Shatter the Suns

by Caitlin Sangster

  Other Menghu crowd onto the balcony, the streaming lines of them multiplying like weeds swaying in the water. My stomach twists with nausea as I dodge between two of the soldiers, trying to ignore the way their laughs turn to rust.

  A Menghu tackles me to the ground, broken pottery cutting painfully into my back as he straddles me. It’s the same one who first picked me up, teeth painted across his filters. He grins at me through the awful mask, his voice tainted with a familiar oily cast. “You always did like making things much harder than they had to be, Jiang Sev. Call this a gift. It’ll keep you in one piece.”

  The handle of his gun streaks down toward my head. A blast of pain, and then all there is to see is black. No Tai-ge. No aunt, no blood, no guns.

  Nothing.

  CHAPTER 58

  MY EYES DON’T OPEN AGAIN until I slam into the floor, dropped like a sack of poisoned millet for the rats. My shoulder and hip scream at the impact, nothing responding the way it is supposed to when I attempt to roll away, to run. The man who was carrying me sits down with a sigh, his presence tapping like spider legs up my spine, the promise of a stinging bite to come.

  He pulls at his gas mask’s straps, adjusting the awful gore grin painted across the filters. The sound of propellers fills my ears and the floor lurches under us, throwing me flat onto my stomach. Underneath me the bag makes a lump, the book’s sharp corner digging into my ribs.

  “If you hadn’t run away before, none of this would have happened.” The Menghu’s slippery voice is a flood of grease in my ears. He turns to look at me, my brain screaming at me to remember, to link that voice to the person wearing Cale’s mask. Cale, who was so close to . . .

  Helix. My stomach lurches, and suddenly I’m vomiting onto the heli floor in a projectile stream.

  “Rotted Sephdom—!” Helix jerks up from the floor and retreats to a corner to escape the expanding pool of sick, the mask’s painted teeth glinting in the dim light as he pulls it tight over his nose and mouth. It’s just us in the small room, almost as small as the storage closet on the heli we left by the abandoned village. Bars line one wall, and there’s a drain in the floor with barely enough room for me to lie here, an acid taste in my mouth, bile soaking into my shirt.

  “Water!” Helix calls through the bars. At first I’m not sure how to react to that. Helix doing something nice? But then he adds, “And a mop.”

  “Where’s Tai-ge?” I croak. But then all I can think are swear words, and I don’t even want to share those with Helix.

  I know why he did this. I don’t know how. But this is fate’s way of showing me just how much I was risking when I trusted Tai-ge back on the heli. What the inevitable end was from the moment he chose my side. He had help. Lockpicks, a radio link, contacts on the island . . . orders to destroy their comm towers . . . How could he have hidden all those things from the Baohujia when they brought him onto the island?

  Maybe that’s why he was so flustered when Xuan disappeared. If Xuan was Tai-ge’s connection to the Baohujia who were sick of fighting—who Xuan did not want to talk to because getting away from the City meant cutting all ties to anyone who know who he was—then my letting him go would have been a huge obstacle to overcome. But I guess they found him anyway.

  I taste the inside of my mouth, the acidic hint of vomit making me gag. Does Tai-ge believe me yet about not asking Reds for help? Dr. Yang probably already has the device in his hands. Something triumphant crows inside me at the thought of the device, lonely and empty, because that wasn’t all Mother left. We sent the rest of it to Sole over the link. Maybe that will be enough. We have something. He has something. There’s still room to play the game. To win.

  Helix jerks me out of my thoughts, toeing my feet aside as he moves out of range of further bouts of sickness.

  “Why didn’t you just shoot me?” I put a hand to my mouth, wiping away the slick coating of bile dribbling down my chin. “You don’t need me anymore. I thought Menghu valued kills. That’s why you take trophies. Since when do you save victims to play with later?”

  Helix slides down in the corner, arranging himself as far from the pool of vomit as he can, waiting until another Menghu comes with a mop and sort of sloshes it toward the drain until it’s a new layer of varnish on the floor rather than a puddle. The soldier hands Helix a waterskin, murmuring something I don’t understand before he backs out the door.

