Last Star Burning

by Caitlin Sangster

  Another thought calcifies along with that revelation, a spot of cancer drilling holes through skin and bone. It never was a contest between Howl’s life and mine. We could have . . . But I take a deep breath and let all the anger for Dr. Yang and this whole situation stream out of me. Nothing changes why Howl brought me to the Mountain. Whatever Dr. Yang wanted from me, Howl didn’t know. He thought it was a choice between us, and he chose himself. Even if he did have feelings for me, if it had come down to that choice, I don’t think I would have won.

  I shake my head, not willing to speculate. Not willing to try and defend him or try and unwind the events, the conversations in my head. What might have happened. It’s too late. Our story was over before it even began.

  “And she told you.” Tai-ge breaks into my frenzied thoughts. “Your mother told you where the cure is. And Dr. Yang was standing right there.”

  “She told me, but I still don’t understand. Have you ever heard of Port North?”

  Tai-ge taps on the door experimentally, frowning at his fingertips when they come away with slivers from the rough wood. “No. There are Kamari . . . or some kind of settlements northeast of here, but . . . we need to take this to my father. If both sides know a cure is within reach, then there will be no reason to keep shooting at each other. Catch Dr. Yang before he gets out of the City, show both sides the way he has been manipulating us, and stop the fighting. We can all talk this over like civilized people.”

  “The Menghu aren’t civilized. Invading for them is like a national holiday. They’re all rabid to kill City-born. And why would your father listen? General Hong doesn’t exactly trust me.”

  “Add that to the fact that the whole Second Quarter thinks I’ve got SS”—Tai-ge breaks our quicklight, sending the room into darkness with the tinkle of glass shards hitting the stone floor—“and it’s hopeless.” Fiddling with one of the long metal wires from the broken light, I can hear him working on the door. “But we have to try. Otherwise, everyone out there might as well be dead already.”

  “What are you doing?”

  His voice sounds amused. “You think I’d come down here without a way to get out? It was a gamble, but I hoped that if I was unruly enough, they’d wait until the ‘compulsion’ stopped to search me. With everything else going on up there, I figured they wouldn’t take the time to follow safety protocols.” The wires scratch against the door’s metal lock. “We were lucky. I thought I was going to have to search this whole prison for you. But I got a set of Seconds with a healthy sense of irony.”

  “Irony?”

  “Because the City blames your mother for SS. If my compulsions killed you . . .” He pauses. “Wait a minute. The door isn’t even locked.”

  “What?” I stand, reaching out to test for myself. He already has it open, but only a crack, as if the lock already being undone might make it safer to leave the door closed. “Why would they leave the door unlocked?”

  Tai-ge doesn’t answer, hand clenched around the edge of the door.

  “Well.” I put a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s hope it’s a good omen and get out of here. Maybe your great-grandfather didn’t like the candles on your family shrine and was glad I stole them to smear all over your watch reports. Maybe he’s helping us.”

  “Great-grandfather would have hated you.”

  “That is a terrible thing to say to a person.” I think for a second. “Even if it is true. But we have to get out of here, no matter why the door is open.”

  The hallway outside is black, silence a heavy blanket over the long line of doors. A creaky hinge brings me up short a few feet down. The cell doors are all open. We’re the only people here.

  “Is this level usually empty?” I ask.

  Tai-ge shrugs. “On the way in, I was too wrapped up in fake compulsions to notice.”

  We don’t see anyone in our hallway or on the stairway up, not even a single guard there to make sure prisoners stay where they belong. When we break out into sunlight, it’s too bright. The rays burn into my retinas as I stumble away from the cement staircase leading down into the Hole. Tai-ge stops, shading his eyes against the beams magnified by huge windows overlooking the City from the lower edges of the Second Quarter.

  The room is deserted, the prison station sign over the front door hanging crooked. The street outside should have been teeming with the midday markets selling meat and canned goods for the evening meal. But it’s empty. As if the whole City is Asleep.

