“I’m planning on it, actually. All shady motivations out in the open. When we find the cure, I’m taking it straight back to Sole.” He stares straight back at me, unblinking. “But I’ll take you and June with me. Even Tai-ge, if my interpretation of what’s going on with the heli is wrong. I’m with you in thinking everyone who needs the cure should have it, City, Outsider, and Menghu.”
The part of me that has been wondering what under the Chairman’s weeping sky we will be able to do with the cure once we find it perks up at the thought. Sole’s a medic. She’s used to working with scavenged materials, doing things in the field when the stakes are high. Keeping secrets. And she doesn’t hold loyalty to the Mountain or the City. If she did, she’d never have helped me leave the Mountain in the first place. If Sole survives whatever mess is going on where she is now, she might be our best hope at giving the cure to anyone who needs it without becoming political.
I nod slowly. “Okay. But I have two provisions.” I mimic his placid tone. “If we take it to Sole, I want to nail down specifics about who knows we’re there, who works on it, how to get materials . . .”
“We’ll come up with something that works for all of us. We can’t afford to be on any side here. No one deserves to spend their lives wondering if compulsions are better than bowing to whoever has the cure.”
I start to roll my eyes, but he holds my gaze. Both of us know what it’s like to have our lives in someone else’s hands because of who we are. Not being in control of where we live, who our friends are, whether or not we die.
The thought actually helps, my reservations fading a degree or two. “Okay. The other thing is, I need the first working dose. I have to take it to Lihua.”
“Who?” Howl glances at June when she gives an approving nod.
“She’s a little girl, she’s infected, and she’s going to get thrown out of her tree house if we can’t help her. Soon.”
“I like tree houses.” Howl nods and sticks out his hand. “I’ll take it to her myself if you need me to.”
I hesitate for one more second, staring at his open palm. But then I take his hand and we shake. His hand is warmer than mine. Rough with calluses, and much less slimy than I was expecting.
“Done?” June rolls her eyes and starts off.
“Wait.” Howl stops me when I turn to follow her. “If I’m in this group, then I’m in. My opinions matter. I get to ask questions about whether or not Tai-ge might be a risk. No one gets to threaten to abandon me in the middle of nowhere or lock me in a stuffy closet again. Or try to shoot me.” He glances meaningfully at June.
“Try to shoot you?” June looks back at him, a hand on her hip.
Howl rubs a hand across his chest where the bullets hit his protective gear back in the City, the moment of seriousness sliding off his face. “Are you going to be the comic relief now? I thought that was Sev’s self-appointed job.” He starts walking, the three of us moving along the ledge that juts out over the river. “In fact, could that be another provision? If we’re all going to do this together, then I demand entertainment.”
“If you promise to use all of your magic Menghu powers to get Tai-ge and the heli back in one piece, I promise to make you laugh until your head explodes.” I start walking, my mind already skating forward, wondering what we’ll find ahead. If Tai-ge could be a threat. I don’t want to think it. But the thought was in my head before Howl spoke, like a seed already planted, just waiting for a little nurturing to sprout.
“That’s my girl. Entertaining and threatening.” Howl isn’t done, apparently. “Though that sounds kind of messy. Maybe just until my nose bleeds?”
“You call me your girl again and I’ll show you blood. I’ll go find a gore and shove your head in its mouth.”
Howl laughs. Not a real, from-the-gut, wholehearted sort of laugh. But not a courtesy laugh either.
It’s funny. Howl deciding that I’m joking sort of makes me want to laugh too.
CHAPTER 26
MY FEET ARE SOAKED THROUGH by the time the craft is visible through the snow-laden trees, light reflecting in a white-hot flare from the uncovered propellers to each side of the cockpit. There are two sets of footprints pointing straight toward it, and none leading away.
“Still looks like it’s Tai-ge and one other Red,” Howl whispers, nodding to the snow turned up around the heli. “And . . . get down!”
Howl, June, and I fall back, finding trees to put between us and whoever it is walking under the heli’s belly. The man’s bare head is shaggy with hair pointing in all directions. Definitely not Tai-ge. June keeps her eyes on the coat-thick form for a few seconds before she looks at us. Not a soldier, she mouths.
