Last Star Burning

by Caitlin Sangster

  I don’t know how long I’ll be able to avoid the Yizhi before they send someone who won’t take no for an answer.

  CHAPTER 24

  LATER, MEI FINDS ME IN the Core, lost in the crowds of people waiting to eat lunch. A fresh coating of mud streaks across her face and arms.

  “What happened to you?” I ask, tapping my ID card against my leg, ready to flash it for a plate and run.

  She looks around as if she doesn’t understand the question, then comprehension dawns on her face. “The mud? Just training. Where did you disappear to?” She brushes her bangs out of her face, leaving a long streak of brown across her forehead. “What? Too scared of dirt to play with us?”

  Mei jumps at me, sliming muddy hands all over my face and arms, laughing as I try to get away. “Now you’ll fit in.” She giggles. “Too clean and people will wonder if you’re pulling your own weight around here.”

  She laughs as I try to wipe the mud from my neck, the coating of brown sludge smearing deeper into my skin. I have to laugh too, wondering how dirt became such a badge of honor. When we get to the front of the food line, the boy behind the counter looks jumpy. “Jiang Sev?”

  I nod, and he gives me a nervous smile. “Telescreen says the Heart sent something down for you. Wait just a minute.”

  He ducks back behind the partition that separates the serving area from the rest of the kitchen, and I wonder if he’ll return with someone from the hospital. Instead, he walks back with an envelope, my name in bold letters across the front.

  I pocket the envelope and grab a plate, Mei pulling me toward the stairs leading down into the amphitheater before I can try to escape to ditch my ID card again. Someone catches my arm, pulling me off balance so I drop my plate, splattering pieces of egg and brown sauce across the floor. Before I can pick it up, Howl sweeps the plate out from under my hands. “I am so sorry!” His voice doesn’t sound very sorry, though, too busy laughing at the accident. “Let’s get this cleaned up, and I’ll get you another plate.”

  “You’re alive!” I say with mock surprise, excitement at seeing my friend warring with the thousands of questions buzzing behind my lips like a swarm of bees. And buried in those questions is a twinge of annoyance that he left me alone all day with only vague, slightly creepy instructions to keep me company. But I refuse to show any of this in front of Mei. “I thought they fed you to the gores or something.”

  He shrugs. “I think the General is just happy to see me. Lots of very long, very pointless meetings.”

  Mei raises an eyebrow as Howl runs back toward the kitchen to borrow a broom. He tosses me a rag and we clean up the mess together. Howl waits until we’re done to give Mei his full attention. “Hi again. Sorry, I don’t remember your name.”

  “Mei.” She looks him up and down, her eyes freezing at the single hash mark carved into his hand. “How did you end up out here? Someone stir your tea wrong?” Her voice is suddenly very cold.

  Howl takes a step back, scratching his head. “It wasn’t the tea. I left because of the window situation.” He nods calmly at her questioning look. “There were too many of them. Living inside a mountain seemed so much more exciting.”

  She presses her lips together. “At least you know how to clean up after yourself. Come on, Sev. I’ll save you a seat while you get a new plate.”

  “Actually, before I threw Sev’s food on the ground, I was going to ask her to come up to the Heart.” He looks back at me, shrugging off her frigid tone. “Dr. Yang wants to talk to you.”

  Mei nods to me and walks off without saying anything else. Howl’s eyes follow her as she goes, eyebrows creased together. “Did someone spit in her hair?”

  “She’s from the reeducation farms. Must not have seen your mark when you first met.”

  “She must be new, or she would . . . well. I guess it doesn’t matter.” Howl shakes his head and pulls my arm through his, careless of the mud smearing across his coat as he leads me toward the elevator.

  Once we’re both inside, the doors close, isolating us in the tiny room. Alone again. After so long together Outside, it’s nice to not be fighting a crowd. Just me and Howl. Quiet. At least, until his eyes latch on to the envelope sticking out of my pocket. “What is this?” He draws it out without asking permission.

  My name blinks back at me, the envelope bulging with something small and round. I shrug. “It came with my dinner.”

