I swallow—What’s he getting at?—and give him the only answer I have: the honest-to-goodness truth.
“She’s my sister, though we don’t share blood. My best friend, though the label’s too weak if you ask me. . . .” I pause, realizing it as I say it: “She’s the first person I ever loved.”
The governor nods, and wisps of his steely hair glint as the sun cuts through the glass. “I understand,” he says, and reaches for his cuffcomm. When he pushes a button on its side, an image is projected into the air. It’s not a hologram—the technology is older. Basic light projection. With no surface for the image to land on, I can barely make out what he’s showing me.
As if to catch the light, he raises his other hand. A picture takes shape in his palm. He’s holding it . . . her.
A woman.
Darker than I am, but not by much. Freckled. With fuzzy hair cropped close to her scalp. Not particularly beautiful, but she pulls you in with her grin—it’s on so wide, you can’t help but smile back at her. “Who is she?” I ask, but I think I know, from the press conference.
“Her name is Emilce Weathers,” he says, his voice going hard and detached all of a sudden. “She is HBNC positive, still contagious, and according to doctors, she has only weeks to live.” He pauses, then adds, “She is . . . my wife.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, weak, knowing from experience how useless it sounds.
Looking at her image, he smiles, but his eyes stay sad. “You know, she laughed at me when I first asked her out? Not unkindly, though . . . no. In a way that made it seem like she had life all figured out, and I must’ve missed the memo. I asked her why she refused, and she said, so simply, that it was because I was wearing a tie. She could not date someone who ‘chose to wear a noose.’ So I took it off in front of her, and never wore another one after that day.”
He drops his hand. All that’s left of Emilce Weathers’s image are the glowing light particles where her teeth would be. “She is the only person I would die for,” he says, and clicks off his cuffcomm.
I watch his face as he says that because I understand, and because I want to see what the words look like on someone else. At times I feel like I’m the only one who’d say that sort of thing, and mean it.
“And,” he adds, not looking at me, “she is the only person I would kill for.”
My stomach twists, recoils like a punch has been thrown—Is that a threat? There’s such edge to his voice. Layers of it. Brutal honesty, but also desperation. Powerlessness. If it is a threat, it’s the worst kind. Not direct, not even indirect. Volatile. As he sees fit, when he sees fit.
It makes me wonder about myself. If I would kill for Aven.
I don’t know, but I’m afraid of the answer.
Governor Voss stands and faces me, still on the bench. Looking down, he says, “So you see. I understand why you are here. Truly, I do. And you, in turn, must understand why I too am here.”
The spring . . .
I knot my brows and begin to shake my head, readying myself to lie, but the governor dismisses me outright.
“Please do me the courtesy of being forthright, Miss Dane. I saw the sample you gave to Chief Dunn. We both know that spring is more than just a freshwater source. I have done my homework. Miss Colatura was sick before she showed up at the Tank—the chief confirmed it. You gave her the water, not knowing what it was. She then experienced a brief recovery and, for reasons unknown to yourself, is now at death’s door.”
Slowly, I rise to my feet—looking up so high makes me feel small, and I can’t afford to feel small right now. “Reasons unknown to myself?” I say.
The governor reaches inside his jacket, into the breast pocket. Pulls out what looks to be a flip pocketknife, and something else I can’t see—it’s too small. “Are you surprised? Do you know so much about the water?”
“I know nothing about the water, sir,” I answer. It’s the truth, and I don’t see any amount of bluffing working for me now.
He nods. “No. I thought not. Miss Dane, let me tell you. It is . . . so, so much more than a cure, though that is, of course, a primary concern. My wife’s life, your friend’s, and hundreds of others depend upon it. It is the answer. Not just to the Blight—to all the UMI’s problems. All of humanity’s problems. From cancer to the flu and everything in between. Even when drunk by a healthy individual, the results are nothing short of miraculous. For those suffering from disease, with daily, repeated ingestion, the results are life-altering. Within weeks, they’d receive a clean bill of health.”
