City of Savages

by Lee Kelly

  “You’re way too soft on this one. You have been since the moment they got here.” Wren doesn’t say anything for a minute. “Well, she’s definitely out now. She won’t be any more trouble for a while.”

  As the feet above us begin to shuffle again, we hear grunts of exertion. They must be taking her out of the stairwell and back to her room. But I can’t lose Phee to this hotel again. I can’t let her be sucked into the twists and turns of its haunted halls until she loses herself completely. “We need to follow them,” I whisper.

  Ryder puts a finger to his lips.

  “Should I give her another dose?” another man asks.

  “Another dose might kill her. We’ll give her another tomorrow morning. And the morning after that, and so forth. Put her on the official rotation. Have one of the headmistresses start spending some time with her during the peak of the trip. She’ll cave. They all do.” A pause. “Pity, I do so hate using this method with children.”

  The footsteps start retreating back the way they came.

  “Ryder.” I’m about to lose it completely. “My dad. You don’t understand. We need to follow them, we need to—”

  He shakes his head. “If they found you, if they caught you, I couldn’t live with it.”

  “You heard them, they’re going to keep doing this to her. Until she bends, or until she breaks. I can’t—”

  “Skyler, please, I’ve already lost far too many people I care about—I couldn’t watch this happen to you.” He grabs my hand. “Listen, Wren thinks your family’s special . . . some of the Standard kids, even the headmistresses whisper it.” And even though I don’t want to admit it, I know he’s right. Wren’s made that clear. “So we need to use that, Skyler. We need to keep you the model Standard citizen till we figure our way out of here.”

  “Ryder, I can’t just sit in my room and . . . and hope that everything works out.”

  “No, we’ll meet tomorrow, same time, same place, and regroup,” he says. “And if I don’t show up for some reason, you run away from here as fast as you possibly can. You leave alone, you got it?”

  “I’d never leave without my mom or Phee.” I gulp. “And I’d never leave without you.”

  He flashes me one of his off-center grins. “I promise, you won’t have to.”

  * * *

  Ryder’s treads are so soft that I barely hear him round the stairwell. I wait in the darkness a long time, paralyzed, my thoughts circling like vultures, preying on my sanity.

  I wipe my tears away, barely able to see. I picture my mom, a walking zombie, screaming and mumbling under the Standard candlelight at dinner. And Phee, thrashing at the world, and then nothing but a hollow shell.

  My mother, Phee, Sam—if they’re all being brainwashed, if they’re being drugged until all the life leaks out of them, who’s going to stop Wren? How are Ryder, Trevor, and I going to bring down a master of manipulation, and an army of devotees?

  I promised Ryder I would go upstairs, curl up in those warm, suffocating covers, and wake up ready to keep playing at this losing game.

  But I know, as much as I know that the sun rises over the East River, that if I crawl back to my room, we’ll never leave this place alive.

  I rack my brain, trying to think of a way out, a way to bring Wren crashing to his knees, but it’s useless. I’m slip-sliding through my own mind, flailing, grasping for ledges that just aren’t there.

  There are no sanctuaries, no mercy, no answers in this hotel.

  Then Phee’s haunted words prick me.

  The Park. Sky, the Park.

  I sit up with a start, the rays of an idea dawning.

  The Park.

  Rolladin.

  But it’s not a real answer.

  Last time we were in the Park, we were running for our lives, a price on our heads and warlords on our heels. We’re wanted for murder: To go to the Park would be suicide.

  But then I think, hopefully, wildly, about the journal. Rolladin loved Mom. It was obvious in those pages, even if it wasn’t obvious to Mom. Rolladin might love us, too.

  Might, a small, more knowing part of me scoffs. It presents evidence as clear as pictures—the extra chances, the extra rations. The leeway when others were given prison, or worse.

  She loved you, too.

  Is the leader of the Park the same woman, in some way, as the Mary from Mom’s book? Could she save us? Would she?

  Am I willing to risk my life to find out?

