“Make sure you catch any bullets coming this way for me,” Xuan whispers as the Menghu and the Outsider set what looks like an electrical saw to the door’s recessed hinges. “I’ve done my quota in that department.”
“They gave you quotas up in the Red Quarter? It would be nice to know I could quit after two bullets.” I flinch as the saw whines to life. They put the blade against the metal hinges, and the whine turns into a metal scream.
The sounds seems to drill straight down into the floor, and I can imagine all the people we saw below in the Core looking up at the disturbance. Fear trills down my arms and legs as a young woman comes lurching around the corner, a wooden two-by-four clutched in her hands. She stops at the far end of the hall, distant enough I can’t make out her expression, just the casual way she leans on her board, as if it’s a walking stick. Others file in behind her. Not rushing us or slamming into the walls or crawling through and licking each other’s toes. Just looking.
“Who are you?” the girl yells over the noise, her voice husky as smoke.
The Menghu looks up from where they’ve cut through the first hinge, pulling back while the Outsider sets the saw to the second. “Save your grenades unless they attack,” she says, low enough I hope those gathered to watch can’t hear. “Try to distract them instead.”
“We’re from below,” I call back to the woman. The saw begins screaming again, the sound grating down my spine.
“The people who come up here to gas us and take our food?” The woman takes a step forward, hefting the two-by-four.
“You can come with us when we go back down. It’s safe.”
The woman smirks at me as she shuffles closer. “You’re going to let us in? Sephs?”
Nerves needle through me as the distance between us closes from twenty feet to ten. One of the men behind her begins to shake, his eyes darting between the wooden board and me. It happens in a second, the board suddenly in his hands, a yell in his mouth.
The grenade slips in my palm, but before I can throw it, the girl wrenches him back by his long tunic, one of the others grabbing the two-by-four away from him. But his compulsion sets off what looks like a chain reaction, others in the group startling back, running, screaming, one slamming himself up against the wall.
The saw’s screams stop again long enough to change over to the door’s locking mechanism by the handle, but there isn’t going to be enough time. More of the Mountain’s stalwart residents have crept up the hall on Peishan’s side, the sight of the first compulsion sending ripples through all the assembled crowd.
“Stay back!” I say it in the calmest voice I can muster, terror bubbling through every word. “I don’t want to—”
But I blink, and the world changes. The girl who first spoke runs at me with hands outstretched, broken nails swiping toward my neck. I raise my arm to throw my grenade, but a hand catches me from behind, hauling me off my feet. My feet scissor back and forth on the floor, trying to find some kind of leverage, but whoever’s got hold of me is too strong, hauling me up, then throwing me to the ground.
Carpet burns against my skin as someone jerks me backward, dragging me inside a room a few degrees warmer than the hall. A sheet of wire-threaded glass slices between me and the girl who had the two-by-four, her hands outstretched to grab me.
She presses a hand to the glass, her fingernails scratching against it as she pushes into the obstruction. Another body slams into her from the side, jerking her away from the frosted surface, others streaking by, shouts and more gunshots muted through the barrier.
“That’ll keep them out.” The Menghu stands up from Dr. Yang’s desk. “Dr. Yang was particularly paranoid about access to his office, I guess. Enough to have a fail-safe bulletproof door installed just like General Root did. Maybe they didn’t trust us even then.”
Xuan sits huddled in on himself just inside the doorway, his hand to his wounded shoulder as he takes deep, measured breaths. Peishan is just next to him, her whole frame shaking. The fingers digging into my ribs let go, allowing me to slump to the ground, and the Outsider steps over me. “You’ve got more fight in you than I expected.” He grunts, rubbing his ribs where I elbowed him.
I stumble to Xuan’s side, looking between him and Peishan. “Are you okay?”
His eyebrows go up in what would probably be an annoying smile if I could see the bottom half of his face through the mask. “The fact that I am still conscious is only because of my astounding levels of pain tolerance.” Peishan doesn’t answer, her face pale. I put a hand on her back, rubbing softly as if that somehow could help when there are still yells sinking through the frosted glass from the hallway.
