But they didn’t chain me up. They just threw me in here and locked the door. There’s no escape route anyway, unless I find a way to eat through stone. I’ve spent the last hour lying on the stinking mattress imagining the kinds of things they’ll do to me in here. I imagine the Pod Minister’s face, his wet mouth, as he personally rips out each one of my fingernails or teeth with a pair of old pliers. Death won’t be enough for him. I shudder and begin to pace the cell.
I am scared to die, but death will be better than having to see Bea and tell her that her parents are dead and that I’m responsible for it.
The door buzzes to life and one of the stewards who arrested me appears. “You don’t look like you’re praying,” he says, and chuckles, as though keeping me locked up were the most pleasant thing in the world. He strolls around the cell, his hands in the pockets of his pants.
“I’m not,” I tell him.
“Well, that’s probably best. I don’t think angels visit this place much anyway.” He stands under the light bulb and flicks it with his finger so that it begins to swing gently, carrying the light from one side of the cell to the other and back again. “So who are you working for?” he asks. “You a RAT?”
“I’m not working for anyone.”
“We hear your girlfriend is a major player. I guess they’ll let you buy your way out—her life or yours. Do you know where she is?”
“You’ve got to be joking.”
He cackles. “It was worth a try.”
“So when does the torture begin?” I ask.
“He’ll be here to deal with you before long.”
“Who? Who will be here?” So this guy isn’t the interrogator. Of course he isn’t: he hasn’t laid a finger on me.
Any minute now the Pod Minister will storm into the room. He will put his hands around my throat and finish what he started. “Who am I waiting for?” I call out as the cell door bangs shut. “Who will be here soon?”
54
BEA
I feel myself being lifted off the ground and carried along the alleyway. “You’re okay,” I hear. It sounds like Old Watson, and it could be him, but it must be my imagination because he wouldn’t have the strength to lift me.
I open my eyes and there’s a man’s face looking down at me. He smiles and says, “She’s awake.”
“Watson, she’s awake,” a different voice repeats. A woman. I struggle to free myself from the man’s arms and manage to stand up.
“How are you?” Old Watson asks from behind me. I have no answer. It seems an absurd question.
“Where are we going?” I say.
“Like I said, I’m getting you out of here. Can you walk?” Old Watson asks.
“I’ll try,” I say. I hold on to him as I wobble forward.
“We’ll be quicker if you carry her, Gid,” the woman says.
“Is that okay?” the man asks. I shake my head no, and force myself to walk more quickly.
We move down alleyway after alleyway, changing direction when we come upon a mob. Everyone seems to be going in the opposite direction to us, and as we advance, we come across fewer and fewer people. At last the man and woman leading us stop, and I find myself right up against the unbreakable glassy shell of the pod, next to a garbage chute. Usually this is where we come if we have to throw away items too large for our home chutes, and usually it is monitored by stewards. Today it is deserted. “We’re here,” Watson says. He leans against the pod. He is sweating and breathing uneasily.
“Did they reduce the air?” I ask.
“I’m old, that’s all,” Old Watson says.
The man and woman smile gently and the woman rubs Old Watson on the back. “You should go with her. You should get out now while you can,” she says.
“There is still work to do here. You can’t do it alone,” Old Watson tells her. Then he turns to me.
“This is Harriet. And this is her husband, Gideon.” The couple smile. “When you get to The Grove, tell Silas you’ve seen them, that they’re alive.”
“You’re his parents,” I say, and they nod. I try to smile because someone’s parents are alive and that’s better than nothing. But they are not my parents, and for a brief second I wish these people were dead and my parents alive in their place.
“Here,” Harriet says, handing me an extra-large airtank. “Use it sparingly and you’ll have four days, maybe more. I’ve it set to eighteen percent. You’ll have to tighten it as you go. Move slowly.”
“And take this. Go west,” Gideon says, handing me an antique compass. “You can’t use a pad. They’ll track you.” He hands me an antique map, too, and points to a dark spot. “That’s The Grove. You’ll remember most of the way, I’m sure.”
“Ready?” Harriet says. She unlatches the door to the garbage chute and looks down into it. From somewhere deep inside the pod there is the sound of an explosion and an alarm begins to whir.
