I’m shaken awake by the steel toe of one boot.
Flinching, I remind myself of Milo. Without energy to do anything more, despite the fear curdling in my gut. Chief lowers himself down to my level. Looks me in the eye. Shakes his head, tsk tsk.
“You missed your report, Dane. Two in a row. Except this time, it was no accident,” he spits in my face and waves a small tube—the vial—in front of my nose.
How did he—? Feeling for my belt, I realize it’s not there. It’s at his feet. I gotta get the vial back . . . and then I gotta get out of here. Somehow. I look around the inside of the heli, but the hatch is closed.
“What have we here,” Chief says in a low growl. He removes the stopper from the vial and brings the glass to his nose. “Doesn’t smell like brack water, that’s for sure. Could it be . . . ?”
I shake my head, about to say that it’s not, when he re-stoppers the tube and places it under the sole of one boot.
“Don’t!” I yell without thinking, reaching for the vial. I’m too slow, though. . . . It’s like being underwater. My muscles hurt too badly.
Dunn has time to pull the vial out from under his shoe and step closer. He has time to bring his sole down on my open fingers, and stay there.
I hear myself whimper like an animal, and I don’t recognize myself. Not when I’m making these sounds.
“Only one way you could’ve come by this water, Dane.” A pause. “Someone told you where to find another source.”
I can’t answer. I can’t tell him the truth.
When Dunn sees I’ll say nothing, he pulls a black baton from the belt strapped round his waist. I lift myself onto my elbows, trying to back away. Closer, closer, Chief approaches me.
“The governor gave me permission to try some . . . other methods of acquiring information, in the event that you suddenly forgot who you work for. Didn’t he?” he says, turning to face the cockpit.
Governor Voss?
Chief smacks the baton once against his palm and it makes a loud cracking noise. Lightning.
With one foot, he kicks me onto my stomach. Wrenches my shoulders around the baton, then twists like he wants them out of their sockets. It’s a bolt of fire that consumes all my air. I groan as he plows his steel-toed boot down the line of my vertebrae. I feel my spine like the serrated edge of a blade.
Chief uses his foot to roll me faceup again. “Where did you get this?”
I’m gasping, heaving. My eyes have started to water and I blink them fast—I ain’t gonna let him see me cry. I still got no answer.
Now he crushes his heel down on my sternum, sapping all my energy. I flex my muscles against it and cough, trying to speak, but he won’t release any weight from my chest. Physically, I can’t. No air, no words.
He lets up, just barely. “Where is the spring?”
“Don’t know,” I wheeze, the air squeezed from my lungs.
Chief Dunn makes like he’s going to strike me. I ball up, braced for the blow. It never comes—
“Miss Dane,” a voice croons from the cockpit.
The governor turns around, sees me coiled on the floor. His expression shifts to something like pity. “If you recall, I asked you not to lie to me. And yet, here you are—lying to me. I need a location, Miss Dane. I don’t think you quite comprehend how dire the situation has turned.” His voice rises, and I can hear the anger there.
Still I say nothing.
Shaking the legless figurine in my direction, “I can see you’ve spoken to Kitaneh. This is clearly her handiwork. And you had on your person that vial, presumably for your friend at the hospital. Yet you refuse to tell me the truth. Fine. And the Tètai are also not willing to cooperate? Unfortunately, this leaves me without alternatives. Chief Dunn. Prepare to make the announcement.”
Announcement?
Dunn, standing over me, slides the baton back into his belt with one hand, his other still holding the vial. One last time, he steps on me. Under his heel the ligaments between my ribs grind together. I have to fight against his weight.
Keeping his boot square on my chest, he kneels down to my level. “Happily, Governor Voss. You know how I feel about it,” he says. “I only wished—”
“Enough, Chief Dunn,” snaps the governor.
Chief scowls, and for a moment I think I see him go for that strike he never got to take, but he holds back. He laughs, scanning my face. “This entire city—it’s disgusting. A breeding ground for disease. Every last one of you—” Chief wears a face like he’s about to spit. “Hosts.”
