An image of her sprawled across the floor—she could have been there for hours and I’d never have known it—ties knots in my stomach. A jolt of adrenaline powers up my legs, even though I have no place, no reason, to run; I just want Aven to open the door. I lean into it, rapping harder.
Finally, it creaks open and five twiggy fingers wrap around the edge, dotted with the purple nail polish she found years ago during one of her abandoned-building penny searches. In spite of the Blight, there’s still a hint of the old her. Just as quickly as it came, the adrenaline drains away and I’m left with that burning feeling like I ran a marathon. Then I can breathe, and I realize that I hadn’t been.
“Hmm?” She’s disoriented. Her eyelids droop so heavy it’s a wonder she can see at all. A curtain of wispy hair, so blond it’s nearly silver, dangles across her face and hides her from view. Even as she is—skin too sallow, features too sharp from poor nutrition, eyes too large—she’s beautiful. None of that matters. I love her so much, everything on the outside is irrelevant.
“Morning, Feathers,” I say too cheerfully, trying to gauge if my obscenely early wake-up call has somehow placed her closer to death’s door, though I know it’s irrational.
Aven doesn’t say a word, just moves away from the door.
I step in and close it behind me, flipping on the flashlight from my tool belt. The strange egg-shaped beam bounces round the room, and I use it to draw Aven a path to her bed. We walk together, one of my arms wrapped around her waist, the other steadying her by the shoulder.
She crawls in, angling her head so that there’s no pressure on the tumor.
“How’s the noggin?” I sit on the bed next to her, pulling the covers up so that she’s warm enough—the night’s still cold.
No answer. Not a good sign.
“Why didn’t you comm me?” I ask. “That’s why you have the thing. I could’ve had a neighbor check in . . .”
“It’s not so bad,” she insists, but her chin drops ever so slightly and her eyelids flutter open and closed.
I know Aven’s every gesture. This one means the hurt is worse than she’s letting on. “I’m getting the Dilameth,” I tell her, and I reach my arm under the bed and grab the orange bottle.
Daggers. Just one of these pills costs more than a month’s worth of protein bars. They’re so potent, Blight victims, along with half the city’s beggars, love ’em, if they can get their hands on the stuff.
I fish one out of the bottle. Aven opens her mouth and I drop it under her tongue.
The pill dissolves almost instantly, gets circulated into her bloodstream. Within minutes she’ll be comfortable. I watch it start to work; the furrow between her brows relaxes and she’s smiling, almost.
This will last about eight hours. Dilameth shuts off the brain’s pain receptors—it does something so that the body registers pain as pleasure. That’s why it’s such a popular drug. You can have the tumors anywhere, at any stage, and it works just the same. Daggers won’t fix anything, though. The tumor’s still a death sentence.
“Is it summer yet?” Aven says, through a yawn.
If I didn’t know her so well, I might think that the tumor lodged in her brain has finally taken its toll on her mental faculties. But I do know her. This is her. What’s left of her, anyway.
“Hate to disappoint, darlin’.”
She looks at me through still half-closed eyes. “Yes, it is summer,” she says, resting her hand on my knee.
“I’m sorry I woke you,” I say quietly. “You feel better now?”
Aven ignores the question. “The race went late tonight.” Then she sees something disturbing, like my face, for instance. “What’s this?” She looks a little closer at my temple, pulling her tangled, whitish hair to one side. Her hazel eyes go wide. She stifles a gasp. “What happened?”
I want to tell her everything. The race, the accident. Water.
And isn’t this awful . . . but most of all I want to tell her about Derek. Would it be too much to ask? To be a girl for five minutes? I’d tell her how he saved me, sort of. How afterward I was naked, though it was much tamer than it sounds.
But I can’t tell her this, because she’s dying, and somehow that means I need to shut my life up in a box from her. For her. How do you tell someone who’s three months from dead that you’re all boo-hoo because your crush doesn’t fancy you? You don’t. They’ll always have bigger things to worry about than your sorry love life.
