Howl blinks, staring at the dirt on his hands instead of answering.
“I played with my father too.” June’s husky voice surprises me. She looks up skittishly, like a spooked deer waiting for the shot to sound. I catch her eye and hold it, waiting.
“He didn’t turn hard, like the others.” Her voice is so quiet I have to strain to hear it, even with the small space between us. “Compulsions . . . He was always sorry.”
She seems so much like my sister.
The thought floats out, unbidden. June is so small and wary, too young to worry so much about dying, but with her history etched in lines across her forehead. I always tried to take care of Aya, even when they separated us at the orphanage. I still wonder, if I’d been there when SS took her over, would I have been able to save her?
“I hardly remember my parents.” I can’t tear my gaze away from her, bowed over the pieces. “But you remind me of my younger sister.”
She shrugs and gathers up her scattered pebbles, but I swear I see her face soften. “Want to play again?”
CHAPTER 17
THE NEXT MORNING, THE SOUND of whispered voices carries into our cave. I sit up, my hand searching for Howl, who fell asleep behind me.
He isn’t here.
June is a heap in her sleeping bag a few feet away, her eyes open. One hand snakes out to point toward the entrance. I nod, reaching into the pack for the gun. I’ve made sure I was between it and June since it emerged from Howl’s coat. Just in case.
Sliding along the wall toward the cave’s mouth, I let my eyes adjust to the light. It is morning, moments from sunrise. The doorway is masked by a pile of rocks and dead scrub, and Howl stumbling into it was a miracle. But some miracles do happen twice.
There are two forms crouched just outside the opening, hushed voices going back and forth.
With shaking hands, I level the gun at the one closer to me, growling in my best tough soldier voice, “On the ground. Now.”
Their heads snap around toward me, the closer one casually raising his hands over his head, looking me up and down as if a gun weren’t practically shoved down his throat. His hair slicks back from a face that seems to be all cheekbones and chin. Skin pale in the morning light, his black eyes are unafraid as they meet mine.
My eyes flick to the other shape and my stomach drops. Howl doesn’t bother to raise his hands. He just sits there looking vaguely surprised. “Good morning, Sev. Still not sleeping well?”
I keep the gun trained on Cheekbones, trying to mask my trembling hands with the weight of the weapon. “Who’s this guy?”
The stranger smiles, revealing white teeth that look a little too pointy. Like an animal’s. “I’m Helix. I was out on patrol when you attacked the Reds, but I couldn’t get to you until they all cleared out.” Shrugging his shoulders uncomfortably, he glances up at his still-raised hands. “Are you going to shoot me or what?”
Helix. His name sounds foreign, like it came from some ancient language that died long before the Great Wars. Kind of like mine. I wait for Howl’s nod before lowering the gun, but I don’t loosen my grip. Helix’s sharp smile gives me the creeps. “Rebel?” I ask.
“I’m a Menghu.” Helix rubs the back of his neck as his hands come down. “Not a rebel.”
“He’s a soldier from the Mountain.” Howl eyes the gun gripped tightly in my hands, and I slowly relax my hold on it. “I didn’t want to wake you. Seems like the first time you’ve gone to sleep since we got stuck in there. Sorry we scared you.”
Helix’s jacket is grayish green, falling past narrow hips and buttoned up to his throat. His canvas pants are tucked into calf-high brown boots, all with a healthy coating of dirt. The front of his high collar is embroidered with a black tiger sitting on a number four.
“Sleeping with a death squad knocking at the door has me a little jittery, I guess. Speaking of which . . .” I look around. “Why are we outside?”
Helix answers, shooting a shifty look at Howl. “There are still some stragglers, but nothing I can’t handle.”
Something in his voice gives me the impression Helix is a little uncomfortable with Howl. Afraid? But that doesn’t make sense. “Why are they out here?”
“Reds are bringing in a set of reeducation slaves to start digging a new mine.” Helix’s eyes brush my star brand, but he continues without comment. “Gassed the area to take care of any Wood Rats and then combed the outskirts to make sure no one was waiting for them.”