  I think of the alternative, staying here, and know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, this isn’t a choice.

  This is our only chance.

  I fly down the stairwell, my feet barely hitting the ground, crack the door at the bottom, and peer into the lobby. There are no armed guards here overnight, like there are at the Carlyle. Just two young minions pretending to keep watch and heavily making out in the corner.

  I watch patiently from the stairwell. Finally, the girl, acting coy, slips away and runs behind the check-in desk. When her young suitor rushes to chase her, I slip through the glass hotel door.

  In my thin wisp of a nightgown, I sprint out into the night, into the cold corpse of a city, a city I’ve hated since I was old enough to know what hatred was. I run up the High Line, keeping the Hudson River on my left, sprint until goose bumps cover my flesh, until my teeth start chattering so wildly I think they’re going to fall out of my head. I run until I forget that raiders and feeders could be lurking in the shadows, until my bones feel so stiff and cold, I swear I’m going to break.

  Run, Sky, I can practically hear Phee’s voice pleading in my ear. Run.

  When the High Line dead-ends, I fly down a rickety flight of stairs and keep running. Past 34th Street, past 42nd Street, up Broadway through a maze of littered taxis, a graveyard of faded signs. I run and run, half-afraid of where I’m going, half-confident that almost all roads lead to the Park.

  I stop only to breathe. Only when my lungs are about to burst and the cement has pounded my flimsy slippers to the point where my legs are about to shatter.

  Finally the twists and turns of the cement jungle run into a forest of green and autumn gold. And for just a moment, I feel like Dorothy when she first arrived in Oz, the sheer, breathtaking beauty of the Park overwhelming me.

  Then I remember my suicide mission. That there’s not a minute, a second, to spare.

  I reach down into the part of me that I never knew existed, not until these past few weeks, anyway. To my layer of malnourished courage, to my soft undercurrent of determination. I close my eyes and picture Phee beside me.

  I channel her.

  The last time the two of us ran through these woods together, we were sprinting from the zoo, running for our lives. Now I’m racing against time to get back in.

  I take a huge breath and start dashing towards the forest. I start yelling before I hit the trees, a deep, bellowing wail of a yell, not my voice. The voice of someone better.

  Someone fearless.

  “Please show us the lords’ mercy!” I call into the darkness, my nightgown flapping behind me like a white flag. “Please show us the lords’ mercy!”

  41 PHEE

  I’m not myself, but I see myself. At least I see who I was, who I think I was—Phoenix. Blond hair, closed eyes, limp arms and legs. Me, I’m floating somewhere else now, just a voyeur without a body. Forced to watch.

  Phoenix is being taken up the stairs by a team of men. They drag her through the hall, propel her forward, and she offers no resistance. She just lies in their arms, aware but unaware, present but somewhere else.

  Like a puppet. Not a real girl.

  The group enters Phoenix’s room.

  “Put her on the bed,” Wren orders the men trailing behind him. “She’s not going anywhere anymore.”

  The men lay her down, and Wren leans over her. “Sist
er Phoenix, this too shall pass,” he purrs, petting her hair. She tries to flinch and pull away, but she can’t move. “Bring in the boy.”

  “But, Master Wren,” one of the men—Francis—says, “I thought I was to be sealed with her.”

  Robert nods. “Master Wren, the boy’s too young—”

  “How dare you question me, after the mess you made tonight,” Wren interrupts. “I ask the questions! I am the embodiment of the Standard!” He sighs and collects himself. “If we give her to the boy, we win the boy. If we win the boy, we win that self-appointed guardian of his. Stryder or Ryder or whatever. We get him, we have his brother,” Wren continues. “Then we’ll have the girl’s mother and sister, too. People are nothing but dominoes. Knock the right one down and they all fall. Come,” he says. “Let’s get the boy.”

  42 SKY

  They grab me on the Great Lawn. At least ten of them—they move out of the trees, drawn like moths to the escaped fieldworker going down in flames.

  “Please show us the lords’ mercy!”