Aven eyes the largest of the cuts on my face, her fingers dangerously close. Instead of answering, I just say, “Hey, easy—you don’t want to touch,” and dodge the graze of her hand. I slide off the bed, thinking I should take a look at the abstract art that’s been made of my face.
I decide against it. Only going to make me depressed. Not only do I have to go to the Tank tonight as a loser, but I have to go looking like this. Now, I’m not vain, but a girl’s gotta draw the line somewhere.
“Ren!” Aven snaps with more gusto than I thought she had left in her. “Earth to Ren?”
“Hmm?”
“What’s wrong with your face?”
“What’s wrong with your face?” I answer, knowing she’ll laugh. But I’m in a bind. I don’t want to tell her how close I was to The End.
“An accident. No big deal.” Not quite a lie, but nearly. If she knew how bad it was . . .
“You hurt?” Her voice is thin as a breeze, but I can tell she wants to ask more questions. I cut her off before she gets too worked up.
“Don’t worry, I’m made of bricks.” I almost died of them, too. “I lost the race. . . .”
For just a moment, Aven scrunches her face up tight, confusion registering. Then she shrugs. “We’ll get by.” She says it with such confidence that I have to think my bedridden fourteen-year-old sister is stronger than I know.
Am I really not going to talk about the fresh find?
Screw the Codes and Violations Handbook. Something tells me a fourteen-year-old girl, nearly dead from the Blight, might compromise the mission. I may not feel right talking to her about Derek, but this . . . this I can tell her.
“We won’t have to.” I kneel down on the floor and cross my arms over the quilt, resting my chin on my wrists. “Aven, I’ve got a secret.”
“Oooh.” She smiles, barely. “I hope it’s going to make me feel better about your face looking like a scratching post for Moo.”
“Don’t make me sad,” I say. “I miss Moo.” She loved the spotted stray tabby more, I’m sure of it. The cat came around when we lived in the orphanage, and we haven’t seen him since we left.
She doesn’t say anything, just closes her eyes, smiling. “Mooooo.” A giggle breaks away from her, thin and gone too fast. When she opens her eyes again, all she says is, “Secret.”
I unclip my canteen from the utility belt.
“I’ve found it,” I whisper.
“Found what?”
Pulling one of her hands closer, I fold it into mine, and rub my thumbs over her candy-colored nails. “Fresh.”
Even while burying my face into our clasped hands, the word sounds as clean as the thing itself.
Her eyes widen, her brows lift up. “You’re serious.”
“I’m serious.”
“Did you taste it? What was it like? When will it be—” She’s grinning as the questions tumble out. Almost immediately, though, she falls into a wheezing fit. Months in bed have destroyed her stamina. Doesn’t stop her grinning, though. The gasping becomes laughter that dissolves into another bout of rasping. Every time she so much as snickers, it morphs into a cough, and the ludicrousness of it all—her utter inability to even break down in giddy, side-splitting joy—sets her laughing-wheezing, laughing harder into the bed.
I follow her lead, cracking up from watching her unable to talk, unable to laugh, unable to not laugh. Once I finally get control of myself, the fits start all over again. It’s sad and horribly funny at the same time, and we’re cackling like maniacs, b
ecause I’ve found one of the two things that life cannot exist without, and yet it does. Right here. In the Ward.
This goes on until I have to remind her to inhale. “Deep breaths,” I insist, which seems to calm us both down a bit. “Yes, I drank it. Tasted like pure nothingness. And no, I don’t know when it will be piped off.”
Then the fit dies down fully, and when Aven speaks again, her tone is sober. “I won’t be around to taste it, will I?”
Do I give it to her? The CVH would say an adamant “no.” The fresh should really be tested—I know from memory what section 72(a) states:
Any and all findings from Government scouting missions* [*see 21(a), (b), and (c) for term “Government scouting missions”: [(a) approved, (b) financed, or (c) assisted]] must be registered immediately with DI Headquarters, where it will be sent out for testing of infectious foreign bodies.
I shouldn’t give it to her. Infectious foreign bodies don’t sound like a barrel of fun.
On the other hand, I did taste it, albeit accidentally. And I’m fine. If there were something wrong with it, I’d be upchucking over the john right now.
