With that, he takes off, leaving me frantically looking around. I’m picturing a big black gadget with a red button on top. Nothing remotely like it is in the lab.
A thought drops into my mind. “It’s not here.”
It’s Renee. I respond with, “What isn’t?”
“What you’re looking for. It’s on a rooftop, but I won’t tell you which building.”
“I thought you were Cece. You’re not, are you?”
“The CCs were servants. I am Renee.”
I’ve circled the room back to the glass case and the blue jars waiting to unravel in someone’s young brain tissue. The case is locked and a quick, cursory search of the desk drawers doesn’t yield a key. Grabbing a chair, a heavy wheeled one, I smash it against the glass and the blue eyes within. The glass shatters, shards barely missing my hands. I lift up the chair to swing once more. Time stops and my arm freezes. I stay that way, frozen against my will, for what seems like an eternity. Then my fingers unclench and the chair drops to the floor. Helpless, I watch it fall.
38
The doors of the Oyster have opened for the day but not a single customer has come in. The crowd milling about the square has drawn Jada to the window. Weighing on her is the way she’s fenced off her life. Only two things mattered, the excellence of her eatery and her rank, each move mapped and fought for, everything else in her life cast aside. Everyone an enemy.
It occurs to Jada that she hasn’t taken a day off in years. Barely an hour here and there, really. Well, why not today? She pushes through the saloon doors into the kitchen to inform the staff of the holiday. As if she’s not the only one struck by the impulse to play hooky, the kitchen is empty, the door to the back alley open.
Thoughts from her fellow Tenners start pouring in—expressing the desire to take a break from their own workspaces.
Bonnie: “I know we’re not due to meet until Friday but I feel we should all come together. Not in the Tenner room. Too isolated.”
Chase: “I’m in. No customers at the moment anyway.”
Ben: “How about Founders Square?”
Poulsbo: “I’m already in the square, searching for nests… To help Renee.”
Chase (again): “I’m feeling generous, maybe we should all help Renee.”
Blank Jack: “I’m in.”
Sue: “Count me in.”
Samm, agreeing with Sue for once: “Sure, Founders Square.”
Ben (again): “Are you well enough to join us for the physical activity, Bonnie?”
Bonnie (again): “Indeed I am. Let’s get out there and help Renee.”
Emotions bubble up inside Jada. Embarrassment. Shame at how she planned to treat Renee, the offered hand of friendship a false one. And a feeling not very familiar to Jada—hope. She adds her eager agreement. “Yes, Founders Square.”
39
My breathing coming in shallow gasps, I burst out of the Town Offices building, Renee having released the hold on my body. The clouds above the Dome have darkened, a heavy storm approaching. And inside…it’s as if another town party is happening. People are streaming toward Founders Square, their walking rhythm crisp with purpose. Neighboring buildings obstruct my view of the square itself. I consider climbing the walkway from which Dax and I watched Lu and Wayne in the moonlight, but decide not to risk another high-up location.
Spotting McKinsey, I race to catch up with her. She glances over with an unnervingly fixed smile, her step not slowing. “Scott. Hello.”
I spill everything. “It’s Renee—she killed Delilah and Rick, tried to kill Bonnie. She tried to kill me.”
I’m hoping for an ally and McKinsey’s response is delivered warmly, but it takes me aback. “I’m sure Renee had a good reason.”
“Have you met her?” I ask. “In person, I mean.”
“You don’t need to speak to someone face-to-face to know them.” We’re being jostled left and right by the thickening crowd and McKinsey moves closer in, her arm brushing mine. She tells me in a conspiratorial tone, “I don’t care at all about all my hobbies. It was just a way to collect people. And another secret: I was livid when you bumped me out of the Ten. I hid it well at the time, though, didn’t I?”
“Sorry about that.”
“You shouldn’t apologize for your success. I was wrong to be angry.” She prods me, “Is there anything you want to share with me in return?”
“Other than that Renee’s a killer? Fine. Dax and I are dating, and since he’s my PAL and the Code Enforcement Office knows, my rank will take a great big ding next week. And Delilah is my mother.”