“Watch your tongue,” I hear the governor say from up front, as he gestures to the pilot. “Miss Dane,” he starts, not even bothering to look at me anymore. “I will not regret the events of the next twenty-four hours, because they will not be of my own doing. Tell your friend it is not yet too late.”
The hatch opens. A gray sky and a concrete roof wait.
“Now,” the governor adds, tired. “Get out.”
But the vial—I have to get it. . . . Chief’s left hand—I see it, right there in his fist, and I won’t leave it behind. I slide closer to him, making like I’m about to stand. Extend my leg. Hook my ankle behind his.
“What the—”
In the cockpit, the governor has started to stand. “The vial!”
Chief looks down at me, steps nearer, and with every bit of strength my quad can muster—I yank him forward. His knees buckle . . . but not enough. I hook my other ankle. Repeat.
This time, he goes lumbering backward.
Jumping to my feet, I resort to the lowest but most effective of moves: Square in the groin . . . That’s where I step. Hard.
It does the trick. Chief grunts. Curls up into himself, his face twisted and none too happy.
I lower down, grab the vial.
Chief Dunn starts to rise. Adrenaline hijacks my muscles. With the vial in my hand, I jump out the hatch, not another look back.
32
12:45 P.M., SUNDAY
Sprinting for the nearest suspension bridge, I leap onto it, no care for balance or keeping the thing steady. Behind me, air churns, coughs up roof dust.
But that makes no sense. . . . The chief’s not following? Only when I’ve crossed to the other side do I look back. Make sure I’m not crazy.
Despite the vibrations running through the rope in my hands, I don’t believe it—Chief’s heli roars into the sky. Rises up from the rooftop, one building over.
But I have the vial. The governor should’ve sent him after me—his wife . . . he’d want to use it to cure his wife, wouldn’t he? The aeromobile doesn’t even head west over the Strait. Instead, it loops around over to Mad Ave.
Then, dangling out from the airborne beast is Chief Dunn. Holding a megaphone.
One time . . . One time have I seen this happen—I’m thirteen again, back on the Empire Clock with Benny before my first race. When they announced the Health Statutes, locking down the Ward and making Transmission of the virus illegal.
“Attention, citizens of the Ward!” Chief’s voice booms through the air.
The announcement . . . This is what the governor was talking about. I don’t breathe. I imagine no one’s breathing right now.
Across the roof, another man steps quickly off a bridge. Holding his hat, he looks up to the sky, then over to me. As if I know what’s going on.
“Attention,” Chief repeats, body half in the air. “Between the hours of twelve and two A.M., a squadron of pilots will fly through the city. Do not be alarmed. After that time, we ask that all HBNC-positive citizens gather on the rooftops of your respective sickhouses. No arrests will be made. There you will find shipments containing a new drug in development that has been proven effective at eradicating the HBNC pathogen.”
I can hear a hundred breaths catching in a hundred throats, it’s so quiet.
“I repeat.” A pause. “We have a cure for HBNC!”
With that, the heli rises into the air, the chief and his megaphone swinging back into its
cockpit. As it spirals out in the direction of the West Isle, headed northwest toward Central Bay, the howling it makes against the blue is the only noise for miles.
Three unsure seconds pass.
Then, the city erupts.
But they don’t have the cure. . . .
From across the canals and gutters, manic yelps ring out in the crisp air. Hoots, high-pitched and frantic, echo all around. With a bird’s-eye view of Mad Ave, I can see everyone who’d ducked under an awning or behind a storefront stepping out. Looking around. As though they’re walking outside for the first time. People hug—people who don’t know one another.
If they don’t have a cure, what are they giving out?
I become my own island, fighting against the dizziness in my head, refusing to move.
“You hear that?” a stranger shouts, and rushes closer. When his eyes land on me, a heady grin splashes across his face. Without a word, he throws his arms round me. He picks me up, lifts me right off my feet. “A cure, they’ve made a cure! It’s a gift from above!”
