by Ally Condie
“She’s fishing,” Lei says. “That’s a net she’s holding.”
“Has she caught anything?” I ask, looking closer.
“It’s hard to say,” Lei tells me.
“So that’s why you like it,” I say, remembering Lei’s story about the fish that come back to the river in Camas. “Because of the fish.”
“Yes,” Lei says. “And because of this.” She touches a little patch of white at the top of the picture. “Is it a boat? The reflection of the sun? And here,” she says, pointing to darker spots on the painting. “We don’t know what’s casting these shadows. There are things going on outside the edges. It leaves you with a sense of something you can’t see.”
I think I understand. “Like the Pilot,” I say.
“No,” she says.
In the distance, we hear screaming and calling out. A fighter ship whirs overhead.
“What’s going on out there?” Lei asks.
“I think it’s the same as usual,” I tell her. “People outside the barricade wanting to come in.” The orange light of bonfires on the other side of the walls looks eerie, but it isn’t new. “I don’t know how much longer the officers can hold them.”
“They wouldn’t want in if they knew what it looked like,” she says.
Now that my eyes have adjusted to the light, I can see that Lei’s fatigue is actual pain. Her face has a drawn look, and her words, usually so light, sound heavy.
She’s getting sick.
“Lei,” I say. I almost reach out and take her by the elbow to guide her from the cafeteria, but I’m not sure how she’d feel about the gesture. She holds my gaze for a moment. Then, slowly, she turns away from me and lifts up her shirt. Red lines run around her back.
“You don’t have to say it,” she says. She tucks her shirt back in and turns around. “I already know.”
“We should get you hooked up to one of the nutrient bags,” I say. “Right now.” Thoughts race through my mind. You shouldn’t have stayed, you should have left like the others did until we knew we had something that worked—
“I don’t want to lie down,” Lei says.
“Come with me,” I tell her, and this time I do take her arm. I feel the warmth of her skin through her sleeve.
“Where are we going?” she asks me.
“To the courtyard,” I say. “You can sit on a bench while I go get a line and a nutrient bag.” This way, she won’t have to be inside when she goes down. She can stay outside as long as possible.
She looks at me with her exhausted, beautiful eyes. “Hurry,” she says. “I don’t want to be alone when it happens.”
When I return with the equipment, Lei waits in the courtyard with her shoulders slumped in exhaustion. It’s strange to see her with less-than-perfect posture. She holds out her arm and I slide the needle in.
The fluid begins to drip. I sit down next to her, holding the bag higher than her arm so that the line keeps running.
“Tell me a story,” she says. “I need to hear something.”
“Which one of the Hundred would you like?” I ask. “I remember most of them.”
I hear a faint trace of surprise in her voice under the fatigue. “Don’t you know anything else?”
I pause. Not really. The Rising hasn’t had time to give us new stories, and it’s not like I know how to create. I just work with what I have.
“Yes,” I say, trying to think of something. Then I borrow from my own life. “About a year ago, back in the Society, there was a boy who was in love with a girl. He’d watched her for a long time. He hoped she’d be his Match. Then she was. He was happy.”
“That’s all?” Lei asks.
“That’s all,” I say. “Too short?”
Lei begins to laugh and for a moment she sounds like herself. “It’s you,” she says. “It’s obvious. That’s no story.”
I laugh, too. “Sorry,” I say. “I’m not very good at this.”
“But you love your Match,” Lei says, no longer laughing. “I know that about you. You know it about me.”
“Yes,” I say.
She looks at me. The liquid drips into the line.
“I know an old story about people who couldn’t be Matched,” she says. “He was an Aberration. She was a citizen and a pilot. It was the first of the vanishings.”
“The vanishings?” I ask.
“Some people inside the Society wanted to get out,” Lei says. “Or wanted to get their children out. There were pilots who would fly people away in exchange for other things.”
“I’ve never heard of anything like this,” I say.
“It happened,” Lei says. “I saw it. Some of those parents would trade anything—risk everything—because they thought sending their children away was the best way to keep them safe.”
“But where would they take them?” I ask. “Into Enemy territory? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“They’d take them to the edge of Enemy territory,” Lei says. “To places called the stone villages. After that, it was up to people to decide whether they’d stay in the villages, or try to cross Enemy territory to find a place known as the Otherlands. No one who went on to the Otherlands ever came back.”
“I don’t understand it,” I say. “How would sending your children out to the middle of nowhere—closer to the Enemy—be safer than staying in the Society?”
“Perhaps they knew about the Plague,” Lei says. “But obviously your parents didn’t feel that way. Neither did mine.” She looks at me. “You almost sound like you’re defending the Society.”
“I’m not,” I say.
“I know,” she says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to tell you history. I meant to tell you a story.”
“I’m ready,” I say. “I’m listening.”
