Not possible. Those are the only words in my head. The only thing I can think. Why would he pretend to be from the City? “What do you mean, killed by the same attack?” I’m pretty sure I would have heard if the Chairman had been murdered.
“Our parents were killed outright by a bomb, but our brothers, Chan and Seth . . .” She stumbles over the names like hot coals, pausing for a moment. “They were infected. The Mountain didn’t have Mantis back then, so the minute they woke up . . .” She trails off, eyes wandering as though she’s lost her train of thought.
“You mean they were put down? Like sick animals?” The calm tone shrouding the disbelief in my voice is starting to shred.
She laughs, a bitter, unhappy sound. “You don’t believe me. No one understands anymore. Any infected inside the Mountain—any at all—would have tried to killed all of us. We didn’t have Mantis to keep infected from hurting people or hurting themselves. We didn’t even have tranquilizers. When the people who lived here took the rebels in, infected weren’t welcome. Almost one hundred years underneath this rock, afraid to do more than turn on the lights and use the greenhouses because it would bring attention down on us. The Menghu weren’t even organized until a few years before I was born. We knew what would happen with just one compulsion, just one person out of control in the dark.
“They weren’t shot outright. When they woke up, they had to leave. Just as effective as a death sentence.” Her fingers find my pocket holding the gore-tooth necklace, drawing it out. “This was his. Seth’s. He must have given it to Howl before he left.”
Her face crumples. “Seth and I . . . We were close.”
My hand closes around the necklace, the shard of jade cutting into my hand as it presses against the long white tooth. Everything seems so still, as if the world has stopped. “If Howl is from here, then how did he end up in the City?” As the Chairman’s son, no less. What she’s saying simply isn’t possible.
“Dr. Yang brought Gui-hua to the Mountain.” Sole startles back when I stand up at my mother’s name. “They were so close to finding the cure, and there Howl was, ten years old, no parents to protect him. Dr. Yang infected him, then they used him as the trial. They succeeded. Your mother disappeared the next day with all the documentation. She went to the City to save you and never came back. Whatever Gui-hua and Dr. Yang discovered together, Dr. Yang couldn’t duplicate it without their notes.
“Howl was all they had. Dr. Yang waited until he was older, to see if it stuck. When he turned sixteen, they decided the tests weren’t enough, They needed more. Another person who was cured to compare him to or to dig deeper. They didn’t have the first, so Dr. Yang set a date for an operation. A dissection, really, to look at what Gui-hua did during that first procedure. Dr. Yang didn’t even pretend Howl was going to live through it, he just assumed Howl would be happy to give himself up for the good of everyone else. Howl went out on patrols the day before it was supposed to happen and didn’t come back.
“The Menghu tracked him down Outside, but he wouldn’t come back. Howl could hold his own against any of them. Dr. Yang managed to talk to him, convinced him to help run Mantis back to the Mountain until some other solution presented itself.”
“And then he met me.” My whole body is numb. “Some other solution.” I was Howl’s ticket back home. If Dr. Yang had me to dissect, then Howl would be free.
“He took the promotion into Nei-ge and went straight back to Kasim and his other Menghu friends.”
I can’t even hear the rest of what she is trying to say because a deeper, uglier memory crawls up out of my brain, context finally crystal clear. You know it’s going to come down to one of you in the end. That was what Dr. Yang said. And Howl answered, Yes.
Howl knew. I’ll bet Dr. Yang started sharpening his knives the moment we got here. It explains how well Howl fit in, how quickly “we” meant the Mountain instead of the City. Why I never heard a word of remorse for leaving. Not about family, friends. Nothing.
The fear I saw in Helix and Cale’s faces when Howl stood up to them suddenly takes on a frightening animal quality. If Howl isn’t who I think he is . . . then who is he really?
No.
Howl had the whole time we were in the forest to slip and show corruption lurking underneath his chipper exterior. If he were truly as horrible as Sole is saying he is, I would have seen it. I would know.
