by Corrie Wang
“Ahh,” he says quietly.
Just that. “Ahhh.”
And then he is on his portable.
“Influencer,” I say. “I think we could use a diversion.”
“On it,” Reason says. “Eugene. I need immediate assistance.”
“Hello.” The hologram is instantly next to Reason in his clean suit and gleaming teeth. “How may I help? Do you need directions? Fashion advice? Please say: Eugene, I need blank.”
“Eugene, I need the entire building to evacuate.” Panic makes waves in the calm river of Reason’s voice. “Full emergency protocol. Safety procedure override code six-nine-two-four-N—bump, I can’t remember it.”
Rage doesn’t bother pursuing us. Clearly he’s either not used to moving quickly or simply never has to. But I can perfectly hear the PTT he sends.
“I have her. White hair. She looks like a swan. Coming to you.”
“Reason, now’s not a good time to stop being a know-it-all,” Sway says as he looks over the third-floor banister to the lobby below.
I join Sway and look as well. Three floors below us, Wreckage has his hands up in the air and is backing away from the entrance as Jackal and two other tattooed mobsters walk in.
Reason closes his eyes, “Safety procedure override code six-nine-two-four-N-five-six-one.”
Eugene blinks. Smiles. “Safety procedure overridden. Emergency protocol in effect.”
Red emergency lights begin flashing. Over a loudspeaker, a voice not unlike Eugene’s loudly directs everyone to calmly and quickly head to their nearest exit. The club music screeches to a halt. A moment later, drunk, loud norms pour out into the third-floor hall and swarm around Rage. Moments later, like a burst pipe, they pour down the escalator around us. Reason sends his dogs ahead. I zip the puppy into my coat. Then we three join hands and let the masses consume us. Seconds later, we’re all tumbling down the escalators.
At the entrance, Jackal slips on the icy floor as he grabs a norm with white hair.
“Hello, little precious,” I hear him say as we slide past him out into the freezing night.
“Can we safely assume Rage is in Chia’s pocket?” Sway grunts.
“Or the other way around,” I reply.
“Seems like a leap,” Reason says, then adds begrudgingly, “but maybe not a far one.”
We lost the cover of the revelers from Euphoria a few blocks back. Now Reason leads us down deserted streets, his hover board skimming the top of the knee-high snow. I’m following close behind in the trenches left by his dogs’ bounding bodies. Sway is even farther back, his breath coming in harsh rasps. When I ask what’s wrong with him, Reason simply says, “Asthma,” as if that strange word explains anything.
A few blocks over, I hear the whine of snowmobiles and someone calling out, “Here, kitty, kitty.” More worrisome are the footsteps I hear crunching snow about half a block back. Someone is following us. But every time I look behind us, expecting Jackal or Rage, all I see is Sway’s pained face and an empty street past it.
Honestly, I don’t care whether Chia and the mob are covertly aligned or not. “Beasts are beasts are beasts,” I remember Majesty saying before she was snatched. What difference does it make how they’re teaming up? What shocks me is how completely unprepared my grand is. Matricula Rhodes has backup plans upon backup plans if the wheat fails. She couldn’t be caught this unawares. Except I’ve never heard her mention any of this.
“All I know,” I say, “is that Chia is crazy if he thinks our mothers would ever voluntarily sign us up to live in fenced-in neighborhoods.”
“Don’t you already, though?” Reason asks. “Seriously. I don’t see the difference.”
“Glori,” Sway kindly interrupts, puffing, “you haven’t lived in the neighborhood for five years, right? I think maybe things have changed while you were gone. From everything I hear, fees are starving. You’re out of food. You have no power.”
“Thanks to you males.”
“Actually, can we stop?” Sway wheezes, his face violet. “I have to stop.”
Reason and I exchange an anxious glance. The street is wide and eerily desolate. Dark light boxes run along the buildings with posters for things called Miss Saigon and Hamilton. An enormous vertical sign that spells BUFFALO in half-smashed lightbulbs hangs above our heads. A half block up is a forest-green street sign with white lettering that reads BUFFALO NIAGARA MEDICAL CAMPUS, along with an arrow pointing north. I never thought I’d get this close to them. My Grand Mati’s old labs.
