Shadow Me

by Tahereh Mafi

  I grumble something foul.

  He laughs. “I have to say, if you’re interested in keeping it to yourself, you might want to change your tactics.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He shrugs. “You don’t see yourself around her. Your feelings are obvious to everyone. From anywhere.”

  I drop my head into my hands with a groan.

  And when I finally look up, ready to respond, I’m so distracted by the scene in front of me that I forget to speak.

  Warner and Juliette are having a moment.

  A pretty passionate moment, right here, in the hall. I realize, as I watch them, that I’ve never seen them kiss before. I’m frozen. A little stunned. And I know I should, like, look away—I mean, I know in my head that I should? That it’s the decent thing to do? But I’m kind of fascinated.

  They clearly have crazy chemistry.

  Their relationship never made a lot of sense to me—I couldn’t understand how someone like Warner could be an emotional partner to anyone, much less someone like Juliette: a girl who eats, sleeps, and breathes emotion. I rarely saw him emote anything. I worried that Juliette was giving him too much credit, that she put up with too much of his bullshit in exchange for—I don’t even know what. A sociopath with an extensive coat collection?

  Mostly, I worried that she wasn’t getting the kind of love she deserved.

  But now, suddenly—

  Their relationship makes sense. Suddenly everything she’s ever said to me about him makes sense. I still don’t think I understand Warner, but it’s obvious that something about her lights a fire in him. He looks alive when she’s in his arms. Human like I’ve never seen him before.

  Like he’s in love.

  And not only in love, but beyond salvation. When they break apart they both look a little crazy, but Warner looks especially unhinged. His body is shaking. And when she suddenly takes off running down the hall, I know this won’t end well.

  My heart aches. For both of them.

  I watch as Warner slumps back, against the wall, sinking into the stone until his limbs give out. He collapses onto the floor.

  “I’ll talk to him,” Castle says, and the devastated look on his face surprises me. “You go find Ms. Ferrars. She shouldn’t be alone right now.”

  I take a tight breath. “Got it.” And then: “Good luck.”

  He only nods.

  I have to pound on Juliette’s door a few times before she finally opens it. She cracks it open an inch, says, “Never mind,” and then tries to slam it closed.

  I catch the door with my boot.

  “Never mind what?” I lean my shoulder into the door, and with a little shove, I manage to squeeze my way inside. “What’s going on?”

  She stalks across the room, as far away from me as she can get.

  I don’t understand this. I don’t understand why she’s treating me like this. And I open my mouth to say exactly that when she says—

  “Never mind, I don’t want to talk to any of you. Please go away. Or maybe you can all go to hell. I don’t actually care.”

  I flinch. Her words land like physical blows. She’s talking to me like I’m the enemy, and I can’t believe it. “Are you—wait, are you serious right now?”

  “Nazeera and I are leaving for the symposium in an hour,” she snaps at me. She still won’t look at me, though. “I have to get ready.”

  “What?” First of all, when the hell did she become best friends with Nazeera? And second of all: “What’s happening, J? What’s wrong with you?”

  She spins around, her face a stunning caricature. She looks mutinous. “What’s wrong with me? Oh, like you don’t know?”

  The force of her anger sends me a step back. I remind myself that this girl could probably kill me with the twitch of her hand if she wanted to. “I mean, I heard about what happened with Warner, yeah, but I’m pretty sure I just saw you guys making out in the hallway, so I’m, uh, really confused—”

  “He lied to me, Kenji. He lied to me this whole time. About so many things. And so did Castle. So did you—”

  “Wait, what?” This time I grab her arm before she has a chance to walk away again. “Wait—I didn’t lie to you about shit. Don’t mix me up in this mess. I had nothing to do with any of it. Hell, I still haven’t figured out what to say to Castle. I can’t believe he kept all of this from me.”

  Juliette goes suddenly still. Her eyes widen, bright with unshed tears. And then, finally, I understand. She thought I’d betrayed her, too.

  “You weren’t in on all this?” she whispers. “With Castle?”

