Nine
Page 27
Councilman Rousseau frowned. “We needed an answer that was more politically palatable.”
David looked over at Nicholas. They made eye contact for a long, painful moment.
“Nicholas,” he said. “How could you? You’re my son. I protected you.”
“Yes,” Nicholas said, setting his cup down, “but you never gave me a choice in the matter. You gave me goals and expectations, and pressure . . . God, the pressure.” He shook his head and clucked his tongue. “But you never thought to ask me what I wanted. I never wanted to follow in your footsteps. I just wanted to impress you.
“And when I discovered this project of yours . . . I realized that the version of me who wanted to impress you all this time? Well, that version of me is dead now.”
David glared at Nicholas. “You blame me for your ambition?”
Nicholas’s eye twitched, a fleeting pinprick of anger.
“I blame you for everything.”
The Councilmen stepped between them.
“We have to let the process take its course now,” said the one called Councilman Gerson.
“How could you do this to me?” David shouted to Nicholas as the guards pushed him out the door. “Your own family!”
Nicholas sipped his coffee.
The Councilmen packed up David’s files and, together with security, they escorted him out of the room.
Ahh.
Bitter and black.
He put his feet back up on his father’s desk.
It didn’t get any better than this.
The next day at the academy, afternoon classes were cancelled for a special assembly.
Nicholas sat on the stage in the gymnasium. Headmaster Denton had the podium, and beside him sat a chubby woman with short hair and a severe expression. There was also a gallery of news reporters lined up in front of the bleachers, near where the old Burners’ section used to be. The academy’s entire student body filled out the seats.
With two notable exceptions, Nicholas realized as he scanned the crowd.
“I have several important announcements for you today,” Denton said at the podium, his voice scratchy, his lips visibly dry and parched.
“First, in accordance with the new rules from the Council of the Awakened, the academy is suspending its life score. Extinguishments are no longer endorsed or condoned by the academy.”
He coughed loudly, clearing his throat.
“Second,” he continued. “This illicit Burners Society has been shut down. And the leaders of the club, Franklin Overton and Constance Zandt, have been assigned to community service in a project to re-home all the unfortunate souls in Retro Row. It is a fitting and just punishment.”
Denton looked out at the crowd and sighed.
“Finally, I am stepping down as the headmaster of the academy. It has been my great honor to have seen so many of you grow and thrive in your many lives.”
There were some murmurs of surprise, and muted elation, from the student body.
“I introduce to you Headmistress Perigree.”
He stepped aside, and the chubby woman stepped up to the podium.
She introduced herself and explained that the academic year was going to continue as planned, minus any emphasis on the life score, of course. Then she turned to Nicholas.
“Now, I think we should all take a moment to commend the selfless actions of one of our own academy members. A brave soul who dared to stand up for what is right. He single-handedly transformed the world, and he should be an example to all of us.”
She gestured for him to stand. “Nicholas Hawksley.”
She turned to the crowd. “Let us applaud this young man.” Slowly, reluctantly, the crowd began to clap.
“Where would any of us be now without Nicholas Hawksley?”
Nicholas stood, basking, as the flashes of the cameras popped around him. Among the dazzle of the lights and the cheers he saw one figure slink out of the crowd to the exit.
Julian.
Halfway out the door, he turned to look at Nicholas.
Nicholas nodded to him.
Could you be bigger than me one day, Julian?
He grinned and waved for the cameras.
Not anymore, friend.
Chapter 46
JULIAN LOOKED UP FROM HIS DESK AND OUT THE WINDOW of his new apartment. Fat snowflakes drifted through the air. He was still getting used to this view of the Lakeshore skyline. Lake Tower stood out among the buildings, like a giant exclamation point.
Looking at the Tower, Nicholas’s shit-eating grin flashed into Julian’s mind.
Nicholas’s eyes, wild with perverse morbidity, that night in the van as they approached the Tower . . . Those eyes—that grin—of the hero of Lakeshore . . .
And here Julian sat, in this apartment, this new life, this new number, this Nine . . .
He had to turn away from the window.
In fact, he was done for the night. He closed his notebook up. He felt ready to take the exams now. Ready to put in an application to Azura University. The advisers at his new school, Perennial Prep, had assured him that he had a real shot now—especially since he would probably be the only Nine applying.
He went over to Rocky’s side of the table. Rocky was halfway through a mathematics worksheet. He helped his little brother complete it, and then it was time for bed. Julian watched, feeling responsible and parental, as Rocky brushed his teeth, and then stood in the bedroom doorway as he crawled under the covers.
