Ren jumps over Callum’s knees and kneels down next to me. “We’re so close. Do you know how close we are?” She makes an inchworm with her fingers. “That’s the distance on the map. It’s nothing. You’ve got that much left in you, I know it.”
I hug myself harder, tucking my wrists away. I’m not sure I do. She won’t allow no for an answer, though. “I can’t do the wet suit alone,” I tell her.
“Well,” Ren says as Callum pulls a spare out from under my seat. “I have two pieces of good news. Callum has hands, and he just happens to be experiencing a temporary bout of blindness. Lucky you, am I right?”
On cue, Callum closes his eyes. Kneeling, he holds the wet suit open for me to step into. I can’t help it. I laugh and roll my eyes. Sometime’s she’s too much. I feel myself warming up a bit, just from Ren forcing me to move around.
Hopping past, she grabs a second wet suit from under my seat and then pushes a button on my side of the Omni. A metal wall rises. Ren disappears behind it.
When I look over at Callum, his eyes are closed, as promised. “Go on, then.” He nods. “I’m blind, remember?”
Pushing my wrists against the waistband, I wince as Ren’s leggings slide below my butt. True to his word, Callum’s eyes stay shut tight.
The water is a full foot high now and Callum’s no longer kneeling. He’s doing a balancing act, holding the wet suit for me. I’m about to step in, but movement outside the window catches my eye.
It’s Ren—she’s already sawing away at the net, knife in hand. I watch her, totally frozen. Soon the fraying rope drifts from the harpoon and the mobile slows.
She slips out of sight, and I step into my wet suit.
Callum tugs the shimmering blue neoprene over me like fish skin, or a mermaid’s tail. I like thinking about it that way. He peels me into one sleeve, then the next, and zips me up. Last, he dusts off my shoulders. We’re chest-deep in the water. It splashes against my chin and up into my nose.
“Breathe normally,” he tells me. “The harder you’re breathing now, the harder it will be to fight back the hunger pangs.”
“Hunger pangs?”
“Air hunger. Instinct will tell you to open your mouth, even though that’d be a very bad idea. You can ignore the air hunger a few times before it becomes a problem.”
“Like passing out?” The thought alone makes me tired.
Callum nods and the metal gate that separates us from the hatch opens wide. A dripping-wet Ren swims back into the Omni.
“Done,” she announces, spitting out brack. “We’re free. When the whole pit’s flooded, I’ll fire up the engine and get us outta here. Even if they notice the rope’s been cut and we’re no longer in tow, they’ll have no clue where are.”
I tread water next to Callum, my mouth pressed to the roof. We’re waiting until the last minute. I flap my arms, but everything is so much harder without hands. Swimming, they were like fins. I’ve got nothing like that now, so I kick my legs a hundred times harder just to do the same work.
Ren paddles into the front seat, holding on to the wheel.
The inches of air dwindle away. Soon they’re gone.
Murky brown water wets my lips, and I let myself sink into the flooded mobile. It’s easier now that I’m not fighting to stay afloat. Callum bobs next to me. He gives me an underwater thumbs-up.
Since I can’t give him one back, I cross my eyes instead. Hopefully he gets the message. Just then, the water kills the dashboard’s bright buttons.
It’s so black we could be floating in outer space.
Through the window, DI headlights fade into the distance. They still haven’t noticed. Once more, the engine grumbles on, a sleeping giant who never wanted to be woken up again. It kicks into gear, jutting forward quickly enough that Callum and I both float back into our seats. My mouth almost snaps open without warning. This is what Callum was talking about. The hunger. I want air so badly, I’m straining the muscles in my throat just to keep my mouth closed. My heart triples its pace. Anxiety spreads under my ribs, a chain saw whirring, blades spinning and spinning like it will never stop.
I need to breathe.
Callum grabs my hand. I watch his outline shifting in the black water. His body hangs so peacefully. Ren’s too. I imagine I look the same, and in my mind’s eye I picture the three of us: dangling, suspended in darkness. I wonder if this is what it was like being in my mama’s belly. I let the thought calm me. It relaxes my throat. I realize I no longer feel it—the hunger.
