by Caroline Wei
“The queen’s,” Clarice mumbled, like she was talking to the floor. “Daisy, daisy. But it’s too late now!” she howled with laughter. “It’s all inside me!”
Clarice scuttled towards me on her hands and knees, like an insect, but the ropes binding her to the stakes in the ground wouldn’t let her get too close. She held out her arms. “All inside me! All inside!”
I tried to swallow the burning bitterness in my throat, but it was too dry. “Potestrine is inside you?”
Clarice rolled backwards, clapping her hands in the air. “Yes, yes! All inside me!”
I tried to get a closer look at the bite marks on Clarice’s arm. They had been leaking black pus before, when she had been more recently wounded. Tentatively, I touched one of the gouges, expecting backlash. Clarice stayed surprisingly collected.
“Clarice, is that potestrine?”
She rolled up, immediately still. “Yes. Potestrine. Queen has it, queen has all.”
My blood thrummed with sudden excitement. “And what’s the cure to potestrine?”
Clarice started screaming, the sound filling the air until it was all I could hear. “NO!” she yelled, pulling at her clothes. “NO! NO!”
My breath caught in my throat, and I hurried out of the room. Seeing her like that, seeing my friend like that, was getting to me. I rubbed at something burning in my eye.
Without warning, I ran into Malchin’s hard chest, and he held out his hands to steady me. I didn’t let him say anything—instead, I stepped quickly away, keeping my gaze down. I had to think about what Clarice said.
“Wait, Alle—”
I turned the corner and sat down with the injured. Victoria was talking quietly to a young girl around Carmen’s age. Crushing my hands to my eyes, anxiety flooded me. I needed to be useful, to be good, like Victoria. I needed to find a way to get us out of the Cube, to keep us safe.
Potestrine. Whatever had been inside the bee-spider-drones, it was potestrine, and potestrine made people crazy. They yanked people out of their right minds. And apparently, a queen had all of it, which didn’t make sense—unless there was a queen, in the world outside of the Cube.
I whimpered into my knees, trying to keep all the storms inside. There was so much we had to do and so much we didn’t know.
I was so scared. I didn’t want to admit it to anyone, but I was.
There was no dinner that night. The few medics we had, as well as Victoria, tried to tend to all the wounded. When everyone settled down to sleep, I could still hear Clarice’s keening through the walls.
In the darkness, I pressed my face to the soil and cried.
6
YALE
The ballroom was draped with lights, jewelry, and the scent of perfume. It was the time of year when there was usually a festival to celebrate the queen’s birthday, but seeing how she wasn’t there, she’d ordered for an Inauguration Ball to be held. Kind of like a welcome-to-the-world ceremony for the Amnesia Experiment.
Only the best of the maids were selected as servers for international events, so I suppose I should have been happy. I couldn’t have been, though. All that seemed to register was Alle, floating in a diamond gown in the middle of the room, a ring of crystals in her hair. She was smiling, nodding at the guests, curtsying, and talking to people. Always so kind. Always so pure.
I blinked, and the image was gone immediately. The platter in my hand was heavy, loaded with goblets shining with golden wine. Weaving in between the crowds was almost like second nature to me—the quick apologies, the hasty politeness, the skirting feet. The grand ballroom no longer took my breath away as it used to. I’d seen the thick velvet curtains, the giant tinted windows, and the gold-and-silver filigree wallpaper too many times already. Instead, I snuck looks at the festive apparel of the guests, admiring the beautiful fabrics. Niveus’ serving maids stood out among the colorful crowd because we were so plain. All we wore were our dull uniforms, the only decoration a snowflake on the breast pocket.
Every country was here, even Caesitas, which was not on particularly friendly terms with the queen. I could see the royal family, dressed in blue. The king was not present.
All along the perimeter of the ballroom were Niveus guards, but I could see a few foreign soldiers. They all looked grim and firm, their expressions not fitting a celebration at all. Then again, I didn’t feel much like celebrating either.