“The story, then.” She lifts her arm and looks at the liquid running in. “This pilot loved the man but she had obligations at home, ones that she couldn’t break, and obligations to her leaders, too. If she left, too many people would suffer. She flew the man she loved all the way to the Otherlands, which no one had done before.”
“What happened after that?” I ask.
“She was shot down by the Enemy on her way back,” Lei says. “She never got to tell people what she had seen in the Otherlands. But she had saved the one she loved. She knew that, no matter what else happened.”
In the silence that follows her story, she leans against me. I don’t think she even knows she’s doing it. She’s going down.
“Do you think you could do that?” she asks.
“Fly?” I say. “Maybe.”
“No,” she says. “Do you think you could let someone go if you thought it was best for them?”
“No,” I say. “I’d have to know it was best for them.”
She nods, as if she expected my answer. “Almost anyone could do that,” she says. “But what if you didn’t know and you only believed?”
She doesn’t know if it’s true. But she wants it to be.
“That story would never be one of the Hundred,” she says. “It’s a Border story. The kind of thing that can only happen out here.”
Was she a pilot once? Is that where her husband is? Did she fly him out and now she’s going down? Is this story true? Any of it?
“I’ve never heard of the Otherlands,” I say.
“You have,” she says, and I shake my head.
“Yes,” she says, challenging me. “Even if you never heard the name, you had to know they existed. The world can’t only be the Provinces. And it isn’t flat like the Society’s maps. How would the sun work? And the moon? And the stars? Didn’t you look up? Didn’t you notice that they changed?”
“Yes,” I say.
“And you didn’t think about why that mig
ht be?”
My face burns.
“Of course,” Lei says, her voice quiet. “Why would they teach you? You were meant to be an Official from the very beginning. And it’s not in the Hundred Science Lessons.”
“How do you know?” I ask.
“My father taught me,” she says.
There’s a lot I’d like to ask her. What is her father like? What color did she wear when she was Matched? Why didn’t I find out all of this before? Now there’s not enough time for the little things. “You’re not a Society sympathizer,” I say instead. “I’ve always known that. But you weren’t Rising at the beginning.”
“I’m not Rising or Society,” she says. The fluid drips into her arm slowly. It can’t keep pace with what’s happening to her.
“Why don’t you believe in the Rising?” I ask. “Or the Pilot?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I wish I could.”
“What do you believe?” I ask.
“My father also taught me that the earth is a giant stone,” she says. “Rolling and turning through the sky. And we’re all on it together. I do believe that.”
“Why don’t we fall off?” I ask.
“We couldn’t if we tried,” she says. “There’s something that holds us here.”
“So the world is moving under my feet right now,” I say.
“Yes.”
“But I don’t feel it.”
“You will,” she says. “Someday. If you lie down and hold very still.”
She looks at me. We both realize what she’s said: still.
“I was hoping to see him again before this happened,” she says.
I almost say, I’m here. But looking at her I know that it’s not going to be enough, because I’m not who she wants. I’ve seen someone look at me this way before. Not through me, exactly, but beyond to someone else.
“I was hoping,” she says, “that he’d find me.”
After she’s still, I find a stretcher left behind by the medics. I lie her down and hang up the bag. One of the head medics comes past. “We don’t have room in this wing,” he says.
“She’s one of ours,” I tell him. “We’re making room.”
He has the red mark, too, so he doesn’t hesitate to bend down and look more closely at her. Recognition crosses his face. “Lei,” he says. “One of the best. The two of you worked together even before the Plague, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” I tell him.
The medic’s face is sympathetic. “Feels like that was in a whole different world, doesn’t it?” he says.
“Yes,” I say. It does. I feel strangely detached, like I’m watching myself take care of Lei. It’s just the exhaustion, but I wonder if this is what it feels like to be still. Their bodies stay in one place, but can their minds go somewhere else?
Maybe part of Lei is floating around the medical center and going to all the places she knew. She’s in the patients’ rooms, overseeing their care. She’s in the courtyard, breathing in the night air. She’s at the port, looking at the painting of the girl fishing. Or, maybe she’s left the medical center behind and gone to find him. They could be together even now.
I bring Lei into the room with the others. There are a hundred and one of them now, all staring up at the ceiling or off to the sides. “You’re due to sleep now,” the head physic tells me from the port.
“I will in a minute,” I say. “Let me get her settled.” I call for one of the medics to come over to help me perform the physical exam.
“She’s all right so far,” the medic says. “Nothing’s enlarged, and her blood pressure is decent.” She reaches out and touches my hand before she leaves. “I’m sorry,” she says.
I’m looking into Lei’s staring-up eyes. I’ve talked to lots of other patients, but I’m not sure what to say to her. “I’m sorry,” I say, echoing the medic’s words to me. It’s not enough: I can’t do anything for Lei.
Then I get an idea, and before I can talk myself out of it, I take off down the hall for the cafeteria and the port where Lei was looking at the paintings.