  My feet slip out from under me as I step in a pool of spilled water, a cup broken in the middle of the floor as though someone dropped it midsip. Papers lie in messy heaps, spilling over onto the floor. Tai-ge runs his finger along the inside of a tall cabinet set into the wall, doors torn open and askew.

  “The rifle cabinet is empty. They must have been in a hurry.” His eyes follow a trail of debris, cupboards, shelves, and tables all lying on the ground, stomped to matchsticks. Drops of dried blood coat the whole scene, as if someone decided to ransack the place with nothing but his bare hands.

  “Someone let all the inmates out.” Tai-ge is at my shoulder, pulling me away. “The rebels must have had allies down there.”

  “Why didn’t we hear the locks go? Can they control the doors from up here?”

  Tai-ge nods. “It must have been when I was still screaming. Let’s get out of here. It wasn’t just political prisoners down there, and I don’t want to find out if any of them stayed back.”

  Outside, the normal cloud of smog hovering over the Third Quarter burns black instead of the normal brown-tinged gray. I can see the flames from here, wooden dwellings falling as if they’re no more sturdy than dried flowers. Heli-planes circle over the chaos like vultures waiting for their prey to give up their last breath.

  “Where are all the people?” I ask.

  Tai-ge points down toward the smoke. “Either down there fighting or heading up to the heli-field. Or hiding, I guess.” A red polka-dotted curtain twitches closed in the house facing us across the street.

  “The heli-field?”

  “The army heli-fields are down below the City, but there’s an emergency landing pad and some hangars up in the First Quarter.” He scans the City beneath us. “My father is commanding from the First library. But how are we going to get him to listen? They aren’t going to just let us in, not when they sent me screaming to the Hole an hour ago.”

  “Why didn’t they give you Mantis?” I ask.

  “It’s all gone. The Firsts took it all or are hiding it somewhere to keep it away from the rebels. The minute the attacks started, every single pill went missing, airlifted from the heli-field. Father has probably already killed someone, he was so angry. I saw two other Seconds in my class get sent down to the Hole before I decided to come find you.”

  Did they know? I wonder. How deep are Dr. Yang’s claws in the First Quarter? Is he pulling out everyone loyal or valuable to him, letting everyone else die? Are all the City heli-planes his now?

  The tiered eaves of the library tower over the First Quarter, easy to see even from the Hole’s entrance so far over in Second Quarter that it’s almost to the wall. My boots pound against paving stones worn smooth by thousands of feet as we cross over the Aihu River using one of the many bridges that connect the Second and First Quarters with no wall or checks in between, unlike the walls that pen in the Thirds down the mountain. I lengthen my stride to keep up with Tai-ge, feeling odd at being together again. He looks different. The lines I remember from the previous night in his room are still there, his face molded into a permanent frown. He was serious before, buttoned up to the throat. But he could laugh, too. I can’t imagine the statue running beside me laughing ever again.

  We’re too low down on the Steppe, most of the roads twisting away from the library and up toward the lab district, but we slide through alleyways, the blocks of lesser First homes, and follow the wall that bars Thirds from coming into the First Quarter all the way to Renewal Road. I grab the tail of Tai-ge’s co
at, just about dragging my arm out of the socket to pull him behind a wagon abandoned in the street as a group of Seconds march by, their synchronized steps ringing out across the wide road.

  Just over the wall and bridge Howl stopped me from crossing . . . only a month or two ago? . . . the City Center towers over the central market, windows heavy-eyed and blinking in the late-afternoon light from underneath the three tiers of red tile roof. It’s hard to believe that it is empty now, the single occupant finally released.

  Tai-ge’s eyes are on the tall building as well. “Sun Yi-lai.” He points, the Chairman and his son peeking from their portrait inside the doors, barely visible from our hiding place. “He disappeared the same day you did. Did Dr. Yang take him, too?”