I was about to walk past a woman swathed in purple—Viola’s color—when she waved me down. She didn’t look at me as she spoke to her companion, an older man who was probably her father.
“—didn’t know that it’d be that extreme,” the woman was saying, her voice pitched violin-string high. Her dainty fingers, loaded down with amethyst rings, clutched at the stem of one of my goblets. “I mean, I knew there would be death, but that was a lot of death. I mean, I knew. That makes me uncomfortable, if you know what I mean, but I mean what I hate more is that everyone lost their memories.”
I recognized her voice now. She was the second-born princess to the throne of Viola, called Adriana. I knew because I occasionally saw her splattered on the pages of magazines, declaring her a pageant winner or whatnot. Her older sister, Rosalynd, wearing a floor-length gown with a dramatic periwinkle train, stood a few feet away, chatting with a guard.
Her father reached for a goblet of wine as well, giving me more time to listen in.
“Has to be done, I suppose. But I am sorry, dearie. There’s nothing that’ll stop them, they’re too—”
It had become too awkward for me to remain, so I curtsied and went on my way. In only a few minutes, all the glasses of wine had been taken, and I went back to the servers’ section to get a quick refill. While I was bending over one of the tables, the queen caught my eye.
Well, it wasn’t really the queen. It was a portrait from when she was younger, on the far side of the wall, outlined in silver and majesty. She was lovely—her eyes were piercing, and her hair curled thick and dark blonde around her shoulders—but she looked like she wanted to kill someone. I’d heard rumors about her murdering people who displeased her before, and from the time that I knew the queen, I’d seen uncomfortable acts of cruelty. She was one of the few who actually benefited from the War.
After a conflict as cataclysmic as that one, humanity had scattered. People lost faith in the governments that had allowed smoke and fire to consume their children for years on end. There was no sense of direction, nowhere to go, no one in charge. Citizens of the old United States ousted their president. Men and women in China broke into federal buildings. Something called the United Nations disbanded when a vengeful group of rebels launched a series of violent protests. I wasn’t old enough to remember what it had been like, but I could imagine the atmosphere of fear, the panic, the desperate hunt for survival.
It was all too easy for strong-willed leaders to take the helm and promise what families wanted to hear: a future, and a prosperous one. They preached a return to old, trusted institutions, to the traditional systems of power when control was centralized in one family, in one person. Back then, with these positions in place, no one had to suffer from modern, corporate greed. There were no arms races or mass hysteria or catastrophic exterminations.
Or so they said.
The ten countries formed, each taking in survivors of the War. Bygone citizenship lines blurred as more and more were consolidated into a new nationality. This reality that no one had known before paved the way for novel rulers to step into place, eventually leading to someone like the queen.
Queen Carlen Frost of Niveus, however, was not liked by international diplomats and leaders. She was not liked by most of the palace staff. And she had certainly not been liked by me, especially when she was hurting her own daughter.
My best friend, Alle.
And this one deed of the queen—putting her into the rat maze that was the Amnesia Complex—was something never before seen in history.
I lost my staring contest with her dead-hard ey
es and finished pouring wine. There were things I needed to do and things I’d rather not think about.
As I continued serving, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for some of the royalty here, waltzing along to the tight orchestra music. While some were dressed finely, others had noticeable tears or stains on their clothing, however bright the colors were. After World War III, not all were as fortunate as Niveus.
Sometimes, at night, when I was alone with my thoughts, I would wish that our country’s good fortune had gone to someone else. I would wish that it hadn’t been put into the hands of a wicked queen who wanted nothing to do with Alle, her own flesh and blood and the only heir to a palace of stone hearts.
7
MALCHIN
There was a very small spot in the soil above Alle’s head. It was crowned by little plant roots, throwing a halo of light around her soft hair. I felt a strange desire to touch it, but then pushed the thought away. Instead, I stood with my hands on my hips, trying to figure out where I’d gone wrong.