  He raises his eyebrows, silently asking my consent before ripping the end open, sliding two green pills out on to his palm. Brows furrowed, he looks back up at me. “You still have the Mantis I left you?”

  “How did you sneak it into my room without waking Cale?” I take the envelope back when he extends it out to me, but he doesn’t answer. Clearing my throat, I voice the worry that has been brewing inside me all day. “Is there something I should be worried about? These Mantis pills aren’t right? And the tests in Yizhi . . . ?”

  Howl shakes his head, but he looks put out. “No, of course not. Go ahead and take these pills. I just need to talk to Dr. Yang about it again, I guess. They’re messing with your dosage for some reason.” He shrugs and turns back to stare at the closed elevator doors. “I think I’ve squared things up with Yizhi anyway, so you shouldn’t have any more trouble from them. I checked into it and they were never supposed to do more than those SS scans.”

  “Are you sure?” I try to sound light, as if hiding today were some kind of joke. “No one ever chased me around back in the City. . . .”

  “The City wanted to kill you. I’m just trying to make sure the Mountain doesn’t poke any more holes in you than they need to.”

  “You said this place would be safe.”

  Howl is quiet for a moment. “It will be. It is. You don’t have to worry.”

  The elevator doors open to a large room, the ceiling domed high over my head. The walkway splits in the center of the room, branching out in ten different directions, each leading to a door set back into the wood paneling. But I can’t look at the heavy wooden doors or the mural dancing across the high arch of the ceiling. I’m lost in peering at the shelves and shelves of books. Old leather covers tooled with gilt, brightly colored paper screaming out their titles, tall, short, thick and fat, everywhere all around me.

  “We’re here a little early,” Howl says when we reach the center, a crossroads that could lead anywhere, “because I wanted to show you these.”

  I can’t speak, a wave of something I don’t quite understand rushing up through my chest and pricking at my eyes, all questions about needles and Yizhi forgotten. If I didn’t know better, I would think it was homesickness. Homesick for a time long before I left the City. Long before I met the nuns, before a star graffitied my hand.

  “This is . . . like home. Like the library.” The smell of dust and old, creased paper sinks down into me as if it’s the only thing that really knows who I am. I catch sight of a title I remember reading over and over, the outline of a sleeping maiden draped across the binding. All I need is the picture window. The picture window and . . .

  “Your mother brought the first few. Every time we send someone into the City, they smuggle some out.” I can hear the smile in his voice, warm memories leaking out. “There’s hope in fairy tales and stories like these. Sleeping Beauty always woke up.”

  “She always woke up?” I look at the book. “I thought they let her lie there until she rotted. She was the one who brought in the evil fairy. Being cursed to sleep is a fitting end to someone who tries to work with evil and hide it. Isn’t that the moral?” It was mother’s story, one of the few fanciful tales the Firsts didn’t seem to mind leaking all over the Third Quarter.

  “Sev . . .” Howl’s laugh echoes over us as he pulls the book from the shelf and holds it out to me. “That sounds like classic City manipulation. Read the real story. It has a happy ending.”

  The painting on the cover at once calls to me and makes me want to go wash my hands. I know too well what it means to be Asleep, and it
doesn’t help that this sleeping princess’s story resembles my own history so closely. How could the sleeping princess in this story have a happy ending when I know very well that Mother won’t ever wake up? That she deserves to be up on display. Asleep.

  I wave the book away. There are so many other stories here, tales I’ve never read that have nothing to do with me. “They’re so beautiful.” But beauty hardly comes close. This place is a shrine. Sacred. I walk toward the closest shelf, reaching up to pull a book down, Howl’s exultant smile at seeing me happy a warm glow in my chest.

  Howl steps up to the shelf next to me, one arm brushing mine. He touches my wrist, then slips his hand into mine. “You’ll stay, won’t you? Mantis aside, it isn’t so bad. Safe. Better than the City.”

  Right now, surrounded by books with Howl beside me, it does feel safe. Like I could fit in here, next to him. He puts the book down and steps a little closer, his eyes trapping mine as he looks at me, all thoughts of the books dulling to fuzzy background haze.