Hope, fizzy and full, rises up my chest when I hear him say that. “So the water can really cure Aven?” I whisper. Callum said he could do it and I believed him—but hearing it twice doesn’t hurt.
“Like I said, over enough time. And in the correct dosage. It is a natural antiviral, not much different from ginger root or echinacea. Except far more powerful. In Aven’s case, not enough was consumed. Since the virus was not eradicated, she relapsed once the water left her system. But if she’d had more . . .” The governor’s voice trails off. “Quite good incentive to find me another source, is it not?”
I nod fiercely. “Yes, sir.”
Now I’m even more anxious to get to Callum.
“Don’t think I’m the best choice for the job, though.”
Governor Voss laughs. As he does, he tosses the object in his hand up into the air, catching it easily. It looks to be some kind of a statue.
“To be fair, I didn’t choose you,” he tells me. “Not that I believe as the natives do, but you found the spring. It chose you.”
I almost laugh. The spring didn’t choose me, it didn’t pull out its megaphone and announce itself. My feet just . . . sorta walked there. As they tend to do when they’re going places.
Thinking he’s done, I open my mouth to object. He cuts me off.
“That, and you know at least one Tètai.”
I shake my head and answer, “I don’t know anybody by that name. Sorry, sir. . . .”
He can’t make me do this, I don’t have time to hunt for him.
“Not a name.” He wags his finger. With one hand on my shoulder, he sits me back down on the bench. “A guild, of sorts. The Tètai were established by the early natives with one purpose: protecting that water. And someone you know, though you may not be aware, is one of the last four members still”—he pauses, as if finding the right words—“in existence.”
“That’s who messed with the spring,” I murmur.
He nods, points his pocketknife at me. “Bingo. A friend who knows what you found.”
“But only you, Aven, and the chief know.”
“We are the only ones you have told, yes. We are not the only ones who know.” Governor Voss unlatches his cuffcomm, flips it open to find whatever he’s looking for, and passes it to me. “I’d like you to read something.”
I have to project the image onto my forearm where the skin isn’t as dark. As I begin to make it out, I hear a scraping noise and look up—he’s using the pocketknife to whittle the object in his other hand. Sand-colored bits flake off while he chips away at the statue.
It must be wood. . . . It looks like wood. But why carve it like that? Why not use it for something useful?
“It is a translation from the Dutch,” the governor says, as though that’s what I was wondering about—not the strange thing he’s carving in front of me.
Turning my attention back to my forearm, I shake my head, and I start reading.
27
1645
Directors of the Dutch West India Company—
While the tales I have brought you might appear to be the stuff of fancy, I urge you to reconsider my recall from post as Director of the New Netherland region. Interview the men in my militia—they will all attest: the Lenape inhabitants of this region, skirmish after skirmish, do resurrect their wounded bodies, making them impossible to defeat. A native may lose his life one day, yet we will be confronted with the very same face not a month
later. Lost limbs have spontaneously regenerated during battle.
To learn the truth, I did send one of my men to search their settlement. He did not return alive—his body, and that of a Lenape tribesman, were found in the nearby woods. Upon inspection of both, a peculiar tattoo was discovered on the native, behind his ear, in such a design. . . .
I suck in air when I see that shape projected onto my skin. Just like a tattoo—a black symbol, or design, or whatever it is. Derek’s tattoo.
My mind ping-pongs between coincidence and no way. Because if it’s not a coincidence, if he really is one of these Tètai, I can’t figure out why he’d ever hide the spring from the sick. The dying.
Governor Voss must hear me gasp, because the pocketknife stops its whittling. When he looks over, he says nothing. We exchange glances, and he nods for me to keep reading.
I continued to send envoy after envoy, each one sabotaged, and turning up in a manner similar to the first, in the same manner of killing. Only one man survived. With his dying words, he told me of the existence and location of the “Minetta Brook,” they call it: a brook with unusual, healing capabilities.