“Delilah… I, too, have a secret there. After we left the youth center, she hit it big and I scraped by with odd jobs, like you had to do. Delilah kept me by her side—we were PALs, after all—and pushed for me to be invited to events until attention started to trickle in my direction—enough for me to be hired in a junior capacity at the Agency. I owed everything to her and she never let me forget it. I did many favors for her over the years. Many…”
We enter a narrower passageway and I lose her in the crowd ahead.
Someone tugs on my sleeve. It’s Ty, Wayne’s replacement. “Scottie, I have a confession,” he begins. “I borrowed your bike to get here as fast as I could. I left it in front of the Oyster. Sorry about that. Oh, and I was so nervous setting up for the Tenner gala last week that I spilled a tray of toast and cheese on the floor and picked everything right back up and served it. I don’t know if you ate any but sorry about that too.”
He moves on ahead. A great big cloud of honesty appears to have fallen on everybody, admissions of guilt, minor and not so minor, reaching my ears in overlapping waves:
“I stroll around each night after the map goes dark and peep into windows. The Security Office never caught on…”
“I steal fruit from rooftop gardens…”
“I wash my linens only once a year…”
“I sleep with people for rubies…”
I run into Vicky, who warned me—what seems a long time ago—that Delilah the person was at odds with her image. “You know, I once spit in Delilah’s coffee,” she admits without preamble, her voice raised over the increasing din of the crowd. “I’d like to say that I feel bad about it, but I’m not sure I do. She wouldn’t let me take any roles, no matter how small. All I did was wait and wait. I suppose it was wrong of me…”
“Why is everyone going to the square?” I ask her.
Vicky looks at me with the eyes of a child. “So we can all be together.”
We pass Poulsbo—tears are streaming down his face—and join the throng of people gathered around the platform where Delilah pulled Lu onstage and toasted the eighty-fifth anniversary. Jada is on it, brandishing a fistful of Tenner invitations above her head. She calls out at the top of her lungs: “We, the Tenners, sit on a throne of lies. First—Delilah the Duchess! She traded in secrets—leveraged them to prop herself and Rick up, a mastermind number one and a willing number two!”
Boos from the crowd, directed at individuals now gone.
“Next! Chase reuses his coffee grounds—as everyone suspected all along! Worse, he hosts an after-hours fight club in the basement of Fill-n-Sip Cup… Everyone’s Friend Bonnie? She keeps a corkboard with everything she pretends to remember. She’s not anyone’s friend.”
More boos, prolonged ones.
“And Franz? Our relationship expert drums up business with a well-placed rumor to start feuds…which he then offers to fix with a mediating session or six!”
Shouts of indignation at this. Someone yells, “Franz, is this true? You had Carl and me do six sessions. You goateed shell of a human being, I’ll find you and—”
Now Jada’s words are rushing out fast: “And more: Samm and Sue, they have yet to contribute a crumb to governing. Sue was having an affair with Rick behind Samm’s back. They hate each other… And Scott? Her partner is also her PAL—I reported them. I have ruined lives, forgone friendships and relationships, manipulated and
elbowed.” Jada’s gaunt features tighten at the admission. “But it’s more than who I was or what the Tenners did. Every one of you has had to lie, climb backs, kick down, hide large pieces of yourselves… To be better liked. To pull that rank up just a little more.”
“Yes!…”
“I had to lie, too!…”
“But now Renee has shown us the way,” Jada calls out and I know it’s not just my mind that’s been pushed upon. “We can cleanse away the past, make a fresh beginning. A new, harmonious life where we’ll all be equal. No rank or perks. No Tenners living luxuriously, well-fed and waited on hand and foot…”
The square is hushed now, ominously so.
“Let’s get everything out in the open and say goodbye to our old way of life. I’ve let go of my secrets—here are the rest.” Jada flings the invites and they fly off, white birds disappearing into the crowd, hands grabbing them.
“Scottie, where are you?”
It’s Dax—I’ve put Cece on mute for anyone else. “By the stage,” I respond eagerly, very happy to hear from him. Backs and heads block my view but I get on my toes and manage to catch a glimpse of him. He’s in the baseball cap, pushing his way through, but it’s slow progress. I start squeezing my way toward him. We can head out a gate, be alone like before, and come up with a plan.