  When Helix turns back to me, he holds the waterskin out. “You must be thirsty. Can you hold it yourself?”

  The water is for me? I try to think about moving my cheek from the floor, about moving at all, and reject the idea. He walks and pulls me up by my shoulders, propping me up against the wall. Bile burns up in my throat again, but this time it stays down, just making me choke. A part of me wants to fight Helix, but the promise of water is enough to keep me from flopping back down on the ground.

  “I’ll get you some clean clothes before we land,” he says, not offering the waterskin, as if he knows that’s what I want and has chosen to relish in watching my pride break down far enough for me to ask for it.

  I narrow my eyes at the Menghu, my mind jarring against the tiger at his collar. His high cheekbones peek out above the mask, circles shadowing under his eyes. His once-slicked-back hair I remember so perfectly now looks as if it hasn’t seen a comb in days, mussed into a greasy chaos of spikes. “What do you want? Did you get . . .” But I shouldn’t ask about Howl. What if they don’t know if he’s down there?

  Or worse. What if they saw Howl in his broken state and just ended him?

  “Did we get Howl?” Helix asks. For a moment I’m afraid I’ll start retching again, that the nothingness in my stomach will continue heaving until I’m inside out. “Dr. Yang told us you would probably be together. The two people who can stop SS just running away into the sunset. Very romantic.”

  “I can’t cure SS. Neither can Howl. It was never about . . .” I start coughing, my rusty throat scraping against each word. “It was that device. . . .”

  “Sure. The device.” Helix nods and looks away, holding out the waterskin again. “What if that device doesn’t have everything we need to make a cure, Jiang Sev?”

  “Then you’re out of luck, because my brain isn’t going to do anything for you. Ask the doctor. He knows.”

  “Dr. Yang specifically asked me to find you. Honestly, I doubt there’s anything at all on that device. This whole invasion and Kamar having a cure is just a fairy tale the Firsts swallowed whole. All we really need is you.”

  “If that were true, I’d already be dead, Helix.” I cough, my stomach turning as all the muscles clench. “I would have turned myself in.”

  He gives the waterskin a shake in my direction. “Do you or do you not need help?”

  I take the waterskin from him, the water bubbling out to dribble down the front of my shirt. This isn’t the Helix I remember. He was all pride and polish before. Until he raised his gun, and then he was empty Menghu, like the hollow-eyed tiger badge they all wear. But now he looks deflated somehow.

  The mask catches my attention again, and I point to the toothy filter, meeting his eyes. “Cale didn’t wake up?” I ask. “I didn’t realize it would matter to you.”

  He glares at me, his eyes like burning coals over the curls of the mask. “Do you know how many people died because you and that monster ran away? Hundreds of people stuck inside the Mountain wishing they were dead. I always felt a little sorry for you before, but not anymore. And Howl . . . I hope I’m the one who gets to put him down.”

  Anger builds inside me, the casual reference to killing almost like an item on his to-do list, but it doesn’t tamp down the hope that kindles at his words. Howl isn’t dead. Not yet. “How can you treat people the way you do? Like targets and animals, as if you’re some other kind of creature. Howl doesn’t do that, but he’s the monster?”

  “Howl doesn’t do that? He’s still trying to make you believe he’s a human?” Helix takes the waterskin back, upsettin
g the rest of it on the floor to wash away the last remnants of vomit. “I wonder what he wants from you now?”

  “Stop talking. Get away from me.” I let my ears close, but I can’t make my eyes shut him out. Not when he’s so close. Once a group of Reds in the Youth Corps of the Liberation Army decided to try their new hunting dog’s skills out on me. I couldn’t close my eyes then, either. Not when the dog cornered me a street down from my cannery shift. Not as its bared teeth inched closer to my arm. My eyes were pried open by terror, waiting to see if my brain would let the predator disintegrate into the dust of hallucination.

  I still don’t know if that really happened. The Reds could have called the dogs off. Or it could have all been inside my mind.

  But I can’t afford to close my eyes and hope Helix will disappear. Even if I don’t know how to escape or how I’m going to get the cure back from Dr. Yang, if all I can do is freeze and wait for my problems to disappear, then what am I worth, anyway?