“That’ll be the gas,” Gideon says. He is carrying an airtank and slips the facemask over his mouth and nose. Harriet and Old Watson do the same as Gideon helps me into my mask. He slides a belt around my waist and attaches the tank to it.
“Watch out for glass at the bottom,” Old Watson says, leading me by the hand to the escape route. I still feel weak. It’s as much as I can do to climb up onto the lip of the chute. I don’t want to flee. I want to bury my parents. I want to find Quinn. I left him once before and it was the worst thing I ever did. I glance at Harriet and Gideon, and then at Old Watson, who nods sternly. “Go on,” he snaps. I am about to protest, but I know that what I want is less important than what I have to do, and what I have to do is survive. For Quinn. For my parents. So I shove my body away from the edge of the chute and I am gone, devoured by the chute and sliding right out of the pod, just like any other broken thing.
55
QUINN
The door buzzes and a tall figure bursts into the room. I cower against the wall, and when I look up, I see my father, his uniform dusty and torn in places. “They sent me to deal with you. Me!�� he shouts. “Do you realize what you’ve done?”
“Do you know what you’ve done?” I shout right back. “Do you know what you’ve spent half your life doing?” He takes off his cap, folds it, and pushes it into the pocket of his coat. When he speaks, he is surprisingly quiet.
“I’ve been protecting your way of life. Do you think it’s easy to keep the Premiums in power? It isn’t. And you have the audacity to judge me? You enjoy all the pleasures of my work and now you question the way in which those pleasures have been secured. Every fine piece of clothing you’ve worn in your life and every gourmet meal, all the air you breathe has been possible because of what I do.”
“I don’t want that. I want—” I pause.
“What? What is it you could possibly want that I haven’t given you?”
“I want to be free,” I say. My father squints as though I’m speaking a language he barely understands. He stares down at the floor and sighs.
“The Pod Minister has been killed. You’ll be tried for that and executed.” I nod. It’s no worse than I thought. “Can you breathe without supplemental air?” he asks. I shake my head.
“I’m getting there,” I tell him. He raises his eyebrows. He probably never thought I had it in me to be good at anything.
“So you trained,” he says, and I nod. It feels like we are having “A Moment,” the first one of our lives. Eventually he says, “You can never come back here, you know. Follow me.”
“What are you going to do to him, General?” the steward who first questioned me asks, scurrying after us as we proceed down an unlit, tapering tunnel. My father turns and glares at him.
“We are treating him as we would treat any other terrorist. Now get back to your damn post!” he barks. The steward shuffles to his place by the cell door and watches as my father drags me along. We stop at the end, when we cannot go any farther. We are in front of a door marked with a black and yellow sign: CAUTION—AIRTANKS REQUIRE
D. “Good luck out there,” my father says.
“Out there?”
“When I push you outside you’ll have to scream and shout. Knock hard. Beg to be let back in. I know you can act.” He half smiles and I realize he is only pretending to punish me; really, he is saving me. I clench my teeth to stop myself from crying. I know it would only annoy him. “I’ve left a few airtanks outside for you. They’re full,” he whispers.
“Say good-bye to Mother and Lennon and Keane. And my new brother.”
“Drama, even at the end,” he says, unlocking the door and opening it. With a heavy sucking sound, white light fills the tunnel. And then he says, “In another world I think we would have been friends, son.” I nod and hold out my hand for him to shake it. He sniffs and pats my shoulder. Then he pushes me outside.
PART V
THE ASHES
56
ALINA
The water is forcing the rickety boat to smash against the dock with such force it’s possible the old thing will turn into a wreck before we’ve even hauled up the anchor. The sails flap and huff. No one is speaking. We all look back one more time to take a mental picture of the land we are leaving behind. Buildings glimmer in the distance like small crystals, light glinting against their windows. I have an urge to go back. Now that we are here next to the winding gray river, I want to go home.
Maude and Bruce are sitting on the dock, their feet dangling above the freezing water. A couple of members made it along with us and they are standing in a quivering huddle waiting for instructions, as though Dorian, Silas, and I are their new leaders. I want to reassure them, but there isn’t much I can say. We are sailing into the unknown, where we will all be at the mercy of strangers.
