She went to the kitchen, the place where she’d always been most strict about cleanliness and orderliness. Despite her instructions, the women had searched for any food that they could take with them on their journey to parts unknown. Drawers and cabinets gaped open, packages of food were spilled over the counters and the floor. Lin ignored it all and bent down in front of a floor cabinet. She lugged out a gallon bottle of cooking oil, lifting it to her chest with a pained gasp. She could hear the women calling out to each other in panic as she struggled with the canister all the way back to her room.
It only took a few seconds to open the canister and pour the oil all over the pile of belongings: a sorry, sodden mess when she finished. She shook the last drops from the empty bottle on the pile and stood back to survey her work, flicking an unlit match between the fingers of her left hand.
The women would all be waiting for her in the entrance to the Panah. But she would not emerge above ground with them, blinking at sunlight that they never saw. She would not be there when Reuben showed up to take them to their new lives. She was already disconnecting from the world and their faces, all anchors to an existence she no longer wanted to live.
More knocking on the door, this time loud and insistent; the hammering startled Lin out of her reverie. Swiftly she crossed the floor and unlocked it, hiding the match behind her back. Rupa stood there, her hair and clothes disheveled, a bag thrown over one shoulder. “Aren’t you coming, Lin?”
Only then did Rupa notice the jumble of devices, clothing, knick-knacks soaked in oil in the middle of the room. Her whole body shook like water, and she nearly lost her balance and sagged against the door.
Lin beckoned Rupa into the room and opened her fist, scratching into it with a derma-pen. Rupa snatched her hand back and stared at the combination of numbers and letters Lin had written on her skin.
“It’s the unlock code for the door. Now give me your other hand. This belongs to you.”
Rupa opened her hand and stared at the tiny memory slip Lin had placed there. “My diary!”
“Yes. I’m sorry I took it. But I put something else on there too. Information about Le Birman—and Reuben Faro.”
“What?”
“Listen to me. The drug Le Birman told you about—it hurt Sabine, it can hurt other women. Read all of what I’ve written quickly, right now. Tell the others. If you’re in any danger—any of you—use the information to bargain with Reuben. Don’t back down until he gives you everything you need to get away from here.”
“I don’t understand,” Rupa said, her mouth open in shock. Lin could see her beautiful white teeth and the small, delicate tip of her tongue. Under different circumstances, Reuben might have taken her as his Wife, as part of the spoils. He was certainly capable of working it that way, and sending the rest of them to other good households. The rich men of Green City would be clamoring to lay claim to the sudden influx of extra women: even a half dozen was a shower of abundance for them. After their punishment and their reeducation, of course. But Lin would make sure that they’d never have to submit to the Agency or the Bureau again.
“There’s more, too, about the Panah. All my notes, all Ilona’s notes. If he doesn’t help you get out of here, tell him you’ll send it all to the Agency. They’ll know what to do with it.” She pulled Rupa close to her in one last embrace, kissed her on the cheek. “Now go, Rupa. And take the others with you.”
“I’m not leaving without you!”
“Don’t worry about me,” Lin said softly. “I’m going to find Sabine.” She pushed Rupa away and out the door, then slammed it shut behind her and locked it.
When she was certain Rupa wouldn’t return, Lin lit the match and gazed reverentially at the flame until it nearly burned down to her fingers. With a quick flick of her wrist, she tossed it on to the pile and watched the clothes ignite, then the wood, and the other trinkets that could burn first, and easily.
The acrid smoke filled the room, and the flames spread around and into the pile, penetrating deep into its heart. The room danced and glowed with orange light, transforming the melting devices into gleaming magma. It was the measure of her life’s work, and Ilona’s before her. She was glad to destroy it all. She had no regrets, except for the biggest one: that she could not set Sabine free along with the others. Death had beaten her to it.
She took out the vial of Sleep from her pocket, opened it and spilled the pills into her hand. With one swift motion, she put them in her mouth, lifted her neck like a swan, and swallowed.