  I shake my head. “Howl looks kind of like that painting of the Chairman’s son, so I thought . . . well. It doesn’t matter what I thought now. I’m not the only one he managed to fool. He had the Premier talking to me as if I were a real person the day I left the orphanage. They couldn’t have taken him, too, or I would have seen him. I don’t know where the Chairman’s real son is.” I still can’t let myself focus on that portrait, Howl looking back at me. No, not Howl, however much I wish this coincidence could make his story and not Sole’s true.

  Hugging the buildings, we move forward, stopping to cower just beyond Yuan Zhiwei’s statue as a cluster of Seconds tromp up the road. The statue glares down toward us, as if he’d alert the Reds to our presence if he could.

  Just as we run across the street, one of the Seconds does look back, catching sight of me as Tai-ge and I dive toward a lesser First family’s bright red door to hide. He shouts, and all the men immediately turn back in some formation, guns up and ready.

  “Come out or we shoot!” the captain yells, fear and adrenaline transforming his voice to a monster’s growl. “Yuan knows we need all the men we can get, so if you’re friendlies, then come out!”

  Tai-ge bites his lip, looking at me. “Stay close to me. They won’t shoot you if it means shooting me, too.” Then he slides out from our hiding place in the doorway, hands high up over his head.

  CHAPTER 45

  “FATHER WILL LISTEN TO US.” Tai-ge doesn’t bother to whisper as the men jerk us up the library steps, the building poking out from the spread of structures below as if it were refusing to bow to the war bubbling around its feet.

  “You don’t think he’ll be worried that you showed up with me? Right after being sent to the Hole?” I jerk my arm away from the Second who is pulling me along, standing up straight as I walk through the library’s propped-open doors.

  Inside, afternoon light streams through the square windows, forming a necklace of sunlight around the pagoda’s high ceiling. General Hong’s broad figure stands tall, the focal point in a maelstrom of red uniforms. A raven-haired beauty stands over him preserved in the picture window’s jade, little men around her skirts forming darker patches that splotch across the City maps covering the marble floor.

  The General doesn’t look at us until our escort pushes us down at his feet. “My disobedient son.” He turns to me, features a mirror of Tai-ge’s but made from stone and iron instead of flesh. “And his traitor playmate. Was it you who let these foul rebel creatures into our City?”

  Tai-ge raises his chin to speak, but a shrill screech cuts off whatever he was going to say. The floor pitches under our feet, the force of an explosion hammering down on General Hong, crashing him down on top of us. The air fills with an ear-piercing smash, my eardrums blocking everything but a high-pitched tone. I try to scramble out from the General’s heavy frame, the air smoldering all around me. Arms wrench me back from under the picture window. . . .

  Only there is no window, just a smoking gash in the wall, all the bits of jade lodged in the floor and walls behind us. It’s Tai-ge dragging me away, but he freezes when his panicked gaze lands on his father’s slumped form, back peppered with yellow and green shards of jade and bits of rocks and wood. The library’s stone and timber groan overhead. Still, Tai-ge doesn’t move, as though he’s waiting for the tattered human remains to pull themselves up off the floor.

  Grabbing Tai-ge’s arm, I drag him away from General Hong’s still form, over a man slumped in a pool of red, his leather jerkin torn to shreds, dodging the men and women still left standing as they scream and run back and forth in panic.

  The stones shake around us from another explosion as we sprint down the stairs, but the unholy noise fades as we follow the twisting hallways to a place I’ve been once before.

  A trapdoor and a ladder.

  The rungs slip under my hands as I rush down, an involuntary cry ripping from my lips as I miss a step. Tai-ge moves slower, his boots scraping against the metal above me. When he steps down from the ladder, the ground quivers under our feet, a muted boom filtering down from above. Things seem too quiet, too still down here in the old City, nothing but us and the statue sitting silently behind the ladder.

  Most of the Red’s nerve center must have been in that room. Maybe the Firsts that were coordinating with them too. How many of them are now dead from the Menghu-planted bombs? My heart pounds with the thought of what almost happened . . . what did happen to General Hong, who died as a human shield. Whether he meant to or not.

