by Ann Denton
The old man laughed. And suddenly so did Ges. High. Slightly manically.
Mala glanced over at him, concerned. But Ges only had eyes for the scientist. And his face was suddenly flushed.
Oh. Insight came to Mala at once. Oh. Unfortunately, she was too busy watching Ges to notice that the scientist was now looming right over her.
“You’re new. Are you Mala?” His gravelly voice was commanding, demanding. She stared up at him.
He’s young! Younger than I thought. Maybe twenty? His chin's not weak like Verrukter's. I guess I can see the appeal for Ges. And hazel eyes ... Is he glaring at me?
“Are you … mute?”
He could not have asked a worse question. Though his tone had been more curious than insulting, he immediately struck a nerve with Mala and her hackles rose. “Do you have a problem with mutes?” Mala retorted, her teeth on edge.
“I have a problem with being ignored,” the scientist replied, crossing his arms. He turned away from her and addressed Ges.
“Is this her?”
Ges, still captivated, nodded.
“Why do you need to know?” Mala asked, her eyes icy. She refused to let this man intimidate her. Even if she had to tilt her head so far up to glare in his eyes that she felt like a three-year-old. What am I doing? This wasn't like her. She normally avoided confrontation. She tried to blend into the background. Maybe it was the mute comment. But something about this guy's arrogance got to her. Got under her skin. It was different from Verrukter’s self-absorbed arrogance or Neid’s generic disdain for the outskirts. It was more pungent. She could taste it. It made her want to strip him down a peg. Who is he to think he’s so special?
“Because you're the reason I just got pulled away from my research. To babysit a Kreis who doesn't know how to melt.”
How would this guy know that? Is that what Lowe’s telling people? Is that what Lowe thinks of me? The insecurities she’d been suppressing banged against her skull, desperate to be given voice. Only the smug stare of the man looming over her kept Mala together. “I know how—” Mala started to spit back, too late, but he cut her off.
“Right. That’s why my ecoresearch and our sanitation issues have been given the shelf. My lab. Sunrise. Day after your test. Don't be late.” He turned and strode off, his little old companion struggling to tail him and Ges's halfhearted wave dying before it had even begun.
Mala spun around to Ges, fury making her blood boil. “Who the hell was that?”
Ges was still wistfully watching the corner where the scientist had turned, as if he could wish him back.
“Ges ...” Mala snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Who was that?”
“Oh ... um. That was Ein. He's the head of the science department here. Remember the stairwell? He designed that when he was eleven. Eleven. He's pure genius.”
“Did you say pure arrogance? Cause that's what I heard. Is there something weird in the water here? Because it seems like I've been in for an amazing amount of ego today. Other than you—of course.”
“Mala—Ein's a total legend!”
“You are so love-struck you can’t even see—” A hand over her mouth muffled Mala’s voice. Ges’s eyes were wide, scared.
He called out so the hall could hear, “Starstruck maybe. He's like the most famous Typical ever.” But he bit his lip. His fingers on her mouth trembled a little.
Slowly, she pried them away. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know that you weren’t … telling people.” God, Mala! The one nice, normal-seeming person and you had to go and out him! Great job.
Ges stepped up and whispered in her ear, “Do you think anyone heard?”
Mala glanced up and down the hall. No one had come out of their rooms to gawk. “Well—they’re still all screaming and grunting at each other. So I would guess not. Look, I’m really sorry. If there’s anything I can do to make it up to you—”
“Tell me your secret.”
“What?” Mala took a step back.
“It’s a trade. How do I know you won’t go tell anyone else now that you know?”
“I wouldn’t!”
“How can I trust you?” The vulnerability, the desperation in Ges’s eyes made Mala’s heart clench. It was exactly how she felt about the slip she’d made to Lowe. What guarantee did she have that he wouldn’t let it slip? I mean, he told people I couldn’t melt, didn’t he? He had to … or that jerk Ein wouldn’t be assigned to me. But did he tell them …?
