Shatter the Suns

by Caitlin Sangster

  The disks are padded with a leathery cushion, blocking out most of the fan’s noise. But there’s a steady sort of hum that comes from the disks themselves buzzing in my ears, almost like the whine of a speaker back in the City right before the Chairman spoke. Maybe that’s what they are. Loudspeakers from Before, when there was a reason for only one person to listen to something without everyone having to partake.

  Luokai slips a similar pair of disks over his ears, though his are not quite so crisscrossed with scratches as mine. “Can you hear me?” he asks, his voice loud as if he’s speaking straight into my ear over the fan’s noise.

  I nod. Luokai turns to the willowed shadow on the other side of the fan, shot through with blazing sun, saying something in the close vowels and consonants of this place. A new voice slips into my ear through the disks, like the worst and best memories I have braided together, crackled over with age, though I can’t understand the words. I’m lost in both trying to fit the syllables together and trying not to. Trying not to see my own mother’s mouth moving, as if she somehow came back from the death I gave her at the top of Traitor’s Arch.

  But it’s more familiar than anything I can fit into a memory, her voice. I’ve heard it before. Where could I have heard it?

  Once Gao Shun is done speaking, Luokai looks at me, concentration wrinkling his brow, the fans blowing the bristled hair on his head. “Tell me what the invasion force is after. They’ve never brought so many helis, so many soldiers. They’ve never tried to move against the island. What is their plan?”

  I stare at the fan, at the muddled shadow just beyond, tears pricking in my eyes. She’s right there. My aunt. My blood. My skin prickles over in fear and wanting, the two warring with each other as if it matters somehow what I want. “Can I please see her?”

  Luokai shakes his head slowly.

  I nod, swallowing my emotions as best I can. “They know about your towers. Where they are. Tai-ge—my friend you killed—he meant to break them somehow, I think. I know the date they mean to invade.”

  The woman speaks again, her tongue lisping over the harsh syllables. He nods along with each word, then looks at me. “Invade? Why invade here? If they bring SS here, they spoil their own slave pens.”

  I shake my head. “I’d like to see my mother’s things before I say anything else.”

  Gao Shun’s outline goes still, as if she’s taking stock of my posture, my raggedly clothes, the space between my eyes. When her voice continues, it holds an aftertaste of questions. Luokai translates, “If SS truly is contagious, how is it you walk so calmly next to Luokai . . . ?” He blinks. “Next to me, that is. Do they have a new method of filtering air? Internal, perhaps?”

  My mind whirrs, wondering what it is I should say.

  The shadow shifts to the side, sunlight flickering behind her to stab into my eyes. Her husky voice sounds in my ears, the words lining up in slow, intentional lines, a heavier accent than Luokai’s weighing them down. “That’s what the invasion force is after, isn’t it? They’re here for Gui-Hua’s things.”

  I take too long to respond, the shock of her speaking in my own language either a good sign or a bad one. But then her shadow nods, as if my silence is answer enough by itself.

  “You can’t give anything to them.” My step toward the fan almost feels compulsive, the wind from the fan tearing at my hair. “Mother sent me to get her things before Dr. Yang could or he’ll use them to control—”

  Gao Shun launches into a tirade of clipped syllables cutting me off. Luokai waits until she’s done before turning to me. “I’d suggest not telling her what to do,” he says softly—not a strict translation, I’d guess. “She wants to know what is in those papers. We can’t read them—not the words and letters. The notations and the purpose are foreign to us.”

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  “Your Red friend didn’t have anything special with him when we found him.” My chest goes cold as Gao Shun’s smooth syllables slip through the headphones. “Odd, considering the dire situation you say your people are in with SS. He had no internal filtering system, no external gas mask, at least not that he was wearing when we found him.” Luokai’s eyes glaze as he simultaneously listens to her and translates for me. It sounds almost like they dissected Tai-ge and left him in pieces out in that skeleton village. “They have to be coming here because of contagion. That’s the only thing that has changed.”