Lin’s last thought was not a question, but a prayer that they’d meet again, she and Sabine, once the fire had reduced her body to ash and burned all the pain out of her bones.
Bouthain
He suspected they’d be outside waiting: Reuben Faro, standing in front of a phalanx of Security, guns raised and pointed at them. Bouthain prayed his drug had been effective, that it had paralyzed Sabine’s vocal cords so that not even a whimper could betray her to them.
But the looming figures existed only in his imagination. The elevator doors opened to blank space and the empty corridor beyond, a wormhole for them to slip into and make their escape from Shifana. Bouthain tried to control the tremor that seized his hands as he held onto Sabine’s gurney. He and Mañalac carefully wheeled first Sabine, then Julien, into the low-lit corridor. A cool draft brought out drops of condensation on the heated polymer cocoons that swathed the two sleepers, hiding them from sight.
Mañalac was explaining the quickest way to the ambulance bay. “Mortuary’s nearby,” he said, pointing ahead. “But we go straight to the bay. I have an ambulance waiting. Arrangements all done.”
“Did you use any official portal?” Bouthain asked.
“No, sir.” Mañalac explained how he’d duplicated records from the last patient in quarantine. Nobody checked carefully anymore since there were so few patients left. “Should be easy for you to go straight back after we leave and fix things.”
“Oh, I’m coming with you,” Bouthain said casually.
Mañalac reared back: “No, sir! Too dangerous!”
“Really? I’ll have you know, Mañalac, that I was at the front lines during the insurgency. I saw men bombed and blown up, and usually I was the one who had to sew them back together. A little drive to the border in a sandstorm shouldn’t be too hard in comparison. Is there anything else you’d like to warn me about?”
Bouthain couldn’t hear Mañalac’s whispered reply, but the nurse probably wished he were lying in a body bag along with Julien and Sabine. The whole hospital feared Bouthain’s dry anger, a reputation that he cultivated carefully so that most of them would leave him alone unless absolutely necessary.
Bouthain chuckled to himself, recalling how Julien could never get used to his way of speaking about the most serious things as if they barely mattered at all. If the young doctor were awake, he’d jump up from the gurney in protest, but Julien, sufficiently drugged, lay still as an abandoned shell.
As they crept along the subterranean passageway, Bouthain could only mark their progress by the lights that ran along the ceiling at regular intervals. Eight hours to go until they woke up. In Bouthain’s mind, the man who raped and impregnated Sabine was another dark figure in the invasion of Reuben Faro and his Agency foot soldiers. Who had done this to her—a client, or someone else? Bouthain had seen many rapes in his career, treated many victims of sexual assault in Green City, even young boys. What else did they expect when they repressed the normal urges and behaviors in human beings? What was shamed into submission was bound to erupt, cruelly and unnaturally, somewhere else. But his clinical assessment of a societal problem at large distanced him from the reality of a woman who had been victimized in such a cowardly way. He was surprised at how much anger there was inside him at the hard facts of her violation, the injustice at its root, and the trauma that had manifested so bizarrely that he too was swept up in it
s aftermath.
“Almost there, boss,” muttered Mañalac. Hating to be called “boss,” Bouthain only grunted in reply.
The corridor widened into a larger foyer, immediately bringing with it a change in air pressure. Beyond two sets of doors, brightness beckoned, promising warmth and safety. Mañalac went up to the door display and pressed his hand on it, then tapped in a code. The display glowed red, and another red light flickered to life on the other side of the door. “Quarantine, quarantine, quarantine,” a robotic voice affirmed. “Commencing quarantine procedures now.”
“They’ll clear the bay for us,” said Mañalac.
“I know.” Bouthain was tired; Mañalac’s detailed explanations were wearing him out. If Mañalac was talking out loud for Julien’s benefit he was wasting his breath: Julien could not hear him through the chemical-induced sleep and the insulation of the pod. The nurse wouldn’t be the first person to try to talk to the dead, but Sabine and Julien wouldn’t be the only ones to die if it all went wrong.