It is still snowing, and in a few hours the land will be covered again. The smog in the east is no longer threading its way into the sky. The Grove died a long time ago.
Dorian has a hand on my shoulder. “Maybe we should have surrendered,” he says.
“Let’s go,” Silas says, glancing at him. “Our tanks won’t last forever.” He’s right. We should go. We are taking the boat as far along the river as we can and from there walking to Sequoia. Dorian claims to know its location. And Silas has a map.
“We’ve lost everything,” Dorian says, looking up at me, his eyes still bloodshot from the foam. I nod. We’ve lost everything. And what have we gained?
“We’re alive,” I tell him.
Just about.
57
BEA
The Grove is gone and in its place is a pile of black rubble and thick blankets of foam, suds, and withered trees. The debris is still smoking. It took me a couple of days to get here, using the underground stations as markers. I slept a lot, finding shelter among icy ruins. I wasn’t scared. What did I have to be scared of? I walked for two days and didn’t see another living soul.
And now I am at The Grove, the place I came to find refuge, and I am completely alone, with little hope of finding anyone alive.
I allow myself to cry. I have no idea where to go.
The sun rises and the black wreckage remains unchanged. I find a place to sit, where I open my flask and drink. Then I hear a voice.
“Bea.”
It is so quiet, I close my eyes, afraid.
“Bea.”
I turn and drop the flask.
And then he is holding me and crying into my shoulder and pulling at our masks so he can kiss me.
“Quinn,” I whisper. He holds my face in his hands.
“Your parents—”
“I know,” I say, and Quinn holds me again, wrapping me up in his thick coat to protect me from the snow. He rocks me back and forth.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
Later we walk the perimeter of The Grove together, trying not to notice the bodies. And then a face, set deep into the rubble, blinks at me. I look away, sure my mind is playing some gruesome trick, but a moan follows and the black tree crushing the body shifts slightly. “Someone’s alive!” Quinn shouts, and jumps into the debris. When he emerges, a small, soiled figure is holding his hand and stumbling toward me.
“They’re heading west. Sequoia,” she whispers. It’s Jazz. She’s alive. She’s covered from head to toe in dirt, but she’s alive. And so are we.
“Then that’s where we’re going, too,” I say.
Quinn looks at me and nods. “Yes,” he says.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It takes a whole heap of people to get a book ready. Rarely can a writer work in isolation.
Sincerest thanks are due to Julia Churchill and Sarah Davies, my glorious agents, and the whole team at Greenwillow, with a special mention to Martha Mihalick, who spent countless hours working on the manuscript to get it just right.
Many thanks to Lisa Wu and Felicity Williams, who helped me create a world that works, scientifically.
Thank you to my friends and family, and especially my husband.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SARAH CROSSAN first had the idea for Breathe when traveling in Washington State. Seeing the logging, she thought, “Don’t people understand that we need trees to breathe?” And so began a book about how awful life would be if access to one of our most basic needs—air—were restricted.
Before becoming a full-time writer, Sarah Crossan taught high school English and creative writing. She lives in New Jersey.
www.sarahcrossan.com
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CREDITS
COVER ART © 2012 BY CHRISTIAN FUENFHAUSEN
COVER DESIGN BY CHRISTIAN FUENFHAUSEN
COPYRIGHT
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used to advance the fictional narrative. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
Breathe
Copyright © 2012 by Sarah Crossan
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Crossan, Sarah.
Breathe / Sarah Crossan.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“Greenwillow Books.”
Summary: “In a barren land, a shimmering glass dome houses the survivors of the Switch, the period when oxygen levels plunged and the green world withered. A state lottery meant a lucky few won safety, while the rest suffocated in the thin air. And now Alina, Quinn, and Bea—an unlikely trio, each with their own agendas, their own longings and fears—walk straight into the heart of danger. With two days’ worth of oxygen in their tanks, they leave the dome. What will happen on the third day?”—Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-0-06-211869-1 (hardback)
EPub Edition © JULY 2012 ISBN: 9780062118714
[1. Science fiction. 2. Survival—Fiction. 3. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 4. Insurgency—Fiction. 5. Environmental degradation—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.C88277Bre 2012
[Fic]—dc23 2012017496
12 13 14 15 16 LP/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
Greenwillow Books
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