She just had hope, hope that he felt the same way about her, that his feelings would keep him from revealing the belief she’d harbored since the day her father died. Since the day the burning started. But she wasn’t sure Lowe did feel the same way about her. If it’s some recruiter side effect… some kind of pat-himself-on-the-back thing, it might not even be real. Or, I might have made it seem bigger than it is … because I needed the distraction. Because I didn’t want to think about what happened. Because I didn’t want to think about Mom. That self-doubt buzzed around in her stomach for a moment. And that terrible feeling, that worry that she might not be able to trust the person she most wanted to trust, made her decision easy. She had to trust someone.
“Okay,” she breathed, glancing up and down the hall. “Okay.” She took a step forward and bent to whisper into Ges’s ear. “I believe.”
Chapter Thirteen
“OH MY GOSH! ARE YOU KIDDING?” Ges’s reaction startled Mala. He was practically yelling, his words bounding back to them in an echo. He grabbed Mala’s hand. “This is the best thing ever. Follow me!”
Without another word, Ges scurried back to the mist and tugged Mala down three flights of stairs. When he stopped and opened a set of doors, Mala’s hair was plastered to her face. She pushed a dripping curl out of her eyes as Ges hustled her into a massive empty room.
“Hurry up, we can’t let moisture in here.”
Ges’s spiky head whipped past as he slammed the door behind her and pushed her toward a set of double doors two stories tall. The doors were glass, chiseled with a scene of fish and turtles and massive water creatures Mala had never seen.
“Drumroll.” Ges pitched his voice low and dramatic. But just as he was about to grandly open the doors, a very large backside pushed them open from inside. An old woman with a cart full of books backed right into Ges, knocking him down.
“Whoop! Sorry, honey,” the matronly woman apologized. “Oh, you brought a friend …” her voice trailed off as she looked at Mala. She gave a stiff bow and turned to Ges. “Better be quick. We’ve got a new data set to get out tonight.”
He nodded. With another bow in Mala’s direction, the old woman hobbled away.
“Okay, what was that?”
Ges shrugged. “Data set? We've got to put together a battle analysis for Tier—"
"That's not what I mean. What was with the bow?"
"Nothing. It’s just … you’re Kreis.”
Thanks for clearing that up.
Reading the sarcasm in her face, Ges explained, “You know how you asked what being Typical was? Well, basically everyone at the Center who’s not Kreis is Typical. There are approximately two hundred Kreis. Of those, there are only eighty-four active Kreis and about half of them are gone on a mission at any given time. Typicals are usually families of Kreis who make Ancient. Or people with special skills. And we know the truth about melting, so … we’re here.”
Mala caught something more in his tone. “You mean, they don’t let you leave?”
“Well … no. I mean, we do farm nearby and stuff. But not leave the way you mean. Think what a huge security risk that would be. Hey! Guess what? We’ve got a secret military trove of mutating assassins. Don’t think that would go over so well. And if the Erlenders found out? They already blame us for the world ending. Think that’s why we survived. Anyway, it’s no big deal. We’re happy to serve and all that …”
“Serve? As in servants?” Who would do that to their own family?
“Don
’t ever let a Typical hear you say that,” Ges’s eyes grew wide. “But there are a lotta Kreis who think that. Usually the ones who don’t last,” he added, with a note of satisfaction.
“Anyway, that’s so not important when I’m about to show you the most fabulous, amazing thing you’ve ever seen!”
Mala couldn’t resist. She arched a brow and asked, “Is it anything like the Costume Shop?”
Ges smacked her arm and led her into the archive.
Mala’s mind could only register one word as they stepped inside: massive. Six-meter stacks surrounded them on either side. Stored in towering metal racks were videos and books and maps, rows and rows of them. And the stacks moved on rails, stiff metal monsters with arms reaching as far as she could see. Mala saw one young girl turning a giant wheel to compress two sets of shelves in order to allow her to climb a third.
As they walked down the aisle, Mala realized that there was a circular opening in the center of the room, a giant hole in the floor and in the ceiling. She looked up: the opening continued to the floor above. It went down at least six floors below. The balconies at each floor had no rails, but were studded with ladders every meter, alternating up a floor and down a floor. Female archivists in hunter green wetsuits like Ges’s climbed up and down the ladders with packs strapped to their backs. One woman carried a shelf full of books tied to her spine. A second climbed with two rolled paintings sheathed like swords. She jumped midfloor from the ladder she was on to the one adjacent when someone started down the same route. Green suits bustled everywhere, swarming up and down the ladders, each with a purpose.