  Breathe in. It’s hard. I’m almost afraid some of the air I sucked into my lungs was once inside of Helix. But it’s a relief. Even if I don’t know all the details, I refuse to be stuck.

  Another Menghu walks in, and Helix gets up. “Suicide watch,” he says. “Dr. Yang needs her alive.”

  Breathe out. Like I would try to kill myself.

  The Menghu nods and settles gracefully to the floor across from me, dark brown hair falling forward across her face. I can feel all the muscles that had been clenching—pushing me as far away from Helix as possible in this small space—start to relax. Even if my new guard would hurt me just as quickly, I think she wouldn’t like it. Her round face is a shade lighter than I remember, as if she’s been spending time inside, freckles standing out sharp against the skin across her nose.

  But Mei doesn’t look me in the eyes.

  The heli jogs under us, then goes still. Much like the one we stole from the City, this one’s underbelly is meant to hold twenty or more. But it’s cut into pieces, a labyrinth of cubbyholes ready to stack prisoners, one on top of another. A heli meant for hunting on the outskirts of Port North, where the sound resonance weapon couldn’t reach. Slave transport.

  When I steal another glance at Mei, she’s biting her lip. Her eyes run up and down her hands, fingers interlaced so tightly I can see a white outline forming on her skin. There are bones at her wrist. Six trophies. Six more people dead.

  I try not to care. “It’s okay,” I say. “You’ve got to do your job.”

  She glances at me, then returns quickly to her hands. “Are you all right? It looks as if you’ve had it rough since I saw you last.”

  “I’m fine.” Bruised and cut in so many places I can’t even count them. My head still spinning from the stunning grenade and the fact that my friend threw it. My not-friend. My former friend, who still somehow believed after everything that going back to the Reds would have some other consequences than me in a cell.

  Maybe he doesn’t care about me in a cell. Then all of this would make so much more sense. But it doesn’t really matter anymore. “Look, Mei.” I sit forward. “I need to tell you something. Helix seems to think they still need me and Howl in a lab—”

  “I really did like you. Back in the Mountain.” Mei’s voice spins out like a gold thread, continuous and beautiful. Metallic and cold. “But you must know how selfish you are being. Hundreds . . . maybe even thousands from the Mountain are dead because you ran away. We can’t wait for the cure anymore.”

  Selfish. The word sinks past the fury of thoughts ricocheting back and forth through my head. I suppose it is true. I ran from becoming the cure back at the Mountain, ran from saving thousands of people from SS. I thought that saving Mother meant I didn’t have to die, and that SS would be cured without my blood.

  What would I do now, if my life truly were the price Dr. Yang was asking? Would I be like June, taking off my mask and waiting for death to come? Or would I be like Howl and fight my way out? Do whatever it takes to survive, only to regret it later?

  No. I sit up a little straighter. I make my own decisions. Find my own way.

  “Mei.” She was my friend once. Maybe some small part of her will want to listen. “Dr. Yang is the one who set the contagious strain of SS free. He’s the one who let you spread it all over the Mountain.”

  She starts, looking at me with narrowed eyes. “How do you know about me spreading SS?”

  “I was there, Mei. He is the one who turned SS into an even more dangerous weapon than it already was.”

  Mei shakes her head. “Dr. Yang tried to stop it. He’s the one who told me I could stay, that I could have Mantis. If you’d stayed in the Mountain and let them take the cure, I wouldn’t have needed Mantis in the first place. All this fighting would be done. Everyone would be happy.”

  “Do you really believe that? The fight would just stop when Dr. Yang snaps his fingers?” I inch toward her, trying to hold her gaze as if I can somehow infuse her with the truth she doesn’t feel like listening to. “People aren’t just fighting over Mantis, Mei. And they aren’t going to stop once there is a cure if Dr. Yang is the one who has it. He’ll use it as a reward. As a way to control people.”