Bouthain wished Julien were awake so he could observe everything with his intelligent blue eyes and take the pressure off his mentor by giving directions to all those around him: instructions about the quarantine rules, or an explanation for some little-understood aspect of hospital statutes. Bouthain had taught him well. But the silence from the gurney behind them was complete, emanating the truth that the connections between people were only temporary. At best they could psychically visit one another from time to time, but they would always remain mysteriously out of reach to one another. Death was feared, Bouthain knew, because it changed those distances from temporary illusion to irreversible permanence.
As they passed through the double doors, the red light glowed on the surfaces of their faces and the bodies behind them. They stopped the gurneys there; Mañalac stepped on a small lever near the front wheels, and they locked into place. There was a slippery sound of parting plastic, and then a rush of fresh air over Bouthain’s skin that made all his pores tingle. Everything suddenly seemed brighter, more hopeful. For the first time, he started to wonder if this insane plot might just succeed.
The antechamber was deserted, as part of quarantine procedure. Protocols had been developed to prevent exposing any more people than necessary to the hideousness of the Virus. Even Bouthain’s colleagues lowered their voices whenever discussing it. Bouthain had taken for granted their squeamishness about all things having to do with women and their bodies. He had often spoken of the need to erase the stigma surrounding the disease and its victims. But this general disdain would be useful to them now, and the quarantine protocols would help them to get away without being detected.
Mañalac patted Sabine’s shoulder though the bag. Bouthain wondered if she would be cold or warm to his touch; there was no time for him to see for himself. He went to a closet and rummaged around inside for a set of green scrubs that he quickly slipped on: a gown, a mask, boots, gloves. Mañalac followed suit: they were both now two anonymous hospital workers dealing with a dangerous biological situation.
“We have to close the transport cases now,” said Mañalac.
“Is the ambulance ready?”
“Waiting in the bay,” Mañalac replied, with some pride. Julien had always said this nurse got things done even before Julien asked for them, anticipating what was needed and figuring out how to do it without having to be consulted. Bouthain would make a note of it and find a way to recommend a promotion for the man after this was all over.
“Let’s do it, then.”
Their conversation faded as the gurney rose on its hydraulics, lifting the pods up into the air. Then forward movement again: they passed through the second set of doors, out into the ambulance bay. An insistent droning drowned out most sound: the sandstorm was still raging outside the hospital. Bouthain didn’t know how they were going to get through the storm, despite his earlier nonchalance.
The new space was filled with incandescent white light. From darkness into light, stage by stage: the place they were going purer than the one they were leaving behind.
A slight bump and then a jerk, as Sabine’s gurney clicked into place with the back doors of the ambulance. It tilted slightly, raising her head higher than her legs. The plastic surrounding had been designed to make it easy for a body to slide down the angled surface of the gurney. Bouthain hated seeing bodies treated like offal, flung onto heaps before being cremated: the same in war and the Virus epidemic. He made sure to guide her pod with gentle, respectful hands into the mouth of the ambulance. Then he and Mañalac did the same for Julien.
Mañalac quickly leaned into the ambulance. “Not long now. Little more patience, you’ll be safe soon,” he murmured, just before he closed the doors. It sounded like a benediction to Bouthain’s ears. If Mañalac was religious, he’d better keep praying that they made it to the border without Reuben Faro catching them.
Mañalac took the driver’s seat, switching on the ambulance lights and testing the wheel; Bouthain climbed into the passenger seat and buckled himself in. Mañalac tapped a code into the ambulance dashboard display, and the door of the bay began to lift onto a solid yellow wall that was already blowing sheets of dust into the bay.
Mañalac lowered his mask for a moment and glanced over at Bouthain. “Ready, boss?” They weren’t technically supposed to call him boss, or chief, or anything else besides his title. But “boss” was an ironic term of respect among the working class of Green City: a subtle sign that signaled not Bouthain’s superiority, but Mañalac’s total trust in him, no matter what the consequences.