  What will the Menghu do now that the man giving Red orders is lifeless in a pile of broken jade and stone? And with Firsts flying away with all the Mantis, what are all of the infected going to do?

  The hunt up there is going to turn nasty, especially as night falls.

  Tai-ge’s arms wrap tight around my back and shoulders, pressing my head into his chest. He feels sticky underneath the T-shirt. Chalky dust covers both of us. I can feel it in my nostrils, mouth, and throat, the grittiness on my tongue making me want to gag.

  “I’m sorry.” I don’t know what else to say, the General’s mangled body clouded by some kind of fog in my mind, as if I can’t feel anything at all.

  Tai-ge hugs me tighter, chest expanding under my cheek in a deep breath. But he doesn’t say anything.

  “We still might be able to stop the fighting.” I hate the cold sound of my voice. “If we find someone from the Mountain high enough to give orders and tell them what Dr. Yang is doing—”

  “We have to get out of here, Sevvy.” Tai-ge’s voice breaks, too small in the darkness enveloping us. “This isn’t a fight we can win, just the two of us.”

  “Get out of here? No one knows about Dr. Yang.” I think of Peishan, June, and all the little orphans stranded where I left them in the sewers. Are they safe? And even if I don’t have crowds of friends welcoming me back, no one deserves to be cut down just because of Dr. Yang’s greed. It’s just an extension of what happened to Mother. To me. “If we don’t tell the Mountain who it is they really should be fighting, this invasion will kill everyone we know. For no reason.” I grimace. “What about your mother?”

  “We need to leave. Before the compulsions start.”

  “Tai-ge, are you okay? Your father just . . . saved us. Accidentally.” But what I mean is that he died. Even with the detachment I feel about what happened upstairs, I still can’t quite bring myself to say it out loud. Fear stabs through to my chest as I wonder what will come next—how many more will fall like birds at a glass window before the end of today. This whole City is going to crumble if we don’t do something. But what? It’s like the days at the beginning of the Influenza War. The last Great War. So many infected people jammed together that the idea makes my head spin. And it’s happening again, right above us.

  Tai-ge pulls his head back, letting me look up at him. “We can’t do anything here. We can’t stop the fighting. But we can go find the cure. And people to help us make it, distribute it . . . If no one has SS, and no one can use it as a weapon, what will they have to fight about anymore? If we get to the cure before Dr. Yang does, everything could change.” He takes another deep breath. “The entire Circle is already gone. Most of the First Quarter, too, and I think Mother might
have been roped into going along with them. If we can find their camp, she and the Firsts still alive might be able to help. . . .”

  Before I can object to leaning on the First Circle for any kind of help, much less his mother, who left him in the City prison during an invasion, running footsteps echo up the tunnel and a faintly glowing quicklight bobs toward us. A red quicklight.

  Followed by a trickling trail of yellow ones.

  Tai-ge pushes me behind him, easing the gun from the waistband of his pants to point it at the floor. By peeking around his shoulder, I can see the small dots of light looming larger. Their faces are all shrouded in the serpentine coil of gas masks, the leader’s red light too far out to cast any light on his hooded features.

  The leader, who appears to be wearing a Watch uniform, draws up short about ten yards away, squinting through the quicklight’s glow to make us out, pulling the whole procession to a dead halt. Where did a Red manage to pick up a quicklight from the Mountain?

  The heavy dark pushes in on them, making them look small, harmless. But the leader’s hand twitching into his jacket has nothing harmless about it. Tai-ge takes a deep breath, his ribs expanding out against my arm. “Don’t move,” he says. “We’ve already got a gun on each one of you.”

  Head cocked, the person holding the red light moves forward, pulling back a hood to reveal long golden hair. “You must have a lot of hands, then, since there are only two of you.” She steps toward me. “Is that you, Sev?” Once again, June appears as my guardian angel.

  Tai-ge levels the gun at her head. “Who are you?”

  June raises an eyebrow at Tai-ge before looking back at me, giving me time to inch my way between them, pushing Tai-ge’s gun down. “She’s a friend, Tai-ge. From Outside.”