An image of my sister, Aya, ghosts up in my head, but now she wears June’s face. I suddenly realize I can’t even remember Aya’s features, the same way I can’t remember my father’s. I blink the image away, knowing I can’t substitute June in for Aya, no matter how much I want to take care of her. Still, I’ve already lost one sister. I can’t stand to lose another.
June frowns. “I thought you’d . . .”
“You thought I’d what?”
She bites her lips, hands rubbing against her arms. “I messed up.” One of the sleeves pulls up, a white line against her pink skin peeking out from under the fabric.
Scars. I’ve seen them before but hadn’t really thought about it. I knew when we found June that her time with her “family”—or whatever the clan of infected scavengers she traveled with had called themselves—had been difficult. Only her father had been actually related to her, but even he . . . I shiver as I recall one of the first things June had ever told me about him. That her father wasn’t hard like the others. That he was always sorry.
At the time, I thought it was just compulsions to be sorry for. But perhaps Tian and Cas—the leaders of the band—had been less forgiving of a young girl learning to live Outside even when compulsions weren’t fogging their brains. Her father had sent her off with Howl and me on the sliver of hope that we could do better for her than he could.
How could June have thought I would hurt her, though? That running was a better idea than staying to face a mistake that wasn’t even her fault? “June,” I finally manage to say, “I’d be dead if not for you. Also, a lot hungrier.”
“You could have been dead today because of me.”
I take a deep breath and sit down on a rock, letting her keep the distance between us. Hurrying through this isn’t going to work, no matter how close the Reds are behind us. “I didn’t tell you about Howl. Didn’t think it mattered anymore, because he was dead.”
She waits.
The air seems to freeze in my lungs, Howl’s presence a thundercloud behind us. Hiding what happened between us didn’t seem to matter one way or another before, but I see now how dangerous it was not to tell June. “I was infected. When I was younger. And my mother . . . did something to fix it. I’m immune to SS now, to compulsions. All of it. I didn’t know.”
June bites her lip, eyebrows furrowing.
I stand, unable to hold still as I try to find the words to tell her. My hands search for the necklace with my four red stars, the shard of jade my mother gave me, and the rusty ring I picked up all those weeks ago when I first left the City. Instead, I find the red line scratched across my neck from Howl’s knife. “I didn’t know I was immune, but Howl did. He knew before we even left the City, and he didn’t tell me. He took me to the Mountain so they could open me up and figure out what Mother did to fix me, and he lied to me so I would go without a fight.”
“But you and him . . .” The words come out slower than a drip of honey, as if she has to search to find so many at once. “Before, it seemed like . . .”
I know what it seemed like. It seemed that way to me, too. “If there were any other explanation, Howl wouldn’t have hidden in the heli. He would have just come out and talked to me.”
Her forehead creases. “He said it was complicated.”
“Unfortunately, it isn’t all that complicated.” I try to smile, to ignore the hurricane inside me at the thought of going back to the heli. Of having to face him. He knew that I liked him. He might have even . . . But I close that thought down before it can fully form. If Howl felt anything real for me, he wouldn’t have led me straight into the gore’s mouth. “Now you know. And I hope you also know I would never, ever hurt you. Please don’t leave me.”
June brushes her arm again, the scars standing out bone white.
“With friends, you’re entitled to a few mistakes.” I try to catch her eye, but she won’t meet me halfway. “At least, I think so. It’s been a while since I’ve had more than just Tai-ge. Can we please go now?”
June nods slowly, but she doesn’t move. “And this Port North place . . . we’re going there so no one will hurt you? Not for some kind of medicine to help SS?” She looks at my forehead, as if she can see the lines where the medics in the Mountain would have cut. Not judging, just asking.
“Dr. Yang—the person who was going to cut me open—knew he wasn’t really going to find anything inside me to help. He needed me to wake up my mother so she’d tell me where her notes on the SS cure were hidden. We’re going to Port North to get those notes before he does. He’s going to use the cure to hurt people.”
“Why?” She raises her eyebrows, expectant. As if this is a story I can tell her from start to finish.
