The City in the Middle of the Night

by Anders, Charlie Jane

  “I already promised to help Bianca,” Mouth says. “But I guess I can help both of you.”

  “The Gelet, when I went into the night, they trusted me with something precious,” I say. “Not just their shared past, like what they tried to share with you, but even more than that, a … a kinship. They chose me to be their friend here in the twilight, and I’ve failed them over and over, in so many ways. But no matter how I try to make Bianca understand, she still just thinks I have some kind of power that she can use to get what she wants.”

  I squint at all the bright colors, eaten away by rust or mold. We’re surrounded by the detritus of other people’s bold visions for the future. I keep gagging on the stench of outgassing polymers.

  “You learned to overcome the worst fear and communicate across the great divide, and you’ve overturned everything we thought we understood about this world,” Mouth says, chewing her knuckles. “So of course someone was bound to try and weaponize you. I’m just sorry it was Bianca.”

  * * *

  When my mother died, I was just on the cusp of thinking of myself as a separate person, with independent opinions, and I had a hard time separating her death from my own life. I kept thinking I must have done something wrong, or she must have rejected me, and I imagined her final moments over and over: her skin seared away, her final thoughts worrying about the well-being of strangers. Bianca was the first person who ever soothed my derelict heart after that, so of course I threw all of my love at her.

  Hernan said my mother would be proud of me. I wonder if it’s true, and what she would say if she saw me now. I’ve taken to wearing the CoolSuit, or even a light cotton sari over a blouse and pants, whenever I go outside without Bianca. At some point, I stopped thinking of this as a disguise, and started just taking comfort in anything that makes me easier in my skin.

  Mouth comes back and says, “It’s all arranged. Alyssa’s on her way to help us. She just had to make a pit stop on her own, to take care of something first.”

  I start to thank her for the risk she’s taking, but just then Alyssa shows up—with Bianca.

  “That was your pit stop?” Mouth throws her hands over her head. “You went to fetch her?”

  “We pledged our loyalty to the Perfectionists, and I take that seriously, not to mention all the promises we just made to Bianca. I wasn’t about to sneak around behind her back.” Alyssa shrugs. “Plus, I actually think Bianca would make an amazing leader. She kept the Resourceful Couriers from melting down after Omar died, and she’s been playing the Argelan game better than most people who were born here.”

  “Thanks.” Bianca nods at Alyssa. “I’d be lucky to have someone like you on my team.”

  Mouth looks at the two of them with her arms still raised, a comical statue.

  “Don’t worry: Dash and the others don’t know about your little betrayal, and I hope we can keep it that way,” Bianca says to Mouth. “I can’t believe that right after you promised to help me, you went behind my back and tried to sabotage the mission. Actually, I can believe it, because it’s bloody typical. Everything I know about lies and manipulation, I learned from you.”

  “Both you and Sophie asked for my help, and I couldn’t choose between you. But my promise to you still stands.”

  “Don’t blame Mouth,” I whisper. “This was my idea.”

  “Were you even going to say goodbye to me this time?” Bianca comes over to me, shivering in her crimson party dress. “Or were you just going to disappear again, and leave me wondering if you were alive or dead?”

  I’d made up my mind that I would never see Bianca again, so she appears like a sliver of lost time. I feel the old yearning to comfort her, to sustain her with my near silence, but then I remember how she laughed as she told me that it was too late to stop her plans, and then the sight of a thorn mask halfway on her face. The cavities in the rough metal vehicles with their fresh uneven coats of paint, large enough to hold the most destructive weapons humanity still has. The casual way she said, Do you think we would have stayed friends?

  This feeling is the opposite of what a Gelet’s touch does to me: I feel crushed by the reality of my own body, my own surroundings, my own mistakes.

  “I would have died to avenge you, and you’re still at the center of my world, but you won’t fucking believe in me,” Bianca says.

  “You and Sophie are like a single soul in two bodies,” Mouth is saying to Bianca. “I’ve seen how much you care about each other. Don’t let it go like this. Just work it out. We can find another way.”

  I still can’t look at Bianca. I close my eyes, and instead I see an assault vehicle with empty weapon ports.