My thoughts flick back and forth, trying to speed through all of my conversations with Howl and Dr. Yang until something inside me snaps. I can’t think anymore. My hands are shaking and my legs are unsteady under me as I back toward the door.
“I can’t believe it. I knew Howl in the City.” Sole looks up as I cut her off, my voice breaking uncomfortably close to a sob. “He had parents, a family . . . People there knew him. Even I knew who he was.”
There’s nothing we can do to save my family. There never was. I push Howl’s words away and stumble out into the hallway. “It can’t be true. Howl would never . . .” The painting of the Chairman’s son hanging across from my mother. I’ve seen it thousands of times. It is Howl. It has to be.
She’s the only one like me.
I thought he’d meant we were both . . . but if Sole is telling the truth, then he really meant . . .
Sole bows her head, voice shaking like an old woman. “I wish it weren’t.”
I run.
CHAPTER 36
I HAVE TO FIND HIM.
I have to concentrate to keep from chanting the words out loud. The Core glows with the flush of lanterns and fairy lights. High above the crowded room, long streamers hang down in a pavilion, the top so high that the twinkling lights don’t touch the white, filmy fabric.
Tables surround the amphitheater where people are talking and laughing. The fountain centered on the cafeteria entrance is turned on and spouting red. A beautifully made-up woman leans down to dip her glass into it. It looks like blood.
I hardly recognize any of the Menghu because they are all so clean. They are easy to pick out, though, candlelight glinting on the dead fingers clasping at their wrists and necks.
Have to trust him. Howl wouldn’t lie to me. Not about who he is, not about being cured, not about . . . I can’t make myself finish the thought. Because if he did bring me here to take his place as the cure, then that’s exactly what he would have lied about. Everything. I never would have followed him out of the City if I hadn’t believed the mark on his hand.
Dancing couples crowd the sunken amphitheater floor, obscuring the golden star seal with a haze of swirling skirts. Masks obscure all of their faces, jeweled, feathered, and painted alike. It looks like a dream, a scene from another world. Maybe dancing is what this place was built for. Before the world revolved around SS.
Patting my blond wig down a little farther over my forehead, I stick to the shadows, black sweatshirt borrowed from Sole painfully casual in comparison to the sparkling scene before me. He isn’t anywhere. Not in the amphitheater seats, not at the tables. Leaning back against the wall, I bump my fist against the clear glass in frustration. Why should I believe Sole? Staring off into space as if the world the rest of us live in isn’t what she sees. The box full of trophies stolen from her victims. The frightening drawing I found on the desk. Can I trust someone so obviously damaged?
No.
The dancers below stop and clap as the song ends, the swell of instruments marking the beginning of a new one over the speakers. Most of the dancers remain on the floor, but stay on the outside, watching. Waiting for something.
A girl with fire-red hair flounces to the center, her black skirt twirling up around her hips as people laugh at her bravado, clapping and cheering her on. Rena.
She twirls again and strikes a pose, pointing into the crowd. Chuckles echo up to me as the crowd pushes a young man forward into the center of the floor. He’s laughing behind his black mask, shaking his head as Rena circles him like a shark. Finally, he stands up tall, throws a hand out toward her as the music sta
rts up. A demand.
Rena’s bright coppery head glints in the lantern light as she coyly walks up to him. She lashes out suddenly, kicking his hand, but he catches her foot and draws it toward him, pulling her out into a split. The onlookers cheer as they start to circle the floor.
I can’t help but move closer, drawn by the dramatic strikes and pauses, kicking in and out between each other’s legs, her long ponytail snapping back and forth as he leads her across the floor. Hiding, I feel as though I’m just on the edge of something important, something that I should understand, but can’t.
They pause in the corner of the floor near my hiding place, arms wide as they pose together, cheers following them in ripples from around the steps. The young man lunges, backing away, and she follows, running after. And that’s when I see it.
Stuck through the top button of his shirt. A red flower. My red flower.
