a hand on the ground next to me, knuckles white as it grasps at the frostbitten ground. Tai-ge?
Just as my vision turns blind, my groping hand brushes against something metal. The knife. My knuckles barely move as I grasp at it, my fingers like swollen fish flapping against one another instead of grabbing hold.
I internally cry for my hands to work, fumbling to seize the knife and feeling the blade cut at the fleshy insides of my fingers. The person strangling me laughs. Until I stab the knife point-first into her boot.
My attacker swears, the metal teeth digging into my throat loosening. I still can’t breathe, can’t move, but I force myself to flail over and somehow catch the knife into something meaty.
A boot connects with the side of my head, leaving nothing inside me but a tumult of pain and crackling light. I lie there on the frozen ground, my entire body stinging, waiting for the blow that will finish me.
A gunshot cracks over me—more swearing, running boots.
Nothing touches me. Just frozen earth and pain.
Silence. So much nothing around me where only moments ago it was murder and rage. I feel as if I’m submerged underwater, sucked down so deep the world doesn’t matter anymore because I’ll never be able to find it again. The silence screams at me to move, to do something or it will be permanent.
It takes so long—days, lifetimes—before I can even bring myself to touch my throat, to command my trembling hands to unzip my jacket, welcoming the blast of cold air that washes over me when it’s open. I force myself up from the ground, the world around me ashy white with snow.
I’m alone.
With one trembling hand, I unpin the two red stars from my collar, my blood muddying their tips, and let them fall to the ground.
The knife is still in my hand, my fingers shaking so badly I can barely hold on to it as I get to my feet. There are bloody bodies on the ground, eyes open and staring blankly at the sky, the shells of people who lived and breathed and laughed and cried before this night left them as nothing but an echo. I force myself to look down at them as I walk, searching for Tai-ge’s closely cropped hair, his torn City jerkin, but I recognize no one. A gun lies abandoned in the snow, a streak of red coloring the ice underneath it.
Howl said to take their weapons and ammunition.
I stumble away instead, every breath whistling down my throat. My mask hangs lopsided, the coils of tubes broken and hissing. I tie it back over the lower half of my face, hoping it looks right, unable to keep myself from shuddering as the severed tubes brush against my half-crushed windpipe.
Gunshots pepper the night, and my body involuntarily flinches away from the assault. They sound muted and distant, though I know they can’t be too far away, my ears dimmed by too much sound. I stagger away from the cacophony of fighting, across one aisle between tents. Two aisles. I stop when the tent canvases before me begin to ripple, shouts battering against my tortured eardrums like the harshest of whispers. People, City jerkins, weapons, just across the next aisle between tents. I shrink down, hoping somehow they won’t notice the broken Fourth. But then I see him.
Tai-ge.
Two Reds are dragging him down the aisle in front of me. He sees me right as I see him, his eyes immediately glancing off me and going down into the dirt. As the group passes, he turns his head to the side and we lock eyes. He jerks his chin toward the fields and mouths one word: Go!
I take a step. In his direction.
A hand snakes around my wrist. “Wait.” The gas mask’s unhealthy wheeze fills my ears with a voice I don’t want to hear. Howl.
Tai-ge’s eyes widen, taking in Howl behind me. Waiting until they’re well past, he suddenly gives the Red escorting him a violent shove, and the two men jerk to attention, restraining him instead of looking for Menghu hiding between tents. He twists around to look at me as they yank his arms behind his back. Go! he mouths again. Move!
One of his guards peers toward us. Howl pulls me out of sight behind the tent. Down an aisle, gunshots still burning in my ears.
“We’re going to get out, okay?” He stops, bringing me around to meet his eyes, face so close to mine I can’t look away. Can’t see past him to where Tai-ge is being swallowed by Dazhai . . . Howl’s fingers dig into my shoulders. “We need to pretend we belong here. We’re looking for Menghu. Finding any that haven’t been rounded up yet. Got it?” Howl’s voice rasps with each word. “Someone shot one of the Menghu up in the paddies right as some of the Red scouts came in. The Menghu started shooting the scouts, and now everyone’s crying spy and Menghu are shooting at anything with stars.”
“You . . . How did you . . . We can’t leave Tai-ge!” I pull out of Howl’s grip, stumbling to the side. My head swims. “I won’t . . .”
“I promise you, we won’t leave Tai-ge here.” Howl moves ahead of me again, his voice so calm it makes me want to slap him. “We can’t help him if we’re dead, Sev. We need to get out and find June—”
A dark form crashes into Howl, knocking him to the ground.
My legs fold under me into a crouch, a cocktail of adrenaline and fear freezing all my limbs as I watch a woman slam Howl’s head against the frozen mud, her uniform unmarked. The Menghu’s fingers snake up through the tubes of Howl’s gas mask, tearing it crooked and obscuring his vision. Howl’s double identity is going to be the thing that brings him down, a Menghu attacking him because he’s wearing a City uniform. Something hard presses through my shirt into my ri
bs as I hug my sides.
The knife. Stuck in my hand as if it’s been burned into the skin.
It’s heavy, heavier than the Menghu’s hands, which are now creeping toward Howl’s throat, heavier than the night sky pressing down on me so I cannot breathe. The two of them blur together, a swirl of violent energy as Howl tries to squirm out from under the Menghu’s grip.
I could just run. Back to Tai-ge. Up to where June is supposed to be, to our packs under that blasted tree.
The thought tastes like acid, bitter on my tongue. I have the encryption key. I don’t need Howl anymore.
Another shout goes up from a few aisles over, boots headed in our direction. Tossing all my thoughts aside, I shove the knife into my pocket and sprint toward Howl, crashing straight into the Menghu’s back. My fingers snag in her braid, and I wrench her head back with one hand, tearing at her stranglehold around Howl’s throat with the other. His gas mask lies on the ground next to us, limp and tangled like a dead animal.
Howl’s eyes connect with mine over the woman’s shoulder, and I throw my weight to the side, surprise bringing her down on top of me, so Howl can get an arm around her neck.
We leave her unconscious in the middle of the muddy path between tents, Howl’s sweaty fingers slipping against mine as we run, the beehive of shouts and activity shrinking down to nothing as the dark reaches out to embrace us.
CHAPTER 22
THE SNOW IS COMING DOWN heavy again. Howl and I don’t speak until the dark has curved around us, nothing left but the calm swish of the river washing down the mountain.
“Why didn’t anyone at the gates stop you?” I croak, finally breaking the silence. “No one thought you were a traitor, or kidnapped or . . . anything.” I wish I could pretend this was all Howl’s fault, but this is one blame I can’t put on him. “You’ve been gone for days. Don’t they notice when you disappear?”
“I was with the Chairman.” Howl doesn’t look at me, though I wouldn’t have been able to see his expression in the dark anyway. “We stopped at a camp near your trading post and he told me I couldn’t go wherever it was he was headed. That he’d come back for me when . . . something was settled. It’s only been a few days, and things are so disorganized, I thought I could bet on lower ranks not knowing where I was supposed to be.”
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