Dead Moon Rising

by Caitlin Sangster

  * * *

  I let the guard who so naïvely opened my cell door keep his mask but not his gun. He leads me toward the new arrivals quarantine, his whole frame shaking. He only tries to shout for help once before we start opening doors.

  The first one we open makes my stomach jolt, the little girl and her father looking up from a plate of what looks like rehydrated vegetables and rice shared between them. “You guys okay?” I ask, keeping the guard’s gun out of sight.

  “We’re just down here until they’re sure he isn’t contagious anymore,” the girl supplies. “They have medicine to make his brain better.”

  I nod. “Good. Just… be good.”

  Sweat drips down the guard’s temple as I back him out of the room and shut the door. Jangling the keys in my hand, I open two more cells before I find Song Jie. He jumps up from the sleeping mat the moment the door opens. “I knew we couldn’t trust you. No First could ever—”

  I shove the guard into the room, keeping the gun against his side. “What’s your name?” I ask him quietly, ignoring Song Jie.

  The guard’s voice trembles. “Hanli.”

  “Nice to meet you, though I’m sorry about the circumstances. Clothes off, Hanli. And give me your mask. One sound out of you and I’ll shoot.”

  The guard’s eyes widen, silently pleading for mercy. I raise the gun and wait until he reaches up to unclasp the mask from his face, his hands shaking. He holds it up to his mouth and nose for a moment before pulling it away and extending it toward me. A tear slips down his cheek.

  I can’t look past the iron wall in my brain, the one that’s going to allow me to get out of here in one piece. This kid was going to get sick anyway, eventually. The mask still feels like it’s made from something slippery and rotten as I take it. “And the uniform,” I instruct. “Come on, quick.”

  The guard begins undoing buttons, the Menghu uniform he doesn’t quite fit into coming off one piece at a time.

  “What are you—” Song Jie starts.

  “Quiet.” It’s not hard to use the voice that made my whole company jump. It works even on poor Song Jie, his mouth clamping down in a grimace. “They put you down here, and now I’m here to get you out. Is that enough for you?” I gesture for him to stay back while I pull off my own clothing and exchange it for the guard’s, down to his boots, which pinch my toes. Once I’m dressed and the guard is tied and gagged with strips of Song Jie’s blanket, I go to the door.

  Song Jie hesitates, crouched on the ground next to the guard.

  I hold the mask out to him, raising my eyebrows when he doesn’t reach for it. “You’re mad I got you stuck down here… but you want to stay?”

  A lump bobs in Song Jie’s throat as he looks down at the mask. “They said I’m sick.”

  I put the mask in Song Jie’s hand, then haul him from the room, pushing him down the hallway in front of me. “Just put that on. I’m going to take care of it.”

  “Take care of me being sick?”

  “Trust me. I can make it better.” Lies. I promised not to lie anymore.

  But what else can I do? What else?

  Song Jie doesn’t need instruction on how to act like a prisoner as we walk out of quarantine. I keep my head up, wearing the uniform like authority, while he sags, keeping his eyes down. His breaths rasp faster and faster through the mask as we walk, and by the time we get back up to Sole’s door, his face is red enough I’m afraid he’ll faint.

  Inside, Sole’s sleeping mat is empty. I go to the desk crammed in at the end of the table, fingers shaking as I wrench open drawer after drawer, the lights from the exam table a dull glow by which to see.

  “What are you doing?” Song Jie’s voice is only half angry. The remainder is all fear.

  “Making sure this excursion wasn’t for nothing.” Ten drawers, all unlocked, no vials like the one I stole from Dr. Yang to wake Jiang Gui-hua. Papers, chemicals with paper labels in protective containers, a half-eaten dumpling smashed into the binding of a book on medicinal compounds. If there aren’t enough doctors or medicine to go around, I can see Sole trying to brush up on mixing medicine—no. That isn’t what it is.

  I look over the page with the dumpling wrinkled into the paper. It’s a knockout agent. Sole did say they were using gas grenades to neutralize people upstairs. Based on the chemicals she’s got stashed up here, she’s the one making them.

