The Isle

  “I think that’s it,” Ter says, pointing to a door on our right, painted the same concrete gray as everything else. “It’d make sense to keep it near the delivery boats, and I don’t see any other closets.”

  Sipu slows the Omni. “I agree. Looks like it could be it.” Instead of continuing on toward the DI reserved lot, she swings right, bringing us between two white truck boats. “Ter, Aven, I’m dropping you off here,” she says, handing us a pair of scrubs and a DI uniform each. “Scrubs first, uniforms over them. You two fill the barrel, and I’ll meet you in the lot up ahead. Seeing how many officers are here, I think it’s best if I play escort. Also, make sure no one looks too closely at the ID cards on your uniforms.” She pauses, then holds out her hand. “Give me your Print Mimics—there are too many officers; you’ll look suspicious. I’ll pull prints for all of us.”

  I hand her mine, Ter hands her his, and then she throws on her own DI uniform.

  Squirming into the back, I glance over my shoulder. Only when I’m sure no one’s watching do I layer up. I emerge, fabric chafing fabric, like a blue starchy butterfly . . . except if butterflies turned into caterpillars and not the other way around. “Girls are hardly ever DI,” I say to her, worried, eyeing my blue shirt and pants. “I don’t think I’ve seen one in my life.”

  “There are some women at the base, in the offices, mainly. But . . . you’re not wrong. We’ll have to be fast,” Sipu says casually, opening the moonroof.

  Ter climbs out first. Hugging the plastic sack, I’m next, looking so ridiculous in this DI uniform—I’m fourteen.

  Sipu reverses out of the delivery lot.

  With his head lowered, Ter tells me quietly, “Don’t look. There’s a camera by the ID check. Keep your back to it.”

  I freeze awkwardly. With no fingernails, I bite into my thumb knuckle instead. Ter nudges my elbow toward the gray door.

  I stop suddenly on the walkway. I’m cold, I realize. I’m in three layers and I’m shaking. Yellow bulbs dangle from the ceiling. They’re attached to loose wires, just like—

  I’m back in Quarantine.

  Every point of light becomes a pinprick. At the back of my mind, a steel blade traces a line down my neck. It’s like I’m looking through the eye of a needle—my fear’s made everything small. I can’t feel my heart . . . my lungs don’t work. Why did I come back here?

  “What’s wrong?” I hear Ter ask, but he sounds so far away. He’s shaking me, but I’m someplace else. Somewhere he can’t get to.

  You came to bring them a cure, I remind myself. You came to get them out!

  Since the blade is steel, I know what I have to do.

  I have to turn myself into steel too. Maybe, sometimes, it’s okay to fight fire with fire—Ren isn’t here to do it for you. I pretend I’m the knife. Ignoring the cold, I cut the fear with myself. I cut it in halves, infinitely.

  I make it too small for microscopes.

  When I open my eyes again . . . the shivering has calmed. Over us, the bulbs are just electricity burning up. I breathe, in and out, to remind myself that I can. Whoever said make-believe didn’t work?

  “I’m fine,” I tell Ter in a whisper I can barely hear myself. “It’s over. I’m okay.”

  Ter eyes me, wary as he tries the handle to the storage room. It doesn’t budge. “Gimme some cover,” he says, and pulls off the fake ID card tagged to his front pocket. I move between him and the officers, and the camera.

  Even though I’m faced away, I can still feel them standing behind me. I can feel the ID check, and the security cameras. My body is a living, breathing target. I might have cut my fear into pieces, but there are things bigger than myself—now, I’m afraid for us. What we’re trying to do.

  In the corner of my eye, the men in blue take final swigs from their canteen. “Break’s over,” one says, before heading to the ID check. I hold my breath until they’re gone, but the feeling of eyes on my back doesn’t leave with them.

  Ter continues wiggling the card between the door and the lock, jamming it up and down, until—

  Click.

  It unlocks. When he looks back at me, he’s wearing a wide smile. I can’t force myself to smile back, though. If someone were to recognize me . . .

  I turn the handle first and push past him into the dark storage room.

  I’d be the reason we get caught. I’d be why we failed.

  I shouldn’t be here.