  Gao Shun takes a deep breath and once again speaks in my language, the switch taking my breath away. “You can’t catch SS, can you? You’re impervious. My sister did it to you somehow. And that’s why they killed her, because SS is their weapon of choice.”

  She has me again, caught with no words in my mouth because I don’t know where any of her stones are. I don’t know where or how to place mine because I’m not even sure we’re playing on the same board.

  I didn’t even think I was walking into a game. As if somehow a force that has been fighting the City for so long would automatically fall on my side. My mother told me to come here. I thought that would be enough.

  What was I thinking? I’ve spent so much time concentrating on getting here. Why didn’t I think about what I would find?

  My hands tremble against my legs, twisting words into my mouth to tell her about Outsiders, about her own people being kept on farms, about SS and how it will take them all, and that Dr. Yang did it on purpose . . . how Sole can help us . . . but Gao Shun isn’t done talking.

  “. . . if that dog-headed Gui-hua had done her duty and left the balance in place the way she was supposed to, none of this would have happened. We wouldn’t have Seconds cutting us down, lapping at our blood—”

  “Don’t talk about my mother that way!” The air screams across my face, my eyes so dry they ache, but I keep them open, standing up to the wind pounding across every inch of exposed skin. Only weeks ago, I would have agreed with this shadow from my past. But I can see my mother for who she was now, her frail voice loud in my ears, saying she loves me. “She was trying to help. She was trying to stop . . . They infected me!” I roar it into the fan, ignoring Luokai as he tries to pull me back. “They were hurting me, so she had to do it. She couldn’t stop researching. She couldn’t leave us all to the Firsts. What do you know about SS as a weapon when you’re out here away from it all? Your life doesn’t start or stop based on your Mantis supply.”

  The shadow is nodding now. “She came up with some kind of cure and then she left the cursed formulas here for them to come after. Never thinking once about the people who would die, the danger she was putting us all in. Gui-hua knew that man was a snake, and she still set bait for him here, not caring a moment if we survived once he’d bitten.” Gao Shun swears. Takes a deep breath.

  “She was trying to help people.” My voice feels shredded and limp. “I’m trying to help—”

  “Your City killed my parents. Every last one of my sisters and brothers, caught by your slavers or with bullets in their heads. Your mother left me here alone with no bargaining chips.” Gao Shun takes a deep breath and lets it out in a staticky rattle that sends a high-pitched buzz ricocheting off my eardrum. “We finally have something they want. Who is in charge of the camp?”

  “No. You can’t give it to anyone in those camps. Dr. Yang won’t give it to everyone who needs it. He’ll use it against us, against you—”

  “Do not tell me what I can and cannot do.” Her voice stings, even as it thins out through the headphones. “Who taught you that you are better than your elders, better than your own blood?”

  “What’s to stop them dropping SS bombs here, too, if they have the cure?” I scream toward her, Luokai forgotten at my feet. “You’ve been safe until now because the Chairman needed you to be well so your people could work on City farms. But if you hand over the cure, they won’t even have to kidnap your people. You’ll have to come groveling to Dr. Yang for even a hope of survival.”

  “Thank you for your help.” The shadow turns and wa
lks away, into the light, every step abrupt enough to be a stomp. All I can see of her is a loose robe to match the other Baohujia, the shifty darkness of her burning up as the daylight wraps its fingers around her as if Gao Shun is nothing but a ghost. The last glittering hope I have, vanishing on the wind.

  I’m as close to the fan’s deathly airstream as I can be without getting my nose caught in the blades. She has to be able to see me, daylight streaming down on my face even as it obscures her features. “Your only chance is to give it to me! Contagious SS is already here in Port North. You don’t even have Mantis, and Dr. Yang isn’t going to share with you. I will. I want to help.”

  Luokai’s hand closes around my shoulder, startling me away from the fan’s blades. “Go. She can’t hear you.” He removes the headset from my ears and drags me back through the shrouded doorway, back into the darkness, where two Baohujia have appeared. The fan’s muted whirr scrambles my ears, everything lost in the rush of wind. “Take her back to my room!” he yells over the sound.