A bright lamp shines yellow outside the window as the Omni’s nose splashes the surface. Above us, Ren reaches for the moonroof. She braces herself against the wheel and pulls it open manually. The Omni tilts as she swims out, and Callum lets me through next.
My face breaks into the cool night, and I gasp and gasp. I take in so much air I make myself dizzy, thankful that air isn’t like food or water, and you can’t throw it up. Once it’s in me, it’s in me.
From the dock, Ren’s hand reaches out. The yellow lamp looms directly behind her head—it’s so bright. It reminds me of that light at the end of a tunnel people say you see when you’re about to die.
Lifting my wrist, she pulls me through the water. We move together jerkily, her dragging, me kicking. I’m not floating, suspended anymore, like in those moments before being born. I wonder if that’s what’s happening to me right now, if I’m being born, one more time. I even gasped for air and everything.
It’s with this thought in my head that I haul my body over the edge of the dock.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that it’s Ren who catches me.
16
REN
5:00 A.M., FRIDAY
Callum’s Omni sinks a slow, watery death. It’s too depressing to watch.
He and I both risk glances back across the strait, thinking the same thing: the DI must have figured it out by now. I’d give us an hour, tops, before they find the sunken Omni.
Still catching our breath, we gaze across the water. It occurs to me that I’m standing on West Isle territory for the first time. The Ward’s gap-toothed skyline is dark, of course. Only a few lucky buildings, the ones with electricity, glow from the inside.
Turning around, I count five—no, six—skyscrapers on the West Isle. They’re different from the ones back home, covered in a shining, mirrorlike metal. It reflects in a bazillion different directions.
Callum leads us, wet and bedraggled, over the swaying wooden pier. “Reservoir Dock used to be an actual reservoir. All brack now, of course,” he says in his best tour-guide voice, passing his canteen.
We take it greedily, a few swigs for each. And maybe a few sips more after that. Callum’s a West Isler, after all. He can afford it.
“Easy does it,” he says when he sees we might just finish the canteen. “Drought season’s coming. Weather forecasters predict especially low rainfall this year.”
“But don’t you guys just buy black market?”
Overhead, a solar-powered lamplight casts a soft blue glow along the dock. Callum exhales. “West Isle isn’t as wealthy as you’d think. Not the way we once were. Black-market fresh adds up, and it’s taken a heavy financial toll on many.”
So, what he’s saying is—they’re less rich.
Got it.
Aven, nearly sleepwalking, stumbles over the planks. I’d like for us to be moving faster, but she’s exhausted, and the gurgling strait is too tempting a lullaby. Dropping back, I loop my arm through hers.
Callum closes a gate behind us. “Are you cold?” he asks Aven, shrugging off his jacket. She doesn’t answer, so he just lays it over her shoulders.
“I’m sorry I didn’t wear two,” he says to me awkwardly.
“No, no . . . this is nothing,” I say truthfully, waving an arm. “It’s warmer than any winter night in the ’Racks.”
Embarrassed, he looks away. “Right.” He nods. “No heat.”
I don’t like talking about my home with him. It’s not that I�
�m embarrassed about being poor—I’m not. I’m embarrassed by its side effects. Things like not being clean and not being able to wear different clothes every day.
“Hey, Feathers.” I nudge her until she blinks at me bleary-eyed. I point down. Beside us, little spikes of green sprout up along the concrete slabs. Grass. Growing straight from the ground. We’ve seen it before, up on the garden rooftoops, but in the Ward it just can’t grow like it does here.
Aven wakes up for this. Arms still looped together, she pulls me to the very edge of the concrete path. We stand there on tiptoe, dangling over the wild green abyss. “Count of three?” she says, grinning. “Three!”
She takes one wide step onto the green, dragging me with her. She lets out a squeak and starts swishing her feet around, smashing down one foot and then the other.
This is what I love most about my sister. Her default is happy. She’s been drugged, lost her hands, told to keep her shit together while I flooded our mobile, and . . . here she is, smiling. Jumping. Flattening grass with her feet.
