I nod, keeping my eyes on the snow at my feet. Every swallow hurts, and my head still feels hot, as if touching it will ignite my hair into a blazing torch. Tai-ge is back there, a gun to his head. June is . . . Where is June?
“You weren’t meeting back up at the heli?” Howl pauses, his outline looking back at me. “Or were you? There’s absolutely no chance they didn’t see us land. It’s not safe to go back there. June should have known better. . . .”
“Yes, all of us knew better.” My throat constricts, as if the jagged zipper endings cut straight through it when the Menghu woman was choking me. I leave my jacket flapping open, unwilling to have the zipper anywhere near my throat, even if it means snow wetting my front. “We’re meeting at a spot on the river.”
I almost miss the outcropping of rocks with the tree grasping for purchase above them, but Howl stops to listen at a turn in the river just beneath it. When he nods for us to go on, I point up to the tree. But when we climb up over the rocks, there’s no one there.
“Hu! Hu, huuuu!” The owl is close by, his ghostly call falling heavy on my shoulders. Dig. Death. Graves.
Howl doesn’t seem to notice, pulling Tai-ge’s pack out from under the rock, then mine and June’s. Inspecting them like everything that happened was part of some plan, down to the zipper teeth marks on my neck. As if all his emotions have been extracted and replaced with gears and flashing lights. He extricates June’s waterskin from her pack, takes a drink, then sits cross-legged on the ground.
When I don’t follow suit, he looks up at me, my knees locked, my whole body tense. “I’m sure she’ll be here soon,” Howl says. “Then we can go back for Tai-ge.”
I walk over to the tree’s trunk, as far from Howl in this little bit of shelter as I can, and sink to the ground with my legs curled up to my chest. I rest my cheek on my knees, and tears start even as I order them away, hot as they drip down my face to freeze against my pant leg.
Howl doesn’t say anything, the two of us alone in the claustrophobic dark, muted cracks of gunfire still echoing through the night.
• • •
When light leaks in through my eyelids, I’m surprised to find them closed. Even more surprised that I’m warm, and the light is coming from a concentrated area, as though I’m somehow in a cave. Sitting up sets bells ringing in my head, pain and bone-heavy fatigue settling like a fog that winds tight around me. My scalp brushes the ceiling overhead, and I flinch down, putting a hand up to feel it. Where am I?
The ceiling gives when I touch it, but not easily, as if it’s been weighted down. A rough, weather-treated fabric. One of the tarps, now covered with snow. I’m right where I was before, in the outcropping of rocks with the packs, only Howl has rigged us a ceiling. Found me a sleeping bag.
Daylight slinks through a narrow opening to my left, painting the gnarled roots of the owl’s tree. Something moves to block the opening, and I scuttle back as far from it as I can, my legs tangled in the soft bunches of a sleeping bag. The person blocking the light crouches down, and I catch a glimpse of black hair, the City seal. A single red star pin. Howl.
Only a few months ago I was in the same place. Outside. Running. With Howl. But now it’s backward, a puzzle with all the pieces jammed together wrong. Instead of running from the people who tried to kill me, I’m running with one. Instead of escaping to keep Tai-ge’s head from the chopping block next to mine, I left him there to save my own neck. I put a hand to my forehead, the images from last night blocking out Howl’s outline, a hunched blot of darkness choking the light. Tai-ge with his arms bound, telling me to go. Howl with a Menghu’s hands around his throat like a necklace. Me running from Tai-ge. Me helping Howl.
You had to help Howl. You couldn’t have saved Tai-ge right then. If Howl’s survival clause is aligning his goals with yours for the moment, isn’t it good that he’s here with you? Who better to break Tai-ge out of Dazhai?
But then I have to stop thinking, Dazhai a chasm in my brain. Gunshots, blood. Bodies. My whole body starts to shake again.
Howl finishes whatever he was doing and comes the rest of the way into the shelter, sitting across from me. “Awake?” he asks.
