by Carrie Ryan
“I knew those hordes we were fighting would come east,” he continues. “I knew it was only a matter of time. I was trying to do what I thought was right for us—what it would take for us both to survive as we always have.”
“This whole time it’s been about Catcher?” I ask.
“No.” He shakes his head. “That was pure luck.”
“Then why didn’t you hand him over when you had the chance? Catcher said you were running from the Recruiters. Why not just betray everyone then and be done with it?”
His shoulders sag and he won’t look me in the eye. “Because they’d have used Gabry to control him and I wouldn’t let them do that to her.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. “What do you think they’re doing with her now?” I shout. “With all of us? They’re using us to control him.”
“I know,” he whispers as if he’s ashamed. “I tried to figure out another way. I really did. But with the horde …” His voice trails off. “After Catcher and Gabry got away, the Recruiters took me back to Vista and the town revolted against them, forced us all out, and so we came back here. I was hoping to get to you before Catcher and Gabry made it to the City. I was hoping to warn you—to figure something out. But they found Gabry and took her and then I had no choice.”
He holds out a hand as if entreating me to believe him. “When I found out about the horde I tried to find another solution, but using Catcher was the only way to get you and Gabry into the Sanctuary.”
“You did what it took to survive?” I hiss, throwing Catcher’s words at him.
He just nods. “It’s what I’ve always done, Annah. It’s what we’ve always done.”
I close my eyes and press my knuckles to my lips, trying to make sense of everything. Elias is right—if we’d still been in the Dark City we’d either be dead or stranded. But that doesn’t make his lying to us—his betraying us—sting any less.
“How long have you been back?” I ask him. I don’t open my eyes but I hear him shift, the metallic plink of a few pins rolling along the concrete floor. He holds his breath and I hold mine, waiting for the answer.
It takes five steps for him to cross the room. He takes my shoulders in his hands and waits until I look up at him. His colorless eyes are so achingly familiar. “This way we can survive, Annah. Isn’t that what we’ve always struggled to do? Isn’t that what I promised you in the beginning, that I would make sure we both survived? The Recruiters can do that. Catcher can do that for us.”
He doesn’t answer my question, which means that he’s been in the Dark City for long enough. He could have found me and he didn’t. That he wanted to warn me must have been just another of his lies.
I stare at him, at how he so firmly believes what he’s saying. “I’m not sure I can survive at the expense of someone else,” I tell him. And then I realize that there’s one thing I’ve learned since Elias’s been gone: “I can take care of myself.” I try to ignore the way my voice shakes. And then I turn and walk out of the room, leaving him and the maps and the pins behind.
I wander the dingy gray hallways, my stomach painfully empty as I follow the smell of food past barren rooms holding nothing but stale air and dust. It must be evening, the light through the windows fighting against snow-heavy clouds and reflecting dully off a thin layer of white coating the ground.
A few times I get turned around, all the corridors looking the same, but finally I find the source of the smell in a long narrow room stuffed with old tables. Most of them are unoccupied and I slip inside with my head tilted enough that my hair covers my face.
Even though I try to blend in with the wall, the few Recruiters slumped in the scattered chairs notice me. It’s an uncomfortable quiet—forks paused midway to mouths, someone half standing with a dirty plate, all of them staring at me.
But I’m too starving to follow the voice inside warning that I should just leave. Trying to be as unobtrusive as possible, I head toward a counter along the back wall that holds dishes of graying food: some sort of soup, some sort of meat, a few crumbs of bread. Hastily I fill a bowl, feeling the Recruiters’ eyes following my every movement.
When I turn I don’t know where to go. I start toward a small table shoved against the far corner but one of the men snakes an arm out around my waist, pulling me to him. My hip slides sharply along the lip of his table and I wince as I resist his grasping hands.
“We got room here,” he grunts. His face is dirty, sauce from the meat crusted in the corners of his mouth.
