Nine

by Zach Hines

  Nicholas frowned and turned away from his father. He looked over at his desk: a giant mahogany–colored slab of authority hewn from the rare Lakespawn red oak. Just looking at it now, and the empty, impossible promise it represented, made Nicholas’s stomach turn.

  “That was your best chance,” his father continued, “given where you stand academically. They are an odd club, with their pranks and rituals, but they were prestigious, with important connections.”

  “I know that, Father,” Nicholas said, quietly.

  “You know, George Vander was a member,” the elder Hawksley said. “And look how far it has gotten him.”

  Growing up, Nicholas hated how his father had taken such a shine to Georgie Vander. He was the phenom from the academy, son of the esteemed Councilman Vander, the only person in the Lakeshore area to have ever been elevated. Georgie’s record test scores were written up in the newspaper. He was the valedictorian. He took over the Burners and impressed all the alumni who worked at the Department of the Lakes. He even interned there when he was back on summer breaks from Azura. He was hired straight out of his senior year as a supervisor trainee under Director Hawksley. He was given control of the Lake floor in his first year—a Prelate in his first year!—an unheard-of feat. Georgie fucking Vander.

  “I can’t believe you had that chance right in front of you, and you blew it,” Dad said, shaking his head. “It’s supposed to be you taking the reins of the department once I’m nominated for elevation. But it looks like George Vander is the only suitable candidate now. There’s so much about the job I wanted you to know, Nicholas. I had big plans for you. But now I’m afraid you won’t be part of this. Not if you couldn’t even handle a little school club.”

  Nicholas refused to look over at his father. His shame was hot, burning in his cheeks.

  “Do you think it’s easy for me to arrange to get your number updated regularly like I do?”

  Updated, Nicholas thought.

  Faked, he meant.

  “Not everyone is as lucky as you are,” he continued. “The Lake is becoming far more unstable these days, and I gave you a free pass, thanks to a lot of work and string-pulling. I gave you every advantage I could find, but it seems you failed to realize you were meant for bigger things. You really should’ve taken the time to speak to George Vander about this. Perhaps he could’ve given you some advice.”

  “Excuse me,” Nicholas said, the bile rising in his throat. “Why are you talking about Georgie Vander?”

  His father blinked at him in a curious way. “You don’t know?”

  Nicholas turned to look at his father, an awful dread bubbling inside him.

  “George had to bail out the Burners Society. He heard about what a disaster it was. Some god-awful thing in the Row you set up, at some crumbling amusement park?”

  He shook his head.

  “George stepped in and made some recommendations to turn things around.”

  Wait.

  What?

  Georgie Vander stepped in and had Nicholas ousted from the Burners? And his father is celebrating this?

  “Why?” Nicholas asked.

  “I suppose . . .” His father turned back to the window. “He didn’t care to see his legacy spoiled like it was.”

  His father was holding out on him—there was clearly something more to the story of the Prelate deigning to step in to the affairs of a secret society at the academy, but it was also clear that Nicholas was no longer worthy of this knowledge.

  “If there’s anything I can do to salvage this situation, I’ll do it,” his father said. “But for now, I’m afraid you had better set your sights on something other than Azura University.”

  Nicholas flexed his jaw, grinding his teeth together.

  “I wish that I could have done better,” he said, “but—”

  “There’s no ‘but,’ Nicholas. There’s no excuse. You know who wouldn’t make up an excuse for himself? George Vander.”

  “Well,” Nicholas replied. “We both know I’m not him, am I?”

  “You are certainly not. Dismissed.”

  Nicholas’s father waved his hand.

  Nicholas’s shoes clicked down the hallway tile. Georgie Vander. Georgie Vander. Georgie Vander. Nicholas repeated his name with the martial rhythm of his steps.

  His jaw was grinding now so much it hurt. His entire face ached. It burned, and not just with pain, but with a white-hot anger that he could see in incandescent blobs floating across his vision.

  Control, Nicholas thought.

  Control yourself.

  Because your time will come.

  Yes.

  It will.