Bouthain nodded tersely. “Let’s go.” Mañalac pulled up his mask again, pressed down on the accelerator, and swung the ambulance into the maelstrom outside.
Almost as soon as they’d left the bay the winds, blowing in all directions, began to buffet the ambulance, restricting them to a stop-start crawl through the streets. Driving through the city was usually an easy task, with the city laid out in a grid that driverless cars could navigate. But sandstorms were weather phenomena that reduced visibility to zero and confounded even the most capable navigation system, so Mañalac had to use his own sense of direction to get them out of Green City heading toward the border, a four-hour drive away from Green City. In the sandstorm it would take them much longer to get there. They’d be in Semitia by nightfall, if they were granted a miracle.
Everything around them was a sickening orange haze. At times Mañalac could hardly see two feet in front of him; the flashing lights of the few vehicles on the road made small bright pinpoints that he followed carefully, but not too closely. At other times the wind and sand lifted a little, so Bouthain could see familiar landmarks turned into darkened shadows, palm trees oscillating like windmills, as if possessed. The buildings that normally looked so solid in normal weather seemed to tremble in the onslaught, and lights were going out in windows like eyes closing, one after the other.
The ambulance’s air system filtered out the worst of the sand, but Bouthain was glad for the mask he wore: it added an extra layer of protection. The elderly and the weak often died in the days after this kind of storm, from asthma attacks or inhalation-induced pneumonia. Usually Bouthain counted himself among the invincible, but he knew that the sand, if it got into his lungs, could kill him too.
They drove for an hour in this way, speeding up a little, slowing down, the wheels of the ambulance underneath them grinding noisily into the sand on the road. The sound of sand beating against the windows and roaring wind was a constant hum in their ears. Every once in a while the gears of the ambulance would slip and the engine emitted an angry groan, but above his surgical mask Mañalac’s squinting eyes never wavered from the road. Bouthain felt grateful for the nurse’s steadfastness; his heart was beating fast and hard, and he doubted he’d have the stamina to drive for this long in such dire conditions. It was more frightening than he had anticipated. These kinds of sandstorms were not frequent
, but twice or thrice a summer the shamal wind blew in from the north and devilishly whipped up the desert sand and dust into towering, massive clouds. The dry lands created by the destruction of the Final War had made the storms much worse over the last several decades: you could drive for hours and still not travel the circumference of one. Bouthain had never before driven straight into the belly; the best bet for survival was to hunker down indoors, or better yet, underground, to avoid being hit by flying debris or crushed by the buildings that collapsed in the storm’s path. He felt suffocated, and a panicked thought arose before he beat it back down: what if they were buried alive in all these tons of sand?
They made steady progress, however. Here and there a lone figure struggled to walk against the wind: traffic guards, wearing protective gear with masks and hoods, patrolling to make sure everyone was safely indoors. There were fewer and fewer cars on the streets, most of them abandoned on the side of the road, doors open and lights flashing. Already being covered up in sand, by tomorrow morning, when the storm died down, they’d be hulks, their paintwork and engines ruined by the grinding torrents that stripped them as if every inch had been sandpapered. The ambulance was equipped with special filters so it wouldn’t choke like the cars did. They were built like tanks, these ambulances, equipped with everything necessary to save lives short of a full operating theater; so much better than the rickety, ill-equipped vehicles they’d had during the War. But the roads could become impassable if the sand piled up too quickly.
They were silent: Mañalac concentrated while Bouthain listened for any sound from the back of the ambulance. He’d have gone to the back and checked on his patients, but he was strapped into his seat and it was too dangerous to move.
“Little more patience,” said Mañalac, sensing his agitation, even though Bouthain could have sworn he hadn’t moved a muscle. “Try to nap.”
“I don’t need any rest,” sniffed Bouthain, stung by the suggestion that he couldn’t keep up the pace. But against his will he found himself lulled by the soft rocking of the ambulance. Eventually his eyelids closed and he slipped gently into a light, blank sleep.
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