“I’m okay,” I tell him pointedly. In my head I hear Ox’s admonition not to cause trouble and I look around the room to see if any of the other men care about what’s happening. They’re all watching but none moves to intervene.
“I could use some company like you,” the man urges. His fingers bite into my lower back.
“No, really,” I say firmly, not wanting him to sense my growing apprehension, “I’m okay.” I don’t like the feel of him, the smell of his breath mingling with the aroma of food that’s stayed out too long.
“Pretty girl like you.” He stands, reaching for my face. His chest rams the bowl of soup I’m clutching and it spills down his shirt.
I jump away, tensing as a sick feeling lurches into my stomach. I can see the rage boil inside the man as it climbs to his face in a red haze. “You bitch.” He holds up a hand, knuckles angled toward my cheek. I flinch, recoiling into a ball, waiting for the blow and ready to roll away from it to lessen the impact. My own fingers clench into fists, but I know better than to strike and provoke the obviously stronger man.
All around us men stand, chair legs scraping across the concrete floor. None of them says anything or moves to step in.
“What’s going on?” a voice bellows. From the corner of my eye I see the legs of a tall man striding into the room. When he comes into full view I recognize Ox. Relief teases the edge of my agitation. I start to relax my tensed muscles, letting out a long-held breath.
Ox looks at me and then at the man with his fist raised to strike. “Is there a reason you’re about to hit this girl?” he asks.
The man doesn’t lower his hand. “She spilled soup on me,” he says, shifting so that Ox can see the stain.
Ox’s eyes narrow. “Was it hot—you get burned?” he asks.
The man shakes his head no.
Ox shrugs. “If you’re gonna hit her, then hit her. We’ve got work to do.” Then he turns and walks from the room.
My heart freezes, my mouth open in shock. He was supposed to help me! Astonishment knots in my stomach as the man turns to me, leering. I start backing away, bitter-tasting apologies stumbling from my lips, but this only makes the man’s leer grow.
My back hits another table and I push against it. Its legs groan and squeak as it slides over the floor, and still the man follows me—it seems as if he’s reveling in my fear. I hold my arms up to block him but he forces them away until I’m kneeling, curled over myself, trying to make the most vulnerable areas of my body as tiny a target as possible.
“Next time a man asks you to join him, I suggest you respect that,” he says. And then he brings his hand down, sharp and furious, across the right side of my face. Pain explodes, blasting through my skull, and I bite back a grunt as I throw my hands over my head to protect myself against another blow. I want to spring up, dig my nails into his eyes, but I force myself to stay coiled on the floor instead.
The Recruiter laughs and kicks the now-empty soup bowl I’d been carrying at me, then he calls to his friends and they all swagger from the room, leaving me huddled in the corner.
For a long time I stay there trying to catch my breath, which comes in wheezes and hiccups. Over and over again I replay the entire episode, trying to figure out how I lost control of it so fast. I curse myself that I wasn’t stronger or somehow smart enough to manipulate the situation toward a better outcome.
Ox could have stepped in and stopped it but he didn’t, and I realize he was telling the truth when he s
aid he’d always side with his men and that it’s my job to keep clear of trouble. When I’d told Elias that I knew how to take care of myself, I believed it. I’ve been taking care of myself alone for years—knowing to avoid the Recruiters and their cold cruelty. But I’m not sure I know how to do that anymore. Not in the Sanctuary.
Sick to my stomach, I find a rag to sop up the spilled soup and I try to eat a few bites of bread, knowing I need something in my system but choking on every piece that I force down my throat.
Finally, I slip from the room, glancing around each corner before shuffling down the hallways, staying pressed against the wall as if it could protect me.
I’ve never felt more cold and alone and tired. Hopelessness spirals through me, draining me of energy. Helpless tears cloud my eyes, but the rage that usually accompanies such feelings never comes. I’m used to anger—used to using it to fill me with fight to face another day or week or month. Yet there’s nothing.