  Just as Sipu’s maps predicted, inside the room we find steel barrels upon more steel barrels. They’re stacked as high as the ceiling. I watch, unmoving, as Ter brings one down. I shouldn’t be here, I think again. He pops off the lid. Without saying a word, we pour the water. The bag jiggles in our hands until it’s totally empty.

  It’s anxious too. It’s ready to finally do what it was put on this planet for.

  My heart sinks. The water needs to make it to Quarantine. That’s the most important thing. Not me, and not the promise I don’t know how to keep.

  Ter drags the half-full barrel onto a dolly. “Scrub time,” he reminds me, and I touch his arm.

  “I think . . .” My eyes prickle with saltwater. “I think I shouldn’t go. The security cameras, the officers—”

  “Are you serious?” Ter cuts me off. “You can’t be afraid. We couldn’t have come up with a plan if it hadn’t been for you. . . . I’m not leaving you behind. No.”

  He doesn’t get it.

  Shaking my head, I say, “That’s not even it, Ter. What if I’m recognized? What if we get caught and no one gets the water, all because I had to come along? It’s more important that you and Sipu make it to Quarantine. I’m too big a risk.”

  Saying those words . . . my chest aches knowing they’re true.

  One thing. Here I am, healthy for the first time in years, and I can’t do this one thing.

  32

  REN

  6:15 P.M., FRIDAY

  I close my eyes to Emilce’s lifeless body, fighting off a lump in my throat. Voss has hurt so many people. When does it end?

  Still holding the box, I realize, it ends now.

  I walk across the room and prepare myself for what I’ve gotta do. I need to make it to the radio tower. Then, find some way out of here before the news spreads. And damn, this news will spread . . . fast. As I reach for the doorknob, my wrist buzzes. I read the comm—it’s from Derek.

  I’m through the causeway. Come to the security room. Basement level, last door on your right. Will need you to distract the guard.

  My feelings balance like a seesaw on a rooftop playground. I’m tight with unknowing, unable to reach a verdict about whether I should hate him. After what Emilce just told me—if I find out he knew what Voss was planning, it’d be hard not to.

  And yet, in the back of my head, a tiny hope has survived the blow: Kitaneh might not have said anything. There’s a chance. I’ll show him the box, and the instant that he sees it, I’ll know. His eyes will tell me everything.

  I slip the wooden book into my apron pocket.

  Rushing out into the hallway, I head for the stairwell reserved for the mansion’s peons. I take it down one flight, then two more before spilling out into the basement. There, I fold my hands in front of me, trying to look the part. I do it how I imagine swanky ladies serving even swankier ladies might, and casually swing right down the corridor.

  This level is most definitely out of bounds. There’s no carpeting down here, no fancy-man furniture. Just dull concrete and enough light to see your feet by. I walk past a dozen locked doors. They look like they’re keeping secrets.

  At the last one—right where Derek told me to stop—I stand on tiptoe and peer through a small glass window.

  I see a guard. He’s leaning so far back in his chair, it’s strained to the max. Flat glass screens surround him on all four walls: seven for the island itself, about five inside the mansion . . . I squint—

  Main entrance. Ballroom. Some art gallery room. A cigar room and a sitting room.

&nb
sp; Thank god, I confirm, exhaling. Public spaces only. Don’t need footage of me assisting with his wife’s death floating around. Just one more thing he’ll come after me for.

  Three screens show different angles of a tubed hallway, definitely the causeway. Two more for an area I don’t recognize—some kind of docking lot.

  And there in the corner, there’s a circular door. If this is the right room, that must be the way in and out of the causeway. To its right, I notice some kind of ID code system, but from here, I can’t tell how it works. I imagine Derek’s got something planned, though.

  Quickly, I type:

  About to provide a distraction. Get ready.

  I can think of only one way to distract the guard: Emilce Voss.

  “Help!” I yell through the window, pounding on the door with both palms until they sting.

  The guard nearly drops onto the floor, he’s so surprised. He bounds out of his chair and runs to me. “What’s wrong, miss? What’s the matter?”