I push against the stranger’s shoulders, a trapped animal. “They haven’t. . . . It’s not a gi—”
Gift. It’s not a gift, I’m about to say, but he doesn’t hear, or notice, or believe. I wouldn’t believe either, and then the pieces click together too quickly. . . .
An attack, disguised as a gift . . . the Trojan horse.
A CASE FOR DEMOCIDE.
The gift is the cure.
“Put me down!” I cry as he swings me through the air. I’m a mouse in a mousetrap. A roach on glue. Any living thing about to be exterminated. Eradicated.
I’m a host.
“What’sa matter?” The man shakes his head, tut-tut-ing. I grapple against him, legs straining to touch ground until finally, he lowers me down. As he walks away he mutters, “Ain’t she happy?” to himself. Looks back at me. I can see him feeling sorry. Pitying me.
All this wasted joy . . . I begin to feel hysterical with its wrongness.
Their cure isn’t a gift.
It’s a poison—it’s their extermination plan.
33
1:00 P.M., SUNDAY
All around me, the city is a madhouse.
Little balls of light fizzle in the hands of the neighborhood kids running across suspension bridges. Sparklers. The skyline bursts with them. Dozens of stars shooting from roof to roof, then dying out.
It makes me sick, all this prettiness right now.
Would he do it? Would the governor really poison people just for being sick?
If the West Islers are actually rioting ’cause they’re so scared, I think so.
I have to stop him. . . .
My knees can barely hold up the rest of me, amped and shaky as they are. In my veins, blue fire. I tuck the vial—the real cure—into one of my belt pockets and run toward the building’s escape ladder. Now would be the perfect time to get it to Aven; the hospital will be in an uproar, no one paying attention.
After that, Callum’s. Together we can figure out a plan.
As I’m climbing down the ladder, only a few rungs from the bottom, my cuffcomm vibrates. Buzzes once, then again. I pull my palm away from the rail to read the message, expecting to see two from the same sender, but I’m wrong—the first message is from Callum, sent ten minutes ago. I must have missed it in the chaos. I can’t make sense of it, either:
HE
That’s all it says.
HE . . . then what?
Confused, I flip to the second comm, and my feet stop working. It’s from Derek’s number. But I’m even more shaken by the message than I am by its sender:
Kitaneh knows about the lab. The doctor isn’t safe.
Gripping the rail, frozen on the ladder, I reread his warning over and over. In the back of my mind, I recognize that it means something, him sending me this. But right now it’s a drop in the ocean. I hardly care. Callum’s in danger?
I flip back to his message:
HE
HELP
Callum’s not just in danger, he’s in danger now.
I jump onto the boardwalk, then stop, tugged in two directions. The vial, miraculous and tiny and waiting, is burning a hole through the fabric of my pants. I don’t even feel it in my pocket anymore. It’s eating straight through to my chest.
But I’m only minutes away from the lab.
I’m too close to do nothing.
Spinning onto the Rough Block narrows, everything in me fires off warning shots. And then I see his door at a distance, already half open, swinging on its hinges in a sudden gust of wind.
Kitaneh’s already here. She might already be gone, too.
Holding the knob, I push.
It rebounds. Sent on a direct course for my face. I go stumbling onto the narrows, knocked backward.
My stomach drops—I’m too late—and as I’m cupping my nose, groaning, a figure rushes past. Hooded, dressed all in black, strands of dark hair blown to the side. Then an arm is on my shoulder, pushing me. . . .
Within seconds, I’m tottering on the brink of the narrows, heels balanced in the air.
One more blow, aimed just above the kneecap—it does me in. I fall into the gutterway, brack water filling up my nose and mouth. This can’t be happening. I don’t even know what this is, but instinct does.
I dog-paddle, I spit out the water, and surface, expecting the person to be long gone.
I’m wrong.
Kitaneh pulls down her hood. She wants me to see her face as she stands over me on the narrows. Watches as I grapple with the Hudson. “You . . .” She stops herself. Fists clenched, she looks away from me, letting her hair curtain forward.