“Come on, we don’t have a ton of time here.” The Menghu gestures impatiently at us. “I don’t know how long that glass is going to hold.” She points to me and Xuan. “You two, get in here. We need to move fast.”
The Outsider reaches out to steady himself on the doorway as he walks past the Menghu, and she slides in next to him. A shock goes through me at the way they fit together. I’d thought the two Outsiders and the two Menghu had been sticking to their own kind, but the way these two look over one another, checking for blood, I recognize partners. Friends.
An odd feeling comes over me, trying to reconcile these two with Helix shouting into the night with his gun drawn, looking to put a bullet in June because she was a Wood Rat. The rules have changed since I left the Mountain. Or maybe Helix just likes shooting people, and not everyone under this rock is prejudiced.
I sort of feel stupid for not having thought of that.
“You watch the barrier.” The Menghu points at Peishan.
Peishan stands slowly, her eyes on the glass behind me, her face pale.
“Why don’t you go help them.” I step between her and the glass, trying to smile. She looks so frightened. “I’ll stay here.”
She shudders and ducks her head as she follows the others into Dr. Yang’s lab. Arms prickling, I turn to see what she was looking at.
The girl who first spoke to me is standing only inches away on the other side of the glass, her eyes locked on me. She’s recovered her two-by-four, and the wood is bloody, red dribbling onto her brown coveralls when she leans on it.
I fall back a step, only one knockout grenade slippery with sweat in my fist, the other lost during the tussle in the hall. The girl cocks her head to the side, her voice, muffled by the barrier, so normal it hurts. “Why are you here?”
I button my lips, not sure why it matters to her why we are here. Just that no one seems very happy about it.
“Nei-ge was all telescreens and desks. What’s in there that’s so important—”
A shriek that penetrates the glass cuts her off. Her head jerks to the side, eyes widening at something I can’t see. She drops into a ready stance, two-by-four at the ready, but then slowly relaxes. Deep breaths rack her chest, and she closes her eyes for a moment, leaning heavily on her weapon. She takes a moment to settle herself before turning back to me. “Whatever it is, if you want to get out of there alive, you’re going to have to give us something.”
“What do you want?” My voice barely squeezes free of my throat.
“Food. Medicine. Something.” She pulls at her blood-spattered coveralls. “You keep the air locks up, let some people into your safe haven even while forcing others back. There are no set rules, no process to follow to get in. You abandon most of us to this place, then come back to collect anything valuable. When is someone going to come up here to collect us?”
A voice booms out from behind me: “We don’t have anything to give you.” The Outsider emerges from the lab, setting a pack crammed with bottles next to me on the floor.
The girl sucks on her lip, a slow, studied effort. “Then we don’t have any reason to leave you alive.” Her lip curls. “You think we haven’t figured out your gas-and-run strategy? We let you come up here to see what was so valuable that you had to bring portable generators with you to make sure you could access
it.”
Portable generators? With the power out, wouldn’t bringing things like that up here have drawn anyone with half a brain right to us? I can’t look away from her, my heart beating hard against my rib cage like a wild bird being kept as a pet. There are so many questions I should have asked before we came up here, but I wasn’t supposed to come. So I didn’t.
“If there’s nothing for us to take, then we’ll just kill you.” The girl looks me up and down thoughtfully. “Take your generators. You can’t have more than a few more knockout grenades, and we aren’t going to crowd up all polite and let you blank us out all at once. You want to live, then you have to give us something.” Her voice cracks, but her eyes don’t waver.
I know that desperate feeling. “What’s your name?”
“Aya.”
A shiver runs through me. “Aya was my sister’s name.”
She blinks. “So?”
My sister was sick too. Or the City made her think she was. I’m not sure now. All I know is they killed her before she could grow into a proper adult. They took her life, just the way this Aya’s life has been taken. Not even a stone on Dr. Yang’s weiqi board. More like a speck of dust he brushed away and hasn’t thought of since. “The other three who were with us—they went to the Heart. Are they safe?” I ask.