  Kinda love that he just called me “miss.” This uniform is indeed swanky. I put on my best fancy-maid-lady voice and cry, “I was clearing glasses in the ballroom and I could have sworn I heard a woman crying upstairs! She sounded like she was in pain. . . . You have to help her!”

  I guess a story about Emilce Voss dying ain’t so far-fetched, ’cause the guard appears to buy it. He lifts his comm to his mouth: “Security to personnel: We’ve got a potential problem on the first floor. Anyone up there to check it out?”

  Static fills the room while he waits for an answer.

  Not good. Not good at all. I need to get this guy out. It’s not a distraction if he doesn’t leave the damn room—

  “Sir,” I begin, sounding (ever so slightly) appalled. “Someone could be in pain, or worse, dying. Do you really think this can wait? What if it’s Governor Voss’s wife? She’s up there, isn’t she? He’d be devastated . . . especially if there were something that could have been done about it!”

  The guard’s face drops, his chubby cheeks drawing low into jowls. He makes for the door. I open it for him and follow through the corridor, all the way to the first floor. At the top of the stairwell, I say, “I hope everything’s all right!” and let him run the rest of the way on his own.

  I race back to the security office to find Derek inside, sporting a white lab coat and a simple disposable mask. He pulls a clear rubber-glove thing from his finger, and the door closes behind him.

  “How’d you get through?” I ask, hugging him so hard I’d probably crack a rib—if he weren’t immortal and all.

  My eyes struggle to avoid the triangle of his chest that’s wisely decided to free itself from his button-down shirt. He don’t look half bad in a lab coat neither. He rocks it, in a hot doctor sort of way. I push the thought aside, remembering the box.

  Derek waves the clear finger glove as we leave the security room behind. “Handy Print Mimic. I still needed the distraction, though, so thank you for that; the only people entering the mansion at this point are on the guest list.”

  We walk through the corridor, headed for the stairs. “And the help,” I say, remembering my kitchen run-in. “Kitaneh’s here to kill Voss.”

  Derek’s face darkens. “Well, maybe this time she’ll be successful.”

  Doubtful.

  By now, the weight of my conversation with Emilce has started to feel like a boulder inside my chest. Did Kitaneh tell him? I have to find out. Taking the wooden book from my apron, I lift it up for him to see. I hold it like it’s something unholy but also precious.

  It is precious—it’s the thing that will bring Governor Voss down.

  Derek’s copper eyebrows scrunch together, his whole face quizzical as he cocks his head. In that instant, I have my answer. I throw my arms around him, breathless and smiling. I rock him back and forth. “You didn’t know,” I whisper. “You didn’t know.”

  He don’t understand what I’m so damn happy about. Now, I have to be the bearer of the news.

  Pulling myself away, I step up a few stairs so we’re eye level. “Derek, you need to see this,” I say, and pass him the box. He reads the carved words. Puzzle pieces of understanding begin to fit together. He lifts the latch.

  This is a message for the Tètai. . . .

  The audio plays on.

  When he sees the vial’s label, he lets the lid drop. The message is choked off, silent.

  “Voss . . . he made it. So that we would give him the cure,” Derek breathes in a dead, dry voice. “And Kitaneh knew.”

  He says it like it’s the nail in the coffin between him and the Tètai.

  Passing the book back, he asks, “What were you planning on doing with the information?”

  I point up to the roof. “Radio tower?”

  “We could piggyback on whatever channel they’re using to broadcast the gala. Everyone in the UMI who’s watching a holo will know.”

  “Everyone who gets news updates to their comms too,” I add.

  Derek holds out his hand for me to take. “Let’s do it.”

  Palms clasped, we race to the fourth floor, where we can’t go any higher. Swinging right with Derek flying at my heels, we see it—dead center of the corridor, a winding black staircase to the radio tower.

  I run for it, driven by critical weight—every step brings me and Aven closer to a new, different life. One where we can wander round hunting useless copper pieces for luck, or anything else we damn please.

  A life without waiting for Voss to catch up.

  33

  AVEN

  6:31 P.M., FRIDAY

  Ter knows I’m right, and he hates it as much as I do. Still, he mulls the dilemma over, exhaling and rubbing his scalp.