Howl nods and gestures for us to move forward. I stand there for a second, not wanting to obey. If Howl is part of our group, then who is in charge now? Before, when it was the three of us headed toward the Mountain, it was easy to fall in line. There was no reason to question one another or argue exactly what we were going to do down to finer points. Howl knew where we going and understood what needed to happen, so I followed.
That is no longer the case.
But I don’t know how to assault people who have taken up residence in my heli, so I go in the direction Howl indicated. June pulls out the gun she took from the Red on the rice terraces and offers it to Howl, but he shakes his head and pulls a knife from his pocket. My knife. When did he take that back?
Now’s probably not the time to be annoyed about it.
When Howl looks at me, I hold up the can of inhibitor spray I had in my pack. The last one we have. He nods, then creeps off into the trees, circling around to the back of the heli. June does the same, dodging from snow-covered rock to rough tree trunk until she’s on the far side of the craft. I start in from my side, attempting to keep out of sight.
Whoever this man is, June’s point about him not being a soldier has been made. If he has a gun, it’s hidden under one of the many layers zipped to his chin, and he doesn’t even look up when June scampers by.
I tense as he begins grappling with his outer coat, pulling and cursing until . . . something. Squinting, I try to make out what he’s so upset about, only to look down in embarrassment.
He’s peeing in the snow. Right by the heli. Ew.
Because I’m looking at my feet, I miss it when Howl darts forward. The Red shouts as he falls, but by the time I get there, he’s facedown in the snow, with however many pounds of Menghu Howl can claim on his back and a knife blade against his neck. June comes in from the side, her gun leveled at his head, and I fall into my place, inhibitor spray warm in my hand. Not that we need it.
“Okay!” The word comes out choked, the man gasping for air through his gas mask and coming up with snow instead. “You’ve managed to push me over. Now what?”
“Where are the rest of the Reds?” Howl asks calmly.
The Red squirms to the side, his gas mask pulling sideways as he tries to find air, though he goes still when the knife blade shoves harder against his neck. “Couldn’t you get off and we can talk this all out? I’m just a medic. There are rules about medics, aren’t there?”
“Kill them first?” Howl asks. “So they don’t undo all your good work?”
June nods solemnly, though I think Howl was joking.
“I was thinking more along the lines of letting me zip my pants before anything freezes off.” The Red gives a compressed sort of laugh, the squashed sound coming out as more of a cough. “It’s only me and Hong Tai-ge here. You’re his friends, right?”
I frown as he gasps down another breath, trying to pull his face out of the compacted snow under him. Tai-ge might outrank whoever this is, but he’s older than Tai-ge, and formality usually belongs to age. He continues, “I think he’ll be mad if you shoot me, and I’d rather not upset a Hong.”
“Where’s Tai-ge?” I walk to stand directly in front of the man. “In the heli?”
“I’m here!” The voice turns us all toward the heli’s hatch.
Tai-ge jumps down, not bothering with the ladder. He runs at me, and I can almost feel Howl tense, ready to throw me the knife, or rocket between me and Tai-ge before he can crash into me. But Tai-ge is laughing, the toes of his boots catching on the ice-crusted snow. He stumbles as he gets to me, throwing his arms around me, a smile almost cracking his face in two. “Yuan’s spinster sister, I was so worried! I didn’t know if they’d found you or if it was even possible you were still alive . . . !”
I drop the spray and hug Tai-ge back, my arms slipping against his voluminous coat. Holding as tight as I can, as if somehow it won’t be real, that my friend, whole and well before me, will turn to smoke if I let go. The dusting of ice on his coat freezes against my cheek and his gas mask filter presses an awful mesh pattern in my temple. But I don’t care. Tai-ge’s alive, he’s not in trouble, and we’re back together.
The owl was wrong. No, the owl didn’t do anything but sit in its nest, unhappy to have teenagers take residence under her nest. Fear has colored my thoughts a little too brightly, until I couldn’t see anything but spirits and ghosts. It was just an owl.