  “There is no other way,” Bianca says. “We’re doomed if these two cities don’t start working together. The sky only just pissed alkali a short while ago, remember, and the southern root gardens and orchards are ruined. Argelo is running out of food and clean water, and meanwhile Xiosphant is a collection of ancient machines that can’t go much longer. This is a harsh, ugly planet, and we need to pool our resources or we all starve in our own filth.”

  Alyssa shrugs and says to Mouth, “Can’t really argue with any of her logic. Those fucking complacent Xiosphanti need something to wake them up, make them care about the rest of us. Remember when we thought we were going to be stuck there for the rest of our lives? Ugh.”

  I feel Bianca’s hands on my arms, smell the warm yeasty liquor on her breath. “Sophie, I need you. I can’t face any of this without you. Everything we used to talk about after curfew, all of the dreams we had, we can make all of it real. When the two of us are united, nothing can stop us. Please look at me. Sophie, please.”

  I look, just in time to see tears streaking the metallic paint around Bianca’s eyes, illuminating the lines on her face. I want to put my arms around her, but I’m still deadlocked.

  “Sophie has an amazing gift,” Mouth says. “Something that nearly killed me when I tried to do it. She can touch something that maybe nobody else has ever touched. And you’re forcing her to use it for destruction.”

  “For liberation,” Bianca says through a wet curtain. “I want to save everyone in Xiosphant from the prison of endless repetition.”

  “But Sophie doesn’t want—” Mouth starts to say.

  “Everybody shut up, just shut up, shut up and let me talk. I’m sick of all your stupid voices. Just stop talking, stop talking, shut your faces.” The words come out of me in one breath, in a low, guttural rush.

  Alyssa, Mouth, and Bianca all stare at me. The night wind rustles through the twine-wrapped bundles of rubbish.

  “I never wanted to give up on you,” I say to Bianca in Xiosphanti. “All I ever wanted was to keep following you around and seeing each new thing through your eyes. But I can’t stand to watch you chasing power, or revenge, or whatever it is that you think you crave. You cannot force me to be your tool of conquest, as if I’m the last section of ablative shielding for one of those war machines. And if you insist on trying, then maybe you were right before, and our friendship belongs in the past.”

  I pause to draw a toxic breath, the gears of my anger still scraping. And then, I realize. When I spoke Xiosphanti just now, I identified myself as a student, same as always—but I labeled Bianca an aristocrat, my social better. And I used the formal syntax, as if addressing a stranger.

  Bianca realizes this the same time as I do, and her face collapses under its coating of reflective paint.

  “I’ve screwed everything up,” Bianca says when she can talk again. “But I can still get it right.”

  Mouth touches my arm. I almost forgot she and Alyssa were here. “If Bianca was telling the truth and nobody else knows what we’re doing, then we have a narrow window to get you out of town before everything explodes. She’ll be missed long before we will.”

  I pull away from Bianca. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”

  Mouth looks at Alyssa.

  “Well, of course I’m going to help you, you fuckhead,�
� Alyssa groans. “It’s not like I was getting used to my life not being a giant nest of fetid swamp dogs or anything.”

  I’m turning to leave and searching for a way to thank Alyssa and Mouth for the risk they’re taking on my behalf, when Bianca speaks.

  “Please don’t leave me. Please, I can’t lose you again.” Bianca’s voice sounds almost the same as when the police were dragging me away from the Zone House. “Please. I know that I’m selfish, but you make me better, and after everything we’ve been through we share a bond, you and me, and it goes way beyond any simple college friendship. Sophie, please. I get it, you’re scared to go home, but it’ll be okay, I won’t let anything hurt you ever again. You’ll be a hero. Sophie! Don’t walk away from me.”

  I almost walk into a wall of placards, but Alyssa steers me.

  Mouth is already muttering to Alyssa about the best routes out of town, the easiest way to vanish. I concentrate on trudging.

  And then, from somewhere behind me, Bianca says, “I love you.”