Ges watched Mala as he gestured to the room at large. “So this is where I live. The Anthill, we like to call it.”
Mala nodded but didn’t know what to say. She’d never seen anything like it. “There’s so much … paper.” She’d only kept a book on the boat for kindling when it was too wet to find good tinder outside. And here they had it stacked to the ceiling.
Ges smiled at her baffled face. “These are all the informative materials we’ve scavenged. Engineering, physics, chemistry … Instructions for how to build boats, bombs, airplanes …”
Mala’s jaw dropped. She’d used maps before, seen a video feed from Das Wort once. But that was it. In front of her, above her, below her, were the instructions to rebuild the world.
Mala touched a shelf, letting her fingers skim the spines of several books. She wondered if there were any instructions in this room for a thing her grandmother had called an air conditioner. Mala recalled how her grandmother’s voice had crackled, full of electric joy, as she’d described coming inside in the middle of summer only to feel to a cool fall breeze, lying down in the middle of the floor and fanning her hair out for the icy air. Mala had been young, four or five. She hadn’t been able to picture a cold house, an ice cube resisting the sun. Mala had thought it was magic. I wonder if it’s real.
Mala turned to ask Ges, but her question morphed into a shriek as she saw a young girl in a green wetsuit somersault right off the edge of the balcony. Mala ran forward, and only Ges’s arm kept her from toppling over. Two floors below, the girl calmly descended a ladder, eyes smirking up at Mala, as if she knew the panic she’d caused.
“Show-off,” Ges shook his head.
Wide-eyed, Mala turned to him. “That’s normal?” But even as her sentence ended, a body toppled upside down past their floor. Mala heard the thud as feet connected with a ladder a floor below.
Ges winked at her. “Don’t worry. I won’t be trying to get you to do it anytime soon.”
“Or ever.”
He shrugged. “It’s efficient. And fun. So anyway … you were about to follow me past this boring data-mine and into the realm of awesomeness.” He started steering her through the stacks, back to a dark, dim, rather shabby-looking section. After peering in both directions, he peeled an old map off the wall and revealed a small alcove behind it.
Mala followed him into the cramped cave. It was so full of piles of books and scrolls that she didn’t have room for her feet, much less room to sit, until Ges shoved a whole stack of books right under her legs and plopped her down.
Ges lit a lantern. “No electricity back here,” he explained, as he stacked his own seat below an aged photo of a man with a beard.
“Where are we?” Mala flipped open a few books to stare at their hazy black marks.
“We’re in the autobiography section. Or, as I like to call it, The Room of Possibilities. My grandfather,” Ges gestured at the photo, “started collecting them when he went out on missions. Some Kreis have helped over the years. A lot of times, I luck out when they send a new shipment of scavenged books …”
“What do you mean by possibilities?”
“Well. All of these books have one thing in common. They describe the lives of people who had experiences they couldn’t explain. Most of them are from right after the bomb.”
A thrill raced through Mala’s blood as he spoke. She stared at the books. An entire roomful of people wrote down things, weird things ... unexplainable things.
“Like being Kreis?”
“Exactly. But some are even beyond that.”
“What do you mean?” The hairs on the ends of her arms rose.
“Well. Some believe—Erlenders believe… but some other people too—that there was no bomb. Some think it was a curse.”
Mala inhaled. She’d heard mutters of curses. But, just like all of their charms for luck, it was something no one in the guard had ever openly discussed. And she’d never told anyone about how she thought she’d been cursed.
“Was it?” she breathed. Do they exist? That was the question she wanted to ask, but didn’t.
“That’s the extreme,” Ges continued, oblivious to the chill radiating down Mala’s spine. “Sometimes, there are things in life that don’t make sense. Or don’t mesh with what we’re told. And people make up different explanations. That’s just one. Like—example—there’s one guy after the bomb who kept opening the door to his house and seeing a different place every day. That’s a major one. Everyone called him delusional. But his daughter documented everything. And you know what Mala? The man was blind. The entire time. He was blind.”
