Howl leans back, the hand less abused by the gore coming up to cover his face. I slide June down to the floor, relaxing my grip on her arms. She remains still, eyes closed like she’s asleep, her raspy breaths through the mask long and steady. Sliding a few inches closer to Howl, I put my hand on his back. I can’t watch anymore. Can’t let him sit through this alone. When my fingers press against his bare skin, he takes a long, shuddering breath that catches against his ribs and leans back against it. Against me.
Luokai flinches, eyes glued to my hand on Howl’s back. The way he’s focusing makes every inch of me buzz, waiting for something to happen. For him to lurch toward us, or to move away. Wondering if the compulsion will be violent or harmless. He doesn’t move, though, his straightforward gaze sliding from my hand on Howl’s back to thoughtfully meet mine. I feel as if he’s looking under my skin, examining all the pieces that put me together.
“There must not be very many like you here. Infected, I mean.” I clear my throat, inching closer to Howl. He turns away from Luokai and the dry, dead recount of his journey here, presented like a list of chores, easing toward me until he and June and I are all touching. “How else would you survive?”
“Speakers serve. We lead. Hand in hand with Baohujia. They protect, we advise.”
“Speakers? You mean . . . all Speakers are infected? Everyone in charge here has SS?” A clan of infected are ruling those of sound mind? Remembering the grip of the medicine-induced compulsion I had, the hallucinations, the difficulty distinguishing between reality and the nightmares my brain superimposed on the world around me . . . these are the people Port North chooses to lead? How can you rely upon a leader who may not see the world in colors and shapes, but rather as a monster he is fighting?
“Is that what I am? An ‘infected’?” Luokai raises his eyebrows, his voice a tinge too calm. “Am I some other species than you?”
“I didn’t mean . . .” My stomach sinks as I realize what it was I just said. What I’ve said all along. What everyone says. When I thought I was infected, I didn’t feel like a human being so much as a faulty gear in the City’s machine, something inside of me twisted so far amiss that I didn’t belong to them anymore. But that’s not the truth. Luokai isn’t “an infected” any more than I would claim to be the personification of the cure. Reduced to the lesions or lack thereof in my brain. I’m not a cure, a Fourth, a traitor, a Seph, or anything other than me. A person.
The fact that it never occurred to me to think of it that way hurts. “I’m sorry I said it that way.”
He smiles, nodding to accept the apology. “There are not as many of us affected by the disease here, it’s true.”
“You were looking for the Chairman’s son . . . so Port North will be able to stop the City kidnapping people out of range of your towers. Until the City finds a way to push them down, anyway.”
The look Luokai gives me sends goose bumps rippling across my skin. “What do you know about the towers?”
“I’ll tell you anything you want to know once Mother’s papers are in my hand.”
Luokai’s placid glance has gone steely, and he gets up from the floor. “Let’s go, then. I fear that I went to find your Chairman’s son and came back with something much worse.” He draws an aged breath that pricks the attention of the guard outside, her curly hair framing her face as the light streams through it.
Before she can step inside, the guard puts a hand out to lean against the doorjamb, her head lolling down against her chest. She tumbles to the ground, Luokai barely managing to catch her before her head cracks to pieces on the stone floor. He eases her down onto the floor just outside the doorway, his face solemn.
June tenses, suddenly solid as a statue. She very slowly puts a hand over the part of her mask covering her nose, as if every breathful of air is scribbled over in ink.
“What happened?” I untangle from June and Howl, scrambling to help. I heard no footsteps or helis, no gunfire. I wrap a hand around the girl’s wrist, grasping for a pulse, but there’s nothing there. Her chest lies still, one moment awake and alive, the next . . . gone.
I tip her chin back, meaning to breathe into her mouth, do chest compressions until the life flickers back into her eyes, but Luokai pulls me away. “It is too late, I’m afraid.”
Too late. My brain wants to explode, grasping for an explanation to fit what is happening right in front of me. Howl and June stay behind me, tense as statues. “How can you be so calm? Is it usual for people to spontaneously die?” I lean down, determined to help, even if he thinks it’s too late.
Luokai arranges the guard’s arms across her chest. “She’s Asleep, Jiang Sev.”
“Asleep?” I look up at Luokai, dread a deadly blossom in my chest. “She went with you to the mountains? You were exposed?”
Luokai shakes his head. “She wasn’t there. I couldn’t understand it until you mentioned the contagious strain.” He swallows, looking up and down the hall. “Baohujia protect me. And others, when I am not myself. The two who came with me to the mountains have already fallen ill. Into a coma of Sleep that lasted only hours instead of weeks. One woke showing the symptoms of compulsion. The other did not wake at all. Three other cases of SS have manifested since then. Baohujia who were assigned to be my companions.”
“You’re contagious?” Dread blossoms in a deadly flower inside my chest. “How can you be? You contracted SS a long time ago!”
Luokai gestures to the girl, every bit of her loose and relaxed as if it’s only a matter of time before she falls apart. “Do you have another explanation?”