  “Uh-uh. No way.” I take a step forward. “I had no clue about any of this insanity until Warner told me about it yesterday.”

  She stares at me, still uncertain.

  And I can’t help it; I roll my eyes.

  “Well, how am I supposed to trust you?” she says, her voice breaking. “Everyone’s been lying to me—”

  “J,” I say, “c’mon.” I shake my head, hard. I can’t believe I even have to say this. I can’t believe she doubted me—that she didn’t talk to me about this sooner. “You know me,” I say to her. “You know I don’t bullshit. That’s not my style.”

  A single tear escapes down the side of her face and the sight of it is simultaneously heartbreaking and reassuring. This is the girl I know. The friend I love. She’s all heart.

  She whispers, “You promise?”

  “Hey.” I hold out my hand. “Come here, kid.”

  She still seems a little skeptical, but she takes the necessary steps forward and I reel her in, pulling her against my chest and squeezing tight. She’s so tiny. Like a little bird with hollow bones. You’d never know she was technically invincible. That she could probably melt the skin off my face if she wanted to. I squeeze a little tighter, run a hand up and down her back in a comforting, familiar gesture, and I feel her finally relax. I feel the exact moment when the tension leaves her body, when she collapses fully against my chest. Her tears soak through my shirt, hot and unrelenting.

  “You’re going to be okay,” I whisper. “I promise.”

  “Liar.”

  I smile. “Well, there’s a fifty percent chance I’m right.”

  “Kenji?”

  “Mm?”

  “If I find out you’re lying to me about any of this, I swear to God I will rip all the bones out of your body.”

  I almost choke on a sudden, surprised laugh. “Uh, yeah, okay.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Uh-huh.” I pat her head. So fuzzy.

  “I will.”

  “I know, princess. I know.”

  We settle into a comfortable silence, the two of us still holding on, and I’m thinking about how important this relationship is to me—how important Juliette is to me—when she says, suddenly:

  “Kenji?”

  “Mm?”

  “They’re going to destroy Sector 45.”

  “Who is?”

  “Everyone.”

  Shock straightens my spine. I pull back, confused. “Everyone who?”

  “All the other supreme commanders,” Juliette says. “Nazeera told me everything.”

  And then, suddenly, I get it.

  Her new friendship with Nazeera.

  This must be the secret Warner said she was hiding—Nazeera must be a traitor to The Reestablishment. It’s either that, or she’s lying to all of us.

  The latter doesn’t seem likely, though.

  Maybe I’m being foolishly optimistic, but Nazeera practically said as much to me the other night with her whole speech about wearing a symbol of resistance and hating her dad and honoring the women he shamed.

  Maybe Nazeera’s big secret is that she’s actually here to help us. Maybe there’s nothing to be afraid of. Maybe the woman is just perfect.

  I’m suddenly grinning like an idiot. “So Nazeera is one of the good guys, huh? She’s on our team? Trying to help you out?”

  “Oh my God, Kenji, please f
ocus—”

  “I’m just saying.” I hold up my hands, take a step back. “The girl is fine as hell is all I’m saying.”

  Juliette is looking at me like I’ve lost my mind, but she laughs. She sniffs, gently, and brushes away a few forgotten tears.

  “So.” I nod, encouraging her to speak. “What’s the deal? The details? Who’s coming? When? How? Et cetera?”

  “I don’t know,” Juliette says, shaking her head. “Nazeera is still trying to figure it out. She thinks maybe in the next week or so? The kids are here to monitor me and send back information, but they’re coming to the symposium, specifically, because the commanders want to know how the other sector leaders will react to seeing me. Nazeera says she thinks the information will help inform their next moves. I’m guessing we have maybe a matter of days.”

  My eyes go painfully wide. A matter of days was not what I was expecting to hear. I was hoping for months. Weeks, at the very least.

  This is bad.

  “Oh,” I say. “Shit.”