“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” Julian said. “You know what that means?”
Their weekly video game tournament was going to proceed as scheduled.
“You’re going down in flames,” Rocky said, and laughed.
“Not likely,” Julian said. He made sure to catch a glimpse of Rocky’s Nine—the digit was a dark smudge on his little brother’s neck, contorting as he flexed while wrestling with the covers.
Checking Rocky’s number was a new habit—Julian found himself repeatedly verifying it against reality.
Young Rocky would never—never—have to know what it’s like to crawl, disoriented, out of the Lake and into a new life.
“’Night, kid,” Julian said.
“’Night,” Rocky replied.
Julian turned off the lights and returned to the table in the living room.
They had three rooms. A big kitchen. A great view. Julian would sometimes run his hands along the tile, like how he would check Rocky’s life number—a reminder to himself that this was real.
It was.
It was theirs.
A world of multitudes.
He just wished his mother and father were here to see this.
His father was gone, though they could find no record of his permadeath. In the past few weeks, the Council, making a big show of their sudden empathy, had scoured the Row and brought all the retros into shelters, where they were identified—but Julian’s father was not among them. Either he never emerged from the Lake again after his final, doomed extinguishment—a victim of its changing nature—or his permadeath was inflicted by the nurses just as they had done to Julian’s mother, and the record of it was destroyed in a final, desperate cover-up.
Either way, he was gone. Like Julian’s mother.
And yet, in a way, they were still here.
They were alive again every time Julian saw his brother’s Nine: that was his mother, living on in that number. Their father too: together, they created Julian and Rocky, and tried to shelter them from the worst of the world, but it was Julian who completed what they started—he had kept them going.
His mother also came to him when he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, and saw his eyes. He would think of hers. Two deep, understanding pools, their colors shifting in his memory, but still there.
Still there.
This thought sparked a kind of pure and unadulterated elation, a joy like he hadn’t experienced in years. It was a joy of having a memory. To be able to recall moments long past, and pe
ople long gone. To bring things back and relive them. That was the kind of “rebirth” that felt right and natural. The kind of rebirth that had a place in the world.
Johanna, the proprietor of Bardo Books, had helped set him up with a lawyer—a big, fuzzy man with a Seven and wet eyes in a swelteringly heated downtown office—to negotiate a rebate check for being so high-numbered. She had someone clean up Rocky’s old One, and she also helped them acquire an apartment in the Nine District. More crucially, she helped ensure Julian had guardianship over Rocky—which seemed to go through easier than anyone expected, probably because the courts were overwhelmed with litigation stemming from the Attison Project.
There was a letter from Johanna on the table in front of him, beside his study guide. Julian tore it open. The message it contained was short and simple: someone needed to meet with him tonight.
Once he was sure Rocky was asleep, Julian slipped out of the apartment.
He drove out from downtown, through Lakeshore, and into Poplar Heights.
He parked in front of Bardo Books and walked the narrow side street to the alley behind it. A dusting of snow covered the asphalt behind the store.
There were no cats tonight.
But there was Cody.
She had cut her hair and dyed it black. Her bangs were cropped short and it framed her face in an angular shape. Though he hadn’t seen or heard from her since the break-in at the Lake, this was unmistakably Cody, her freckles bright in the flush of her face from the cold air. She had a dark scarf wrapped around her neck, hiding her number.
She looked older. Julian felt like he was seeing her for the first time. Cody as she really was, all along—the Cody that she willed into the universe. Confident and defiant and in charge, the renegade daughter. He felt his cheeks redden—he didn’t belong here with her. He never did.
She gave Julian a small wave as he approached her.
“Do you know why they call it Bardo Books?” she asked.
Julian shook his head no.
“The Bardo is the Tibetan concept of purgatory,” she said. “It seemed fitting at the time for a group of people who want to stop all extinguishments so we could live our lives any way we pleased.” She chuckled slightly.
“But the more I think about it, the more the connotations seem a little too negative to me. Like, does that suggest we would be trapped in a perpetual kind of limbo?” She shook her head. “Mankind was meant to have only one life. That’s how the world used to be for millions and millions of years.”
Julian nodded. “I like your hair,” he said.
She allowed herself a small smile, but she was obviously fighting to repress it.