I look back at Howl. “But we haven’t . . .” He gives a violent shake of the head, telling me to be quiet. If they know we’ve been cured, it will raise too many questions about what it is we want from Mother’s papers. Who would trade the cure for information about an invasion that supposedly won’t be able to get past their heli-killing towers?
I go back to June, hugging her close. Howl and I were both exposed to contagious SS. June is still well, though. Tai-ge never showed symptoms either, though they went without masks around us much of the time we were in the heli. Whatever cured SS in me and Howl must keep us from being carriers of the new strain, though Luokai is not so lucky.
Luokai focuses on me. “How long does contagion last? Have I been spreading it every moment since I got back here? The two who were with me are as well?”
I shake my head. “I’m not sure how long contagion lasts. We’ve been on the move, but I think I heard something like two weeks?” Dread creeps up and down my arms, the thick walls of the cell suddenly feeling like a shield as much as a prison. How long did it take for the Mountain to fall with Mei, the first contagious case of SS there, roaming free through its glass-and-stone intestines? And the City, turning from a few troubled blemishes of infection to a festering boil in the matter of a few days, sending our heli off with a snarl and complimentary bite marks. The new strain seems to be even more devastating, moving more quickly, finding the basest parts of the brain and exploiting them.
June’s wheezing breaths begin to speed up, her eyes ricocheting between Luokai, the hidden door, the blankets and pallet, the barred window, as if trying to find some sort of escape.
“We need to get out of here,” Howl whispers, his bandaged shoulder brushing mine. His voice is dead, sunken deep inside, as if his thoughts mirror mine, and after weighing every strategy, running is the only viable option.
I nod, trying not to think of what might be boiling up past our quiet hallway. Of the frenzy we left at the City. Howl knows better than I do, because I left him in the middle of it, two bullets lodged in his protective gear.
“You’d attempt to leave without getting what you came for?” Luokai cocks his head. “If your mother’s things were not so important to this war, you wouldn’t have risked coming here. Either of you.” Luokai’s eyes go back to Howl, a soft sort of longing hungry behind his expression. But he bows his head when Howl does not look back.
/> The image puts me in mind of another set of bowed shoulders. Sole, staring at the gore tooth, telling me it was Howl’s older brother who had given it to him. That she and he were . . . something. Before he’d contracted SS. Before her parents and her brother disappeared, leaving her with nothing but revenge and a gun.
Does he remember her? His life before? When I told him Howl was from the Mountain—before I said his name—Luokai seemed only to be made of judgment. Perhaps remembering a family that was supposed to belong to him but that banished him to die instead.
“You must come with me, Jiang Sev,” Luokai finally says, scrubbing a hand across his closely cut hair, pressing his lips together, and it’s as if I can see Howl inside him, peering out, only he’s all stress and no swagger. “I’m afraid contagion adds another level of complication to the conversation we must have with Gao Shun.”
I draw June close to me again, her body still limp, Howl bent over the two of us in a way that’s more frightening than the gore’s teeth marks under his bandages. “Give us a moment. This adds a level of complication for us as well.”
Luokai narrows his eyes at me as if he’s waiting for something. For me to cover my mouth, throw my arms up in panic at being in the presence of an infected breathing his sickness into the air. At least Howl and I are safe. “There are quarantines being set as we speak,” he says. “I’ll give you the time it takes me to find new Baohujia willing to accompany me.”
My stomach drops when he stops at the door, contemplating the metal strip in the wall, one hand creeping up to touch the side of his mouth. “You’re going to spread SS wherever you go,” I say. “Would a mask keep it in?”
“I don’t believe masks work that way. And even if it were possible, you already have two fewer than you need.” Luokai’s smile is blank, though he does glance at June. She shrinks toward me, making herself small, hands still splayed over her mask. “We must move forward, trusting that our future will not be cut short so long as we do not allow it to be.”
Allow it to be? A chill of memory needles through me. Of worrying whether or not SS had left me enough to even claim humanity anymore. Of watching the way people’s eyes glossed uncomfortably past me to look toward the Sanatorium, of Tai-ge’s wall between us and thinking it was justified. I take a deep breath, trying not to draw a line between me and Luokai. “You don’t believe SS will cut it short for you?”
Luokai pauses on the other side of the open door, his loose robes wisping around him like a butterfly’s wings. “SS may visit me during unguarded moments, but it does not choose who I am or what I become, Jiang Sev. I am not my sickness. Life is a series of choices and opportunities, not a line of blocks to stumble over.”
“You say that as if SS isn’t about to swallow Port North whole.”
“Even the sickest of men can see the good in his life. It is a choice.” Luokai smiles at me once, his eyes flicking to Howl and back again before he reaches for the panel to shut the door. “Everything is a choice.”
CHAPTER 48
HOWL DOESN’T MOVE AFTER THE door shuts behind his brother, as if even the afterimage of Luokai’s presence is too much for him. Arm cradled against his bare chest, he almost seems to teeter toward me, the weight of him leaning into my shoulder feeling like some sort of concession. June huddles close on my other side, the three of us connected, as if somehow that will force the universe to right, the prison doors to open, and Mother’s cure to unroll itself at our feet.
It’s like the family I wanted so much to find here. A circle of protection, each of us leaning on the other.