  All of the strength leaves me and I fall, and Alyssa barely catches my limp body as my eyes wash out. My face feels hot and Alyssa’s shoulder smells like soaked-in sweat. Alyssa lays a hand beneath my nape, gingerly, and lets me rest on her as I tremble and spasm. The hurt I’ve crammed inside every joint and sinew for too long rushes to the surface, and my anger falls away, and I can’t hold any of this inside anymore. Nobody speaks, as my jag goes on and on, and I can’t think past the words I just heard Bianca speak, I can’t stand this hope.

  Alyssa’s stiff denim shirt is soaked and she supports me, both arms now, without offering any false reassurance.

  At last I pull myself upright. “I can’t leave her. I just can’t.”

  “Oh.” Mouth bites her lip, then shrugs with her head slung forward.

  Paint runs down Bianca’s cheeks in uneven lines, but she’s giving me the smile that used to make me want to dance on my bunk at the Gymnasium. “Thank you,” she says. “I’ll be by your side the whole time, I promise.” She pulls me close, and soon I’m crying in her arms instead of Alyssa’s.

  My tears mingle with Bianca’s, and I realize the two of us have never cried at the same time before. I’m convulsing and clutching at Bianca, trying to pull her closer and also push her away, and my heart is a dented bell, and the junkyard shrinks in on us, and I hold on tight to her declaration of love, as if it could save me from all of the horrors that lie ahead.

  PART

  FIVE

  SOPHIE

  The viewports inside the Command Vehicle darken, then grow opaque as a dense layer of ice covers them. Even with warm air streaming into the passenger section through tiny vents, the walls turn frigid to the touch, and my fingers get numb. All around me, seasoned killers in dark padded uniforms whimper, Let me out I’m so cold I want to go home we’re all going to die out here we’re going to die. Every time our gravity-assist treads stumble over another sharp downgrade, we lurch, and the entire capsule screams. “Everybody shut up,” snaps Nai, an elegant older woman who’s the leader of the Perfectionists. “You all sound like children.” I can’t see anyone’s face behind their protective faceplate, which makes their wailing seem disembodied—as though delirium has settled upon us like a mist. My armpits chafe and my chest constricts, and I’m caught in my worst terror: strapped down in a tiny enclosed space, surrounded by a whole platoon wearing dark combat gear and helmets, being dragged into the night. Except that this time, I could have escaped. I had a choice, I could have said no. The moans grow louder as the Command Vehicle struggles to stay upright and move forward.

  I’m the only one in the passenger section who’s not making a sound, and that’s only because I’m screaming inside my own head.

  “We’re fine,” says Sasha, a large fussy man who’s the second-in-command among the Perfectionists. “Everything’s fine. Nothing to worry about. Everything’s totally fine. Why should we worry? We’re doing great.” He keeps saying these things until Nai hisses at him to shut up. A sour odor hangs in the stale air around me. I think of Reynold saying, Some primitive fear from before our ancestors discovered fire.

  Bianca keeps smiling at me from the front of the Command Vehicle, where she sits with Nai, Dash, Sasha, and an older Alva loyalist named Marcus, all of them still dressed in normal clothes. She kisses Dash, holding his face in one hand, across an instrument panel full of muddy topographic readings and warnings about the dangerous thickness of ice coating our outer shell. Our conversation in the junkyard repeats in my mind, and I can’t believe how stupid I was.

  Bianca went with me when I said goodbye to Ahmad and Katrina, and she kept nudging me so I wouldn’t say anything about where we were going, but also to hurry me along. She said, It’s exciting, we’re going on an adventure, oblivious to how I flinched.

  The people around me are still crying, thrashing against their harnesses, making invocations to various gods and devices. Dash is joking about Xiosphanti food again. The indicator lights on the front panel make rainbow trails along the scuffed aluminum walls.

  Bianca said she loved me, long after I’d have sacrificed anything to hear her say those words. I would have worn a tower of ribbons and gone to a hundred terrible parties, just so I could pile every shining toy in the world at Bianca’s feet. I would have braved every gun and every gloved hand in Xiosphant to bring Bianca jewels from the Palace vault. But now I see her in the cockpit, whispering to Dash and twirling one slender hand for emphasis, and I feel empty.