“Please have paper, please have paper,” I say to the port. If I’m talking to patients who can’t answer, why not talk to the port, too?
The port listens. It prints out all of the Hundred Paintings when I enter the command. I gather up those pages full of color and light and take them with me. This is what I did for Cassia when she left me: I tried to give her something I knew she loved to take with her.
Most of the other workers think I’m crazy, but one of the nurses agrees that my idea might help. “If nothing else, it’ll give me something different to look at,” she says, and she finds adhesive tape and surgical thread in the supply closet and helps me hang the pictures from the ceiling, above the patients.
“Port paper deteriorates pretty fast,” I say, “so we’ll have to print them out every few days. And we should rotate them through. We don’t want the patients getting sick of any one painting.” I step back to survey what we’ve done. “It would be better if we had new pictures. I don’t want the patients to think they’re back in the Society.”
“We could make some,” another nurse says eagerly. “I’ve always missed drawing, the way we did in First School.”
“What would you use?” I ask. “We don’t have any paints.”
“I’ll think of something,” she says. “Haven’t you always wanted the chance?”
“No,” I say. I think it surprises her, so I smile to take the edge off. I wonder if I’d be a different kind of person, the kind Lei and Cassia could fall in love with, if I had.
“The head physic is going to pull you from your next shift if you don’t go to the sleeproom now,” the nurse tells me.
“I know,” I say. “I heard him on the port.”
But there’s someone I have to speak to before I go. “I’m sorry,” I tell Lei. The words are as inadequate as they were the first time, so I try again. “They’ll find a cure, don’t you think?” I point to the painting hanging above her. “There’s got to be some light in a corner somewhere.” I wouldn’t have seen the light if she hadn’t pointed it out, but once she did, it became impossible to ignore.
On my way to the sleeproom, the door to the courtyard opens and someone in black steps out into the hall, blocking my way. I stop in my tracks. It’s a girl I’ve seen before, but my exhausted mind won’t let me place exactly where. Regardless, I know she doesn’t belong here in our locked-down wing. The head physic didn’t tell me anyone new was coming in, and even if they did, they’d have to come through the main door.
“Oh good,” the girl says. “There you are. I’ve been looking for you.”
“How did you get in here?” I ask.
“I flew,” she says. Then she smiles, and I know exactly who she is: Indie, the girl who brought the cures in with Ky once before. “I might also have some keycodes for the doors,” she says.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I tell her. “This place is full of people who are sick.”
“I know,” she says, “but you’re not, are you?”
“No,” I say. “I’m not sick.”
“I need you to come with me,” she says. “Now.”
“No,” I say. This doesn’t make any sense. “I’m a physic here.” I can’t leave all the still, and I certainly can’t leave Lei. I reach for the miniport.
“But I’m here to take you to Cassia,” Indie says, and I drop my hand. Is she telling the truth? Could Cassia really be close by somewhere? Then fear rushes over me. “Is she in the medical center?” I ask. “Is she sick?”
“Oh no,” Indie says. “She’s fine. She’s outside, on my ship.”
All these months I’ve wanted to see Cassia again, and now I might have the chance. But I can’t do it. There are too many still, and on
e of them is Lei. “I’m sorry,” I tell Indie. “I have to take care of the patients here. And you’ve been exposed to the mutation now. You shouldn’t leave. You need to go to quarantine.”
She sighs. “He thought you might be hard to convince. So I’m supposed to tell you that if you come with me, you’ll be able to help him work on the cure.”
“Who are you talking about?” I ask.
“The Pilot, of course.” She says it so matter-of-factly that I believe her.
The Pilot wants me to help work on the cure.
“He knows you have firsthand knowledge of the mutated Plague,” Indie says. “He needs you.”
I look back down the hallway.
“Now,” Indie says. “He needs you now. There’s no time to say good-bye.” Her voice is honest and unflinching. “Can any of them hear you anyway?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“You trust the Pilot,” Indie says.
“Yes.”
“But have you ever met him?”
“No,” I say. “But you have.”
“Yes,” Indie says. She enters a code and pushes open the door. It’s almost morning now. “And you’re right to believe in him.”
CHAPTER 22
KY
Ky,” she whispers to me. “Ky.”
Her hand is soft against my cheek. I can’t seem to wake up. Maybe it’s because I don’t want to. It’s been too long since I dreamed about Cassia.
“Ky,” she says again. I open my eyes.
It’s Indie.
She sees in my face that I’m disappointed. Her expression falters a little, but even in the very faint light of early morning I can see triumph in her eyes.
“What are you doing?” I ask her. “You should be in quarantine.” After we brought back Caleb, they took him away and locked Indie and me both up in quarantine cells here at the base. At least they didn’t put us in City Hall. “How did you get in here?” I ask, looking around. The door to my cell is open. Everyone else that I can see looks asleep.