The following day, the day I ordered the attack on that area, there was no evidence a spring had ever been there. That was our final skirmish—no natives returned from the dead again.
Admittedly, I ordered the attack without the approval of the Advisory Council, but you must understand: you cannot defeat an enemy that does not die. I was forced to act quickly. That is the tale in its entirety, I beg that you believe me, or I will consider myself shamed.
—Director of New Netherlands, Willem Van Kieft
At the last word, I look up.
“He’s my ancestor,” the governor explains, and returns to sit on the bench beside me. Not once does he lift his eyes from the thing he’s carving. “That letter is how I first came to learn of the spring’s existence. Now, Miss Dane . . . I want you to think about what we could do with such defenses on our side. Who could withhold their water stores from us then?”
I’m not listening to him anymore. That symbol . . .
As I turn off the comm, my forearm goes blank, no tattoo there. It was too unusual to be coincidence.
Derek must be one of the Tètai.
I bite my lip to keep in all the ugly words I want to say. I’d like to hurl the cuffcomm onto the ground. Why would he keep the cure a secret? Not just from the world . . . but from me. Aven.
The hospital last night . . . I put the pieces together fast, and if I were alone I would be wiping my face clean of all the places where his mouth touched mine. This was why. He left us there in the waiting room with no explanation.
He left to fill the gap in the subway. To close off the spring. To stop me from going back.
I clench my teeth together. Dig my nails to the skin.
“You recognize the symbol, don’t you?” Governor Voss’s eyes, the same steel color as his hair, meet mine. To himself he whispers, “She’s still alive, then,” looking away from the statue.
She?
“I knew it,” he goes on. “Kitaneh runs in your circle, after all. Friendly with a gambler who works the races. She has kept me from finding the spring many times.”
He has no idea about Derek.
I could tell him right now, but some pathetic sense of loyalty makes me keep my mouth shut. “Why don’t you go to her yourself?” I ask. “Doubt she’ll listen to me.”
“If I went after Kitaneh, or any of the Tètai directly, it would only end in death. And I can’t afford to kill them off.” Rubbing his thumb over what looks like the neck of some animal’s neck, he brings the knife there. Narrows it. “No, you’re going to talk to them for me.”
I stand up and begin pacing back and forth on the stone pathway. There’s no time for this. “What makes you think I’d get an answer?” I say, frustration cracking my voice.
The governor ignores my question.
He keeps carving that thing. Scrape, scrape . . .
All of a sudden the air goes tight again. I want to get out. He said he understood, but I need to leave, and he’s still keeping me here.
“Miss Dane, why do you think they’ve been hiding it?” he asks calmly.
The question takes me by surprise, pauses my pacing.
“I don’t know.” I speak honestly, and wonder if there’s some answer to that question that could bring me to forgive Derek. I don’t think so.
Governor Voss looks up. Makes a fist around the figurine. “Perhaps it is out of fear. Fear of what people in power—like myself—might do with it. They fail to comprehend the real fear.” He pauses there, and waits. Makes sure I’m paying attention.
“It is not what I might do with it, but, rather, what I might do without it.”
Each word is delivered like a boulder, heavy with some threat that I don’t understand.
“What would you do?” I ask, unable to stop the words from wavering.
“Only what the people want.” The governor reaches up from the bench and takes my hand, opening it up, same as he did with the pine needles. Inside, he places the small wooden statue. “Give this to Kitaneh. She will know it’s from me, and she will know its meaning. Tell them that I am giving the Tètai a chance to fix things. But I need to know where to find another location.”
Gripping the object in my palm, “A horse?” I murmur. It’s more complex than I’d originally thought, but still rough edged. Made like a child’s toy, with spokes and wheels at its hooves, even an empty compartment in its belly.
The seed of an idea forms in my mind. I could buy Aven more time. Callum, too . . . “If I do this—if I talk to her, could you have Aven’s surgery rescheduled?”