Okay, then.
I unscrew the cap to my canteen. Drops of water trickle along the sides. “Taste,” I say, pushing it into her hand.
Aven sits up slowly. “You have some?”
“No, I’m giving you liquor and getting you drunk. Yes, I have some, silly face. Drink. Not too much . . . I need some as a sample to send to headquarters.”
She takes a sip; it dribbles down her chin.
Pulling away, “It does taste like nothing,” she says. “Why, it doesn’t taste too much different from our drainage water.” But she drinks the canteen nearly dry nonetheless. Leaves me just enough to get to Dunn.
“Fine, then,” I say in mock insult. “Give it back.”
“No.” She laughs. “It’s wonderful. I’m sorry. I know what it took to find this. And now you don’t have to work for them anymore.” She smiles, and it dawns on me.
What happens now that I’ve found fresh? I need this job. . . . Without it I can’t care for Aven. The DI has to keep me on as a mole. We can’t afford otherwise. And the report I missed . . .
What’s he gonna do? The thought makes me lose my balance, sends fear all the way to my feet. Glancing down at my wrist for my cuffcomm, I remember it’s busted.
My backup. It’s around here somewhere.
The mattress. I flop onto my bed and reach between the popped springs and the stuffing falling out on one side. Finding it there—whew—I pull it out, see the neon-blue screen blinking frantically.
The comm beeps twice.
Brack—it’s been beeping for the last three hours, but stuffed in my mattress I couldn’t hear it. Quickly, I flip it open—I’ve got one message, from Dunn:
Potential Stat. One Violation at the ’Racks, 17:00. Prepare to report afterward.
A raid? Here?
I don’t like the DI this close to my home. Despite the fact that I work for them.
Aven and I are silent. Still, I don’t consider telling her about the raid. She’ll insist they’re coming for her, even though she’s not contagious, and never fall asleep. Instead, I set my alarm for ten to five, so I can warn her just before it happens.
“Ren?” she calls to me from the bed.
I arch my head back so I can see her better. “Yeah?” I answer, watching her as she stares at the ceiling like there’s a movie playing up there.
“I can feel it getting closer.”
In my throat, a sigh catches, stuck there. Waiting. Every once in a while, something dark gets the best of her, like it is now, and I hate it.
Aven talking like this kills me. I go teary and numb, all at once. As though my brain shuts down at the very thought of her . . . not being around anymore. It can’t even think that word. It’s a curse.
I watch the ceiling too, but I see no movie. “No, it’s not,” I say. I insist. I’ll force it to be true if I have to. “That’s just tired you’re feeling.”
“Okay,” she says. Then, a little bit more determined, “Okay.”
“Water, Ren?” Aven groans only an hour or two later.
I jerk awake, body buzzed from too little sleep, and stagger to her bed. I feel her palms, try to calm the razor-sharp queasiness I get in my stomach whenever she randomly wakes up like this. Her hands are usually cold as glass, but not now. They’re hot. Sticky. She’s red-cheeked and breathing through her mouth. When I nudge her slightly, she clutches at my wrist.
“It hurts?” I ask, confused. The Dilameth should still be working. . . .
She shakes her head. “Hot.”
I nod, and hurry to bring her rainwater from the drainage system.
In the bathroom, I light a candle to see the glass tank. This is how the cheaper buildings do it. It’s a simple setup: tank + sand = filtered water. The rain passes down the roof pipes, into each home’s individual filtration system to be cleaned by the sand. Too bad it don’t work with brack. Funneled rooftop rainwater makes up 100 percent of our water supply.
I fill a glass under the spigot and return to her in the main room. Pushing it into her hands, I feel her forehead again. There’s nothing I can do. Not right now, anyway. Without last night’s winnings, we’ve got no money for another visit from the doctor. A few more hours, I tell myself, thinking of my meeting with Officer Cory, when I can get the green he promised.
I crawl back onto my mattress and listen to the uneven rise, then fall, of her breathing.
Maybe it’s from lack of sleep, but when I shut my eyes again, I start to imagine Aven’s a plant—rosemary, or mint, something that grows in land. I give her water because that’s all I can do, but air and water ain’t all a living thing needs.