“Why would they do that? Gas everyone in the area?” I ask.
Helix squints at me. “Wood Rats are a bit of a nuisance, even for us up at the Mountain. Stealing supplies, spreading diseases. Compulsions out of control. It isn’t safe to let them run free through the middle of a City operation, I’d think, so they just get rid of them. I wish we could be so tidy.”
The cold shrug that accompanies this account prickles at the back of my neck. Howl, June, and I had to sprint away from that gas cloud, just three more inconvenient presences that needed to be extinguished. But tidying the woods a bit doesn’t seem to bother Helix at all.
Helix’s voice takes on a certain brand of offhanded pride as he continues, “My patrol was close by when you set off the grenade. Dr. Yang asked us to look out for you, so I broke off to bring you in. It wasn’t that difficult to find you after you made all that noise and then suddenly disappeared. There aren’t any other caches this way.”
Howl looks up from tracing his finger through the dirt, catches my eye, and nods to the cave behind me. I look back toward the opening and find June’s wide eyes staring out at us, reflective and catlike in the dark. She edges out, holding my bag of Mantis.
I take it, thoughts in a cyclone around the half-empty bag. None of the Mantis seems to be missing. Did she know I’m infected this whole time? That I had Mantis in my pack, the medicine her family needs? But she didn’t take it and run back to them.
“You’re late on your dose.” She glances at Howl before sinking back into the inky depths of the cave.
Helix’s voice grates like sandpaper. “Wood Rat?” He stops cleaning his nails and looks up at Howl. “We going to keep her?”
“What do you mean?” Howl asks.
Helix shakes his head. “Do you even know which diseases she’s carrying?”
June reemerges, this time carrying the one remaining pack from the City. She drops it at my feet and then stalks toward the trees, tripping over the rock Helix is sitting back against so it topples over, sending him into a heap on the rocky ground.
He jumps up, growling a word I don’t recognize, and reaches for the knife sheathed at his hip. But Howl moves so quickly that my eyes don’t believe it when Helix hits the ground.
“You want to bring me and Sev in, then I suggest you skip murdering our friend.” Howl’s voice is perfectly friendly, but sharp edges underneath are showing through.
“Bring you in?” Helix picks himself up, eyes blazing. His hand grips the knife so tightly his knuckles are white. “What, you get out into the forest and decide you’d be better off with the Wood Rats?”
Howl’s jaw clenches and he looks at me for some reason. But then he returns to glaring at the knife clenched in Helix’s hand, waiting until the Menghu lets the weapon go. Howl’s face relaxes into a cold smile, the tension melting away as he shoulders his pack. “Good choice. Come on, let’s go.”
• • •
Only a day and a half’s walk away from the Mountain. The forest seems too quiet, with swells of twigs cracking and birds flying off for no reason as if the whole southern garrison of Seconds really is only steps behind us. All day long, my arms itch with the sense that someone’s watching us, and I begin to wonder if the four of us will live to get to this magical Mountain place at all. Between the feeling that we are being followed and the scowls June is directing at Helix, the chances of survival seem slim.
When we stop to set up camp for the night, Helix’s condescending lesson on correct fire-starting technique stamm
ers to an explosive silence when he pulls two fist-size rocks out from under the top flap of his pack. “Did you do this?” His voice is sharp and quiet, eyes on June.
Silence.
Helix rubs a hand across his stubbly chin, taking a deep breath before catching Howl’s eye. His mouth hangs open for a second, but he eventually just mumbles something about going to find some good tinder. June smirks at his back until he disappears behind a tree. She grabs the four water skins and heads toward the river.
Howl pulls some rope out of my pack, eyeing the tree branches above us. “Nice to see June acting like a real fourteen-year-old.”
“I think we both put rocks in his pack.” A smile catches at my mouth. “Helix just hasn’t found the ones I put in yet.”
Howl laughs as he climbs a tree, looping the rope around one of the branches. “I wish I’d thought of that.”
