by Carrie Ryan
I keep my fists in my pockets, wishing I had the comforting weight of a machete against my hip. Instead I have to make do with a small switchblade Elias found in our flat. Better than nothing.
Most of the buildings on this end of the island are abandoned, the Recruiters relegated to the barracks tightly clumped around the headquarters. We slip inside the first empty high-rise unnoticed and circle the main floor until we find stairs leading down to the darkened basement.
We stare at each other until finally I volunteer to go first. I trail my fingers along the cold wall as I carefully make my way down the steps one at a time, my surroundings gradually swallowed by darkness until I’m squinting for the barest hint of light.
“Maybe I should go find a lantern. I’m sure there’s one left in one of the flats upstairs,” my sister says, and she leaves me alone, stomping back up to the main floor.
I sit on the step, press my forehead to my knees and enjoy the chilled silence. A small gust of wind blows through the open door and over my back, rustling the ends of my hair. My toes tap a rhythm on the inside of my shoe, thumping in tempo with my heart.
It’s difficult to tell how much time has passed. I count my breaths slow and sure, weaving them into the beat of my toes and urging my body to relax.
And then something shuffles below me where the light doesn’t reach. A low rustle and slide like something being dragged across the floor. I jump up, jamming my shoulder against the railing, which throws me off balance.
My arms pinwheel the air for something to hold on to and just as I start to fall I finally grasp the railing, feeling it slide through my hands as my feet slip out from underneath me.
The metal-rimmed edge of the concrete steps slams into me as I tumble, pain digging into my hip and shins until I’m able to get a grip on the railing and stop my fall. I gasp for breath, trying to get my feet back under my body in the darkness, when I feel something brush my ankle.
I scream and kick out, hoping it’s some sort of animal but knowing that it’s not worth taking the chance. I drag myself up the stairs by the railing with one hand, and pull the knife from my pocket with the other, all the while screaming “Abigail!” hoping she’s close enough to hear.
Something pulls me back to the darkness, yanking at my pants, and I kick again, twisting back and swiping the knife through the air even though I have no idea where to aim.
Just then a bright light appears at the top of the stairs and my sister comes sprinting toward me. She takes the steps two at a time, the circle of her lantern’s gleam widening until I can see what I’m fighting: the torso of an Unconsecrated man, nothing left below his waist and a long gash across his neck as if someone tried to decapitate him but was unable to sever the spinal column.
Long skinny fingers twine around my foot, trying to pull me back and himself forward. He tugs and jerks, his grip so tight it’s almost impossible to shake loose.
I lean against the stairs and kick at his face with my free foot again and again, feeling the crunch of his nose, watching his eye socket cave into his skull, the eyeball inside squishing like an overripe grape.
But still he fights—mouth opening and closing, sharp broken teeth glistening.
My sister makes it to my side and swings the lantern high before bringing it down hard on the Unconsecrated man’s arm. Glass crashes and shatters. Flaming oil spills out, coating his body and spraying my pants. Quickly I beat out the embers on me before they can burn through the material and blister my skin.
The Unconsecrated man isn’t so lucky. Flames devour his hair, eating away at his tattered old clothes and flesh. I gag at the stench of black smoke roiling up the stairs as I grab my sister’s hand and haul her back up to the daylight.
Thankfully, the entire stairwell is concrete and the fire’s contained to the plague rat’s body, twitching and fighting against the consuming blaze. Up on the main floor I thrust my sister toward a broken window so that fresh air sweeps over us both.
We sit there panting, the two of us. I pull up my pants and examine the bruises already blooming across my shins from when I fell. My hands shake and my hair smells like burned meat, which makes my eyes water.
I wonder how long the man had been down there, downed until he sensed living human flesh. Perhaps he was a remnant of one of the wheels to power lights or lifts, but either way, if he’d bitten me and I’d bled out I could have been isolated enough in this basement to come back as a Breaker.
“You okay?” my sister finally asks after she catches her breath. I nod. “Next time perhaps we should take a lantern with us to begin with,” she suggests, and I smile.
“A bigger knife too,” I add, which makes her laugh.
We’re both quiet a moment, still recovering from the incident. I slump into a broken chair, my sister sliding to the floor by my feet, her back braced against the wall. She takes my knife, absently wiping the blade across the thick hem of her pants to clean it.
Her face is twisted in thought and finally she sighs, setting the knife aside.
“What is it?” I ask her.
She glances up at me almost guiltily, and then back at her fingers fidgeting in her lap. “You love Elias.” She says it as a statement, not a question.
My eyes go wide I’m so surprised. I look at her carefully, wondering how she would even know to ask such a thing. I can’t figure out what emotion’s in her voice. If she’s angry or hurt or sad or confused or amused. I can’t tell at all what she’s feeling and it frustrates me because we’re twins. We’re supposed to know each other almost better than ourselves.
“He was a brother to me,” I murmur—a safe response. “Of course I love him.”
“That’s not what I mean, Annah,” she says. That same tone. It stirs a memory of when we were kids, how she was always more serious about things than I was. I wonder if that’s still true.