  “Yeah.” Juliette shoots me a beleaguered look. “But when they decide to obliterate Sector 45, their plan is to also take me prisoner. The Reestablishment wants to bring me back in, apparently. Whatever that means.”

  “Bring you back in?” I frown. “For what? More testing? Torture? What do they want to do with you?”

  “I have no idea,” Juliette says, shaking her head. “I have no clue who these people are. My sister is apparently still being tested and tortured somewhere. So I’m pretty sure they’re not bringing me back for a big family reunion, you know?”

  “Wow.” I look away. Blow out a breath. “That is some next-level drama.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So—what are we going to do?” I say.

  Juliette studies me for a second. Her eyes pull together. “I mean, I don’t know, Kenji. They’re coming to kill everyone in Sector 45. I really don’t think I have a choice.”

  I raise my eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I’m pretty sure I’ll have to kill them first.”

  Five

  I leave Juliette’s room in a daze. It doesn’t seem right that so much horrible shit should be, like, allowed to go down in such a short period of time. There should be a fail-safe in the universe somewhere, something that automatically shuts down in the event of extreme human stupidity. Maybe an emergency lever. A button, even.

  This is ridiculous.

  I sigh, feeling suddenly sick to my stomach.

  I guess we’ll have to wait to discuss all this tonight, after the symposium, which is going to be its own kind of shitshow. There doesn’t seem to be a point to attending the symposium now, but Juliette said she didn’t want to bail, not this late in the game, so we’re all supposed to make nice and act like everything is normal. Six hundred sector leaders gathered in the same room and we’re supposed to make nice and act like everything is normal. I don’t get it. It’s no secret to anyone that we, as a sector, have betrayed the entire establishment, so I don’t understand why we’re even bothering to pretend. But Castle says maintaining these pretenses means something to the system, so we have to follow through. Jumping ship now is basically like flipping off the rest of the continent. It’d be a declaration of war.

  Honestly, the ridiculousness of this whole thing would almost be funny if I didn’t think we were all probably going to die.

  What a day.

  I spot Sonya and Sara on my way back to my room and I nod a quick greeting, but Sara grabs my arm.

  “Have you seen Castle?” she says.

  “We’ve been trying to get ahold of him for an hour,” says Sonya.

  The urgency in their voices sends a sudden spike of fear through my body, and the viselike grip Sara’s still got on my arm isn’t helping. It’s not like either of them to be so anxious; for as long as I’ve known them, these two have always been gentle and generally calm—through everything.

  “What’s wrong?” I say. “What’s going on? Anything I can do to help?”

  They shake their heads at the same time. “We need to talk to Castle.”

  “Last I saw him, he was downstairs, talking to Warner. Why don’t you page him? He’s always wearing his earpiece.”

  “We’ve tried,” Sonya says. “Several times.”

  “Can you at least tell me what this is about? Just so I don’t have a heart attack?”

  Sara’s eyes widen. “Have you been experiencing chest pains?”

  “Have you been feeling unusually lethargic?” Sonya chimes in.

  “Shortness of breath?” Sara again.

  “What? No. Guys, stop—I meant that as a figure of speech. I’m not actually going to have a heart attack. I’m just—I’m worried.”

  Sonya ignores me. She rummages around in the messenger bag she carries around in case of emergencies and unearths a small medicine bottle. She and Sara are twins and our resident healers—and they’re an interesting combination of gentle but extremely serious. They’re doctors with the perfect bedside manner, and they never let any mention of pain, illness, or injury go ignored. Once, back at Point, I said casually that I was sick and tired of being underground all the time, and the two of them forced me into a bed and demanded I give them a list of my symptoms. When I was finally able to explain that I’d been joking—that “sick and tired” was just a thing people say sometimes—they didn’t think it was funny. They were irritated with me for a week after that.

  “Take this with you, as a precaution,” Sonya says, and presses the blue, cylindrical bottle into my hand. “As you know, Sara and I have been working on this for a while, but this is the first time we feel like it might be ready for the field. That,” she says, nodding at the bottle in my hand, “is one of the test batches, but we haven’t had any trouble with it. Actually, we think it might be ready for production.”