  Chapter 37

  THE GROUP HOME RAN A BUS TO ALL THE SCHOOLS IN THE district. Julian discovered this upon awakening to the loud rapping of a baton on the door in the morning.

  Dr. Tazia and an angry-looking lump of a nurse opened the door and explained that school would continue as usual. She dropped a bag of their clothes that had finished inspection on the floor beside the door and looked at him and Rocky before moving on to the next room.

  Julian made sure Rocky got off the bus at the middle school. He leaned in to whisper to him so that none of the security stationed on the bus, or any of the other students, could hear: “I’m going to look for Dad. I’ll meet you back at the home tonight, and we’ll go from there. You just keep your head down and don’t talk about what I’m doing. We’re going to get out of this,” Julian said.

  “I hope so,” Rocky said. Julian watched from the bus as Rocky went into the middle school and was received by a teacher.

  Julian was the only kid getting off at Lakeshore Academy. There was little chance that anyone else at the academy would ever end up on a group home bus.

  He dodged the crowd thronging to beat the 7:30 a.m. bell and made his way to the parking lot, making sure to stay out of sight of any of the teachers or guards. He took a shortcut through a copse of trees and walked about a mile down Academy Drive to the nearest public bus stop. By the time he got there, his cheeks were bright red and his fingers felt cold and dead. He tried to warm himself in the bus shelter, pulling his collar tight to his neck. Finally, a bus arrived that took him rattling down Lake Road and out to Retro Row. He paid with the few coins he had in the bottom of his pocket—the sum total of everything he had left to his name.

  Julian’s best-case theory was that his father had merely gone retrograde. Maybe it was a long shot, but there was a chance.

  He got off near the Tasty’s just north of the Row and followed the river down into the thick of it. He spent the morning searching the encampments near the shore. He talked to several retros—the lucid ones at least—mostly older men about his father’s age, but his father was not among them. He walked another mile up the river, asking everyone he saw if they had seen anyone who fit his father’s description. None had.

  He saw some nurses midmorning unloading a bus full of retros near the pier. He hung back away from them and observed. When they left, he checked the new arrivals—a group of confused and lost people, some of them quite young looking, maybe only a little older than Julian. But again, his father was not among them.

  Soon enough, the sun was starting to fade into the steel-gray sky. He was ready to give up, to return to the home and huddle with Rocky and figure out a backup plan. Cat’s Cradle—surely, Cody could take them in. The home had confiscated his phone, so he couldn’t call her—but he was pretty certain he could recall the route by heart now. Maybe he and Rocky could sneak out tonight, climb the fence near the river, then find a car somehow and make their way toward the winding road to Cat’s Cradle. Or maybe it was faster and safer to go to that bookstore first. Maybe Cody was there, visiting her cats, and she would know what to do.

  That’s when Julian noticed lights go off in an old gas station.

  Julian approached a girl lurking around in front of it.

  “Hello?” he said.

  She spun around, holding a knife. He reco
gnized her instantly.

  “Molly?” Julian exclaimed.

  She held the knife up in a defensive posture, but something flickered in her face—some kind of dim recognition.

  “It’s me. It’s Julian,” he said.

  At the sound of his name, some deep, animal instinct lit up in her face. She lowered the knife.

  He approached her, his hands up. “I’m so glad you’re alive!” he exclaimed.

  She backed away from him. “Just chill, okay? Stay in your space.”

  Julian looked at her neck—a Three. The last time he saw her, at the fire ring during Amit’s dead man’s party, she was also a Three. This confused him.

  “Did you burn?” he asked. “Did Constance make you burn?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. He stepped closer to her, and she jerked away. But he moved slowly, reassuring her of how glad he was to see her, that she wasn’t permadead or gone, and eventually she allowed him to come closer. He reached for her shoulders. She flinched as he touched her, but then she accepted it and let him put his arms around her. He squeezed her to his chest.

  “How did you get here?”

  She pulled out abruptly. “The nurses dropped us off on a bus,” she said simply.