“Why do you have to play the hero?” she had yelled. “Why couldn’t you just beat the guy up?” She was talking about the elderly man whose mind had been controlled by the ceiling-born hellions. Alle wanted to know why I risked an entire underground of refugees’ lives so I could spare his.
The truth was, I wasn’t really sure. But I couldn’t kill him. There was no such thing as calmly snapping someone’s neck and walking away without a thought. There was no such thing as pushing an elder into a mob of frothing maniacs and not feeling any guilt afterwards.
I understood Alle’s frustration, but given the chance to do it over again, I still wouldn’t kill him, because there was no guarantee that it meant safety for everyone we’d protected.
Alle looked peaceful in her sleep. I could see the curve of her hips, just slightly out of the ring of light. Swallowing, I stepped away.
People started to rouse when Galen began making what breakfast he could. There were a few plants that he pulled from the soil above and boiled using our recycled water. Women and children ate first, and then men. I didn’t eat at all. I didn’t think I could, even if I wanted to. There were just too many people who needed it more than me.
I sat next to Alle, my hands on my knees, as she nibbled at her breakfast. There was so much I wanted to think about—including what Trial Three might be. Alle had said it would involve at least one wall of the Cube, which probably meant it would be used as a weapon against us. If that were the case, the best move would be to stay underground as long as we could, until we ran out of supplies.
Alle shifted next to me, and my thoughts were replaced by guilt. “Alle,” I said, “I’m sorry for what happened earlier—with the older man, when we were getting attacked.” She was quiet, and for some reason I wanted to take her hand. “I couldn’t hurt him. I didn’t want to hurt anyone.”
She took a deep breath. “Yes. Sure.” Alle pinched her lips, like she was in pain. “But I wish you would have listened. You didn’t have to hurt him, just realized what you were doing. At the time, there were so many people depending on us, and there was so much that I saw—” her voice cracked, and I wondered if this was about the little girl who had died in her arms. Alle turned away.
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. I’m sorry, I really am.” I reached out a tentative hand, not sure what I was doing, until it connected with Alle’s arm. She jerked a little, like she was burned, and, suddenly embarrassed, I retrieved my fingers. “I’ll get going.” And maybe try again later.
“Wait, Malchin.”
I turned.
“I went to see Clarice last night, and she said something about a thing called potestrine.” Alle kept her eyes on the ground when she talked. “I think that’s what was inside of the spiders, the thing that made people crazy. It looks black, kind of like tar, but with the consistency of blood.”
“Clarice told you that? Willingly?”
“Um...the potestrine might have a way of...loosening up the mind. I thought perhaps it released some of the memories that the creators of the Cube stole from us.”
I sat back down next to Alle. “You mean this is something from the outside world? Potestrine? It’s real?”
“Yes.”
That would make sense. Whatever was inside the flying robots made people delirious, and maybe delirious people could overcome the obstacles that were blocking them from their pasts. I was getting excited.
“Did Clarice say anything else about it?”
Alle nodded. “She said there was a queen who had all of the potestrine. I’m not sure who. And—well, before she could answer me about what the cure to it was, she started screaming ‘no’ over and over again.” Alle shook her head and laughed, but I knew she was shaken.
“Clarice called me ‘Miss Baby-baby,’ did you know that? She said some wacky things, like ‘daisy, daisy,’ too…” Alle’s eyes widened.
There was a beat of silence. “What?”
Alle’s eyes rolled into the back of her head, and she fell like a bridge collapsing.
8
ALLe
There was a galaxy in my head.
The stars were blue and spun like spilled milk, spiraling in sparkling, faceted dimensions. Someone’s voice echoed at me from a black hole but dissipated as quickly as it appeared.
The ground underneath my feet was ripe with spring, and the air smelled like grass and soil. I opened my eyes, and the galaxy cleared into a crystal sky, a mother and a father. I was so sure they were my mother and father because I could see myself in them. In him, my eyes. In her, my laugh. One thread of life braided into two.