  The sound of footsteps breaks the electric silence between us, and heat burns my cheeks. I pull back from Howl to look at the books, not wanting to share this moment with whoever it is walking up the hall toward us. “Didn’t my mother work from inside the City? When was she here?”

  “After you fell Asleep.” A new voice answers my question, slicing between Howl and me as it echoes through the huge room. A voice I recognize. “The First Circle refused to allow our research to go forward. So we left. This is what she wanted to bring with us.”

  Dr. Yang’s bowed worker frame from the City has straightened underneath his Yizhi coat, Nei-ge’s squares at his throat. He walks with dignity, authority. The master of this space. He makes me feel small, as if I’m the one who is intruding. “ ‘There is more strength in true beauty and power in imagination than you could ever find in the barrel of a gun.’ She used to say that all the time. Gui-hua didn’t stay here long, though. She missed you. She couldn’t leave you to the City. The Circle.”

  “She couldn’t have missed me.” My hand finds the crook of my elbow, the spot where she injected me with SS. The momentary charm of remembering the woman who read me stories before bed instead of the monster who infected me fades. This room is a shrine. Worship for an idol for whom I will not light incense. “Or if spreading infection is how you show affection around here, I think you’d better show me to the door.”

  Patience and tolerance seem almost painted on the doctor’s face. “Sometimes memories tell us a story that fits what we think we know rather than the truth. You weren’t the first SS victim in the City after one hundred years of safety, Jiang Sev. SS has been used to hurt families not following First Circle orders for years.”

  I keep myself from rolling my eyes. “I didn’t realize you were from the City.”

  “I was a First at the beginning. Just like you, Jiang Sev.”

  I look down at my hand, the shiny blotch of scarring all that’s left of my First mark. I’m not a First. That life died with Father, with Mother leaving us. And out here . . . out here it doesn’t even matter what my scars look like.

  I take a deep breath. It feels unrestrained. Free.

  Dr. Yang gestures for us to follow him straight across the book room into a tall, arched doorway. I don’t follow, looking at the book I almost took, Howl waiting beside me. “Can I borrow one?” I ask. I haven’t read a book, a real book with no First scientific discovery announcement, no war propaganda, in far too long. I ache to sit down and let myself get lost in a story.

  Dr. Yang stops, a funny smile on his face. “No. We don’t allow them downstairs. They’re too fragile.”

  I glance at Howl. “But people can come up here to read them?”

  Dr. Yang shakes his head. “These stories have to be understood. Appreciated. And explained to those who would not understand. We don’t have time for that.”

  Mother brought them books, imagination, and beauty, and they have it all locked away so no one can touch it. Just like the First library. Only noncorruptibles allowed. My next breath doesn’t feel quite so unrestrained.

  We walk in single file, the pictures and paintings decorating the hall a stark contrast to the bare walls that make up the rest of the Mountain. It feels odd to have things adorning the walls like medals of honor all around me. The City is bare except for slogans and statues to remember Liberation. A few portraits of Yuan Zhiwei and Chairman Sun, like the one of Howl with his father in the City Center. Anything else would be selfish. Except for the picture window in the First library. I always assumed it was there to catalog the excesses of Before, and I was a little embarrassed at how much I liked it. Maybe the other Firsts liked it too; they just didn’t want to share with anyone else.

  We finally come to an office, a small window in the sloped ceiling letting in natural light. A heavy desk sits facing the door, and a plaque hangs on the wall, a single syringe displayed like a trophy in the middle of the wood.

  Howl starts to follow me in, but Dr. Yang shakes his head. “Operations has an assignment for you, Howl. Would you go over there now? I would like to talk to Sev alone.”

  My friend stays in the doorway for a moment, pressing his lips together as he looks at the doctor.

  Dr. Yang laughs. “We’re fine. She’s fine. I promise. No more miscommunications.”