I want to give her sunlight, but no one bottles that.
10
5:00 P.M., SATURDAY
The building’s foundation shakes straight through to its bones, and I snap awake as if I’d never fallen asleep in the first place.
Damn. Looking at my cuffcomm, I see that it’s five on the dot, and that the DI are right on time. I’m the one who’s late—I slept through the alarm. Close to ten hours. How the hell did that happen? I think, but I shouldn’t be surprised after last night.
“Aven—” I whisper, pulling myself off the mattress and moving to her bed. The brass frame shakes with her in it, forces her awake. “They’re coming . . . they’re coming to the ’Racks.”
She tosses the lower half of her body closer to me. I see her struggle to sit up, eyes still closed, reaching for the water at her bedside.
“Here,” I say, getting it for her. Bringing the glass to her mouth, I tilt it down for her to sip. Normally, she hates when I do this, says I’m “hovering.” Then she’ll swat me away like I’m a mosquito. But not now. I don’t like it—the swatting at me means she’s okay.
Her eyes snap open. “What if . . . what if,” she mumbles, and tries to pull the glass from my hand. Her hands shake, though, and so does the glass, so she gives up.
“They can’t be here for you, Aven. You’re not contagious anymore, remember?” I remind her, but when she gets panicked like this, there’s no talking her down. She may be wiser than your average fourteen-year-old, but she’s also been indoors for nearly three years. My sister is still a kid in so many ways.
Simultaneously, our heads turn—outside, we hear voices murmuring, the buzz of neighbors congregating in the hallway.
“I’ll check the scope to see what floor,” I tell her, and rush for the door.
The way people from some countries grow up knowing earthquakes, we’ve also been trained to know what a vibration means. But for us, it’s the Blues’ helis, and everyone knows the sound.
In the hall, I’m met with the faces of people I’ve never seen before. After all, the ’Racks is home to more than a few of the Ward’s ne’er-do-wells—mostly folks with connections Upstate and on the Mainland who source the UMI black market with water and meds. And
though the Blues let that stuff slide (and other criminal activity, like murders and theft and such), they will cross the Strait to make Transmission arrests. Some residents even have periscopes installed in their homes for checking the hallway before they leave.
I can’t get to a scope; they’re all taken.
“What’s the deal?” I ask anyone who’ll answer, my heart upping its pace. Fear catches, too—not just viruses. “They coming?”
“Inside. Now,” my closest neighbor, Mr. Bedrosian, tells the crowd. “You as well, Ren,” he urges, eyes narrowing behind square-framed glasses.
Like I need the reminder.
The air hums with a muted panic, as if the sound’s been turned off. You don’t even need it. You can hear what people are saying on the inside—not me, not me. The halls empty, the doors click locked, and ladders drop from a few flights up. Boots pound the floor overhead.
Just like that, I’m alone in the hallway. My arms are shaking, and I can actually feel the blood knocking around in my chest, through my body. I may work for these guys, but that don’t mean I ain’t scared. Maybe that’s even why I am scared—I know full well what they can do.
Dashing back into our apartment, “It’s our floor,” I tell Aven, and bolt the door behind me. When I sit beside her on the bed, run my palm across her forehead, it comes back slick with sweat. She’s hotter than an engine.
“Have more water.” It’s all I can tell her to do right now.
The walls shudder. A troop of guards stampede the corridor outside. When they knock on a door, the sound is so loud I can’t tell whose apartment they’re in front of.
My blood stops in my body—I hear a man’s gruff voice call, “Inspection! Open the door.” A Bouncer, here with the Blues. Only after someone’s filed a complaint can they test in people’s homes. And even though I know they can’t be here for Aven, I feel myself freeze up. I imagine the what-ifs. . . .
I want to see for myself. I need to make sure. . . .
Heel to toe, steps weighted evenly and quietly as possible, I walk to the front of the apartment, then peer through the peephole. I can’t see nothing, but the silence is thick and eerie—the sound of too many people making too little noise.
The Ward Page 8