  With a grin, he pops off the barrel’s steel lid.

  “Take off your shoes.”

  I don’t move. Could this work?

  “Get. In. The. Barrel,” he says, sterner this time.

  Without hesitation, I shove off my loafers and roll up my scrubs. Ter lifts me into the barrel, and I hug him so tight our cheeks stick together. “Thankyouthankyouthankyou,” I whisper, knee-deep in water as Ter pops the lid on over my head.

  I’m sealed away in darkness.

  To wheel the dolly, he has to tilt the barrel—I fall backward onto its side. If I turn around, I can lean with gravity against the steel and not end up swimming. I’m wheeled along the walking path, until I feel us slow, and then stop.

  Outside, I hear Sipu’s voice. “Where is she?” she whispers, and Ter explains.

  “She was right,” she answers. “It’s better this way—the lab might be light-staffed, but the causeway is definitely on high alert after their escape. We’ve got guards at both entrances now to deal with. Here’s your Mimic.”

  I’m wheeled to the checkpoint, where I come to a complete stop—this must be it. Please work, I pray, crossing my fingers.

  And—they actually cross . . . I can feel it! I press the padded end of one against the other. No fingernails yet, but definitely another knuckle and at least a centimeter more of skin and bone. I whisper a silent “Thank you” to the air. I can feel the barrel’s steel sides against my actual, real-live fingers, and it’s amazing.

  “ERROR,” a robotic lady’s voice says.

  It isn’t working?

  “What’s going on?” Ter asks.

  “ERROR. ERROR.”

  “Brack,” Sipu curses. “The Print Mimic has a ninety-nine percent unlock rate.”

  “ERROR. ERROR. ERROR.” The robotic voice is starting to sound mad. I bite my lip, unable to do anything but listen. Work, work, work, I pray from inside the barrel.

  “Try Aven’s,” I hear Ter whisper. “Quick, before an alarm goes.”

  A moment later, in a much calmer mechanical voice—“ENTER.”

  Relief washes over me, though I’m still shivering.

  When a second “ENTER” follows the first, I want to jump, but I know we’ve only made it past the first checkpoint.

  T
he barrel’s moving again, wheeled left into the causeway. “Names?” I hear a guard ask in a gruff voice.

  Sipu answers for the both of them, with names that are not their real ones. I bet they’re real, though. If you’re actually trying to assassinate the governor, you do the research to get past his security.

  “You know, shift change ended,” the guard says, and taps the barrel. “You’re late. You better get a move on.”

  “Yes, sir,” I hear Ter answer. “There was a delivery issue, and the guy called the DI to resolve it. Officer Lane here was kind enough to escort me so I don’t get any flack for it.”

  “I heard nothing about a problem with any deliveries.”

  “Then we’re doing our job right,” Sipu answers, and she snaps her fingers.

  I don’t hear any more conversation. One checkpoint down, I think as the barrel tilts backward. From the map, I know the causeway is about a mile long, end to end. But, since we’re in the middle, that’d make it only a half a mile . . . about a seven-minute walk.

  Even though Ren doesn’t believe in luck, I still cross everything: my fingers, my eyes, my toes . . . every last one of my nose hairs. I don’t cross my legs, because I don’t want to fall over and give us away. But everything else?

  Crossed.

  Finally settled in for the haul, I close my eyes (still crossed), and wait.

  About fifteen minutes later—“Out you go,” Ter says, popping open the lid.

  He places his hands under my armpits, which makes me squirm. I was clammy the whole ride, wishing I had fingernails just so I’d have something to bite off—I don’t want him touching there.

  The next time, both Print Mimics worked perfectly, and Sipu repeated the same story to the second guard. But we did have one real scare—a nurse yelled at Ter for being so late to the shift change. He had to start running, or it’d look like he was being lazy.

  I got bucked around in the barrel like a ship tossed at sea during a storm.

  When Ter lifts me, I flush and squeeze my arms tight so he doesn’t have to feel my armpits. If he does, he doesn’t say anything. He sets me down in the inventory closet, a puddle of water at my feet. “All right. This is it,” he says, making double fists like he’s about to enter a fighting ring. “Anything I need to know?”