  A twinge of discomfort thrums through me when Howl doesn’t leave. But then he nods and turns back down into the hallway, closing the door after him. Dr. Yang opens his desk drawer, fiddling for a few minutes before placing a leather cord in front of me, a shard of red jade twinkling in the natural light. My stomach drops, and a wave of anger turns my cheeks hot. It’s the jade piece Mother gave me. The necklace that disappeared.

  Before I can say anything, Dr. Yang reaches across the desk to touch my arm. “She took it when we left, so she could feel close to you.”

  My voice is as cool as I can make it, though I’m sure the fury at what he’s saying bites through. Mother, wanting to feel close to me? How dare he? “Why am I here, Dr. Yang? Even Howl couldn’t make up an answer to that one.” He doesn’t stop me when I reach out and brush the cold jade with one finger, not sure if I can bring myself to pick it up. “You don’t usually let Sephs in here, do you?”

  Dr. Yang smiles sadly, ignoring the offensive word. “Your mother was a good friend. I’ve been watching out for you as best I can. I’ve never regretted anything more than being too late to help your sister. Getting you out was the only way to save you this time.”

  The necklace draws me toward it, my fingers tracing the smoothed edges, dead faces flicking through my brain. Aya, blood dripping into her open eyes as she lay in the City street. Father, burning under the Arch. “What did you want to talk about, then? My missed appointments in Yizhi? That Howl is convinced I should continue to miss them?”

  “Howl has been living in a very stressful situation for a very long time. Can you imagine passing information about your own father? He’s paranoid. Worried he’s one wrong step, one wrong look away from a shot between the eyes.” Dr. Yang sits back in his chair. He takes a breath and lets it out slowly. “Be patient with him. Careful. I have high hopes for him.”

  The anger simmering inside of me bounces from the necklace to this dismissal of Howl to the doctor’s calm assurance that everything he’s saying is true. Or that I’ll believe him, anyway. Could it be that Howl is just paranoid? I think about the way Howl stood in the doorway only a few moments ago, tension creased across his forehead. I know he doesn’t trust Dr. Yang, didn’t even when we were back in the City. Is that paranoia or a healthy attachment to life?

  The thought curdles deep inside of me. Is my life, Howl’s life, on the line here the way it was back in the City?

  Yang steeples his fingers atop his belly. “There is a way you can help, you know.”

  “Help Howl?”

  “Help me. Howl should recover.” He purses his lips, thinking. “This might sound like an odd request, but I need to know
what your mother said to you when she came back. Right before the Circle took her. She went to see you first.”

  The wave of anger turns into an ocean, a brutal storm. I may be here in the Mountain, but I don’t have to pretend my mother was some kind of god. And Dr. Yang pretending she was just makes me that much less interested in trusting him. “I was Asleep, remember?”

  He nods, sitting forward to drum his fingers against the desk. “And you can’t recall anything from that time? Nothing at all?”

  I remember her being there, relief at hearing my mother’s voice. I wanted to die rather than lie there any longer, unable to move or reach out, open my eyes. Listen to people speculate about whether or not I would wake up, unable to even wave the flies away when they crawled across my face. Mother brought a moment of peace in that awful prison, but her words are just a garbled mess. A broken record telling me everything is going to be okay over and over again. I look at Dr. Yang. “Nothing that would matter to you.”

  The drumming fingers stop. “She and I were working on something very important when they put her to Sleep. I just wondered . . .”

  He just wondered whether the last words she’d spoken to the child she’d tried to kill were about some science project? If some hypothesis would be her top priority on the way to poisoning half of the First Circle? Even if this project was more important to her than I was, as it clearly seemed . . .

  Dr. Yang shakes his head and smiles at my incredulous look. “You’re right. Why would she tell you anything?” He stands and walks over to a water cooler, draining some water into a cup. “Would you like a drink?”

  I shake my head.

  “They’ve got you on Mantis, I take it?

  “About that. Did I hear something about infected not being allowed in? I’m happy to be an exception, but—”

  “We don’t have the resources to take in just anyone, Sev. I wish we did.” He removes his spectacles, rubbing his eyes. “How are you fitting in? Do you like the Menghu?” He speaks as though the conversation is already over. Just formalities to be played out, and he can’t be bothered to pay attention.