Pushing back from Tai-ge’s hug, I look up at him, his cheeks ruddy with the cold. “Why are you here? I thought we agreed to meet at the packs.”
“It’s a long story, I—”
Both of us look up as Howl swears. “Put it down, June.”
Howl has pulled the medic up from the snow, the man’s gas mask hanging askew to reveal an awful, patchy-looking beard that clings to his chin in a rather unconvincing sort of way. Flecks of snow stick to the medic’s cheeks and eyebrows, making it look as though he just came from a rather involved banquet that prominently featured powdered sugar. It’s hard to tell under the snow, but I’d guess he’s somewhere in his late twenties, at least ten years older than I am.
And then I see June. She’s standing just where she was before, her face icy white as her eyes rake the medic’s features over. The gun is shaking in her hands, its nose still pointed directly at the Red’s head. Her finger squeezes against the trigger, only a fraction of a movement away from blowing a hole in him and Howl both.
CHAPTER 27
PANIC TRILLS THROUGH ME AS I run toward her, the thought that SS might have snuck through little June’s mask and taken hold of her twisting my stomach into knots. When I get her, she jumps, skittering back like a rat caught amid the millet bags. It isn’t SS peering out through her eyes, taking hold of her arms and legs to do its bidding. She’s afraid, the gun wavering back and forth between me, the sky, the medic, and Tai-ge, as if the quiet, happier girl I’ve been watching the last few weeks just came out of a coma and is now someone else.
“June, why don’t you give that to me?” I take one step closer and her gaze climbs up to my face. Her shoulders slump and the gun falls down to her side. When I close the distance between us, she doesn’t flinch away, though it isn’t easy to untangle her fingers from the gun’s trigger.
“What’s the matter?” I ask.
June doesn’t move for a moment, her hands shaking at her sides as if she means to grab the gun back, attack the medic where he’s kneeling in the snow, or perhaps just explode. Instead, she turns and walks toward the heli, gaining speed with each lurching step. Dodging the ladder, June runs underneath the heli’s torn belly and out into the trees beyond.
“Hey!” The medic’s voice steams up, and I turn to find Howl pushing him over, brandishing the knife. The man rolls onto his knees, his pants thankfully zipped as far as I can see, his hands raised over his head. “I already said I give up, man. Really not good at knives until after they poke holes in people.”
“How does June know you?” Howl asks. I hate the coldness in his voice—and that I feel an echo of it in myself as I wait for the answer.
“I’ve never seen that girl before in my life.”
Tai-ge steps toward them. “It’s okay. This man is my friend. His name is Chen Xuan. He came to help us.”
“Help us do what, exactly?” Howl’s voice is a shade too quiet.
“I . . . I know about the city north of here. The one they’re going to invade.” Xuan stutters as he gets a clear look at Howl’s face for the first time. He keeps his hands in the air. “Say, you aren’t contagious, are you? Running around out here without masks?”
“SS isn’t going to be a problem for you if you don’t give me a good reason for you being here.” Howl doesn’t raise his knife any higher, but it feels as if he’s standing on an edge, waiting for an invitation to jump.
“We don’t have time for vetting at the moment.” Tai-ge walks to Xuan’s side and pulls him up from the ground. “We have to get in the air before—”
“Tai-ge,” I interrupt. “Explanation. Right now.”
Tai-ge’s eyes widen at my tone. “If the scouts found the heli, they didn’t make it through the shooting last night to tell anyone. It’s safe to take it. Unless Reds followed us out of the camp, in which case we need to—”
“No, Tai-ge, explain that.” I point the butt of the gun toward the medic.
Tai-ge gives a harried shrug. “You need to know now? Okay, okay.” He almost looks as if he’s about to put his hands up in the air as well. I lower the gun, though the business end isn’t pointed at anyone, wondering what exactly my face looks like to make Tai-ge back down so quickly. “I told the Seconds everything. That I needed to get to Port North.” His hands go even higher when I narrow my eyes at all of our secrets being laid out for the Reds to see. “They know about the cure already, Sev. The whole camp heard about it during the meeting. Xuan heard from the soldiers who captured me what I’d been saying, and he came to me. He knows about Port North, Sevvy. He knows where we need to go.”