“If I’d known you’d like the idea so much, I would have put some in your pack too. What are you doing?”
“There are gores in the area. They tend to hang out where there are more people to hunt, and I’ve seen scat and trails all over the place. I thought we could sleep up here on the packs.” He smiles down at me from the tree, “Unless you want to see if Helix really is as tough as he says.”
I shiver, remembering the huge paw prints and gouge marks in the rock just under the ledge where we slept on our first night out here. How different are things now? Howl and me talking like friends from birth, my ribs almost healed. I hand up my pack, then Helix’s, watching as Howl wedges them between two branches and ties them down to form a platform.
June stomps up from the river, dumping the four water skins at my feet, one of them still empty.
“June.” Her eyebrows come down at my soft tone. “I don’t like him either.”
Howl jumps from the tree to join our little chat, whispering, “And I’ll put gravel in his sleeping bag tonight, if you two will help me distract him.”
She looks from me to Howl, something close to a smile curling at the corners of her mouth. She picks up the empty water skin and heads back toward the river.
“You know, she’s only two years younger than I am. My sister’s age.” Or at least the age she would have been, if she were still alive. It seems odd to say what I am thinking. I haven’t ever talked to anyone about my family. Not even Tai-ge. He didn’t seem to want to know.
“She reminds you of her. Your sister.” Howl watches as June skips a rock across the placid surface of the river, waterskin on the ground next to her. “What happened to her?”
“Don’t you know?” I try to laugh, as if the horrific story is some kind of joke. But the laugh wells up in my mouth like bile. “Everyone else does.”
Howl doesn’t smile. “But you’re one of the few who really knows. There’s a difference between truth and propaganda.” He takes a step closer, touching my shoulder. “You don’t have to tell me. But I’d like to know.”
It’s hard to look back, hard to do anything but try to stop the deluge of memories and pictures swamping my mind. I’m not allowed to talk about my sister. Not about my father. None of it. But there they are, staring at me from the back of my head, where they live, buried. I see us all together, me and Father and Mother, Aya holding my hand as we walked together, Mother playing tag with us in the First Quarter park, prodding my reserved father until he laughed and joined us. Of Aya, circles under her eyes, watching silently as they burned Father’s body under the Arch. I held her hand, our palms sweaty and slipping against one another as we watched, Mother looming over him in her glass box as if she were the one who lit the fire. I didn’t look. I couldn’t look. I think my mind made up something even worse than what actually happened.
“She . . . Aya . . .” Saying her name out loud feels so wrong and so right at the same time. “She was quiet. Shy and reserved like my father. She didn’t want people looking at her because the attention made her . . . I don’t know.” I look at the ground. “Curl up inside. She would only play with me.” And Mother. The thought of the three of us together plays like a dissonant chord, rattling me. I hastily think of trees, of the sun, of the wind as it paints stories across my skin. Howl listens with his head cocked, silently offering to take a burden that I can’t hand over, however much I wish I could. “She loved playing weiqi, just like June. I always felt like as long as we were all together, she’d be able to smile. She’d be happy and safe. I could stand between her and whatever it was that made her so afraid.”
I tried to protect her. Tried to make sure the other children at the orphanage left her alone, though the nuns kept us apart. She was assigned to a different family for reeducation, but she had no one like Tai-ge to slip her candies and smile at her when it was hard. Everyone always misjudged her quiet for anger, her reserve for pride. Even at six years old.
Howl doesn’t say anything, letting me think and feel without interrupting. I wish he would interrupt.
“Mother didn’t give her SS. She caught it in a Kamari air strike . . . a City air strike, I guess.” Why would the City want a little ten-year-old with hardly any words, hardly the gall to look anyone in the eye except for me, to fall Asleep? “Two years later, Mantis . . . stopped working. She was in a self-sufficiency class, chopping firewood, and I was right outside the orphanage, hoping to see her when she walked to the cafeteria for lunch. But instead of lunch, she came out with an ax. She was chasing one of the nuns.”