  Mei scoots back until she’s propped against the opposite wall. “I thought you were so brave, following your mother out to the Mountain. Standing down that gore with Cale on your shoulders. Still fighting when your life had been hell. But I didn’t know about the cure then. I was too new. I didn’t even know who Howl was.” She takes a shaky breath. “You should have told me.”

  I wait for a second, not sure what she is trying to say. “Because he’s really one of you? A Menghu? It’s not like he’s going to kill you in your sleep for believing he was a First.” Never mind the fact that I didn’t know either.

  Mei finally looks up, something like pity in her eyes. “You really don’t know anything, do you? You’re not brave, just oblivious.” She looks at the door, craning her neck to get a look down the hall, and at first I think it’s so she can make sure no one is listening. But it isn’t. She’s worried about something. Waiting for it to come up the hall to get her.

  Is she taking Mantis? Or is this the beginning of some made-up danger starting to take hold of her brain?

  But Mei doesn’t start compulsing. “They won’t tell me if they found him or not.” She goes back to her hands, whispering it almost to herself as if she can’t bear to admit it out loud. She’s frightened. Frightened he’s here?

  “You’re . . . scared of Howl?” The last image I have of Howl, the light from outside clinging to him as he waved me on, is lodged in my brain. I don’t need an explanation from Howl as to why the Menghu were so terrified of him. I know him, and that’s enough. But for some reason, watching Mei go pale and check the door again makes my stomach twist. “How can you possibly be more scared of Howl than of Helix? Helix has actually hurt you before.” I saw the bruises. All because of a stupid game, too.

  She looks at me again. “Howl was brutal. He and Sole—”

  “I know about him and Sole. I thought the way they went after Reds would be a reason to respect him for other Menghu. You idolized Cale and her awful bracelet. . . .”

  Mei’s hand goes to her own bracelet, the finger bones clasped around her wrist. “He didn’t just go after Reds, Sev.”

  It takes a moment for the weight of her words to settle across me. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that Howl didn’t always get along with people in the Mountain. And when people went out on missions, sometimes the ones he didn’t get along with didn’t come back. He was perfect with the generals, with all of Nei-ge, but in the dormitories after the lights went out . . .” She stops, swallowing hard. “To hear Helix tell it, after Howl made captain, the people he didn’t care for seemed find themselves right out where the Reds could get them.”

  A memory flicks across my mind: Cale’s face when Howl stood up to block her and the Yizhi men trying to drag me to the hospital. He told her she’d be tra
pped Outside if she tried again. That he’d make sure she was.

  “They saw him hurt people? Kill people?”

  “There’s no way to prove anything. I guess General Root wouldn’t even listen to the reports, saying they were just after Howl because of politics and wanting promotions. He said it was jealousy, because Howl was so good at what he did. But Howl never denied any of it. He just waited. Watched. And when you crossed him, you disappeared. Not even a finger left of you to remember.” Her bone bracelet rattles as she brushes a clump of hair out of her face.

  Howl’s face clouds my vision, the broken expression on his face. The Menghu—even Sole—all think . . .

  But what do I think? Howl won’t touch the trigger of a gun.

  Mei glances down the hallway again. “I can’t shake the feeling that he’s in this heli somewhere. Sitting in a cell where I can’t see him, but he can see me. Watching all of us. Memorizing our faces. When Dr. Yang gave orders to look for him, they told stories the whole way over. . . .” She shivers.

  A few weeks ago, what Mei is saying might have horrified me. But now I have already chosen what I believe. Who I believe.

  Howl’s past doesn’t change who he is now. Especially not a past colored in by Menghu who haven’t enough morals among them to realize that hurting other people just because you can isn’t always the explanation that makes the most sense. Menghu who don’t look close enough at their enemies to see that they’re people too.

  I fight to keep my voice calm. “Mei, listen to me. Please.” She goes back to tracing the walls with her eyes, listening to the sounds coming from outside, my words stopped by some invisible barrier. “Dr. Yang doesn’t have to kill anyone for the cure. Not me, not Howl. There were hundreds of Firsts who had been cured in the City. Dr. Yang could have taken any of them. He wants you to believe him because it gives him power over you. You believe he’ll be able to cure you, so you do what he says.”

  She doesn’t look up.