I shiver as the shadows twist around his face. He followed you into the camp, I think. Brought you to the key. If all he wanted was the cure, he’d have taken the key and the maps and left. But then I can’t keep myself from continuing down that road: If all he wanted back at the Mountain was for you to die, you’d be an ash-choked gust of wind by now. Admitting that Howl might have done something good makes the dead coals of hope inside me want to reignite. To believe that somehow there’s an explanation for all the lies Howl has told me.
But there’s no place for wishes like that. There never has been.
My voice croaks painfully as I try to find words. “Has June come back?”
“Not yet. We were able to go straight to the river. If something happened and she had to circle around . . .” His outline gives away no hints as to what he’s thinking or feeling, his voice calm. “There’s no reason to worry yet. It’s only been a few hours.”
“No need to worry after a gunfight that might have started right in front of her?” I refrain from groaning as I lean back against the tree trunk. Everything is sore, as if I were trampled by a horde of Sephs. I reach up to touch my neck, but then stop, unable to make myself face whatever damage has been done. I’m alive. Breathing. That’s all that matters. “You said the shots started up on the rice terraces.”
Howl’s outline nods. “I didn’t want to leave you here alone. If you’re feeling okay, I’ll go see what I can find. Dodging Reds shouldn’t be too difficult.”
“Find . . . what?”
“I know where June was supposed to be when the fighting started, that she made it to your bomb. . . .” He gives an appreciative nod, as if a bomb is something to be proud of. “Maybe I’ll be able to figure out where she went. And I can look into where they’re most likely to be holding Tai-ge so we can start planning. He has the key, I’m guessing?”
I try to swallow down the hitch in my throat, but it won’t go. I’m acutely aware of the key pressing into my leg where it sits in my pocket. Maybe Howl would have left with the maps and everything else if he knew the key was right here within reach. Putting my hands casually at my sides so I don’t give it away, my fingers curl around something hard and felted on the ground. Something sharp pricks my skin as I pick it up only to fling it away. An owl pellet.
“June knows how to handle herself,” Howl says. “So does Tai-ge. If anyone recognizes him, they’ll keep their hands off until the Chairman or whoever is in charge of the Reds has had a say. We have time.” He sits forward, light zigzagging across his face before I can catch his expression. “There’s no reason to think the worst until it’s happened.”
I nod slowly. “How is it possible there are Menghu down there? You know the Chairman. What does Dr. Yang have on him to make him obey?” Something about a photograph.
Howl doesn’t answer for a second, memories from last night crowding in to fill the silence. The way the Menghu bent under me as I pulled her hands away from Howl’s throat, the feel of her hair tearing under my fingers. It’s not like I’ve never had to hurt someone. I did more than once last night. And I would again for Tai-ge, for June. For Lihua and Peishan.
But for Howl?
It’s okay not to want anyone to get hurt, Sev. Including Howl. The thought seems almost whiny in my head, like I have to justify the fact that I saved Howl even though he’s put me in harm’s way. But even I know it isn’t a matter of stopping an act of violence because it was right in front of me. I helped him hurt that Menghu, whoever she was, to make sure he was the one who survived the fight. I don’t need him anymore, but I couldn’t leave him there either.
What is wrong with me?
“I know the Chairman likes shaved ice with mango.” Howl’s voice surprises me from my thoughts. “And honey in his tea. But that’s about where it ends, Sev.” H
e leans against the cave wall, his head tipping back. “I wouldn’t have walked into Dazhai so confidently if I’d known Dr. Yang would be there. I wonder if that’s why the Chairman left me . . .” His voice stalls, and he moves deeper into the cave, out of the glare of light, his gaze suddenly focused on his hand. There’s a purplish glow teasing his features, leaving his eyes and high cheekbones shadowed and skull-like.
“What are you doing?” I ask. But I know. I can see the characters painted in light on the back of his hand. It’s a link like the one he gave me in the Mountain, a tiny mechanism that let us send messages to each other when I was trapped in Yizhi. Only I don’t know who’s on the other end of this one. He’s reporting.