“Things aren’t going well in the camps,” Xuan breaks in, keeping his eyes on the knife blade still pointed at him. “It doesn’t take a First mathematician to see how many masks there are and how much Mantis is left, and divide by how many people were there were at Dazhai. Not to mention the . . . odd behavior we’ve seen from the Chairman. The way he’s been buzzing in and out of the camp . . . something’s not right. I figured my chances were better with Hong Tai-ge than with the rest of the Seconds.”
I blink, trying to weigh the deluge of information against June running away at the sight of him. Howl looks from Xuan to Tai-ge, and for a moment I think the knife might switch targets. “Why did you come here, then? Why not back to the packs? How are we supposed to trust that the new General and the Chairman both aren’t listening to this entire conversation?”
“I won’t tell him if you don’t. At least not if you let me get back on the heli.” Xuan swallows, his eyes wide on the single red star still pinned to Howl’s coat. He attempts a smile, voice taking on a jaunty sort of tone. “Last I checked, the Chairman’s family wasn’t supposed to be so interested in razor blades. I’d bow, but . . .” He shrugs, his hands still half-raised.
Tai-ge gives Xuan a push toward the ladder, facing off against Howl. “This is ridiculous. Just because the camp is on lockdown doesn’t mean they aren’t going to send someone out looking for the heli again. Resources are spread thin, if I’m not mistaken. We have to move fast. I didn’t want to scare Sev by showing up with a Second at the packs. I wasn’t even sure if she was alive.” He looks at me, crinkles between his brow barely lifting when he catches my eye. “I was going to go back for the maps, just me, and hope that Sev was hiding there. But now I don’t need to, and none of this is going to matter if we get patrollers out here before we lift off.”
I take a deep breath, looking at his face. Tai-ge never could lie. But even if every word out of Xuan’s mouth is the truth, it doesn’t change that June seems to want to stake him through the eyes. “Okay.” I avoid looking at the medic, not sure how to untangle things. The explanation makes enough sense that I’d rather not continue discussing it with Reds ranging out from the camp. “Okay. Let’s go. We can figure out the rest in the air.”
Howl’s face is too blank to be a real reaction,
doubt rising off him like a smoke screen.
“Good.” Tai-ge lets out a deep breath, clapping Xuan on the shoulder and leading him toward the ladder. “We’ve got the key; we’ve got someone who knows what’s on the ground.” He does a double take when Howl starts after them, pointing at the knife in Howl’s hand. “Is that mine?”
Howl glances at me, waiting until I nod at him to lower the knife before he does so, though he doesn’t surrender it into Tai-ge’s outstretched hand. He gives an exaggerated smile and gestures for Xuan to go up the ladder, waiting until Tai-ge follows him up before sheathing the knife and pocketing it.
When he looks at me, the smile is gone. He points down at June’s footprints, stark and raw in the snow. “You’re easier to talk to.”
I nod in agreement. “I’ll go after her. What are the odds Xuan is telling the truth?”
Howl starts up the ladder. “I’m going to say miniscule.”
“You believe Tai-ge, though?”
Stopping, Howl looks down at me, his lips pressed tight together. Then crawls in the hatch.
Nerves flutter deep in my belly at leaving Howl alone with Tai-ge, but then I let go of the thought. We’re working together now. Howl put the knife away when I asked. Keeping the heli is too much of an advantage to let go of, and it was Howl who said Tai-ge would be left out of any murder sprees so he’d have a reliable pilot.
That’s going to have to be enough for now.
June isn’t far, her tracks undisguised and leading straight to the tree she’s sitting beneath, only a few back from the clearing around the heli. She fiddles with her coat as I approach and stares down into the snow.
“June?” I ask. “What’s the matter?”
She glances up, just a flash of green before planting them straight back into the snow. Bone quiet. Like an empty skull, a doll dressed up in old clothes, but with no tongue to speak.
I kneel in the snow next to her and touch her arm. “How do you know that man?”
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