  Five, ten, then fifteen warlords converge on me, picking me off the ground, until I’m just a caught animal, stretched and ready for roasting.

  “You must be suicidal,” Lory hisses into my ear as the troop of guards carries me towards the castle. “Rolladin’s had a price on your head for weeks. You’ve signed your own death sentence, marching back into the Park.” She gives a tight, confused laugh. “You Millers are masochists.”

  We burst into the dimly lit hall of Belvedere Castle, the warmth of the firecups burning my frozen limbs like fiery ice. My arms are nearly ripped from their sockets as I’m pulled forward, down the entryway. The ceiling oddly looks lower, the hall shorter, than I remember, especially compared with the awe-inducing tower of glass we’re trapped in now.

  Rolladin is in her chambers when I arrive. She’s waiting, already expecting me, the news of my return getting here faster than I could.

  “We found her shouting through the Park.” Lory gives me a small shove forward. “She asked for the lords’ mercy.”

  Rolladin doesn’t look at me, not once, has eyes only for her guards. “The lords’ mercy,” she says. “Hmm.”

  She stalks to the bar behind her desk in the far corner, the same one where she’d pulled the whiskey bottle out for Phee and me, all those nights ago. When my greatest fear was my younger sister overshadowing me, becoming a warlord. That fear seems a luxury, compared with all that awaits us at the Standard now.

  Rolladin pours herself a half glass of whiskey and downs it. The warlords and I hang on her every movement, awaiting her word.

  She thrusts the glass onto the table. “You killed one of my guards. Injured another,” she finally says. “The lords’ mercy is hardly appropriate.” She looks at Lory as she delivers my sentence: “Solitary confinement. Take her to the primate tower.”

  No.

  “Yes, Rolladin,” the guards say in unison, tightening their grip, and pull me back out the door.

  “It was an accident!” I stammer. “Self-defense. Cass was about to kill Phee!” I struggle against my captors, appealing to Rolladin with wide, pleading eyes. “I need your help! They’re drugging them! My mom, Phee, we need you! Please!”

  “Quiet.” Lory spins me around, dragging me down the hall, as I thrash with all the energy I have left.

  “Please, Rolladin,” I wail over my shoulder. “They’re going to die!” The tears spring forward. “You have to help me, please!”

  Rolladin walks slowly behind us as we push and pull down the hall. I crane my neck, trying to see her, trying to get her to see me, to show her the desperation in my eyes. I try to probe through the Rolladin exterior to the Mary inside her, the woman I read about, the one I came to see.

  “My dear, the one thing I’ve really learned from the war,” Rolladin purrs as I’m taken down the hall and back out into the cold. Her form gets smaller, her voice softer, like I’m drifting away from a shore. “Is that there’s really no such thing as second chances.”

  Before the cold air outside the castle slaps me, I call out once more, “Mary!”

  Then the doors close.

  They leave me, alone and shivering, in the primate tower.

  43 PHEE

  Phoenix doesn’t stir. And I’m still here, watching her. Removed, a visitor at a horror show played out behind glass.

  Two of Wren’s men return with a basin filled with water and a cool towel to wipe Phoenix down, to prepare her for something I’m sure I don’t want to see. They do their job quickly and place the basin and the towel in the bathroom. They leave one of their torches hanging in a slot attached to the wall.

  There’s silence for a minute, a lifetime. Then different voices enter the room.

  “Master Wren.” Trevor, who I haven’t seen in weeks, trails Wren into the belly of the bedroom.

  I see Trevor, now, for what he is. He’s a teenager, even though when I was Phoenix, he was never more than a kid. He’s tall and thin, with a kind, even face, confused eyes. And he looks nervous. But also happy, expectant. Unlike me. Unlike the girl on the bed.

  “Brother Trevor, we find you most willing to accept the Standard,” Wren whispers into Trevor’s ear. “And we reward those whose souls are empty and ready to be filled. As I promised, this Sister is our gift to you.”

  “Gift,” Trevor repeats. His face looks puzzled, torn. Like he knows there’s something wrong, but he’d rather not think about it.