“Blind?”
“You see the paradox, right? And people who found out couldn’t get past that. Both the reality of his blindness and his sight were something they couldn’t reconcile. They’d grown up hearing that you could be one or the other. Both was not a possibility for them. That’s not true in this room.”
Is he saying what I think? Is he saying it’s real? He hasn't used the word yet.
Ges was in his element. His speech sped up and his hands gesticulated furiously. “Or there’s a diary from a woman who noticed that every day she wore her father’s wedding ring on her necklace, she had a lucky day. More subtle, but far more relatable, right? Well, what about a woman who thought she was going crazy because her toddler kept disappearing on her? And shortly after that, she started seeing a man standing in the woods at night, at the edge of her yard—just watching her? Who would you group her with?”
“She probably had some kind of mental illness.”
Ges’s brown eyes blazed at that and he swung his freckled fist down onto a map, crushing it. “Really, Mala? You’re Kreis!”
“I’ve seen a lot of people with battle syndrome. Or paranoia.”
“Mala—you don’t think it was possible, her baby might have been Kreis? That her missing baby and the man in the woods might be the same person?”
It took Mala a second to picture the scene, of the toddler screwing up his face to cry and suddenly growing taller. A few days ago, if anyone had asked her that question, she would have laughed. But, that was before her entire guard had been massacred at the whim of a bald man who had changed into a child and back again. Before she lost her mother. Mala stared fiercely at Ges. It was a minute before she had her grief under control and could ask him the question she wanted.
“Do K
reis normally melt when they’re babies?”
“Is there anything normal about Kreis? No offense—but like you said earlier—they aren’t normal. They’re Rude-o with a capital R. But to answer your question—no. Puberty is a more typical onset. Some a little younger. Some later. But is it possible? To have a toddler transform?”
“Is it?”
"Did you?"
"I don't know ... my mother. She couldn't speak." The grief rushed back, quick and awful, punching the inside of her stomach black and blue.
Ges grabbed her hand and pulled her up. Her loss of balance pulled her back from the pit of despair but Ges's attempt to catch her only knocked both of them to the floor, legs splayed.
Ges ignored their compromising position, too intent on his discussion. “Well then it’s possible, isn't it? That you are one of the only living Kreis to transform as a baby. That’s what this room is all about. Asking that question. What’s possible? And the crazier it is, the more I try to resist the urge to shut down the judge-o-meter. I try to stay open. To search for the tiniest possibility.”
“But … why?”
“Because Mala. You said it yourself. You believe. Who else believes?” He stood too quickly, his feet slipping on a scroll. He grabbed Mala’s arms for balance, but leaned in for emphasis. “There’s a whole culture out there, fighting us day in and day out. And what do they believe in? Magic. Demons. Curses. Why? Are they all just crazy? The thousands of them? Or is there something else going on? What do they believe in, exactly? Everyone else here dismisses them out of hand. But is what they believe possible? … Is what you believe possible? I think it is.” His eyes glowed like copper pennies in the dim lantern light.
His fervent intensity, his innocence, everything about Ges drew her in. He believes. It was like a weight had lifted. Despite her grief, despite the fact that the loss of her mother was still a gaping, bleeding wound, Mala felt as if a burden had been lifted from her shoulders. For as long as she could remember, she’d hidden her hallucinations from the guard. Her belief she’d hidden even from her mother. Though people in the northern guard were known to have lucky rituals, and to play at magic, no one would ever admit to being a true believer. It was the ultimate betrayal. Only savages believed. Only Erlenders. But since the night she’d seen her father die, since the night that Erlender muttered an incantation over her before tossing her into the river, Mala had believed. For a long time, she’d believed that her hallucinations had stemmed from that moment. From what her four-year-old self had imagined to be a curse. It was illogical, she knew—particularly in light of everything Lowe had told her, but a childish part of Mala still clung to that belief. Maybe it’s been so long that I just don’t want to let it go.