I don’t get far. An argument breaks out directly in front of me, the result of a few lines jotted down on the back of a card.
“Are you eff’n kidding me? I was forthright about my gambling addiction and ended up in the bottom thousand and what did you do, Sophie, hid yours and lived it up in the Top Hundred?”
“At least I gambled for money and not for rubies, you little—”
It’s one of many arguments springing up all at once. The spilled secrets—everything from life-destroying false gossip to light-bulb hoarding—are compelling half the town to accuse the other half of greed, lies, deceit. Accusations and spittle fly, hair is pulled, punches are thrown. I’m still fighting my way out, but I’ve lost sight of Dax. “Meet me by the west gate,” I think at him.
Then things get worse.
“Look, it’s the Curse Slayer.” As if of one mind, those in the vicinity start turning in my direction, a slow motion, the apex of a bad dream. A man takes a step closer, as does a knot of women, all demanding, “Curse Slayer, where are you going?”
No more lies. So be it. “I’m not a Curse Slayer. There was no curse to slay.”
Hands are grabbing at my clothes to hold me in place. I wrestle the felt strap of Dax’s binoculars out of someone’s fingers and kick and shove as I’m propelled back toward the platform from which Jada’s still screeching about togetherness. I pass Sue and Samm going at each other—she throws a shoe at him—and take advantage of the distraction to dive under the platform, grabbing hold of a bit of dark blue on the ground, Dax’s baseball cap. I just manage to fit under the wooden boards. For the moment I’m safe. Sheltered. No need to think… I could close my eyes and rest. It’d be so easy to stay…
“Stay, Scott…”
Renee’s managed to reach me. I pinch myself hard and the stab of pain sends the uninvited thought scattering away. Crawling out the other side of the platform, I stick the cap on my face and stay low, ducking bodies, doing my best to blend in with the continued secret-spilling. “This cap doesn’t belong to me, but I have no intention of returning it to the Gardens Center…”
A knot tightens around me again, Blank Jack within it. His eyes meet mine and in them I read that he doesn’t understand what’s going on; Renee must be unable to take over his mind as easily as she has with the others. “Help me,” I mouth at him. He stares at me, then nods and thunders through, his head low, knocking people off their feet left and right to indignant shouts.
The open corridor gives me the chance I need. I take off. Someone tries to stop me—it’s Ty and he has a black eye, an enormous mole accompanying his normal ones—but I dodge him and sprint away.
“Stay, Scott…”
I’m getting better at keeping Renee out and my step doesn’t slow down.
My bike is where Ty said he left it, in front of the Oyster, and I let out a small whoop. Jumping on, I pedal furiously, my lungs threatening to burst with the effort, the west gate my goal. Soon the grass of the Edge Garden is soft under the wheels. The gate building is in view; out front is a stack of wood left behind from the bird-hut build, as if Poulsbo hasn’t had a chance to return for a final cleanup.
I’ll wait for Dax and we’ll make our way to the forest so we can figure out what to do, how to fight back…
Oof. I’m on the ground. The bike hit something—or rather something hit the bike, sending me tumbling off. I sit up, nursing my hurt arm. Dax must have left the square before me and run hard to get here. He picks up the rock he sent into the bike’s spokes. Somehow it’s his voice and it isn’t, the eyes that meet mine both his and not his. “You can’t go, Scottie. Renee wants us to stay.”
I stare up at him from the ground, desperate to reach him. I know the best way to accomplish that is to get him to understand. “Dax, you were right—the answer is simple after all. Remember the day I came to your lab? You showed me the black ants and said that together they’re something more. Well, you and I and everyone else, we’re like the ant colony, linked by our CCs and gem-giving and thought-sharing into one big web…out of which something emerged. I was right that Renee seemed to know more than could be accounted for. She picked up the word ‘awesome’ because I spent time thinking about it, put it in Rick’s onyx. Renee knows everything. She is all of us—an invisible mind.”