“All right,” I say. “But we can’t stay here.”
The snowmobilers are one block closer now. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty.”
“The late transports don’t leave until midnight,” Reason says, looking around.
Sway glances at his portable and rasps, “Two hours to kill trying not to be killed.”
“Fuego’s place is close,” Reason suggests.
He meets my eyes. Sway won’t make it far.
“Can’t,” Sway pants. “Comma would kill me. Though that might be preferable to this.”
“How much farther to there?” I point at the medical campus sign.
Reason shakes his head. “The labs? No thanks.”
Gauging from the sound of their engines, the snowmobilers are now only one block over. The dogs whine. Waving the males to the building with the Buffalo sign, I kick out a pane of glass from the front door. Reason sends his dogs in first. The puppy whimpers to run after them. When I put him down, he scampers off into the darkness. As both males crawl inside, I try to clear our tracks from the snow. I’ve barely snuck through the glass when four snowmobiles turn the corner.
“Where are the dogs?” I whisper, sinking back against a wall.
“Dinnertime,” Reason quietly replies as he crouches behind a dusty couch. Seeing my questioning look, he adds, “Rats.”
The building must have plenty to spare. It’s enormous and anciently decadent with marble floors and walls, chandeliers with hanging baubles, and intricate carved molding that fees would have burned ages ago. All of it is coated in a half inch of dust. Covering his mouth with his sleeve to muffle his ragged breathing, Sway stumbles up the steps and hides next to a bathroom.
One moment the males are shouting, “Here, kitty, kitties.” The next it’s silent.
Putting a finger to my lips, I use a mirror from my pack and carefully peer outside. Four snowmobiles sit empty at the corner. Otherwise, it’s wind, snow, and nothingness.
“They must have gone another way.” I hunker down to keep watch, Mama Bear at the ready. “Reason, what do you have against the labs?”
He considers not answering but then taps his leg with the crutch. “I was one of the ones your elder fees left behind. I was in the day care when Fortitude started his fire. Chia rescued me, but not before my leg was crushed by a fallen beam.”
Reason says fee like someone else might say spontaneous diarrhea. I guess I don’t blame him. When I heard it growing up, this part of the story made perfect sense to me. Why save beasts when you could save fees? But now, looking at these males, knowing Grand knew this is what they grew up into, I suddenly get why she spent so many sleepless nights on the back porch staring off in the direction of the river. No wonder Reason resented us. Except for one problem.
“What day-care center?” I snort. “When fees fled, they took the fee fetuses from the labs.”
“No,” Reason says. “Chia’s told me this history a thousand times. It’s why I live with him. He saved me from the fire that Fortitude set at the day-care center. I’d bet my puppy on it.”
“Great. You’re on.”
“Technically, I didn’t give the puppy to either one of you.” Sway rubs his chest. The violet deoxygenated flush in his cheeks is being edged out by his normal creaminess. “So can we please agree that you both have different names for the same thing?”
“Why would I agree with a fee about anything?” Reason snorts. “You have no idea how weird they are, S
way. Every other day they do this bizarre dance ritual in the intersection of Grand Island Boulevard and Baseline Road. They’re always hugging. You’ve heard Quarry talk about how hard they are to please. How critical. There’s a reason they call you nags, you know. I mean, what did we ever do to you anyway? I say, if males are so terrible that you couldn’t even handle the baby version of us, then we have absolutely no need for any of you now.”
He is breathless with this rant, and I have to suppress the urge to shush him. The Here-Kitty-Kitty beasts are still out there. But all I can hear is Reason’s subtext. When I reflected on our history with the beasts, I thought about how badly fees were affected by the divide. Our lack of electricity. Our diminishing goods. But I never felt unloved. I never felt abandoned.