  When I open the bottom drawer, a bottle rolls loose inside. I pick it up, finding familiar green pills inside. Mantis.

  My pack still sits on the floor by her pillow where I left it before. I shove the Mantis bottle inside, and when I check the rest of the contents, I find them untouched. Taking long, measured breaths, I set myself down on Sole’s bed and look at the room from her perspective.

  Sole knows I’ll try to escape. If she believes a single word of what I said before about going after Sev, she’ll know I’m going to come after the serum. Where would she have put it? What are the chances it’s even in here?

  “Can we please go now?” Song Jie stands next to the hinges of the door, watching it carefully. Admirable instincts, if all you know to do is hide. “What happened, anyway? I thought you said these people were your friends.”

  “Be quiet, Song Jie.” My eyes catch on a ripple of movement, a paper on top of Sole’s desk quivering in a thin stream of air. There’s an air vent back there.

  Sole used to have a box of things she hid. Not trophies, though that might have been what they were when she first took them. Reminders of the people she killed that she took out every now and then, as if she had to remind herself of the things she’d done. She hid it in an air vent back when she had a room in the Yizhi wing.

  I stand and cross the floor, the close space making it difficult to get a hold on the desk to pull it away from the wall. “Song Jie, any time you feel like helping…?”

  Song Jie joins me, the two of us together managing to wrench the desk back from the wall with an ugly screech of metal on cement. My fingers find the vent cover’s edges, easing it from the wall, then stick my arm into the opening. Inside, there’s cloth. Twine. I pull the thing out to find a little faceless doll in my hand, just like the thousands produced in factories inside the City. I always thought they were a little creepy, but this one is a whole level worse, a brown stain marking its red dress and white apron, as if a doll Menghu shot this particular City comrade.

  The doll’s head is partially detached, loose threads poking out around her cloth chin. I pull the head back to find a plastic cap marked with characters I remember from Jiang Gui-hua’s notes. Using my fingernails to pry it from the doll’s torso, I’m rewarded with a vial full of clear liquid, the toy’s stuffing knotted around the glass, the label on the cap clear. The serum.

  “If you don’t start talking, I’m going to—”

  I tuck the doll into my pocket, waiting expectantly. “You’re going to what, Song Jie?” I push the desk back into place, then wrench open the drawers I searched earlier, rifling through her books until I find the right compound again. “I said I’d get you out of here. And luckily, Sole’s given us all the tools we need. Come help me.”

  CHAPTER 34 June

  THE COALS GLOW DARKLY IN the cave, my stomach growling as I listen to Loss’s deep breaths that sound like sleep. I’m unprepared for when Luokai pokes me in the back, his eyes alert. “I need to tell you something.…” He flinches as Loss stirs, rolling over.

  “Are you two talking?” The rougher blinks blearily in my direction. “Get some shut-eye. Not many things that won’t keep till morning.”

  I shrink down in the sleeping bag Loss let me borrow from the cave’s supplies, his knife a heavy weight at my side. That’s put-on sleepiness, sure thing. He’s waiting for whatever he wasn’t eating in the porridge to start working. Maybe it puts people to sleep?

  “I…” Luokai’s words slur. “The thing we were looking for went… like the mom.”

  Luokai was already eating when I got here. Could I have
stopped this? What is he saying? What mom? We’re looking for Sev, who had a mom.

  “And…” Luokai blinks heavily, looking down at the little lights dancing across the backs of his hands like fireflies in summer. “Sole hasn’t spoken to me in days. But it’s still… like I’m… my brother. This was his link first.”

  Definitely drugged. I roll a little closer, glancing carefully at Loss. Luokai doesn’t seem to be hurt, just… sleepy. What does he mean by saying Sev’s like her mom? Her mom isn’t breathing anymore.

  “He was supposed to have gotten to her by now. He was so sick when he left.…” Luokai takes another of those rib-cracking breaths of his, but it hisses out of him like a balloon leaking air. “If he’d gotten there all right… she would have said something.” He’s glaring at his hand now, swiping at the lights as if he doesn’t remember how to make them go away.

  Howl was sick. Sev’s like her mom.…

  Is he saying he thinks they’re both dead?