Governor Voss stands up, placing me eye level with his jacket buttons. He rests a hand on my shoulder, firm, and says, “Miss Dane, if you’re able to convince Kitaneh, Aven won’t need surgery.”
Not exactly the answer I was hoping for.
I look around the arboretum—it’s too calm in here. No wind . . . arboretum is just a fancy word for a glass cage. When I meet his eyes again, I’m fixed by that idea, caught under the steel of his irises. The longer I stare, the harder they look.
“You’re to report to Chief Dunn via comm with their answer in—” The governor glances at his cuffcomm. “Four hours. I would not waste any more time.”
Four hours? I can’t look away from him—I’m an animal, trapped, clutching the strange wooden horse in my hand.
“Go,” he hisses.
Are they tailing me?
I lean over the banister in the stairwell to listen for footsteps, but I don’t hear a sound. That means nothing though. Could be they’re keeping quiet . . . watching. Waiting to see what I’ll do.
Well, the easiest place to lose them is here. Right now. In the hospital. And I can think of only one way to do it.
I race up another flight of stairs and into the hall, but instead of making a right toward the main stairs, I keep straight. Straight on to the red double doors at the opposite end of the corridor.
Painted in white lettering on each door: “Contagious.”
They’ll leave this exit unattended for sure.
I push the doors open and walk through. Find myself sucking in my air, like I’m still afraid of catching it. So many years pretending, hiding. It’s not that I ever forget I’m immune, but I don’t always remember it either. Exhale, I remind myself. I remind myself to inhale, too, though I’m sure the air’s megafiltered anyway.
I take slow steps through the empty hall, my path wide open. I should run . . . but my feet disagree. My heart disagrees.
I can see every patient.
All the rooms—made of clear, double-layered glass panes. Visitors can look, but they can’t touch. There are never visitors, it seems. Ain’t even that many patients. Hospital care is too expensive. Most, like Aven and me, opt for the cheaper route: house calls and black market daggers.
But the ones who are here . . . each of them could be h
elped by the cure that Derek keeps hidden. I want to be sick, and not from the retching noises coming from my left.
A young girl looks up, peers back at me through a room made of glass.
Her hair does me in; not quite as sunny as Aven’s, but enough to confuse me. I walk closer, and she brings her hand up to the plastic canopy that surrounds her bed. Holds it there like she’s shielding her eyes. But she’s not—she’s trying to see.
Me.
She’s trying to see me.
That hair, that hair . . . She’s not Aven—the girl ain’t no more than eight—but my insides don’t care what my brain knows. Through the blurry plastic and the glass, she’s Aven. Before I ever met her. Before her dad dropped her off at Nale’s, ’cause he was dying and couldn’t take care of her alone.
I place my hand on the glass, the hand not holding the carved horse, and suddenly I’m back in the Tank. I’m Aven, seeing the world from Before for the very first time.
“Who are you?” a voice asks, tinny and weak, through the comm built into the panels. The sound startles me and I step away, dropping my hand. “Don’t go—” She’s pleading. . . .
I look around the empty hallway, then back at her glass room and her white plastic door. I could turn the knob. Go inside. Touch her hand.
My palm is on the metal. Then, echoes from the entryway—
The doors . . . someone’s coming.
I’m sorry, I mouth to the girl, and I drop my hand. Spinning around, I bolt for the end of the corridor. Every patient turns their head as I race by.
When I swing myself into the stairwell, I hear the static of cuffcomms crackling from behind, but no footsteps. . . . They’ll be hiding outside instead.
I clamber down the stairs—if I could, I’d jump the banister, but I’d need both hands for that. The horse grows sweaty in my fist and I’m making a racket, but there’s no other way.
Breathless and staggering, I hit the last stair and I’ve reached my exit. Then I’m out the staff door, onto the narrows.
Planks wobble under my feet, and though the walkway is empty but for me, I don’t slow. Forget the Cloud, I think, realizing that it’s docked around front. I’ll hoof it instead. They’ll have a harder time following me that way.
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