Howl’s eyes are dark behind his mask, the intensity between the two of them like a rubber band twisted and ready to snap. They look as though they were born in each other’s arms. Born here, born Menghu. I can’t tear my eyes away, dread and despair seeping in through my nose and mouth, the very air around me toxic. I keep waiting for clouds to start swirling down from the ceiling or shadows to leap out and rake at me with their sharp claws, but this isn’t a hallucination. This is real.
Helix’s voice rings in my head: You are going to die. You don’t even know why.
Howl, who can’t dance. Howl, who can’t shoot a gun. Howl, who says we are our own team, not a part of this place. Howl, who told me he was from the City, and that we were going to escape this place.
Howl, who brought me here to die.
• • •
I don’t know how I get back to Sole’s room, whether anyone notices my uneven stagger through the halls of Yizhi. When I open her door, she’s waiting for me the way I left her, head bowed, tears glistening against her light skin. Eyes fixed on her hands.
The last threads of hope inside of me flare up, bright and rebellious inside my chest. I want to fight for him, for myself. Trying to find a place for the Howl I know inside of this terrible story.
“Even if he did lie about who he is, he saved me from that operation. Or sent you to do it, anyway. He’s done nothing but stand between me and Dr. Yang. We’re leaving, right? If I am the sacrifice he’s offering to the Mountain, then why am I still alive? Why didn’t he just hand me over the first day we walked in?”
Sole bites her lip. “Howl is a survivor. No matter what, no matter the cost. When he first brought you here, it was for you to take his place on Dr. Yang’s table so that he could come home. He knew what was going to happen to you. He knew. Everyone knew.”
“But he changed his mind.” Even trying to wrap my brain around that thought leaves my lungs constricted, twisting the air out of me. How could his intentions ever have been so foul? “If we wake Mother up now—”
“He hasn’t told you about any of this. Why?” Sole’s voice is quiet but unapologetic. “What if waking your mother up doesn’t work, Sev?”
“If it doesn’t work . . .”
“Whatever Howl has convinced you of, about how important you are to him, about . . . this.” She holds up one hand, something cupped in her palm. “It’s not the whole picture.”
A jade bracelet. It’s lying on top of a note, bold characters I can hardly make myself recognize.
It says, For good luck. I love you, H.
A present. Like my flower. Made with love. Or with something much, much worse. My fingers twitch toward it, as if holding something he made will tell me that Sole is lying.
“I love you.” The words sound twisted and evil coming from Sole’s mouth. “Perhaps that’s true. But Howl loving someone more than himself . . . ? If it comes down to a choice between you and him, Howl will be the one who lives. And, if it’s possible, the Mountain will be what comes second. The things he did before . . . even Helix has been trying to keep away from him.” She swallows, her throat pulsing. “Why else would Howl have lied to you? When it was your life on the line? When you could have escaped and put him back in the surgery waiting room?”
The silence between us is tangible, liquid. My mind is crushed under the weight of what she is saying. I want to believe that what the note says isn’t a lie, isn’t bait to keep me here, to string me along just a little longer. But even if Howl does love me, how could I expect him to love me more than he loves his own life?
If he’d told me about being cured, that my life may mean thousands more could be saved from SS, I might have come anyway. I might have walked straight to the hospital and handed Dr. Yang the scalpel.
But he didn’t tell me. He didn’t tell me anything. He actively kept it from me, flirting with me, kissing me when I asked too many questions.
The last bits of fight inside of me smolder to ash, that tiny flame extinguished. I pull the gore tooth from the leather cord around my neck and set it on her desk.
CHAPTER 37
THERE ARE TWO MENGHU WAITING just outside the service entrance door. For me? Was Howl not even going to go through with our escape? The immobilization spray has both of them down before they know I’m there.
We were supposed to meet at midnight. Was he going to lead me up here and pretend he wasn’t a part of us being captured? Or were all the disguises about to be dissolved once and for all? The last time Howl was planning on saying, Oh, I forgot to tell you . . .