  The vehicle lurches, and someone’s gloved fingers grab at my arm for support, and I freeze. I can’t breathe. But just as I’m spiraling into panic, I feel a nudge on my right wrist. My bracelet has woken up, and it’s urging me deeper into midnight. I take a deep breath and I concentrate on the hum that I feel through my skin. The Gelet haven’t given up on me, even after all the times I failed them. They still want me to join them.

  All that matters is that bracelet, and the knowledge that my friends are near, and everything else is nothing. Except I don’t know what the Gelet will think when they see a fleet of armored vehicles, spiked with weapons, and they realize I’ve led a whole army to their territory. Bianca’s friends designed these vehicles to look just like the ones the Gelet tore to pieces before.

  I never loved anybody the way I have loved Bianca. But I know in my shattered core that I would have been a better friend to her if I had walked away in that scrapyard. I need to learn to belong to other people the way everyone else seems to, with one hand in the wind.

  * * *

  Something strikes our vehicle, and we rock sideways so hard we’re perched on one set of treads for a moment. Then we fall flat again with an impact that crushes me into my safety harness. “What was that?” Nai says, and nobody answers, except to groan. A second impact pushes us off one of our treads, and the vehicle sways harder.

  The cockpit’s night-vision screen shows a glimpse of fuzzy segmented armor.

  “Fucking bison!”

  “It’s a lot bigger than I thought it would be.”

  “It’s a lot bigger than we are.”

  “Get it off us!”

  “There’s more than one of them.”

  At least three shapes move around us on the screen. We rock onto our side again.

  “We can’t move forward,” Marcus says.

  “Shoot them! Shoot them!” Sasha has sweat pooling on his forehead. “Where’s the bloody flamethrower?” A woman named Lucy puts on protective gloves and fumbles for a port in the side, letting in a stabbing draft for a moment until the port seals around her wrists. Sasha picks up a short-range radio and shouts, “We’re under attack. Roger, you’re in the rumbler. Can you get a clear shot?”

  Nai starts to say, “No, wait—” Dash tries to slap the radio out of Sasha’s hand.

  A heartbeat later, I feel an impact that makes my teeth snap together. My neck hurts, and my ears ring.

  “You missed the bison, but you hit us,” Sasha says into the radi
o. “Try aiming.”

  A second mortar blast rattles our vehicle.

  “Sasha, you idiot,” Nai says. “Tell them to stop shooting at us.”

  Lucy’s flamethrower goes off, turning the night vision a shimmering green, and Lucy shouts, “Got one of them!” The viewport shows an impression of a shrieking round mouth and stringy white fur on fire, then goes dark again.

  We’re back on our treads, moving forward in fits and starts.

  “Bad news,” says Marcus. “Those mortars cracked one of our engine casings. We’ll have to keep stopping every few kilometers, or the chamber will overheat and flood with toxic fumes.”

  “We can’t stop,” Nai says. “We’ll get stuck in the ice.”

  “You should have thought of that before your goon ordered the other vehicle to shoot at us,” Dash says. Nai starts to respond, but thinks better of it. Most of the people in this vehicle answer to Dash.

  Sasha sees me sitting nearby, and looms over me. “You,” he spits. “You’re supposed to be the magic talisman that gets us through the night in one piece. That’s what we were promised.”

  I just look up at him. Whatever Sasha sees in my face, it makes him back away, hands raised in a defensive cower.

  “Stop bothering Sophie,” Bianca says. “She’s not an all-purpose protector. She’s good if we run into crocodiles.”

  “Oh god, spare me. Bianca! Everybody swoons whenever you open your mouth, like you’re some Xiosphanti princess out of an old storybook.” Sasha grunts. “This whole mission was your idea, and we’re depending on your friend’s so-called magical powers, and I can tell you’re just a cheap grifter.”

  Bianca smiles up at Sasha, as if he just said something innocuous about Zagreb opera, and I can’t help feeling a sugary rush of pride in her.

  Everybody else in the Command Vehicle goes quiet, not even moaning anymore. We’ve stopped driving already, because our engines need to cool down. Dash breaks the silence. “Sasha, put on some protective gear and go outside to look at the damage you caused. Take a few engineers with you.”