“That’s a good question, June.”
“Is he going to try to stop us?”
Us. Hope is a fragile thing. “That might be why Howl’s here. I’m not sure how much he knows.”
June shrinks an inch, running a hand over her scar-lined arm, pulling her sleeve down so it hangs past her wrist. “Can’t get infected like Dad. I won’t be a Seph.”
“That’s exactly what we want to stop. Anyone having to live like that.” I reach out to her, meaning to pull her into a hug. She watches my arm, her eyes narrowed as if she isn’t quite sure what I’m trying to accomplish, so I let my arms fall. “I’ll protect you, June. I’ll keep you safe.”
Tapping the side of her mask, her brow furrows once again. “I . . . I want to stay with you.” Then she points to the heli without looking, her eyes going hard. “But I won’t kill him.”
“You won’t kill . . .” My mind goes blank, following her finger to the sharp flare of sunlight reflecting off the heli’s glass cockpit. Tai-ge has pulled the tarp back, the silvered metal gleaming in the icy winter sun. “You mean Howl?”
She nods. “He hurt you. But he saved my life before. I owe him.”
I start toward the heli. “No one is going to kill anyone.”
June still doesn’t follow me. “Things are different when someone’s running at you with a gun. I knew it was Howl back in the City. Didn’t like to shoot at him, but he was with people who were shooting at us. This is different.”
I turn to face her, and she finally meets my gaze, her green eyes looking too large for her face over the black curls of her mask. “No one is going to hurt Howl.”
It isn’t difficult to say. I don’t want to hurt anyone. The relief in her eyes feels heavy, though, as if I’ve promised more than I realize.
CHAPTER 7
JUNE AND I CLIMB THOUGH the hatch at the same time, her rucksack and sleeping bag squishing against my side as we squeeze through. “Get us off the ground!” I call, looking around for Tai-ge. “It’s not just Menghu we have to worry about. There are Reds at the Post. With guns.”
In the two seconds of silence that follow—the time it takes June and me and her miles of sleeping bag to spill onto the heli floor—my heart goes still. Tai-ge isn’t answering. I left him alone with Howl. What if . . .
But then the heli control chair swings around, Tai-ge’s face twisted into a scowl, the faint light from the heli’s control screens throwing shadows under his eyes. “I can’t get the maps to work. When we disconnected from the network, everything went haywire.”
“Come on, Tai-ge,” I say. “We just have to move.”
Where is Howl? The cargo bay door is sealed, the boxes once again stacked in front of it. Everything is back where it’s supposed to go, but the chilling undercurrent inside me still sets my teeth on edge.
And then I see it. The storage closet door is open a crack. There’s a light on inside and a shadow of someone moving. My stomach clenches.
Tai-ge goes back to the screen set into the console, sliding his fingers across the map displayed. “I’ve been messing with it since you took off, and I still don’t have it figured out. I don’t know where to go, or exactly where we are. I’m not trained to draft flight plans, just follow routine courses. I thought I had a go
od route to Dazhai, but when I tried to find an isolated place to drop Sun Yi-lai, I got all turned around. . . .”
“Well, the Reds will know exactly where we are if we’re not in the air in about five seconds. Didn’t you hear me? They were shooting people at the Post.”
Tai-ge looks up from the screen, his hands freezing. “What?”
June goes up to the screen, brushing Tai-ge’s hovering fingers away from the dim glow. Her finger stabs a spot of green nestled next to a dark ring of rocky-looking bits.
Tai-ge glares at the spot, blinking with a fierce sort of focus that makes me think he’s trying to light the contraption on fire with mere force of will. “Are you sure? I thought we were down . . .”
June gives a dismissive shake of her head, batting his hand away again as it touches a meadow farther down on the map. She drags her finger across the screen so it shows a different place, a green field in summer that’s incongruous with the frozen mountains outside.