  The fire has brought the feeling back into my limbs, but every inch of me ices over, and no matter how far down into my sleeping bag I burrow, Luokai’s there looking at me, and this… this information he’s been keeping back from me…

  Luokai slumps down to the floor, his hand going slack around the link. I ease forward, checking his heartbeat, his breathing. Hoping that the fact they are still there means something.

  They can’t be dead. I told them they couldn’t die. Couldn’t leave me with SS sucking at my ankles and clouding my brain.

  But dead happens quick. I’ve seen it too many times not to know.

  I shut my eyes, but then it’s Sev in there. Bloodless. Cold. Lying in the dark of Underneath. They can’t die because I’m not good enough. I can’t take care of Lihua, Peishan, and the rest. I’m like Dad too now. Like Luokai. No one can trust me. Not without Sev and her cure.

  The flames sink lower and lower as if they can feel my heart flickering out. Lying back with my eyes open, I count the seconds one at a time as if that will force time to stop, to go back until Luokai gives a great snore, a long rasping gurgle I’ve never heard from him before.

  My insides try to swallow themselves down when Loss sits up. Looks Luokai and me over to make sure we’re still. Stands. Picks up his pack and walks out.

  Whatever happens to Sev or Howl or me or any of us, I can’t leave Peishan and the others to whatever was in Loss’s porridge. I wait until the rougher’s clear of the entrance before following. The air is warmer than earlier, full of the promise of snow. No moon to give me light, but it only takes a second to find Loss’s shadow creeping down the hill. Headed toward the river and the boat wreck.

  Cai Ayi and her roughers scavenge when they can, and that’s fine. That’s their business. But luring Luokai up to the cave instead of pushing him into the river, then trying to drug the both of us… It’s different. Desperate, if we’re not the first people Loss has brought up here to rob. Loss’s cheeks were dirty, red from cold, his mask chafing at his skin. Desperation might not even be the half of it.

  I run back to the cave and check Luokai to make sure he’s still breathing before taking his dry socks and the outer layer of his robe that he’s tucked under his head like a pillow. Tuck the extra layer around me tight, zip my coat, warmed and dried by the fire, to my chin. Then I take Loss’s knife, the one he set right at my feet when I asked, and stick it in my belt. Put up my hood. Sneak up the hill toward the Post.

  It’s a few hours’ walk, the cold gnawing at me through my winter clothes, the sun’s first rays barely threatening to break overhead by the time I get to the Post’s trees.

  Or, where they’re supposed to be, because instead of trees and platforms and old friends and almost family, there’s nothing but fire-torn skeleton trunks. Ash coats the snow, along with half-burned planks that fell from up above. And there are footprints, so many footprints, muddy and black in the old snow.

  My wind rustles the leaves behind me, hanging back.

  And then I see them, my eyes catching the blackened bit. Bones. Sun and skies and cold and everything I love. My kids were supposed to be here, and instead there are bones.

  “June?” Loss must have walked double quiet and double slow so I didn’t hear. His breath hisses through his mask, the sound at least thirty feet away. “Don’t move yourself an inch, okay? I don’t want to hurt you.”

  Now my wind fails me? She who warns me when there are Reds and Menghu and gores and Dad and water, and suddenly I’m drowning and alone, so alone. I start running before Loss can catch me, my hand on the long knife stuck in my belt.

  “June stop. There are too many Sephs around here to survive in this part of the woods.” His feet pound the snow behind me, everything inside me pounding along with them as I look for somewhere to hide. The trees are ashy and broken, too burned to hold my weight. “June, let me help you!”

  My feet move still faster, scurrying over rocks and between dead trees. Loss didn’t follow me up here to chat, and he’s stupid if he thinks I’ll listen to him play like he’s nice now. He didn’t lie about the kids then try to put me to sleep because he wanted to help me. Panic is a bubble inside me, about to pop, waiting for my foot to catch on a rock or a root. Loss knows this area, knows the trees, the ground. His legs are longer, faster. Even if I don’t fall a single time, Loss can follow my footprints just as well as I could follow his.