“You love him the same way I do now,” she says. I can tell she feels awkward asking but even so she sets her jaw, waiting for the answer and not apologizing for the question.
I don’t respond. My first instinct is to shout at her that there’s no way she can love him like I did. That I know him so much more than she does. I grew up with him. I survived the Forest with him. I’ve lived with him since we were children, barely alive and struggling to figure out this world with no help. I’ve stayed up all night with him on the roof counting stars.
I know him better than he knows himself, and she can never be the same to him as I am. As I was.
But I don’t say anything. Because I realize that these are things I used to feel. They’re more of a habit now, born of so many years of waiting for him to come home. Of once thinking I needed him to be safe.
I’m not sure I understand what love is anymore. Seeing the way my sister and Elias are around each other, I’m starting to realize that it’s so much more—so much deeper—than what I expected.
“Did he know you loved him?” she asks.
I think about the night before he left. Of him skimming his fingers over my body. He had to have known then.
I shrug.
She leans her head back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling soaring above. “He talked about you with such … fervor in his voice. He was desperate to find you,” she says.
I can’t help but snort, especially since I now know that wasn’t the case. That he’d stayed on with the Recruiters rather than come home to me.
“You know he lied about that, right?” I ask her. “That he never came looking for me. He was with the Recruiters the whole time.”
Her face clouds and she shrugs. “He did what he had to.” I wonder if she believes her own words. Or if this is what you do when you love someone: accept their bad decisions along with their good ones.
“He called you beautiful and strong and sweet,” she adds softly.
I keep my voice even and calm as my heart ricochets through my body. “He clearly lied.”
She rolls her head along the wall until she’s
facing me. Her expression is somber and serious. “Do you hate me?”
Immediately I open my mouth to tell her no but I swallow the word down. Do I hate her?
Yes. I hate her for living a comfortable life. For falling that day on the path and letting me leave her behind. For growing up with a mother. For not having been tangled in barbed wire and becoming hideously scarred.
For showing me what I could have been if I hadn’t turned cold and dark and hollow.
But of course none of that’s her fault. She couldn’t control the fact that she tripped that day on the path. She’s not the one who forced me to walk away, who forced me to choose Elias over her.
“I don’t hate you for loving Elias,” I tell her truthfully. After all, we’re twins—it shouldn’t be a surprise that we’ve both loved the same man.
If I ever truly loved him to begin with.
She shifts until she’s kneeling in front of me, and I still can’t read her expression. She keeps herself so well guarded. I wonder if I’m the same way. I feel as though I’m a storm inside and the waves of it can be seen in my eyes.
“I want to understand who you are now, Annah,” she says. “I’ve forgotten everything about who we used to be, but we’re still sisters. We’re twins. That means something to me. I want to mean something to you as well. I want to be friends.” She lowers her eyes as if she’s afraid of how I’ll respond.
I stand up so fast that specks of light swim in my vision. I stalk across the room, needing distance. It’s hard for me to catch my breath, my chest tight. I ache. So badly I ache.
My fingers tremble as I press them to my lips.
I hear her stand, hear her footsteps. “I’m sorry,” she says softly. “I shouldn’t have said anything, I shouldn’t have—”
I shake my head, cutting her off. I want to tell her that I’m not used to being loved—I’m terrified of it. But she’s my twin—I can’t keep her at arm’s length. It will be too easy for her to sneak past my defenses because she’s so much like me.
“I’d like that,” I finally manage to squeak out. I turn and see the relief on her face. “I’ve missed you,” I add. “I’m sorry for leaving you.” A lightness falls over me from saying it out loud, for finally apologizing.
She waves a hand through the air, brushing away my words, erasing the need for apologies, guilt and regret. I watch her fingers, thinking how alike we are, down to the smallest details. Down to the shape of our nails, our gestures and facial expressions. It’s strange to see it after being apart for so long but at the same time there’s a comfort in being near her again.
In knowing there’s someone in the world who understands and loves me.
“We’re sisters,” she says simply, as if those words can seal the bond of all the mistakes of our past. As if it means that regardless of everything else in life we’ll have each other, always.
“Yes,” I say. “We’re sisters.”
Over the next few days my sister and I continue to search all the buildings we can sneak into. We find nothing: no hint of a tunnel access or other inspiration for finding a way off the island.
During this time I don’t see Catcher—not up close. Every now and then I may glimpse him unloading supplies from the cable car and then heading back into the Dark City. He looks more exhausted and worn with each trip.
I miss him.
My sister and I find a few odds and ends while scavenging through the abandoned buildings. She’s collected a mound of old blankets and clothes she’s been cutting up and arranging into a quilt, and after watching her for an afternoon, I’ve joined in, though it’s clear I’m not skilled or detail-oriented enough to be any good.
Elias has been spending much more time at home with us, which means our movements have become limited—he hates the idea of us going outside and possibly stirring up Recruiter ire. While my sister seems content to sit and sew day after day, I’m not used to being cooped up inside. I can only stitch so much binding, and finally I tell them I’m headed to the roof for fresh air.