  “You are old enough to partake in the most sacred tenet of the Standard. Being sealed with another, creating new life to serve me and my Standard. Only then will you truly become part of us,” Master Wren whispers. “Do you understand what I’m asking of you?”

  Trevor’s quiet for a long time. “I don’t think I’ve ever been a part of anything.”

  “You will be tomorrow morning,” Wren says. “Do not disappoint me.”

  Master Wren walks away from Trevor and out the door, leaving him with Phoenix. I want to wake her. I want to shake Trevor. But I have no hands. I have no voice. I have nothing left.

  “How . . . how are you?” Trevor asks Phoenix.

  Silence.

  “I heard about you kissing Ryder from Sister Ava,” he adds. “I don’t care.”

  More silence.

  “I love you,” he blurts out. “I always have.”

  I watch him slide in beside Phoenix’s body. He’s tender with the girl on the bed. He . . . puts his fingers carefully in her hair, as if she might disappear if he moves too suddenly. He dares to put his lips against her shoulder, curling himself into a ball, imprinting his body next to hers.

  “I know you think you’re too good for me,” he whispers. He carefully puts his hand on her stomach. He’s testing the waters inch by inch. “You are too good for me,” he says. “But maybe you’ll feel differently. One day.”

  After a long time of lying next to her, he cautiously props himself on his forearms and leans over her. I watch his face turn gray. He knows something is wrong. Something is wrong, Trevor. Something is really, truly wrong.

  “The love potion will kick in soon, I promise,” he says. “Then everything will be as it should be.”

  He inches closer to her, studying her drawn, pale face.

  He lowers himself down to her lips. He grazes them softly, gently—

  Then he stops.

  His pause waters a tiny seed of hope in me. I try to make it grow. I push it out of my body like a new limb, will it to reach out and wake the girl on the bed. I try to breathe life into her, force her to speak with me. Beg her to tell Trevor what’s ripping us apart.

  “Please,” we finally, barely, whisper. “Don’t see me like this.”

  44 SKY

  I’m jarred awake by a heavy blanket thrown at my feet. I don’t remember falling asleep. All I remember is being bullied
behind bars, screaming until my voice finally gave out, and curling into a ball of defeat in the corner. The stagnant air of the primate tower, thick with trapped humidity, must have finally knocked me out.

  I jump at the scrape of a match. A burst of warm light illuminates the black hole of the prison.

  I shield my eyes. “Who’s there?”

  “Who do you think?” a rough whisper answers me.

  My eyes settle and there, in front of me, puffing on a long, thin white cylinder, sits the warden of the Park.

  I’m speechless, but Rolladin doesn’t say anything either. She just lifts the flaming roll of paper to her lips, offering me nothing but soft, hazy rings of smoke. But this feels like a chance.

  “What . . . what is that?”

  She eyes me carefully. “A cigarette.”

  “I’ve never seen one before,” I whisper, very conscious that the fate of my family rests in this woman’s hands. And in mine.

  “I outlawed them in the Park.” She shrugs, squashing the end of the stick into the cement floor with a flourish. Then, thinking twice, she promptly lights another. “Didn’t need any temptation after I decided to quit.”

  I don’t ask her why, if she gave them up, she’s smoking one now. I don’t know what to ask her, what to say. It feels like I’ve talked myself into a corner in about three seconds, until I remember a vague, borrowed memory from Mom’s journal.

  “You used to smoke, before the war,” I say cautiously. “You had a lighter in the tunnels.”

  Rolladin doesn’t answer.

  “You used it to guide everyone up to Great Central.”

  “Grand Central.”

  “Right, of course. Grand Central.”

  It could just be shadows’ illusions, but I swear the smallest of smiles plays at the corners of her mouth.

  “We’re . . .” Dare I say it? Do I actually dare to say it? Stop it. There’s nothing left to lose. “Related,” I finish.

  She sucks in quickly on the cigarette, and a startled “PUGH!” escapes her lips.