  “They burned it when you left.” Loss’s voice pinches as he calls after me. “Burned us all out. I think some of those kids might have gotten to the ground okay, but I don’t know how they would have gotten past Red guns. I’m sorry about your friend and his boat, but a guy’s got to survive out here.” Loss swears, and I hear him trip behind me.

  I veer uphill, toward where Sev and Tai-ge and me landed the heli… Was it really only a few weeks ago? I don’t know. How long was I Asleep? And if the Post is gone, then what’s left of the world I know? If I get away from Loss, where is there left to go?

  What does he want with me?

  The question spurs my feet all the faster. If I don’t run, I’ll find out, and then SS won’t have a chance to suck me down to Underneath. Loss’ll put me there faster than any compulsion could.

  Uphill. To the rocks. The unburned trees. Up to the zip line Sev and I used to escape the Post when Loss and Cai Ayi were coming after us, Reds shooting up from the ground. They burned Cai Ayi. They burned the roughers. Peishan, Sev’s friend-but-not-friend from the City.

  “June, it’s not a bad place I’m taking you!” My ears prick, but my feet don’t slow as I scramble up the snowbanks. “They need hands on the farms.”

  Loss wants to chain me up with the City slaves? That’s worse than Underneath. My heart pounds hard against my chest as I come to a spot I can’t climb. I turn around, looking for him, his voice bouncing off the trees. All the hair up and down my arms stands up on end as he comes into view, tears making uncomfortable trails down my cheeks.

  I’m trapped.

  “They’ll give you a bed. Maybe even Mantis—that’s what they promised. You’ll be safe. Safer than that guy you’re with.” He reaches out, moving slow. “I’m probably saving you from whatever he wanted—”

  Lihua. I left Lihua, a little girl so much smaller than me. I ran straight to the top of the zip line with Sev and cut all the ropes that would have been everyone’s emergency escape so they couldn’t follow us.

  I left everyone at the Post to burn.

  Scooting out of reach just before Loss can grab me, I scramble through a snarl of dead bushes and roots, sending the branches back to snap in his face. My feet skid on the ice, the trees around me dressed in needles and bark instead of ash and char, so I’m past the burned part of the wood. The world seems to narrow, the Circle tightening until it’s just me and the rougher’s heavy breaths as he squeezes after me through the dense trees. But then the world yawns wide again because I find what I’m looking for: the Post’s emergency exit. The zip-line cable.

  I can feel the
fizz of a compulsion at the back of my head, but not what it’s going to tell me to do. All I know is it can’t happen. Not if I want to live. I take a deep breath, like Luokai says. Focus on what’s right in front of me. Try to blank out the thought of Loss sprinting through the snow after me.

  Breathe. The wind is here with me. Breathe or it will be your own lungs that kill you. Not Loss.

  The cable’s a black slice against the sky. It leads me to a tree naked of leaves, a rope dangling down from one of the top branches. I don’t need the ladder made from old boards nailed into its side to climb to a crux in the tree above the rope where the branches bend under my weight.

  Loss stops at the base of the tree, his eyes squinting up into the shadows after me. “Don’t make this worse than it has to be. It’ll be a better life!”

  There’s a bag tied to this tree, up in its highest branches. I know it because I tied it here myself. Years ago, when one of the roughers first brought us to the Post. They found us, Dad’s tongue cut out by Parhat’s knife, bleeding as if everything inside him was about to come out.

  I had to know there was a way out. Up in the trees it seems like there’s no way to go but down. I think it was Loss himself who showed me the zip line. After I rode it down to test it, over and over until Cai Ayi laughed and told me to stop playing games, I left something here at the top, just in case sliding down the line wasn’t enough. I’d learned that if people wanted to chase you—if they knew where you were the way Parhat had the day he cut out Dad’s tongue—they’ll follow you until the job is done. A zip line wasn’t going to change that.

  I needed a secret. So I tied one up in the tree.

  Loss seems about to explode, his softened voice crumbling to thorns at the edges. “June. Please come down. We both know I can get up there just as well as you. I really don’t want to hurt you, but I’ll drag you the whole way by your hair if you make me.”

  I pull out his long knife, early morning sunlight glinting on the metal, and cut open the old canvas bag I tied up here.