  I pull away from him to look around the room for something to break the fan from its moorings. For anything that will give these people a reason to listen to me. “I have to convince her. I can’t—”

  Luokai grabs hold of my shoulders, forcing me to look him full in the face, to be still. “Answer me truthfully. Is that really what is in those papers? A cure?”

  Luokai’s rangy outline towers over me, but his hands are gentle. “Yes,” I answer. “Will you help me? You’re in charge here, not Gao Shun.”

  “Speakers don’t act individually, Jiang Sev. We do what is best for everyone.” He gestures to the Baohujia behind me, and their hands are like shackles around my wrists, wrenching me back the way I came before I can make any more arguments. Down the dark hall, wind slipping its salty fingers through my hair, anger shuddering through me as we push through the red curtains and down the stone stairway. Gao Shun’s words twist around me like tentacles, squeezing at my throat, at my ribs and heart. Every word was an accusation, a challenge, as if somehow I were the one who sent the Chairman to haze her. But every step feels as if I’m tearing apart, leaving something of myself sitting there at the foot of the fan, wishing I could see Gao Shun’s face.

  Her voice is so familiar. But where I thought it was like mine, the similarity cuts, as if instead of sharing blood, she’d like to inspect mine drop by drop.

  When we get back to Luokai’s room, my guard palms the door open and jerks me inside, forcing it to shut before I can say anything to him. Perhaps now that they’ve gotten what they need from us, being polite and gentle isn’t on the agenda anymore. I’m not important anymore. A meaningless stray from a people they hate.

  I suppose I can understand. All I’ve seen of this place are remembrances and the stone walls that protect them from the City—from people like me.

  But I know how it feels to be waiting for SS’s hooks to show up at the corners of my vision. For the creature living inside my chest to rear its monstrous head. To be exposed, to be chosen, even when you didn’t want to be. My Baohujia guard has been exposed to Luokai, so what could he be thinking now? That he’s only got hours, minutes even, before his eyes could close. And, if he’s been guarding Speakers his whole life, he knows exactly what it is he’ll be giving up.

  If he wakes up at all.

  I try to shake off the heavy web of misery sticking to my shoulders, but it doesn’t fall away. This place could be just as cursed as the Mountain, as the City, within hours. What are the chances they’ll ever recover from the plague about to descend if they hand everything to Dr. Yang? What could I have said differently while I was facing down the shadow that was all I could see of my aunt through the fan? Could I have been more guarded? Pretended to be afraid when Luokai told us he was sick? It didn’t even occur to me.

  I put a hand to my stomach, wishing I could calm the wriggling dread deep inside me and sink to the floor, my hands clawing through my hair, clamping down tight as if that’s the only way my head will stay attached.

  Howl’s blankets twitch, his eyes open and looking at me, June a lump under a blanket just next to him.

  “Are you okay?” Howl whispers.

  I blink, surprised when tears overflow down my cheeks.

  He lifts one edge of the blanket, smoothing out the side of the pallet. “There’s room for one more down here.”

  “How many people have to take the things I want before I’ll stop trusting them?” The words rake their long claws down my throat. My eyes clench shut, shards of pain slivering out to my temples, the sharp edges delving deep into my brain. I crouch down, curling in on myself as if I could crush all the feelings out of me. “I didn’t mean to tell her what is in those papers . . . and now she’s going to use them . . .”

  An arm closes around my shoulders—Howl, somehow up from the pallet, crouching next to me. He holds me close, and I sob until there’s nothing left inside me but ache.

  CHAPTER 51

  I SLEEP. NOT THE COMFORTABLE sleep of a bed and four walls around you, but the dead sleep that digs its claws into your brain, leaving scores deep in your dreams. Dreams of the box. No. Worse. Dreams of Mother’s voice crying over me. Dreams of being trapped in my own body once again, daring every muscle of mine to move, of pleading and then screaming in anger when not even a finger will obey. Screams that echo inside my skull, lie panting on my tongue, because I cannot force my own mouth to open or my throat to obey.