I don’t know how she does it.
Callum leans up against a lamppost, watching and smirking. A moment later, he looks over his shoulder. I check the rippling, dark strait also. Dawn’s begun to peek through the clouds, turning the sky a soft gray, and the water is clear.
I exhale. “We should go,” I say, wary of being out in the daytime.
We work our way inland.
Callum steers us down a street paved with sloppy, uneven stones. Nailed to the storefronts are actual paper flyers. They read:
A DAWN FOR DISCOURSE:
BEGIN THE DAY AS YOU WOULD SEE IT FINISH.
Join together for a peaceful assembly led by fellow
UMI citizen Jary Kahn if you agree . . .
FRESHWATER FOR OUR NATION
MUST NOT BE OPTIONAL!
I wanna ask Callum about it—but then we’re passed by a woman wearing a mask with a long, curved nose. . . .
“Uh, Callum?” I point.
“Just a mask,” he answers quickly. “The Blight’s made everyone more fearful over the last few months. The mask protects from the virus; it has a built-in air filter.”
“But what about the cure? The governor stole so much of the serum during our drop-offs.”
Callum rubs at a fluff of brown hair on his temple. “He’s made some available to the public, but it’s wildly expensive.”
As predicted.
“The governor didn’t give it to the prisoners, that’s for sure,” Aven tells us, carefully watching the bird mask pass us by. “They’re still sick.” She shakes her head, brows clenched. “Ren . . . we can’t just leave them like that. We have to get them out.”
Do we?
Now that I have Aven back, I can’t muster the willpower to sneak back there so fast. Not that I’m happy hundreds of sick prisoners are living in filth and squalor because the government says they’re criminals, but . . . how the hell am I supposed to fix that? And why me? I got what I went in there for. Now all I care about is protecting her.
“Let’s talk about it tomorrow. There’s a lot we need to know before we do anything.” I look to Callum for reinforcement. “Right?” An older sister telling her no has a lot less authority than a bona fide scientist.
“I’m in agreement,” Callum says. “Let’s discuss tomorrow.”
Shouts fill the air, but we see nobody. What’s going on? I wonder, glancing around the mostly empty streets. When we turn the corner, I get my answer.
In the middle of the road, a pack of people, all wearing the masks, stand around cheering. A man raises his fist. Nailed to his pulpit, a flyer: A Dawn for Discourse.
The man has the look of old wealth that hasn’t seen an update in some time. “Now is the time!” he yells to the crowd, adjusting his black suspenders. Spittle flies from his mouth. “We must campaign Governor Voss for a Second Appeal Upstate!”
“Is he serious?” I ask Callum, boggled. Why would anyone want another appeal?
The crowd continues cheering, but they’re silenced when the man holds up his hand. “I know what you’re thinking—the First Appeal failed. Negotiation with Magistrate Harcourt, the leader of the Falls’ government, proved unsuccessful, as did force.
“Four times a month, Harcourt auctions off their extra water stores. Yes, my friends, extra! Sources on the Mainland say that they have a surplus. And four times a month, the UMI cannot afford to win these auctions! Well, hear this, fellow West Islers: the UMI cannot afford to lose! Not anymore. Our previous failure means only one thing: we must try again!”
Not that I think anyone here is interested in my opinion, but considering the death toll was somewhere in the thousands and we still didn’t win—I’d beg to differ.
The man goes on, feverishly digging one hand into his pocket. “Only with a larger military do we stand a chance!” he shouts. Then he points across the strait. “Governor Voss’s recent success in nearly eradicating the Blight is an opportunity for all of us.”
I spit onto the pavement. “Bullshit.” Looking at Aven, it hits me that she still doesn’t know the truth. “Callum made that cure from the spring water, and me and some other racers got it to all the sickhouses. Now Voss is taking the credit.”
“The Ward is no longer a place of disease, and those people need a calling. They need a mission. A purpose! This is that purpose. Too long has the UMI gone without a reliable source of freshwater. We must campaign Governor Voss and Chief Dunn to lead them to their purpose!”
The masked crowd roars, eating it up.