  That gets my attention.

  I stare in awe at the bottle in my hand. It’s heavy. Glass. “No way,” I say softly. “You did it?” I look up, look into their eyes.

  They smile at exactly the same time.

  These two have been working on creating healing pills for as long as I can remember. They wanted to give us something to take on the road—in the middle of battle—to keep us going if and/or when they’re not around.

  “Did James work on this at all?”

  Sonya smiles wider. “He helped.”

  “Yeah?” I smile, too. “How’s his training going? Everything okay?”

  They nod. “We’re about to go pick him up, actually,” Sara says. “For his afternoon session. He’s a fast study. He’s growing into his powers nicely.”

  Almost without realizing it, I stand up a bit taller, puff my chest like a peacock. I don’t know what right I have to feel proprietary about that kid, but I’m so proud of him.

  I know he’s got a big future ahead of him.

  “All right, well”—I hold up the bottle—“thank you for this. I’m going to take it with me, because”—I shake the bottle—“this is amazing. But don’t worry. Seriously. I’m not going to have a heart attack.”

  “Good,” they both say.

  I grin. “So you want me to tell Castle you’re looking for him?”

  They nod.

  “And you’re not going to tell me what the urgency is all about?”

  Sara and Sonya exchange glances.

  I raise an eyebrow.

  Finally, Sara says—

  “Do you remember when Juliette was shot?”

  “She was shot three days ago, Sara.” I offer her an incredulous look. “I’m not likely to forget.”

  Sonya jumps in and says, “Yes, but, the thing you don’t know—the thing that no one but Warner and Castle know—is that something happened to Juliette when she was shot. Something we weren’t able to heal.”

  “What?” I say sharply. “What do you mean?”

  “There was some kind of poison in the bullets,” Sara explains. “Something that was giving her hallucinati
ons.”

  I stare, horrified.

  “We’ve been studying the properties of the poison for days, trying to come up with an antidote,” she says. “Instead, we discovered something . . . unexpected. Something even more important.”

  After a beat of silence, I can’t take it anymore.

  “And?” I say, gesturing with my hand that they should continue.

  “We really want to tell you everything,” Sonya says, “but we have to speak to Castle first. He needs to be the first to know.” She hesitates. “I can only tell you that we think we’ve discovered something that directly corresponds with the tattoos on the dead body of Juliette’s assailant.”

  “That guy Nazeera killed,” I say, remembering. “She saved Juliette’s life.”

  They nod.

  Another spike of fear spears through me.

  “All right,” I say, trying to keep my voice light, steady. I don’t want to freak them out with my own worries. “Okay. I’ll tell Castle to come find you right away. Will you be in the medical wing?”

  They nod again.

  And then, as I walk away, Sara calls after me.

  I turn around.

  “Tell him—” She hesitates again, and then seems to make a decision. “Tell him it’s about Sector 241. Tell him we think it’s a message. From Nouria.”

  “What?” I freeze in place, disbelieving. “That’s impossible.”

  “Yes,” Sara says. “We know.”

  I take the stairs.

  I don’t have time to wait for the elevator, and besides, my body is too full of nervous energy right now to stand still. I take the stairs two, three at a time, flying even as I keep a hand on the handrail to steady myself.

  I didn’t think this day could get crazier.

  Nouria.

  Shit.

  I don’t know how Castle will react to hearing her name. He hasn’t heard a word from Nouria in years. Not since—well, not since the boys were murdered. Castle told me he gave Nouria space because he thought she needed time. He figured they’d find their way back to each other again after she recovered. But after the sectors were erected, it became near impossible to contact loved ones. The internet was one of the first things The Reestablishment took away, and without it the world became—in an instant—a bigger, scarier place. Everything was harder. Everyone felt helpless. I don’t think anyone realized just how much we relied on the internet for literally everything until the lights went off. Computers and phones were taken away. Destroyed. Hackers were found and publicly hanged.