  Pressure hums inside my head like a fire blazing to escape, building inside my nasal cavity until I finally force a word out between my teeth. The world seems to fall to pieces around me as my eyes find a blank ceiling, and I sit up, my lungs choking down a full breath of air.

  Light-headed with the gasps raking my throat, I look around Luokai’s room, empty of anything he could break or use to hurt himself. As much a prison as the box I lay in downstairs. I can move, but is this dark hole in Port North’s rock much better than being Asleep? No one can hear me speak. No one would listen even if they could. My life and that of my friends are probably already forfeit. But it isn’t only us who will die if Gao Shun hands the cure to Dr. Yang.

  The warm weight beside me resolves into Howl, curled around his broken collarbone. His arm lies in its sling across his chest, his other arm lined up along my side, as if he fell asleep wanting me to know I wasn’t alone. My throat clenches, and I move away, tears prickling across my eyes.

  I should have known the moment I started hoping to find a place here in Port North that it was hopeless. Fairy tales and hope are for stories. We wouldn’t love them so much if that were the way our lives really were. I should have expected my aunt to be holding a gun with one hand, using the other to protect an entire island’s worth of people who she’d rather see survive over me.

  Howl and June asleep next to me seems like the worst sort of story, because I can still feel hope when I look at them, and all I can do is curve around that shiny bit of nothing and wait for it to be taken away.

  Family. What does sharing an ancestor even mean? I pull at strands of my hair, trying to distract myself from the fire burning everything inside me to ash. June and I are family, no matter what blood says. We chose each other, me in the first moment I saw her standing there in the dark next to her father.

  She chose me when we burned his body.

  Nothing, not even blood ties, will break that. We’re sisters—not because either of us needs replacements for sisters or fathers or mothers who disappeared into the weeping air, but because we are better together than apart.

  And Howl . . . No matter how backward and unraveled the two of us are, he was willing to fight for my life. And I’m willing to fight for his. Of all the people I could have have at my back, I’m glad it’s him.

  But Howl isn’t my brother the way June feels like a sister. I don’t want him to be. And, at the same time, I can’t find a place inside that isn’t shaded over in doubt, wondering how either of us could move past the broken bits of bone and dea
th tied between us so tight it suffocates.

  There’s a tray set just next to the silver strip marking where the door opens, a teapot, three small cups, three bowls of rice, and a whole fish, its eye glazed over, staring blankly at the ceiling.

  Taking a deep breath, I reach over Howl and June to touch the wall, the stone cold against my fingers. It doesn’t matter if we’re stuck. Doesn’t matter if my aunt would rather have never seen me, might try to use me as some kind of bargaining chip.

  I’m not Asleep. I can move. I can breathe. I’m not laid out on a platter, staring into eternity, waiting to be eaten. Despair never helped anyone win.

  “Sev?”

  I jump at Howl’s voice, looking over to find his eyes open.

  “Are you all right?” he asks. “You were dreaming again.”

  Heat starts a slow burn in my cheeks as if somehow he could hear everything I was thinking as I looked over at him, so quiet next to me on the floor. “How’d you guess?”

  “You were calling for your mother before you woke up.” He slides over to his side, laboriously attempting to sit up, grimacing when I lean down to help him up into a sitting position. “You still dream about her? You did when we first left the City.”

  I feel my face flush, my cheeks warming. “I’ve been awake for a while. Have you been lying here . . .” Putting hands against my cheeks, I clear my throat. “How do you know I used to dream about her?”

  “Because you’d wrap yourself up around that brand.” He glances down at the star melted into my hand. “You’d say her name. I thought it was, you know, being out in the middle of nowhere, wondering when the Sephs would come at you. Taking medicine that messed with your head. Giving up everything you knew for everything you were afraid of . . . all in the company of a boy you’d never met but who was devastatingly attractive . . .”