I pick up one of the felted owl pellets, pulling it apart to find the poor creature’s leftovers inside. Before Howl can look up, I lunge forward, stabbing his hand with the sharp end of a bone. Howl flinches away, probably more in surprise than because of any damage the digested bone could do, but it’s enough to loosen his grip on the link a fraction, allowing me to grab it.
“Who is left for you to report to, Howl?” I ask.
The darkness has retaken his face, and the air seems to hum around us, as if all the violence I’ve expected to find inside him is about to come pouring out. I squeeze the link, expecting him to come at me, but he doesn’t move when the purple letters spill across the back of my hand.
Small contingent still holding East wing in Y. I look up from the message. Howl still hasn’t moved. “What does this mean?” I ask.
“You can look at the other messages. The ones I’ve sent out.” I recoil when he crawls toward me on his knees, but it’s only to point to the arrow pulsing at the corner of the display, just underneath my pinkie knuckle.
I touch the arrow and a column of messages appears, scrolling slowly up until it comes to the oldest, dated near after when I left the Mountain. It’s from Howl, his messages orange.
ETA three weeks. No tail. End count?
The response is purple like the one that first came up. Quarantine came too late. Mei contained, but others still at large. Emergency protocols aren’t going to be enough.
Mei? She contracted the new strain of SS at the Mountain. The contagious strain. I’m still not sure how she managed to start compulsing without any typical SS warning signs. She never fell Asleep.
Howl’s answer: Get out. I’ll double back.
Not leaving while I can still help. You bring back Jiang Gui-hua. It’s our only chance.
The next set of messages are just checking in to make sure whoever he is talking to is still breathing, and then there’s a gap. I glance up at Howl, still watching me impassively. It’s probably hard to send messages on a link when your hands are taped together. The messages resume early this morning.
The messages start with a demand from Howl: Tell me you’re alive.
Alive. Jiang Gui-hua?
Dead. It’s a message all by itself. Bleak and hopeless. The next one doesn’t come until hours later, as if Howl had to steel himself to ask for the report hiding behind that one word in the answer. Alive. I’m with Sev. Potential cure formula in the north. Mountain status?
The answer is the one that popped up when I first took it. Small contingent holding East Wing in Y. More of the message I hadn’t seen scrolls up. City invasion forces took most of the Mantis stockpile. No way to ID infected. Holed in emergency caches.
This is what’s happening back in the Mountain? A memory pierces my brain, Mei compulsing in the hospital room. The doctors back at the City seemed to think the contagious strain moved more quickly, more violently through its victims, but not without any symptoms at all. She slept so soundly the night we came back from the patrol that landed Kasim and Cale in the hospital. I couldn’t sleep at all.
Was it possible that she contracted SS not from Cale in her hospital room but before that? From the bomb we accidentally set off? Spreading it with every step she took?
My question is more difficult than it should be. “The Mountain is overrun?”
Howl’s head bobs up and down. “I guess we’re even. Our homes are both destroyed.” Pain bites through the sentence, breaking his voice. “One more thing we have in common. Family all killed off. Cured. Used. Exiled. And now, homeless.”
It’s the confession I wanted from before, from the moment I saw him tied up in the storage closet. Admitting who he is, that he lied. But the bald admission doesn’t make me feel better. His head and shoulders bow, and he looks ready to sink through the floor, to become a part of the scenery. To give up.
Human.
“How sure are you the cure is going to be at the end of this hunt?” he asks, voice so quiet it might as well be dead. “How much of a chance do we have?”
Anguish rushes through me like a sickness as I watch him bowed under the sad remains of what used to be his, tears welling up behind my hardened resolve. We are the same in ways that are hard to think about. Everything that mattered to us was stolen. Cursed by SS and then by the cure. I reach out and touch his ankle, the only bit of him close enough to reach.
Howl looks up, surprised.