The ropes Howl was supposed to stash aren’t here. I have to go back to Sole, to send her into the Zhuanjia supply closets to steal some. Everyone is in the Core celebrating, so all she has to do is walk in.
When I get Outside, I keep my hands busy, cutting telescreen wires that Howl told me he’d disable. Every step uncovers more evidence that Howl didn’t mean to leave tonight at all.
When my way out is clear, I brush the new dusting of snow from the anchors set for Zhuanjia workers, and thread my rope through them. Shouldering the extra webbing, I slide the rope through the clasp on my harness and take a deep breath, scrunching my eyes closed as I lower myself over the edge. I try to concentrate on the rope, the way it pulls at the feed on my harness . . . but I can’t keep my eyes away. I have to look down.
There’s nothing to see. Straight up and down, rocks jaggedly disappear into the dark below me. My breath sticks in my throat, my chest and arms tingling as though I’m covered in ants. I can’t even see the ground, hundreds of feet down to the first treetops, black circles in the night. Turning back around, I try to focus on the rock, my feet slipping against the icy edge.
I don’t have any choice. Breaths coming fast, I walk down the side, lowering myself with the rope.
I have to reset the lines twice, pulling them down after me when I hit a ledge. The rope threads through my hand-tied anchors, a sorry-looking setup. My life rides on knots that my fingers are tying for the first time. Just as I’m starting to feel confident, my pack catches on a tree limb, pulling me away from the rock face. I kick to find purchase with my feet, and my fingers catch between the line and the feed. I let go with a yell. The branch cracks under my weight, the sickening lurch of free fall clutching at my senses as it gives way under me. But it’s a short fall, only a few feet to the icy ground.
The frozen air swishing through the trees sends goose bumps prickling down my arms inside Sole’s bloodstained coat. I lie in the dirt for a moment, pebbles digging into my legs and side. I don’t have time to think about being cold. There is nothing left in me except escape.
• • •
The hammock folds around my tired body like a cocoon, hiding me from the bright arrows of light lancing down from the full circle moon. Zhinu and Niulang glare down at me, asking why. Reminding me of that first night, of him. I’m waking up from a dream that was always too good to be true, where Niulang was a protector, Zhinu’s love. It turns out he was actually one of the frightening beasts, the qilin from the story instead of the man. I exchanged Tai-ge’s reserved smiles and
steady friendship for Howl’s full gore-tooth grin, believing the lies as his teeth snapped closer.
Which leaves me with nothing. All I am is the traitor that Tai-ge could never bring himself to touch. Hunted in this empty forest by the same men and women who are going to break through the City walls to kill everyone I know. The pieces for this game were placed long before I sat down to watch. My stone, whoever it was who placed me, is dead.
It’s only a matter of time before the Menghu come, trained like wolves to sniff out their prey. I can’t find the emotion to care.
I breathe in and out, stretching my ribs until my lungs burn, the shadows from the trees fluttering across the sheltering layer of my hammock. There is no room to regret, to think that this is what I should have expected. I am solid, a rock. Incapable of feeling anything. I can’t let the doubt or the desire to trust Howl even now take over. To look over my shoulder and expect him to come running after me like this was all a mistake. I am too hard to feel. Too hard to remember that, for the first time, I really am alone. Friendless. Banished. Too hard to notice the despair killing me slowly like dry rot.
CHAPTER 38
SUNRISE. I HAVE TO KEEP moving. I stagger downhill, knowing I won’t last long if I don’t find water. The air clear of winter’s low-lying clouds, I can see the rounded tops of the mountain range disappearing into the northern horizon. The City clings to the side of one of those mountains. And if I can find the river, it will take me back. Back to the Reds, to Traitor’s Arch. Back to the people who weren’t shy about why they wanted to kill me.
Back to Tai-ge. Back to Mother. Maybe waking her up will stop people from killing one another, stop SS. Or maybe it will just stop them from killing Tai-ge, keep him off the list of people I loved who are now dead.
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