I falter. It was Sister Lei Aya chased into the cold, cobbled street, brandishing her ax. And there was a bruise on Aya’s cheek when they finally let me see her body later. The suspicion blurts out, something I’ve never been brave enough to say out loud. “One of the nuns hurt her, and SS made her brave enough to fight back.”
Howl knows the rest of the story, that the Watch shot my little sister in the street right in front of me. Like I said, everyone knows. Jiang Gui-hua’s daughter proving her true designation: Fourth. Swinging an ax at the very order of women who had taken her in, clothed, and fed her when no one else would have. Traitors, the whole family.
I knew after that just what it meant to be a Fourth. It meant no one cared. No one wanted us. That they’d rather we were dead than alive. Aya was a hole burned out of my soul with only one Red bullet. I knew if I were to live, if I were to matter, I would have to wipe the brand from my skin. Become a new person. The kind General Hong would recommend for reintegration into normal society. The kind that fit. Aya was a memory I had to blur, to forget in order to keep my smile in place.
But she’s there now, sharp and clear in my mind, a crack in my heart.
I look at June, still throwing rocks in the water one at a time. Howl’s hand on my shoulder seems solid, as if it’s bracing me. June doesn’t look at all like my sister, but her silence—her fierce, angry silence—is just like Aya’s, who never even for a moment believed anything they said about Mother or Father no matter how many times she had to swallow Mantis pills.
My father didn’t deserve to die. He was quiet, but he loved us. He would have saved us, would have fought for us if he’d had the chance. If Mother hadn’t made it so they killed him before he could. Reeducation is only for those the Firsts think they can save.
“It wasn’t fair.” Howl’s voice is tight. “She didn’t need to die. Didn’t deserve it.”
“It was so pointless. She was there one minute, asleep in a room down the hall, and the next day . . .” I look up at the sky, framed by the trees. It hurts too much to continue. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter. That’s why we’re out here. It matters more than anything else. The people they kill for no reason. Because they’re hungry or sick or can’t control compulsions . . .” Howl’s voice crumbles at the edges, and he clears his throat, avoiding my eyes. “Sorry. Old argument. I don’t need to say it to you. I wish . . .”
But he doesn’t finish, clearing his throat again instead. Pity and sorrow turn the edges of his mouth down, as if Howl knows what it means to lose people,
though I don’t know how he could. I stare at him, wishing I knew the right question to ask, how to open the doors to his past so he can let out whatever demons chased him from the City into the Mountain’s arms. I want to know.
Howl looks toward the river, watching June. He smiles. “June’s cute when she’s acting human, don’t you think?”
Not ready to talk about family yet. Just as much as I’m not, I suppose. So I give him an exaggerated wink, running from thoughts of my sister, of all the bad in the world just to watch June skipping rocks. That’s one right thing. “Cute how? Should I sleep between you two tonight?”
At my joke, Howl falls into line with an exaggerated eye roll. He seems to understand, running right alongside me from whatever it is he’s not saying out loud. “No, thank you. You can keep all the little girls to yourself.”
“Are you sure? I think a few days back I remember her looking at you from across the fire with something less than outright hatred.” This is more comfortable territory, my jagged edges blurring as if joking will make him forget what I said. Will make me forget. “Or, if she’s not your type, I know a whole bunch of little girls back in the City who would wait on you hand and foot.” I grab his wrist and twist his hand down, tapping the single white line there with my finger. “Even if they didn’t see this.”
He grabs a handful of dead leaves from the ground and rubs them into my hair. “Because I’m devastatingly good-looking. Yes, I know.”
I drop his wrist, scrubbing at the leaves to cover my embarrassment. I never said anything about devastating good looks. What I said after the explosion . . . I had a concussion. It doesn’t count.
Helix’s voice muscles in between us from behind the tree line. “Come over here, Sev. You can try starting the fire tonight.”
It doesn’t matter that I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know how to start a fire. I have to get away from the mischievous smile that is sending pulses of electricity through my chest. I sit with my back to Howl, cheeks burning.
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