When she turns again, there’s no anger. Just a stone sadness to her eyes and a frustration. Like I ain’t never gonna understand. Slowly, she lowers herself to a crouch.
“You all want the same thing,” she says, pointing to the sky. “You desire an all-encompassing cure. But the spring is not a medicine. Even if it mends your cuts and heals your sick, it is not a cure. Not unless humanity is a disease.” Her voice is even. “The spring is sacred; it is so much more than a cure. But used to the wrong end, it is a curse. You must understand.” Kitaneh looks at me as she rises.
“I told you not to come here,” a voice growls. I see Derek running up to her, out of breath, winded, his face lined with fear. He spots me in the canal, and he relaxes some.
I hate that I notice it. I hate how clear it is on his face. I can see the concern, the caring there, when I couldn’t before. But I don’t want him to care about me, not now, not when I know what I do. It makes my anger that much harder to hold on to.
Because if he actually does give a damn about me . . . then he’s got it in him to give a damn about everyone else, too.
“Are you all right?” he asks. Kneeling down, he reaches for my hand, and in one easy swing he lifts me out of the water and onto the narrows. My anger is too slow. It doesn’t even have a chance to make it to my face, at least not in time for him to see it. Quickly, he positions himself between me and Kitaneh.
I wonder if maybe I wasn’t safer where I was. Back in the water.
“You knew what the doctor was doing,” she barks. “All along. And you were going to let him do it. I, however, refuse to take any chances. Especially not now, after that,” she says, pointing in the direction of the announcement. “This girl has no idea what she’s dealing with. See that she leaves it, Derek. Or I’ll have no choice.”
Kitaneh eyes me one last time and shakes her head. Tucking her hair under her hood, her hands in her pockets, she turns on her heel. And then she’s gone, walking briskly down the narrows.
Soon as she’s out of sight, Derek—with just a look—nudges me toward Callum’s apartment. I hold on to the words I want to say to him, because through the crack, I can see just how well Kitaneh did her job.
“Callum . . .” I whisper, afraid to open the door.
“Check on him . . . ,” he says, something black in his
voice.
Now I’m more afraid not to. What if he’s hurt?
That does it—I push it in but stop, unable to go farther.
Papers torn from nails. The faint smell of smoke. When I look down, ashes snake across his floor. Glass triangles litter every surface; all the beakers lay in pieces. Sharpness everywhere.
And his desk . . .
The samples, destroyed. His research, destroyed.
I’m soaking, dripping water onto the floor, spinning around in circles. Disbelieving. Just as bad as Ro’s fist to my gut, I’m out of air again. Derek walks into the room behind me. I hear his breath catch too.
“Callum, you here?” I call out, glass crunching beneath my sodden Hessians. There’s no sign of him up here, so I begin toward the staircase that leads downstairs.
I open the bathroom door.
Covering my mouth, I look away. I can’t help but gag.
Callum.
In the dark room, a red pool gathers around the shower drain. It spreads over the tiles—he’s lost so much. I can make out his body, curled up, limbs bowed out at unnatural angles. I need more light—I can’t see him enough to help him. On the sink, I spot a match, which I strike, then bring to the candle on the counter.
The smoky smell eases some of the nausea I’m feeling. I drop down beside Callum, blood painting my leggings a color not much darker than my leather jumpsuit, but I don’t retch. I look for the wound. It ain’t hard to find—his shirt’s soaked through.
On the right side of his stomach, a gash the size of my hand. Gaping flesh sliced straight through to muscle. “No . . . no, no, no. Callum,” I say, his name hard as nails in my mouth. Pressing my palm to the spot, I try to slow the blood. “Look at me. You’ve got to look at me.”
He doesn’t. And the way his head lolls to the side—I don’t like it. There’s no movement in his chest, neither. I grip his jaw, one hand on the wound, and gently shake him. His skin is cold and clammy against mine. “Wake up. Wake. Up.”
Is he . . . ?
My hand pressed to his flank does nothing. The warmth of his blood sticks to the spaces between my fingers.
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