As calmly as possible, I say, “First of all, day-care centers don’t have babies that are all born in exactly the same year. Second of all, it’s called Intersectional Zumba. Third of all, yesterday wasn’t the first time beasts attacked the island, and fourth, Matricula Rhodes didn’t only take fee babies with her at the divide.”
Simultaneously both males say, “Come again?”
“Jinx,” Sway says. “Also, that’s what he said.”
“When Matricula Rhodes fled to Grand Island,” I continue, “she took a handful of teenage males with her. One was the son of a fee. The others were his friends. And they were loyal to Fortitude. Their first night on the island, they killed two of our teenage fees and so badly beat up a handful of others that we still don’t talk about it.”
“I’ve never heard about this,” Reason says, shocked.
“What a surprise,” I say.
Though in all actuality, I never heard much about it, either. Majesty was there that night. She was one of the girls who was hurt. Grand created the mercenaries the very next day.
Suddenly, a shuffling sound comes from the back of the theater. I bound up the steps with Mama Bear ready, but it’s only the puppy. Dragging something long and white with him.
“Whatcha got there, little pup?” I pick it up and immediately fling it away.
It’s a decaying human arm bone. Flesh dried to it like jerky.
Scooping up the puppy—wiping my hand on my pants—I follow his tracks behind a mahogany bar where a corpse is zipped into a sleeping bag, its mouth yawning open in agony or sleep. Empty liquor bottles and candy wrappers are littered around it. Reason scavenges. Finds an unopened box of something called black licorice.
“How did that survive?” I ask.
Reason eats one and spits it out. “Because I don’t think it’s food.”
I dig into my bag looking for the snacks Comma packed. Instead I find the animal masks from the car.
“Do these mean anything to you?”
I offer the bear mask to Reason, but he won’t take it.
“I know what that is,” Sway says. “Those are why y’all call us beasts to begin with. Rugged told Com and me that Fortitude’s followers traded them around and wore them when they attacked fees. Stole things. Scavenged. The masks made it so you could never be sure who was a safe male and who was a beast. Until eventually, it was safer for fees to assume all males were beasts. Where’d you get those?”
“They were in the car that took Twofer from our house.” Quietly, I add, “And you think males don’t hurt fees?”
“I had no idea,” Reason says, his dark eyes liquid with apology.
Nodding, I shoulder my pack and zip the puppy back into my coat. It immediately attempts to disassemble my hood.
“Where are we going?” Sway asks.
“To the labs. I want to see where my grand worked and settle this day-care-versus-labs debate once and for all. Twofer will love his new puppy.”
“You can’t take back a gift,” Reason says, whistling for his dogs.
“I’m not. I’m winning him. You’ll be embarrassed when you realize how wrong you are.”
As his dogs return, licking their chops and wagging their tails, Reason laughs, and the unexpected playfulness that illuminates his expression does so many miraculous things to his features, I look away.
Sway rolls his eyes, mutters, “It’s my puppy.”
Outside the door, there’s a flash of movement. I slide out Baby Bear.
“There’s just one thing I have to do first.”
“What’s that?” Reason asks, eyeing my knife.
“Catch whatever septic’s been following us.”
Back outside, the moon makes a rare appearance and casts an otherworldly light on the deserted street. I squint down the block. The snowmobiles remain, but now there’s also a shadow crouching behind the garbage can across the way.
“I need to pee,” I say loudly. “Here, Sway. Hold my puppy.”
As Reason laughs and hooks up his dogs, I meander my way to the garbage cans. I’m only two steps away when whoever is behind them springs out. I launch myself at his core. He’s wearing a black knit balaclava and has me by at least three inches and forty pounds, but I’m faster. As we tumble backward, I’m able to flip around and put him in a headlock.
“What is happening right now?” Reason shouts.
“He’s been tailing us since we left the club,” I shout.
“No, I meant, it’s like someone pressed a Berserker button.”
“Told you,” Sway says as they both come running to help.
“I’ve been following you longer than that,” my abductee grunts. “You got sloppy, Roach. Now who’s this new beast? And how friendly are its dogs? I want to mush that big one’s face.”