My speech lands without much of a splash. “She is all that’s best in us,” Dax says matter-of-factly. “Our hearts, our strength, our zest for life.”
This dreamy point of view, so unlike the usual Dax, drives a chill down to the very tips of my toes. I’m still on the ground and I search around with my good arm and encounter a solid object—one of the wooden planks left behind by Poulsbo.
“I’m glad Jada told everyone about us,” Dax says. “Renee dislikes secrets.”
“You know why she wants us all to be closer, right? It’ll make her stronger, tighten the web.” I’m sure Renee is listening and I continue as Dax pulls me to my feet by the elbow, “Didn’t work out like she planned, though, did it? Didn’t turn us all into one big happy family. Last I saw, half the town was busy punching the lights out of the other half.”
“The wave of anger will pass.” He carelessly tosses the rock onto the grass—something the real Dax would never have done—and places a hand on my shoulder. I can feel its weight. “Come back to the square.”
I shake my head. “No. Come out the gate with me.”
The grip on my shoulder tightens and my fingers tighten their hold on the plank in response. I don’t want to hurt Dax. I don’t want to be hurt by Dax. But there doesn’t seem to be a third option. Hurt or be hurt.
He shoves on my shoulder so I’m facing away from the gate. Pushes hard on my back to get me moving. Before he can push me a second time, I twist around, blinking back tears, and swing as hard as I can with my good arm, the plank—a solid piece four feet in length—leaving my fingers with the impact. It catches him straight across the stomach. He falls to his knees, doubled over.
The plank has stayed on him, as if stuck.
Then I see them: metal dots all along the wood and blood seeping out from behind. There are nails, now embedded in Dax’s stomach. I drop down next to him, panicked, not knowing if it’s better to leave the nails in until we get help, whether pulling the plank out will cause him to bleed to death. I search my pockets for a handkerchief to stem the bleeding but Dax stops me with a whisper. “Scottie. Go.” The eyes with the pain in them are back to being his own. One of his hands is cradling the wound but the other is inching toward the rock, as if of its own accord. “Go, Scottie. I can’t stop myself.”
I hesitate, then jump over him and sprint toward the gate. It takes all my willp
ower not to look back.
Yesler’s station is deserted—he’s probably in the square spilling his best-kept secrets—and I burst into the mudroom to find two people on the floor, their backs to the wall and knees drawn up. Duffel bags are by their side. Lu’s eyes open as I approach. Her greeting is slow and sluggish. “Hey, Scottie.”
“Hey,” I say back uncertainly.
“Renee didn’t want us to leave, so we stayed.” Her hands unsteady, she shakes Wayne awake. “Look, it’s Scottie.”
I climb into a snowsuit as fast as I can, wincing when I get to the arm injured in the fall off the bike. I can’t take Lu and Wayne with me. They’re in no condition to walk—Lu’s face is weary and gaunt, and so is Wayne’s, as if they haven’t gotten much food or water in the past five days. Having donned the snowsuit, I help them up and walk them to the door. “Go to Founders Square, people will help you.”
This much I know to be true. Whatever reason Renee had for going after the number ones, her focus now seems to be on bringing everyone closer. Leaning on each other, Wayne and Lu shuffle to the doorway, where Lu turns. “Aren’t you coming, Scottie?”
I reach for the gloves and helmet. “I’ll be right behind you. First I have to check on…on the bird hut. For Renee.”
Lu’s frown dissipates. “All right, if it’s for Renee…”
The gate is unlocked. Helmet in hand, I burst through the metal doors, then the heavy glass ones, and hesitate at the outer threshold. I know there’s nothing out there for me but the white and the cold and the vast forest. The storm has started and snow is rapidly covering overlapping tracks from yesterday’s market day.
The clang of the outer gate door behind me feels final. Slamming the helmet on, I hurry along the traders’ path. I know where to go: the tree line, out of signal reach.
“Where are you going, Scott?”
A rich, slightly husky voice spoke the words. I can see a faint outline of a person out of the corner of my eye, a companion walking alongside me. “I know what you’ve done,” I say.
All the Whys of Delilah's Demise Page 24