“I wanted you to know that everyone got out safe. All the kids from Cat’s Cradle, from Attison Camp, and even Robbie and Cassie have stuck with us,” she said. “Or Molly, as you knew her.”
“Where?” Julian asked.
That faint outline of a smile vanished from her lips.
“I can’t tell you that,” she said.
She glanced at the Nine on his neck, then looked away quickly.
“I understand why you did what you did. But . . .”
Julian nodded. “I get it.”
“I also asked you here,” Cody said, looking away, “to say goodbye.”
Julian exhaled, a sense of melancholy cutting through him like the chill of the Lakeshore winter. Snowflakes drifted down around them.
“The Council is looking for us,” she said. “Even if they accept Nicholas Hawksley as the public face of the leak, they know there were others behind the break-in. And they’re not going to let us just exist outside their control.”
“So, you’re leaving,” Julian said.
She nodded, frowning slightly, dimpling her freckled cheeks.
“We have reports that burnings are already resuming in the Lake Superior States on a more aggressive schedule. Things might seem better now, but they’re actually only going to get worse. There are still food shortages. Droughts and crop failures. That hasn’t changed. But somehow I think the Council will only care about protecting their own power over anything else.”
Julian nodded. “You will be safe about things, right?”
She stepped close to him. She grabbed his face and kissed him on the cheek.
“You betcha,” she said.
Julian pulled her in close and hugged her. She embraced him back, squeezing his head against her face. It was warm in the cold air. As he held her close, Julian saw something out of the corner of his eye.
It was that cat . . .
It was sitting there, in the snow, staring at him, its tail swishing through the night.
His heart skipped its beat.
“Cody . . . ,” he said, pulling away from her.
He was suddenly overcome with an odd feeling. Like he was weightless again. Like he was tumbling from Lake Tower.
“Do you see the cat?”
“Cat?” Cody said. She turned around.
“I don’t see anything,” she said, stepping away from him.
Julian squinted his eyes shut, and rubbed them until the dizzying sensation faded. Until he was on solid ground again. Until he was himself again.
He opened his eyes. The world was fuzzy, but he blinked it back into focus, and as he did, he saw Cody slipping away.
“Goodbye, Mr. Julian,” Cody said, disappearing down the alley.
Julian stood for a moment as the snow fell, watching her figure vanish into the night.
Then he turned around, looking for the cat.
But it wasn’t there.
Nor were there any tracks.
Only a dusting of snow, undisturbed and gleaming in the moonlight.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my agent, Jim McCarthy, for your wisdom and patience, and for your faith in this project. I’m extremely grateful to have you in my corner.
Without my editor, Kristen Pettit, this book would not exist. Thank you for bringing out the best in this story. Your incisive editing and keen sense of narrative were a massive inspiration. I hope to have even a fraction of your skill rub off and follow me to my next book.
Thanks also to the entire team at Harper Collins for bringing this book to life. Thanks to the arresting cover art from Sarah Kaufman and Craig Shields, and thanks to Elizabeth Lynch for the patience and jacket copy (and apologies for having to read my handwriting).
Philippa Donovan—I owe you my deepest gratitude. Your insight into the business of books, and into this book in particular, and on writing in general (and life in general) has been invaluable to me. Let’s just say, I owe you one.
Thank you, Zach Cox, for your encouragement and early reads, and thank you, David Alpert, for taking a chance on me years ago in the first place. Thanks to Elizabeth Lo for the insightful feedback (and infinite patience), even after the millionth draft. Thanks also to Yalun Tu, for several lives’ worth of narrative discussions, and Isabel Marden, who helped me envision the teachings of the Temple of the Nine. Thank you to Brenda Hsueh for discussions about Malthusian perils. Thanks to my parents for keeping the place well-stocked with books when I was a kid. Thanks to Eric Puestow and Katie Doering for the hospitality and the house. Thanks also to Travis Hines, Sarah Fung, Adam White, Evan Greenspoon, Wendy Park, Jon Stocking, and Tim Szetela for all the advice and help and friendship over the years.
About the Author
Photo by Ana Lazarevic
ZACH HINES is a novelist and screenwriter. Originally from West Virginia, he was based in Hong Kong, where for over ten years he worked as a journalist. He now lives in Los Angeles. Nine is his debut novel.
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Copyright
HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
NINE. Copyright © 2018 by Zach Hines. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Cover art by Craig Shields
* * *
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018933340
Digital Edition AUGUST 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-256724-6
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-256726-0 (trade bdg.)
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1819202122PC/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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