Aya shrugs. “I don’t know.”
Yuan’s blades. I don’t want people to die, and I don’t want to walk away from this with nothing. “We’re getting materials to make medicine, and our friends were after some information from the power system. Let us through, Aya. There’s room for more people below. If you come with us past the air locks, there’s food down there, Mantis—”
Hands grab hold of my coat from behind, the Outsider jerking me back a step. “Shut up. This isn’t a negotiation.”
“Let go of me.” It’s the calmest, coldest my voice can go. “Sole let you in. What makes you think the people up here won’t be welcome?”
“Because there’s only one of me, and I’m not infected.” He slides between me and Aya and pushes me back from the glass, sending me stumbling toward the door into the lab. “Life isn’t balanced out to be perfectly fair. Right now that means there isn’t room for everyone.” He jabs a finger toward the lab, instructing me to go help.
“No.” Aya’s eyes burn on me as her hand goes into her coat. It comes out again holding a gun. “Don’t go help the others. I want to talk to you.”
“Don’t waste your bullets on this glass.” The Outsider waves Aya away without really looking at her. He focuses on me, eyes hard. “You go back there, where you can’t do any more damage.”
“Damage?” It comes out of me in a hiss. The dismissive wave sets my insides burning with acidic anger, the way he pushed me, as if even though we’re all supposed to be working together to save each other, the fact that he’s taller than me means he’s in charge. “Don’t touch me again.”
“Little girl wants to be in charge?” He takes a step toward me, but I refuse to back away even as he towers over me.
Tap-tap-tap on the glass. I don’t look away from my staring contest with the Outsider until the girl’s voice filters through. “Cover your eyes if you want to keep them.”
The rest happens so fast—there’s a thunk against the glass, then another and another, a spiderweb of cracks curling out from one spot right at the center of the glass. She’s shooting the same spot over and over, and I barely manage to jump back before a bullet comes singing through, glass exploding after it like the tail on a comet.
Another girl slides to a stop in front of the glass next to Aya, something metal and spidery in her hand that they feed through the hole the barrage of bullets made, but then the Outsider is on me, grappling for my arms, fear punching through me. “The grenade!” he yells, the sound ringing too loud for the consonants and vowels to line up correctly. An electrical pulse fuzzes through my ears, shattering what’s left of my hearing and the rest of the glass, the shards falling like droplets of water from a cliff. My fingers fumble over the grenade, trying to find the pin, my fingers sweating and sliding across the warm metal.
“Give it to me.…” The Outsider grabs the grenade and knocks me sideways to the floor.
Another gunshot.
Red buds up from the Outsider’s chest, and everything seems to move too slow and too fast at once as he drops to his knees. The grenade falls from his limp fingers, but I can’t hear it hit the floor. I can’t hear anything at all.
CHAPTER 53 Sev
GLASS SHARDS CRUNCH AS I slide down next to the Outsider. His eyes are open, blinking, but he isn’t looking at me.
“Move away from him.” Aya’s voice is muted in my ears. “The rest of you…!” she yells toward the lab. Peishan and the Menghu stand horror-struck in the doorway. “Slide your weapons out first, then come out with your hands up. You—gather up everything they were trying to pack out of here.” She’s talking to someone else. More of the people from the hall?
I can’t concentrate, can’t make myself even look, staring down at the Oursider. His eyes blink once more, a long gasp sucking into his mask filters. And next to him, lying so quietly on the floor where he dropped it: the grenade.
My hands are on it before I can think, the pin coming out easily between my fingers. I throw it toward the two girls standing framed by the ruin of broken glass as if they own the world and all of us.
The other girl runs out into the hall, covering her face, but cold-faced Aya hardly flinches as the grenade comes to rest at her toes, knockout gas foaming around her ankles. Then suddenly she’s on top of the Outsider, wrenching the gas mask from his dead face, pressing the filters hard against her nose with one hand. Her gun is in the other hand, switching between me and the Menghu as she inches out from the lab.