“We can’t go there, June. It looks like a farm.” Tai-ge looks to me in appeal. “We don’t know where all the survivors from the invasion went, but as far as I can tell, most of them ended up on farms closest to the City that produce food. I do not want to end this little adventure by being shot out of the sky. Unless you’ve rethought my plan to contact the Reds and—”
“No,” I cut in, and catch myself looking at the storage closet door, Howl’s shadow still beyond it. Listening. “And keep your voice down.”
June points to the field again, then throws her rucksack on top of the boxes blocking the cargo bay door. She drops onto the floor next to them and braces herself against the cold metal, pinching her eyes shut. June doesn’t like taking off.
“You’re sure, June?” I ask. She nods without opening her eyes. “Let’s do it, then.”
Tai-ge peers out into the forest, then nods and begins fiddling with the instruments decorating the console. The heli engines shudder to life underneath us, the propellers filling the air with a dull roar as they begin to spin.
“Do I get a vote?” I barely hear Howl’s voice over the propellers’ thunder. Walking toward the cell door feels like wading through tar, every bit of me screaming in protest. Just as the heli makes its shivery departure from the ground, I slam Howl’s door shut.
CHAPTER 8
THE LAND LOOKS BRUISED AND purple under the sun-killing clouds by the time we set down in the field June pointed to on the map. Buildings stare at us from across the wide expanse, blank-eyed and dark. Their rooftops bow under the weight of years, jagged holes in their walls where the bricks have been stolen.
Abandoned. That’s what this farm is.
What looked like fields on the map is a clogged mess of low shrubs and grass. The City hasn’t been here for years, by the look of it. I glance over at the buildings, the thought of eyes watching us from inside shivering through me.
Tai-ge pulls open the heli’s hatch, but June puts a hand on his arm to stop him from going out. “How likely are there to be people here we should be worried about?” Tai-ge asks. “Scavengers? Sephs taking shelter? We already have to keep an eye on the sky to make sure no one followed us.”
June grabs the binoculars and a flashlight for an answer and heads toward the hatch. She’s never used the flashlight as a light source while scouting; I think she just likes how heavy it is, as if in a past life it was a bludgeon. A featherlight gust of wind wisps up through the hatch when she pulls it open.
“What if there are gores?” I dart to the ladder, about to climb down after her, but she waves me off. I know we can’t risk not scouting, and she’s made it clear on several occasions that my help is a hindrance, but it’s hard to stand here doing nothing. I move to the console, where I’ll be able to see her through the front windows, as if watching June will somehow keep her safe.
“I don’t know why you keep talking about gores like they’re going to pop up and tear us all to shreds.” Tai-ge’s eyes follow June as she makes a round of the field, then peeks into the buildings one by one. “Those stories that Outside patrollers tell are ridiculous.”
“Gores are not made up, Tai-ge.” June disappears into another of the dilapidated buildings, flashes of gold hair and pale skin showing through the holes marking the walls. “I might have spent half my time Outside hallucinating, but—”
“That’s my guess about what you saw. Hallucinations would make anything seem worse. I’ve been Outside for weeks now. Wouldn’t we have seen evidence of huge savage creatures that like to snack on fingers and toes?” Tai-ge leans against the console next to me and puts a hand on my shoulder when I don’t respond. “Are you okay, Sevvy?”
I look away from the window as June trots off into the trees, her little frame lost in the darkness. “What?”
“Are you okay?” Tai-ge lets his hand drop down my arm, settling it on the console right next to mine. He feels warm standing so close. “I mean, none of us are okay, exactly. But you seem even less okay than you did before.”
I look down at our hands, the traitor star burned between my pointer finger and thumb a horror next to the two smooth scars marking him a Second. A line of brown scabs pokes out from his sleeve, a crescent shape that looks suspiciously like a bite.
“I’m fine, Tai-ge. Take off your coat. We’ll put some more anmicro on your arms.”
“Don’t worry about it. The scabs pull, but I think we’ve kept up on them enough that they’re not infected.” He pulls me away from the console, waiting until I have no choice but to meet his eyes. “I’m worried about you, Sev.”