I yank off the mask, never feeling so relieved in all my life. It makes me think about my grand. How she must be feeling the exact opposite right now. For all the talk of what she knows or doesn’t, one thing is certain. Twofer and I are gone. And she has no idea if we’re safe or not.
But then my head is being roughly noogied. And I’m being hugged so hard I kind of wish I were still wearing those smelly dead-body layers of clothes to cut me a little extra breathing space. Because here—fierce and angry, relieved yet hurt, and don’t let Comma hear me, but beautiful in her lipstick war paint—here is my best friend.
Su.
I squeal like Twofer seeing his first butterfly. Then we are both talking at once.
“I’m sorry I chose Sway over you…” I say.
“No, it was the right choice…” Su says.
“I know you get mad that I always favor Twofer, but that doesn’t mean—”
And then Su slaps me. Reason and Sway both take a few steps back.
“Maybe let’s give them a minute,” Sway says.
“Just stop it already. You want to know what I get mad about? That right there. That you think there’s only one kind of love to show Two Five and it’s yours. That I’m such a monster”—her voice breaks—“that I feel nothing toward someone who laughs so hard it gets the hiccups when I tell a joke. Someone who told me it liked my log-like qualities when Cheerio broke up with me. That logs built happy homes.”
I can’t help it, I laugh. “Cheerio called you log-like?”
Su nods. “Wooden, thick-skinned, and prone to ignite. You think I am only here to support you? I am here because Twofer is and that is the only true thing we know. I love it—” She rolls her eyes. “Him—I love him, too. Okay? You aren’t the only one.”
Most of what I want to say is a rebuttal of blame that ends in more dot, dot, dots. Then why didn’t you… ? How was I supposed to know…? Why haven’t you ever… ? But if this is Su’s truth, I have to respect it. And while I could have done without the slap, her words are also insanely wonderful to hear.
“His hiccup thing is really adorable,” I say. “Especially considering your jokes are terrible.”
She pulls our foreheads together. I lightly bite her nose.
“Fees are so weird,” Reason says.
“Now,” Su barks. “What are you doing standing out here in the open? Did Liyan not teach you how to cover your tracks? Did Itami not teach you the
art and value of doubling back?”
“The snowmobilers?” I ask.
“Not dead. Knocked out in an alley up the street. They’ll probably want to find some pants and shoes when they wake up, though.”
“What about Comma?” Sway asks. “Is he okay? Why aren’t you at the steam station?”
“It’s totally fine. It tried to convince me to stay and watch more movies, but I figured you could use the backup.”
That was the headlight I saw. She’s been following us this whole time.
“Su, you shouldn’t have come.”
“No. I shouldn’t have let you go by yourself to begin with. You’re out here risking everything, and I’m supposed to stay back there eating popcorn, watching television? Though if we make it out of this alive, from what I’ve seen, we’ve got to watch that Unicorn Warrior show. The fees are so diesel. Swoon.”
Suddenly, Su punches me in the shoulder.
“Ow, what now?”
“Don’t what now me.” She points at Reason. “Now there’s two beasts we have to worry about turning us in. You can’t keep collecting beasts because you’re attracted to them. Influencer, my ass. I see why you brought this one and it’s obviously not for his fighting skills.” She knocks his crutch with her hatchet. “Why are we all still standing around in the open?”
“I’ve changed my mind,” Reason says as Su tromps off in the snow, heading in the opposite direction from the labs. “I’d like to not help anymore.”
“You get used to her,” Sway says. “Kind of.”
At one time, the medical campus must have been a beautiful sprawl of brick and glass and curved steel and oil-slick-shimmering solar roof tiles. Potential for scientific advancement still radiates from the structures like fumes off the river in the heat months, and this is despite the fact that most of the buildings looked like they took direct hits on Nuclear Night. I can’t even imagine what a mind like Grand’s could have done if she’d been able to access this space for the last seventeen years. The diseases she could have cured. The crops she could have brought back into existence. I wouldn’t put it past her to make a molecule that cleaned air.