“My crew will kill you the moment you stick your noses outside this room if I don’t come out first to tell them you’re okay,” she hisses through the mask. “They know enough to stay out of the gas.”
The Menghu’s eyes leave Aya for only a split second, long enough to take in the Outsider—her friend—lying in an ocean of blood. Peishan hangs just inside the doorway, her hand tight over her mouth.
“Tell me quick.” Aya’s voice shakes as she turns to me. “You said you could get us below. How?”
“Did she?” Xuan says as he comes to kneel next to me, his hands checking over the Outsider. But there’s no reason. Both of us know he’s already dead. He looks at me. “Maybe try asking for something like… all of our lives staying intact before promising the world to these people.”
“You’re going to look just like him if you don’t start telling me something I’ll like,” Aya interjects.
“They won’t let you in downstairs unless you’re with us.” The lie tastes bitter on my lips, bringing Howl’s face to my mind. I should have tried making a deal with this girl before saying anything else. Howl’s the one who taught me to outline parameters, to bargain, to mistrust. He’s the one who taught me that you can still love in a broken world, that sometimes actions aren’t what they seem. That sometimes killing is desperation, the way mother said it in my head. If I had killed Dr. Yang first… “Get us to our friends in the Heart first. There’s something in there we need.”
Aya nods. “Fine.” She points to Peishan and the Menghu. “Hands up until we’ve checked you for weapons. Huishan?” she calls. The gas is dispersing down the hallway, and shapes appear in the mist, sleeves and shirts up over their noses to ward off the last wisps of gas. A girl sticks her head inside the ruined glass, waiting for orders.
“Take two over and scout out the Heart. See if you can secure our way.” The girl nods and ducks back out, tapping two others hanging back in the hall. Aya gestures the others, five frazzled and bloodied teenagers who look about my age, into the room. “Check them. Grab their packs.” Without watching to make sure they obey, she turns back to Xuan where’s he’s still crouched by the dead Outsider. “You’re a medic, I’m guessing?”
> Xuan purses his lips, flinching when one of Aya’s crew members starts patting him down. “I’m never sure if people ask that because they want my help or because they want to get rid of me. Put me down as a maybe?”
“He is.” I keep my hands high until the person twitching at my clothes backs away. I stand, pulling Xuan up once he’s been checked and am instantly sorry when he gives a pained grunt, a hand going to his bandaged chest. “If you have wounded, we’ll help any way we can. But it’ll have to be on the way.” Peishan shrinks away from me, the Menghu at her side glaring at the blood marking my clothes.
A dead man’s blood soaked into my knees, his body a cooling lump on the ground. It breaks through for a second, the horror, but I push it away. I hate that I’ve seen enough bodies now that I can bar it from my mind. Hate that even if it’s monstrous, it’s what I have to do right now.
This Menghu probably has seen more death than I have. But this man meant something to her. “What was his name?” I ask.
She jerks away from the man patting her down and heads to the door without answering, looking everywhere and yet at none of us. “They’ve got our stuff. Let’s get over to the control room and then out of here.”
Aya nods, running out in front of her into the dark hallway, the other members of her crew forming a vague circle around us, waiting for us to follow. I grab Peishan’s hand and follow Aya into the hall, measuring my steps to allow Xuan to keep pace. Aya stops when we come to a broken shape on the floor, one arm lying at an unnatural angle under a cloud of dark hair. The Menghu stops too, her nose flaring.
“She got hurt in the fuss. Pick her up,” Aya rasps.
“Wait, I have to see if she can be moved.…” Xuan drops to his knees next to the body.
“We don’t have time.” And then Aya’s running again.
I bend down to leverage the girl onto her back, but the Menghu elbows me aside. “Not enough muscle on you to make it very far,” she mutters, gesturing for Peishan to pick the girl up by her boots as she loops her own arms under the girl’s armpits.
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