“Well, aren’t you a doll?” Mother came towards me and lifted me up easily, right underneath my armpits, my frilly dress fluffing out around my chubby knees. There was a deep chuckle somewhere in the Garden of Eden. My dad put a hand on Mother’s shoulder and smiled at me, his eyes two pieces of cocoa.
“Princesses aren’t complete without their flower garlands, darling,” he said, a dimple creasing his right cheek, browned with sun. I stretched out my arms towards him, and he lifted me from Mother’s grasp. Hoisted on his hip, I watched as he lifted a string of daisies from the ground. “Aren’t they pretty, my love? Just like you.”
“Don’t spoil her before she’s old enough to understand it,” came Mother’s voice, the sound of wind chimes.
“Oh, I’ll spoil you rotten before you’re old enough to say ‘more.’ What do you think, dove? Yes or no?”
The daisies were the color of snow and wheat, of summer and winter, of water and earth. They were stiff and green in Dad’s hands, their petals like the skin of a peach. Something like a gurgle burst from my throat, my vision getting a little blurry around the edges. Warmth seeped through my stomach like sunshine.
“Oh, she likes them,” Dad murmured, his dimple popping out again. “Carlen, she’s just like you.” Mother gave a fuzzy response.
“Long time ago,” Dad said, nuzzling his nose to mine, “I won your mama’s heart with these. She loves daisies like you love food.”
I laughed.
Then the snake hissed at Eve, and I fell out of the garden.
And crash-landed into the abandoned desert.
The room I was in was dark, cavernous, full of echoes. Dark facets twirled in every corner like gargoyles, and I huddled into myself as faceless workers brushed past me, the sharp chemical smell of their clothes stinging my nose. The hem of my dress was Chinese silk, very expensive, and it was already smeared with oil that would never come out. Mother would kill me.
“Not that, you imbecile. Over there. This.” The darkness in my eyes lifted a little, parting the mist. Mother stood in her threatening glory among a small group of people in lab coats, wearing fashionable pants that rose well above her ankles. Her hair was twisted into a bun, with silver thread woven into her hairline to give the illusion of a crown. Her thin, pale hand held a single daisy, crisp and new. I pitied the flower, whatever it was about to go th
rough.
“Do you understand me? This is the key. Potestrine will be the most powerful—” She turned around, her eyes carving into my face. “What are you doing?”
I turned just in time to see the gigantic pot of glowing hot liquid, which was attached to a pair of tongs losing control which was attached to gloved hands which was attached to a terrified woman. Her mouth opened in a stillborn scream as cold nails dug into my arm and yanked me out of the spill zone.
The liquid vomited onto the floor, and workers scattered in all directions. The pot and tongs clattered together like two pieces of a dissonant concerto, the woman its unsuccessful conductor.
Mother dislodged her nails from my arm and stood in silent fury before the bumbling woman, whose face was streaked with tears. Boulders slammed into my chest. Poor woman. Poor, poor woman.
“This is a chemical hazard,” Mother said, her mouth barely moving.
“Yes, ma’am, I’m so sorry, ma’am,” she said.
“Give me that.” Mother stretched out one white hand. The woman’s eyes widened, confused. “That.” Understanding, the woman handed over her gloves. Mother snapped them onto her own hands and gestured for the liquid to be poured back into the pot.
“Drink all of it.” She lifted the refilled pot with one hand and held it out to the shocked worker, whose lips opened and closed like a fish’s. “That’ll be punishment enough, don’t you think?”
A thousand razor blades tore through my brain. I ran around to stand in front of the queen. “Mom, that’s not—”
“I didn’t ask you!” Thunder flashed in Mother’s eyes. “Get out of the way, Alle.”
“But she’s—”
“Does potestrine for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the rest of your life sound appetizing to you, my love?” She tilted her head, silver thread glittering in what little light there was. “Because that’s where this is headed.”
And without a breath of hesitation, Mother splashed the entire pot of hot liquid onto the woman’s face.