Listless and exhausted, I wander the corridors, trying to find Elias or Catcher or my sister, following stairs when they appear and letting gravity pull me where it will. My cheek throbs and I press it against windows, letting the cold of the night numb the pain.
I’m standing there, silent and lost, when I hear what sounds like cheering. It seems so out of place that I find myself following the noise, wondering what there is to clap about when the world seems to be pulling itself apart around us.
I turn a corner and there’s a light glowing ahead, and I walk toward it hoping maybe Elias and my sister are there. The hallway opens up, widens with windows set into the walls—most of them broken or missing their glass. Instinct telling me to hide myself after the earlier altercation, I crouch close to the floor and peek my head over one of the ledges.
I end up looking down on a crowd of Recruiters huddled and sprawled along tiers of benches sloping to a concrete floor below. Some of the men stand with their arms raised, clapping and shouting. The air’s thick with the stench of them, unwashed bodies and greasy hair.
Everyone’s focused on one object: a large metal cage in the center of the auditorium. In the corner, several Unconsecrated trudge around in wheels powering lights strung across the ceiling under night-darkened skylights. They moan and reach for the living and I can see from here that most of them are missing fingers or even their entire hands.
I’m starting to back away when Conall climbs onto a platform balanced across the top of the cage. The Recruiters shout and jeer and eventually fall silent as he whistles.
“Tonight should be a good one,” he calls to the crowd. “Place your bets.”
A door off to the side slams open and the entire room goes quiet, everyone waiting but for what I don’t know. Eventually, I hear someone wailing and then a young man stumbles into the auditorium. He’s terrified, face drained white, eyes panicked as he scours the room.
My hands move to cover my mouth as if the crowd below could hear my strained breathing. Dread begins to unfurl in my chest.
The Recruiter who hit me earlier pins the man’s arm behind his back as he cracks the gate to the big center cage open and tosses him inside. The Recruiters on the benches roar. The man turns back to the gate, trying to yank it open. He’s screaming words I can’t hear or understand over the shouting of the crowd.
He slams himself against the fence, trying to climb, but the top’s enclosed with wire. Even from here I can see that he can’t escape. He reaches his fingers through the links, his mouth moving and cheeks wet with a sheen of terror sweat, but the Recruiters nearby only laugh and taunt.
Just then a door in the far wall opens and the crowd dissolves into a raucous chant as another body is dragged toward the cage using chains attached to the end of rigid poles. The woman’s tall with a shaved head, her body clad in the remnants of a white tunic. At first she seems confused, and for a moment I don’t realize she’s Unconsecrated. She stands there dazed as the scent of so many living overwhelms her.
And then, jerking at the restraining chains, she moves toward the cage, clawing at it. Her mouth is open, her teeth straight and white and biting at the air. The young man screams and throws himself away from her, scrambling at the fence and thrusting his hands through the links, trying to reach the lock or plead for help.
I stare, horrified. Unable to understand the cold cruelty of the men who throw open the gate to the cage. Who unleash the Unconsecrated woman, throwing her inside to face the helpless man.
He tries to climb up the side, but the Unconsecrated woman reaches for his foot, attempting to drag him down. The Recruiters only shout and jeer and one of them slices a knife along the man’s fingers until he falls. Stumbling back across the cage, he stares at the blood that runs along his wrist and drips brightly to the floor. The Unconsecrated woman’s face snaps up into the air and she rounds on him.
Slowly, she starts toward him, her steps a little uneven as she crosses the center of the large cage. The man backs away from her, his blood leaving a thin glistening red trail across the concrete. Of course she follows.
He bangs at the fences, screaming in terror. His fingers rip at the metal, not caring when the flesh tears from his palms or his pinky snaps. He races around and around, trying to keep clear of the Unconsecrated woman as he begs for help or mercy—for anything.