“Can I help you, Howl?” I whisper, the spot where he’s touching me seeming too warm.
Howl pulls away from me, straightening his spine one vertebrae at a time, a sort of rabid energy replacing the dejected slump to his shoulders. He looks around the room, each movement a quick jerk that reminds me of June’s caged panic, first eyeing the narrow window, and then the metal strip marking the door. “What’s on the other side of that?”
“A hallway. A very long drop straight into the ocean.” I nudge June over, settling her onto the floor with her back against Howl’s leg, and go over to the pallet. “Food that smells as if it’s meant to be consumed by nostril rather than mouth.”
“Help me think. What did you see on your way here? Windows . . . any way out?” He watches as I pull the ragged blanket up and hold it up to the light, breath stuttering over the soft, tangy scent of whatever medicine is on Howl’s wounds, clean linen, and a pleasant sort of undertone that I know belongs to Howl himself. It only takes a moment to find a rip in the threadbare fabric and tear a long strip free from the blanket. “Come on, anything could help.”
“You just found your dead brother.” I kneel in front of Howl, but he won’t look at me, the tattered fabric light in my hands. “You don’t need a moment to think it through?”
“Rather than plan how to survive this?” He rocks to the side and almost falls over, as if he meant to leap to his feet and overbalanced instead.
“We have to talk to Gao Shun before we go anywhere. She has Mother’s papers.” She might be the one Mother gave them to. Gao Shun might belong to me. I breathe deep, itching just to see her, to see if I can draw lines between us.
“Having them and giving them to us are two different things.”
Howl is probably right to doubt, but he’s not going to be able to do anything at all if he doesn’t stop moving around. I go up onto my knees, holding the fabric I tore from the blanket out. “Hold still, would you? The more you move your arm, the more pain you’re going to be in.”
For a moment I think he won’t obey, hectic energy streaming from him like sweat. But I don’t move, meeting his eyes full-on, refusing to budge. Finally, he nods, letting me loop the strip of fabric around his wrist and knot it behind his neck, though his momentary stillness is nothing like submission. The makeshift sling barely reaches around his arm and up to his neck, my fingers tracing the lines of his neck and shoulders as I tie the sling tight.
“Thank you.” He adjusts his arm. The pained, lopsided set to his shoulders doesn’t exactly straighten, but I can almost feel him relax a hair. He takes deep breath, still staring toward the door. “I can’t . . . process Luokai right now. What are our options? Do we have any resources?”
“Just what is here.”
“And Tai-ge? The heli is probably our best shot to get away from here, and he’s the only one who knows how to fly. Do you know where they took him?”
“No.”
Howl shifts to the side, frustration setting his jaw in an angry line. “You don’t know? Or you don’t want to say it out loud?”
Tai-ge’s face swims up in front of my eyes, the argument about the cure and his mother and Reds and Menghu and Howl . . . and then Howl’s hand touches my arm, an anchor when I’m drowning in air.
He tries to catch my eye, but I won’t look. “Tell me.”
I turn away so I don’t have to see that awful mix of patience and sympathy in Howl’s eyes, as if somehow my heart should be bleeding out through my chest.
If it is, I can’t feel it. I can’t feel anything but numb. Off-balance, perhaps. Empty, even.
I should be sad. My best friend is dead.
Maybe I am sad. But the way it happened cauterized the wound, sealing the rot and hurt inside. I knit my fingers together, feeling the blank space where I wore that stupid ring. It wasn’t even his ring. It was a ring I made for myself and assigned to him, the rusty metal staining my skin until I put it on my necklace of pasts. I’ve known my whole life what Tai-ge was. It’s like Xuan said. If he’d wanted me, all he would have had to do was ask. But he didn’t ask until there were no other options, until I’d already cut all the nerves that led back to him.
It was bad enough to have only thought of Howl when Tai-ge kissed me. But worse is the wrongness inside me that finally feels right. As if the last bits of wire and twine binding me to the City have now been ripped free.
�
�I know you two are . . . close. I’m sorry. . . .” His voice is soft, eyes searching my face. “Talk to me, Sev. Let it out.”
I blink, waiting for tears or panic or anger or anything at all, but everything just feels empty and dead. “There’s nothing to let out, Howl. He was . . . he was talking to the Reds.” I try to swallow the words down, but they vomit out of me, my whole chest and throat straining to keep the burning bile down. But at his expression, I take a deep breath and look down. “Tai-ge was talking to the Reds the whole time.”
Howl’s eyes widen. “So I was . . .” He presses his lips together.
“You can say you were right. You were.” I smooth my hair back behind my ears, nose wrinkling when the uneven strands fall right back into my eyes. “I think he wanted to believe that we could find the cure and stop the fighting somehow. But when it came down to it, he didn’t have the faith in me. Or in himself. He couldn’t see past the City walls.” Saying it out loud feels as if I’m admitting something. Something I didn’t even want to admit to myself. Tai-ge didn’t trust me. He thought I wasn’t smart enough or capable enough to listen to, even when I had more information than he did. That so long as he was safe, he assumed the rest of us would be too. “They don’t take Reds prisoners here.”
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