Wide-eyed, Aven looks at Callum and me. “He wants to make the Ward into an army?”
“Looks like it,” I answer, kicking at a cobblestone.
“As I said,” Callum says, gesturing to the sky, “drought season. People are protesting—it’s the third ‘discourse’ I’ve seen this week. They’ll have to rely entirely on rainfall, or go broke buying black market.”
It takes all I’ve got not to point out that right across the Hudson Strait, we’ve been doing that same thing for years. It ain’t easy, but we do it.
“It’s them. . . .” The words shake out of Aven’s mouth as she tucks her arms away.
At the far intersection, there are two men in telltale blue fatigues round the corner. They’re headed down this block—
We duck under the awning of a boarded-up storefront. “No, no, no . . .” Aven repeats over and over. It’s like watching a storm roll in. She tries to control it, but she can’t.
I poke my head up. The officers are ten, maybe fifteen feet away. Aven watches me. Her bottom lip quivers, her whole body heaving. She can’t breathe.
I can barely breathe too, watching her this way. We need to hide. I glance around for a better spot, but this is the best we’ve got.
“Help,” I say, turning to Callum and gesturing to the wooden boards. He kneels closer and we grip the bottom-most two-by-four. It pops off, dangling from a nail.
“In,” I tell Aven. She slips under the wooden board, and when Callum and I follow, she doesn’t look back. In a far corner of the clothing store, she balls herself up. White hair drapes round her shoulders, hiding her face.
She’s crying.
Seeing her like this, I want to throw knives or something. Just when she’s healthy, they mess with her body and her head. I can’t let this go. When I met my other self underwater, all my teeth bared, I knew I wouldn’t be able to. Now I’m doubly sure.
Voss can’t exist.
“No one’s taking you away again. No one,” I whisper, crouching in front of her. She doesn’t look at me . . . she just lifts her eyes to Callum.
He’s peering between the wooden boards, and quiets us with the tiniest motion of his hand. A shaft of sun shines bright triangles onto racks of dusty, unworn clothes.
We freeze. The officers’ muffled voices are coming from right outside the storefront. Their shadow steals the light away.
Seconds pass.
Callum drops his hand
. The voices are gone. He turns slowly, and then he nods.
I exhale. Relief floods my body, but Aven’s still glued stiff. “Let’s get you something to wear,” I say quietly, eyeing the clothing racks behind us. She needs a distraction, but she doesn’t want to move.
Standing, I ask, “When have you ever seen a closet this big?” To tempt her, I begin rifling through the hangers. May as well look for myself too. I hate walking around in neoprene.
Like a turtle poking its head out from its shell, Aven glances around. She takes tiny steps toward one rack, then another. After deciding that we’re safe enough, she smiles at me.
Even in here, in this dusty, abandoned store, her smile does a better job than the sun. Everything just feels warmer.
I leave her to explore and go meet Callum by the registers. He’s gesturing for me to join him, wearing a fool grin on his face. I think for a second he’s found green and wants to rob the place. But that’d be absurd. This is Callum, after all.
From under a register, he retrieves two bizarro masks, passing one to me.
Up close, I see it’s not just a mask with a crazy long nose—it’s a beak. This is funny, because—“Callum . . . birds are how the virus spreads, right?”
Even his snorts are gentlemanly. “You are correct. Interestingly enough, we’re not the first nation to adopt this accessory. Hundreds of years ago, during the Plague, people wore them as well.”
I slip on the mask, letting it dangle from my neck. “You ready, Aven?”
She pops out from behind a clothing rack wearing a fuzzy, light blue skirt, and a new tee. It reads Suck it, Asteroid over a cartoon of a burning meteor.
“Love it,” I say.
Waving a hanger at me, she says, “This is for you. I’m all ready to go.” She pushes something long and floppy into my face with a smile.
I don’t know if I even want to see. Aven and me, we have very different taste.
I eye the garment, then look to Callum. He just raises both his hands. Boy’s staying out of the clothing talk, apparently. It’s black. That’s good. And stretchy—also good. I hold it up and finally make out what it is. . . .
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