“I said I’m fine.” Taking a step away from him, I turn to the problem I wish I could ignore. The storage closet almost seems to smolder and distort at the edges, as if it’s a door into the eighteen levels of hell instead of the only barrier between me and the boy I didn’t ever want to see again. “I mean . . . I will be once we decide what we’re going to do with that.” I point to the door. “Once we’ve got maps. And when we get to Port North before Dr. Yang does.”
Tai-ge nudges my shoulder, narrowing the space I put between us. “You know the tubes that were in Sun Yi-lai’s things? I thought at first they were some kid of weapon, or hiding something inside, but they’re just rolls of paper. Shall we have a look? Maybe it will give us a better idea of what he was trying to accomplish.”
“You know, I am sitting right here.” I flinch, Howl’s voice muffled from inside the closet. So he can hear us. “Just open the door. I’ll tell you what they are.”
“It’s fine.” Tai-ge lowers his voice, as if speaking too loud would shatter me into a million pieces. “He can’t get out of there.” He crouches by the console, opening the small compartment where we found the binoculars and a few other odds and ends. Now there are five tightly rolled papers, each a crisp white, about as long as my arm, and sealed with City wax. Carefully extracting the one on top, Tai-ge runs his hands down the length of the tube, fingers stalling on the falcon-and-beaker seal. “Do you remember the time we snuck into the market square with some of Mother’s saved ration cards? It was the year those red beetles came out of the walls of the orphanage. You wanted a scarf, but they wouldn’t give you enough cards to get one.”
I blink, the change of subject whistling through me like vertigo. “Yeah . . . I guess. But . . .”
He peels the wax back carefully, using only his fingertips, playing with it as it goes soft in his hand. “You were going to cut the ends off so you could hide little bits in Sister Lei’s bed so she’d think the beetles were living in her sheets. It took all afternoon to convince you to get a black one instead and to leave that poor old lady alone.” He smiles. “Black looked better on you, anyway.”
It didn’t take all afternoon. Since when did I ever have an afternoon to argue over scarves in the marketplace? I brush the annoyed thought away. “What you don’t know is that I did cut off the ends of the black one. She thought they were spiders, and it was even better,” I retort. “And you’re lucky I didn’t do it to you
too.”
“You would have put real spiders in my bed.” His smile almost erases the statue-like lines in his expression. Tai-ge never was one to laugh out loud. He hoarded his smiles almost as carefully as June holds on to her words, and the moments he chose to share one have always made me stop and pay attention, as if he’s entrusting me with part of his soul. I lower myself to the floor next to him. “Did Sister Lei ever figure it out?” Tai-ge asks, batting my arm with the paper tube. “She couldn’t have, or I would have heard about it in . . .”
And just like that, the memory sours. I reach for the tube, peeling up the last of the wax and smoothing the paper across the floor. Tai-ge would have known because it would have been in my reeducation reports. The Hongs knew everything about me. They probably knew the weight of my bowel movements and how many times a day I brushed my hair.
I wrinkle my nose. Hopefully not the bowel movements.
“I just . . .” Tai-ge smiles again, and there’s a trace of my old friend somewhere deep inside him. The one who didn’t clench his jaw so hard. The one who didn’t see his dad torn to pieces two weeks ago. “I just wish things were less . . . not okay. Do you remember before?” The smile thins to a line, an uncommitted lack of expression too complete to be natural. “Do you remember how nothing used to matter? The most exciting thing that happened would be finding you’d dyed my face soap green, or the two of us hiding from the nuns to sneak in an extra game of weiqi.” Tai-ge puts his hands down on the paper to smooth it out, deliberatly brushing his palm across the back of my hand as he does so, and letting it rest there. “I miss us from before.”
It’s like a jolt of electricity shooting up my arm, and I’ve jerked away and folded my arms tight around my middle before I can properly think it through. Tai-ge crouches so close to me I can feel his body heat through my coat where our shoulders touch. He doesn’t move, staring down at the paper on the ground as if I didn’t just pull away from him like a little girl stung by a bee.
Shatter the Suns Page 5