  Julian was horrified, but he tried to stifle it. He tried to look at this girl and find the old Molly he knew.

  He was flooded with a crash of memories: Molly and Julian climbing a tree when they were six, finding the best place to build a fort. Molly and Julian in the back seat of the bus on the way to the middle school with a pack of playing cards, dealing out a game of Born Again Bones. Molly and Julian on the first day of freshman year, the only Ones in the school, watching with condescending disgust as the white jackets walked through the cafeteria. Molly at the fire ring with her new friends, all of them in white jackets now. Julian turning and walking away from her. . . .

  And now here she was, wielding a knife and fending for herself in an abandoned gas station on the Row. These memories were now his alone—they might as well be his own private hallucinations.

  “Molly,” Julian said. “Something really messed up is happening at the Lake, and I think you got sucked into it.”

  “Cassie,” she corrected him. “I’m Cassie.”

  Julian frowned—the name didn’t suit her, but that was hardly the strangest thing about the situation he was now in.

  Especially now that he caught sight of someone emerging from the gas station down below. That white-blond hair, the pale face, the bright white patch stretching down his neck . . .

  Robbie the retrograde.

  “You,” Robbie asked, a vicious edge in his voice. He was holding a pipe in his hand, defensive.

  “Let’s just be calm,” Julian said. “I was looking for my father. This has nothing to do with you.”

  “I told you to stay away,” he said. “To stay away!” He came toward Julian with the pipe held back, ready to swing.

  Julian stumbled back, putting his hands up—“I don’t want to fight!”

  “It’s okay, Robbie,” Molly intervened, stepping in front of Robbie. “He doesn’t mean anything bad.”

  But Robbie pushed past her. “I told you,” Robbie said, pointing the pipe at Julian. Julian grabbed the pipe and tried to wrestle it from Robbie’s hands. Robbie pulled against it. As they tussled, Robbie kicked Julian in the leg. Julian let go and stumbled backward.

  “Stay away from her,” Robbie said. “She’s mine.”

  Julian gathered himself. “I can’t stay away! She helped me. Cody, she took me to Cat’s Cradle.”

  The phrase “Cat’s Cradle” seemed to shake something in Robbie’s mind.

  “The house on the hill?” Robbie asked, the gears turning in his head. “Cat’s Cradle,” he said, declaring it as if he had just discovered it. “Do you know where Cat’s Cradle is?” His ferocity seemed to have melted away all at once.

  “I’m going there tonight,” Julian said.

  Molly helped Robbie up. Julian couldn’t let her stay here—he couldn’t let her rot away in the Row.

  “Come with me,” he said to Molly. “Cat’s Cradle is a safe place, away from the nurses.”

  “You’re taking both of us,” Robbie interjected.

  Julian looked warily at Robbie.

  “I trust him,” Molly said. “He saved me.”

  The sun was gone by now, just a dimming filament behind a bank of clouds. Julian tried to calculate the risk he was about to take, bringing Robbie to Cat’s Cradle, back to Cody, without her permission. But he soon realized calculations were useless, really—he was not leaving Molly here. There was no way. Even if he had to bring this Robbie kid along.

  He nodded to the two of them.

  “Fine. But I have to get my brother first,” he said.

  But something was deeply wrong when they arrived at the group home.

  The front gate was choked with vehicles from the Department of Lakes, the light on an emergency van rotating in the night. Nurses were hustling in and out, some of them reading off a clipboard, others prepping a row of vans.

  Julian held Molly and Robbie back across the road. They hid behind two Lake-issued sedans.

  “Is this some kind of setup?” Molly asked, looking at the nurses.

  “Kid, I’m going to smash your face in,” Robbie growled.

  “I have no idea what’s going on,” Julian protested, his voice laced in panic. A nurse emerged from the entrance to the group home, leading a line of young children behind him. At the end of the line, Julian saw Rocky. Behind him walked a man in purple robes—the Prelate of the Lake—along with Dr. Tazia.

  Suddenly, something broke inside Julian.

  Some tiny wire that had been holding him together.