Our building is the tallest in the Sanctuary, so I have an unobstructed view of the world. It’s close to evening, the clouds still belching snow while a clear strip of sky on the horizon burns a muted orange. It’s a subdued cold, one so prevalent that it envelops me, slowly leaching the residual body heat from my clothes.
I stare across the river at the City. The fires in the Neverlands have mostly burned out, although several piles of rubble are still smoldering. In the Dark City itself a few buildings glow with life: people hunkered down against the horde. I wonder how long they’ll survive—if this is what the City was like after the Return, a few sparks of life scattered like embers ready to burn again if only given the chance.
I wonder if they’ll ever catch or just slowly shimmer out as winter and the horde march on.
Even from here I can hear the Unconsecrated, their collective moans drifting across the river on the frigid wind. Generally, cold weather should slow them down, but the City’s always warmer than other places, retaining ambient heat trapped in narrow streets. And while the plague rats may be slower, they’ll still overwhelm a human. There are just too many.
I lean against the wall of the structure enclosing the stairwell, letting it break the worst of the cold air blowing from the river. From here all I can see are the tops of the old skyscrapers in the City, and I blur my eyes, trying to visualize how it once must have been. Not naked steel but gleaming towers bursting with life.
The City must have held such promise then. So many hopes.
I’m yanked from these thoughts when the door from the stairwell opens and a figure moves out into the snow. I stay by the wall, hiding myself in the shadows. As soon as he takes a step I recognize Catcher. At the sight of him my stomach tingles, warmth flooding my body.
He glances around but doesn’t notice me as he strides to the low wall at the edge of the roof. For a moment he glances across the river at the City like I was. And then he opens his arms wide and tilts his head back, staring at the sky while white swirls around him and the heat of the skin on his neck burns any ice that dares touch him.
He looks … beautiful. And as if he can hear my thoughts he turns, lowers his chin and finds me in the shadows. Snowflakes brush against his lips and melt. They catch in his hair and eyelashes. He smiles, his grin lopsided and free, and it feels like all this is just for me.
Heat radiates through my limbs. Nothing exists in this moment but the two of us and the clean crisp snow. It’s too much, and I turn away from him, burying my face in the collar of my coat. But then something soft clips my arm in a powdery explosion.
I hesitate and another snowball brushes my side, falling apart on impact. Catcher holds up his hands as if to say he had nothing to do with it, but I can see that his fingers are red and puckered, wide troughs of snow dug up around his knees where he packed together the snowballs.
And then he laughs, the sound of it breaking the silence. It’s infectious, and soon I’m laughing too as I stoop and start collecting handfuls of powder, packing and smoothing them. Catcher scrambles to find cover but there’s nowhere to go on the barren roof and I pelt him. He huffs with mock outrage.
It’s his turn to chase me, and I shriek with laughter as I dodge his first attack, only to catch a snowball to my hip as I’m twisting to fire one off at him. We chase each other around in circles, scooping up snow and not even bothering to pack it before tossing it.
I’m out of breath from laughing and running and dodging. Snow crystals glitter around us, the frozen taste of them coating my lips. I give up all pretense of trying to make snowballs and just shovel snow at Catcher until he grabs me around the waist, pinning my arms to my sides. We’re both crying with laughter as he spins me, the last gasp of the sunset light setting each flake into brilliant glowing color.
Catcher’s cheeks are pink, his eyes bright and I can feel the heat radiating through his damp clothes. It’s freezing outside and I want to push closer to him, to tak
e that warmth into me. We’re twirling so fast now that the force of it tries to pull us apart, but he holds me tighter, snowflakes spiraling around us. I let my head fall back and revel in the joy that erupts from every part of me for the first time in so long.
Finally, he stops and we stand there hiccuping and gulping frigid air. He reaches out absently and tucks a wet strand of hair behind my left ear, his fingertips just barely brushing my jaw. For a minute I forget to tense, forget to care that the hair was there to cover my scars, to hide me. For a minute I feel normal.
I don’t let hesitation crowd my mind. Instead I let the buoyant freedom of the moment overwhelm me and I stretch up onto my toes and push my mouth against his.
I barely feel him under me, barely get a taste of the heat before he shoves me away. I stumble from the force of it, throw my hand against the wall behind me to catch myself. I’m so shocked I can’t speak and he only stares at me, horrified.
“Don’t ever do that,” he wheezes. “Don’t ever kiss me.” He’s wiping at his mouth with his hands as if my lips were poison.
I can’t look at him. I turn away, mortified by his utter rejection.
Just like that, all the insecurities slam back into me. It’s like walking down stairs in the dark and thinking there’s one step left when there isn’t—instead you stutter and fall off balance on solid ground.
For a moment I hope that maybe we can just pretend it never happened. That I didn’t try to kiss him and that he didn’t push me away. I want nothing more than for this to be possible but I know it’s not.
I start for the stairwell door, my back stiff, but he stops me with his words.
“I’m infected,” he says harshly. “I could infect you! Don’t you understand that? Don’t you even care about yourself enough to avoid that risk?” He paces, frustrated and angry, while I stand clutching the doorknob. I feel like nothing, as if I don’t exist, and the taste of it is sharp-edged and bitter.