“Sorry.” I pull away and twist my hands behind my back, not sure if it’s because I’m embarrassed that I touched him or because my attempt to help is so pathetic. Sorrys don’t do much, but I don’t have anything else to offer. “I don’t know about the cure. I’m only going on what my mother told me.”
He looks down again. “I’m sorry about what happened to her. I didn’t know she would die.”
The link buzzes in my palm, a new message appearing. Glad you found Sev. I’m not sorry for giving her a choice. Think before you do anything else stupid. Or irreversible.
The only person who gave me a choice was . . . “You’re writing to Sole?” How is that possible? She was the one who warned me about Howl. “Is she safe? Will she be able to get out?”
He sits up, craning his neck to see the new writing scrolling across my hand, purple light catching in his eyes. “I don’t know. She won’t leave while there’s a chance she can help people. Her birthday happened sometime while I was gone. It feels wrong that she should be in there instead of . . .” He clears his throat. “Twenty-eight years of living under that rock. What if she never comes out?”
An image of Sole’s shaking hands, the unsteady warble in her voice, whispers through my brain, the box of things she’d taken from the people she killed on her patrols with Howl. If it comes down to a choice between you and him, Howl will be the one that lives. No matter what he told you, this is who he is. Her testimony is what sent me running out of the Mountain as if there were a ruthless killer after me. Because I was half convinced there was.
And here she is, writing to him. As if he’s a person. Someone she cares about. She’s glad he found me? After telling me to run? If Howl’s done enough evil in the world that Sole thought I was better off alone Outside than with him, then . . . how does this fit in?
Is there a place in a human heart to love someone, to want good things for them, even if you know every terrible thing they’ve done? When you worry there are more terrible things in their future?
I look at Howl, the monster mask I’d so firmly fixed over his face already morphed into something I don’t understand, no matter how much easier it is to give him fangs and a gore’s flat eyes. My whole world, painted in bold blacks and whites, has now somehow been swabbed over with a discomforting and many-hued gray.
CHAPTER 23
I HOLD UP THE LINK, Sole’s message scrolling in purple across my hand. “This is why you followed us. Why you’re here. To get a cure back to Sole before it’s too late for her. To help the people at the Mountain.”
“No.” Howl meets my eyes. “I didn’t know about what your mother said until after I found you.” He holds his hand out for the link. I give it to him, watching as he reads Sole’s new message. He doesn’t look at me again.
“Why, then?” I hate the ugly hope uncurling inside of me. That it even exists wh
en the answer is so plain. Howl wanted to live and thought my brain held the cure, so Howl needed me. However human he may be, that’s the answer that will never change.
I want it to. I’m ashamed of how much I want there to be a different reason, but Howl doesn’t speak, the sun’s slow rise outside now diffusing light through the cave instead of pouring through like a spotlight. We can finally see each other.
“I didn’t expect your help last night,” Howl says quietly, a question lurking in the depths. “All fights are a risk, and I think you tipped the scales for me last night. Thank you.”
I clench my hands together, my fingers tingling where they touched him.
“Is your neck okay?” He comes closer, craning his head to look at the bite marks the zipper made in my skin. “What happened?”
“I’m fine,” I rasp. “You aren’t a medic, so gawking isn’t going to help anyone.”
He moves until he’s right next to me. “I can apply anmicro and tie a bandage just well enough to make you look ridiculous—”
“No. Thank you.”
“Okay.” Howl slides back to his place by the entrance, his feet extended in front of him. “I think . . .” He shakes his head as if he can’t quite grasp the right words for what he’s thinking. “I’m getting the vibe that we’re still stuck in that alternate reality where I was trying to kill you.”
The half accusation jolts through me, like falling facedown and naked in the snow. “You . . . don’t you dare try to pretend . . .”
“Pretend?” Something in his voice ignites over the word, as if Howl’s thin veneer of calm has cracked, leaving something raw and angry exposed. “You haven’t even asked what I wanted when I helped you escape the City or what my plan was. If you’ve got questions now, say them out loud, okay, Sev? Don’t just make the answers up and expect me to kneel for the punishment.”
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