  It snapped, and unwound, and fell tumbling into the void.

  “They’re not taking my brother,” Julian said.

  He burst out from behind the car. He charged up past the nurses, rushing in so quickly they didn’t know how to react. Dr. Tazia looked over, her mouth gaping open.

  Rocky saw Julian and broke free from the startled nurse restraining him. He ran for Julian, his face wet and puffy from tears. “Julian!” he shouted. Rocky grabbed his brother by the waist and Julian scooped him up in his arms and turned to leave.

  But two thick arms wrapped around his neck—a nurse from behind. Another nurse, his face a strobing shadow in the flashing light of the van, grabbed Rocky and pried him out of Julian’s arms. He could feel his brother’s fingers, clutching at his jacket, being peeled off.

  Julian’s arms were twisted behind his back and he was thrust toward a bright bulb of light. It was a flashlight, glaring into his face, stinging his eyes.

  A hooded figure stepped into the light and leaned in close to Julian, a silhouette behind the brightness.

  “Child.” The Prelate spoke, his voice a deep scratching of stone on stone. “You need to stop this and calm yourself down.”

  “That’s my brother. Where are you taking him?” Julian demanded.

  “He’s a One,” the Prelate said. “All the Ones are being enrolled in the Attison Camp, a special educational program at the Lake.”

  It felt as if the ground crumbled beneath his feet and Julian had entered free fall.

  “Don’t worry,” Dr. Tazia added, stepping beside the Prelate. “He will get full school credit.”

  No!

  Julian pushed against his restraint, and the nurse responded by wrenching his arms so hard it felt like they were tearing from the sockets. He looked over to Rocky, who was crying now, wailing, as a nurse hoisted him up into the van. All Julian could do was watch as Rocky slipped away from him . . . like Molly, like his father, like his mother.

  “Let him go! Let us go! We didn’t do anything!”

  “Child,” the Prelate said, “this isn’t a punishment.” He shook his head. “This is just how things work.”

  The Prelate stepped back and signaled to the nurse behind Julian.
>
  “We’d better put him in detention,” he said. But then he stopped still, noticing something. He grabbed Julian’s chin. He leaned in close to Julian’s face, so close Julian could smell the clinical, antiseptic stink coming off his robes.

  “I’ve seen you before,” he said. “You were with the Friends. Visiting dear Dr. Collins.” The tapes.

  Damn it, the tapes.

  The fabric of the Prelate’s mask shifted. He was probably contorting his face into a grin. “What good fortune to have you here tonight,” he said. “Makes my life much easier.”

  The nurse yanked Julian onto his feet and turned him to the van.

  Just then, a bright flash lit up beside them. A violent crashing sound tore through the air. Julian felt the nurse’s grip slacken in the sudden rush of noise: a car had crashed into the fence, flames tumbling out of the open windows.

  The nurses were shouting. The Prelate was barking indistinguishable, gravelly commands to his scrambling nurses.

  Julian seized the opening: he elbowed the nurse holding him in the ribs and slithered out of his grasp. He fell in the dirt and scrambled to his feet before the nurse could grab him again. He rushed toward the van containing Rocky, but the Prelate signaled to it and it sped away, the tires throwing up a cloud of dust.

  There was a powerful gust of heat on Julian’s back, and he turned to see that the fire in the car had grabbed hold of the back seat and ignited it. The flames were towering several feet in the air. Two nurses sprayed it with feeble-looking fire extinguishers, but the flames just ate the spray up. In all the chaos, Julian had a single moment of clarity—enough to realize that the flames would soon grab the gas tank, and it would explode.

  And so he ran as fast as he could back the way he came, his legs thundering, his heartbeat throbbing in his head. He jumped off the road and tumbled into the ditch where he had been hiding earlier. Molly was suddenly there, grabbing him by the collar, pulling him up.

  “This way,” she said, breathless. She pulled him to one of the other cars they had been hiding behind.

  Molly tumbled in on top of him and slammed the door shut. Robbie looked up from under the steering wheel, a mad grin plastered on his face.