There’s no way for him to escape. He’s trapped. My body becomes nothing more than a thumping pulse, my heart pounding as I watch her pursue him slowly around the little cage. She’s dead, she’s uncoordinated, so he can easily out-maneuver her, and he jumps from her reach and dodges around her, always a step ahead.
At first it looks easy the way he stays away from her—he’s faster and way more agile than she could ever be. But as the urgent minutes drag and multiply he begins to look worn out. Sweat causes his shirt to stick to his back even though cold winter air whistles into the auditorium from a broken skylight.
I realize just how sunken his cheeks are, and I wonder when he last ate or drank. How long he can fight before his body buckles in on itself.
And of course the woman keeps going. The man could run for days and she’d never stop. Eventually he’ll collapse from exhaustion or starvation or dehydration—things that will never bother the Unconsecrated woman.
It’s impossible to know how long she’s been dead—days? Weeks? Months? The tunic she wears marks her as a Souler—a member of the cult that worships the Unconsecrated as the ultimate resurrection. The cult Elias infiltrated rather than coming home. Elias said the Recruiters had been rounding them up, and I remember how they’d been after the girl—Amalia—and the boy in the street the other day.
My stomach turns with disgust as I think about Elias being somehow a part of what’s going on below. If he’s somehow responsible for this Souler woman being here. For her being dead.
Soon the crowd gets antsy and begins to boo. They start chatting with one another, their attention waning, and I hunch under the windows, afraid one of them will glance my way. I want to crawl back down the hallway. I want to race out into the night and climb into the cable car and let it carry me away from this awful island and these horrible people.
Except that escape isn’t an option, and even if it were I can’t move. I’m stuck in place, unable to abandon this man’s final brutal moments. I can only crouch here, listening to the moans and screams of the man as he begs for help.
Every time he pleads for mercy I shudder, bile burning the back of my throat. I can’t believe the cruelty of what’s going on. I can’t believe anyone would consider this entertainment.
The timbre of the crowd below shifts, falls into chants and cheers. When I glance back over the ledge I watch as Conall motions to a man by the far wall, who ducks through a narrow door. Just as it’s falling closed I catch a glimpse of what’s beyond and it makes my body go numb. Lashed to the wall are more Unconsecrated—dozens of them straining and pulling against chains, their jaws tied shut with strips of cloth.
The Recruiter walks down the hal
l, strolling between the gathered dead as if he’s a commander inspecting his troops, and then he stops and points and two other ashen-faced Recruiters scramble to pull an Unconsecrated from its restraints and wrangle it into the auditorium.
It’s disgusting and horrifying and stupidly dangerous, but the rest of the men cheer at the sight of the new Unconsecrated, their voices reverberating off the walls as Conall grins maliciously and the plague rat is stuffed into the cage. It’s two dead against one living.
Now it’s harder for the man to get away. His movements become frantic and I dig my fingers into my thighs as I watch him try to dodge their stumbling attacks.
Slowly, inevitably, the two Unconsecrated pin the man against the fence. His desperate whimpers fill my head but there’s absolutely nothing I can do to help him, which makes me feel complicit in this horrid spectacle.
He fights against them. Lashes out. He makes it around the edge of the cage a few times until he stumbles and the first Unconsecrated Souler falls on him. Her bite’s not deep and for a collective moment everyone stares at the man’s arm as he climbs to his feet and pushes away from her.
Like everyone else I hold my breath, waiting to see if he’s actually been bitten. A flash of hope spreads over the man’s face, searing through me as well. Then a tiny prick of red wells from his flesh and then another. The bite broke the skin. He throws his head back and wails as the Recruiters around the arena pound on the ground with their feet and clap their hands, drowning out the moans and the crying and even the sound of my own heartbeat.
I crawl to my feet and sprint down the hallway away from it all, their chants echoing as I careen around corners and slam into walls, trying to find my way out of the building. My vision is a blur but it doesn’t matter in the darkness. I trip along the uneven floor and right when the door to the outside looms into view I fall against it, flinging myself out into the frigid night.
