The Ward

by Frankel, Jordana

  I veer left, into the open channel.

  Turning off the belly props, I bring the mobile down a few feet, though we’re both still too close to the surface for my comfort. Closer to the canal’s floor means farther from Mad Ave and all those people. At worst, the explosion will send a few people in for a dip. Better than burning them to death.

  There’s a building back behind me that should do the trick.

  Of course, ain’t no need to be picky when it comes to blowing myself up. I jiggle at the wheel, veering the sub left and right, making it look like I’ve lost control.

  Chief, Governor Voss, and Kitaneh all need to think what happens next is an accident. If she’s right and the governor is keeping an eye out, my being dead can only help what Callum and I are trying to pull off. Governor Voss will never expect anything from a dead girl.

  I gun the engine.

  Kitaneh follows me out a hundred feet or so. Then I shift 180 degrees, turning back the way I came, aiming to cross beneath Mad Ave at a perpendicular.

  “Autopilot. In fifteen seconds, shift speed to a hundred and thirty miles per hour,” I say to the VoiceNav. “Then shift angle to forty-five degrees downward.” I’d just autogun her right away, but I’ll need those ten seconds to get into the airlock without the Omni sliding me around. And a forty-five-degree angle should be wide enough so that Callum’s Omni will hit the building. I’m no Benny, though—I never liked playing pool.

  I’ll need to jump ship before she hits. I could do it now. . . .

  Checking the periscope again, I see Kitaneh. Not now, too soon. She’ll spot me for sure.

  I look around the Omni, sit back down. All of a sudden it’s no longer an Omni—the phrase buried alive comes to mind, though these days we just weight the bodies into the canal or burn them when we can. Or, if they were important enough, we’ll send them down the Strait on a boat. We don’t put our dead in coffins. But that’s exactly what this Omni’s starting to look like. A coffin.

  It closes itself around me, and my insides start to shake. The soles of my Hessians drum against the floor, and to kill the nerves in my hands, I squash them both under my butt. I’ve been nervous before, but this is different.

  The sack. All that water . . . it’s sitting right there.

  Too much. Too much responsibility. Looking at it, again I wonder if every life is equal. If every life carries the same weight, has the same value.

  Take that sack. What’s in there can save a few hundred lives. Then take me: one person. If every life is equal, then that sack is more important than me, if only ’cause it holds more lives.

  But what if everyone in that sack is evil? Murderers. And I, not knowing, give my life to save them. What then? Are we all still equal?

  It’s the most confusing word problem in the world, where every number changes depending on what you do or don’t do. My head spins. “Get it together—” I moan to the dashboard, because I have to stop the panic before it disables every ounce of courage I ever thought I had.

  “Brack,” I curse to myself. “You can’t die. It’s just Aven. Forget the others.”

  It’s just Aven. I have to make it—if not for the other numbers, for her.

  And like someone’s opened a window, that does it. I can put the math problem aside, I can breathe again.

  Never liked numbers anyway.

  “Countdown to autopilot, please?” I ask, steeling myself for the next . . .

  “Ten seconds.”

  Ten seconds. She says it so kindly. Ladylike. Classy. Makes me think I’m headed for a ball, not a brick wall.

  Turning off the headlight and the belly lamp sends the mobile pitch dark. Gotta get a move on.

  I walk back into the airlock hatch, still dripping, and wait. Crouched in a ball, I’m the same size as the red rubber sack swung over my side. I’m the same damn size—except I’m just one life. Numbers pop back into my head again—that thing has to count for hundreds. Thousands, maybe.

  Just one.

  “Seven seconds.”

  Just one.

  “Six seconds.”

  Can’t jump now—have to wait until the sub shifts to the new speed. That’ll take three seconds, at least.

  “Five seconds.”

  Then, when I feel the sub shift down, I’ll know I’m out of Kitaneh’s line of sight. She’ll be above me. That’s when I’ll hit the red button and land myself back in the brack.

  The seconds drag on, each longer than the next.

  I clutch the sack by my side. Hugging my knees in this curled-up position, I imagine the one life in there that matters: Aven. I picture her next to me. She’s telling me I’m doing the right thing. That she doesn’t blame me for choosing Callum.

  That thought though, it kills me. My eyes sting and I blink away a tear that starts on a path over the bridge of my nose. There’s hardly enough room to wipe it away. I inhale and exhale. I realize my nails are digging into the sack.

  Fear freezes me up. I loosen my grip and breathe out all the air in my lungs, prepping for the dive and the air hunger.

  “Three seconds.”

  I’ll push the button. Swim out, then down. Under Kitaneh’s sub. Behind her. Up. Get myself dockside, onto Mad Ave.

  “Two seconds.”

  Then, back to Callum.

  Kitaneh will think I’m dead. Then she’ll tell Derek, who’ll tell Terrence, and the chain of gossip in the Ward will spread faster than the Blight. Everyone will know.

  “Zero. Shifting to speed one hundred and thirty miles per hour, shifting to angle forty-five degrees.”

  The Omni bucks and sways; the damage has made scrap of it. Not just yet, I think. Let’s go out with a bang. I know it’s only metal. It can’t think. But this is all I can do.

  We jerk from side to side and I feel the nose dip, angling itself toward the building. It’s pulling the speed, all its belts and cogs on the inside straining against the added weight—a low layer of water already slicking the floor. Faster. It’s getting faster. One more jolt and it’ll really be moving. Propulsion pushes me back. I claw the floor with my fingertips. Now is no time to screw up.

  I push the red button.

  Water rushes in, a shock of cold everywhere. Have to wait until the airlock is mostly full before I swim out, otherwise the water will just push me back in.

  Soon, I’m submerged. One last chug of air, mouth pressed against the roof. I realize the last thing on Earth my mouth might ever touch is the roof of Callum’s Omni.

  I push myself out of the doomed mobile, sack hauled over my shoulders. Seconds later, orange headlights shine directly overhead, as Kitaneh’s Omni sends a rush of water my way. I’m thrown into a somersault. The weight of the sack slows me some, and disorients me more. I try to keep my lips tight together, imagining that they’ve been sewn shut, but they open, and my own air bubbles drift away from me.

  At first I hate myself for being weak, for letting them go. But then I realize . . .

  They are my compasses. When the somersaults stop, down is up is up is down. . . . These bubbles are the only thing that remind me which way ain’t lying.

  I follow them, not sure where I am under Mad Ave.

  Don’t care.

  Again, I find myself frog stroking for the surface with my body fighting a thousand icy jackknives, each one telling me to stop moving. To stop moving means to stop fighting, but I’m so far away, and the sack is so heavy, and my boots . . . my boots are also dragging me down.

  Almost fifty feet to surface and it’s taking too long. Callum’s Omni will hit any second now, and if I’m in the water when it does, that’s it. Underwater explosions are even more dangerous than ones on land—the blast from the pressure wave would turn me into a ball of ruptured junk. I’m fuzzy on the science, but it’s bad. Of course, that’s for, like, a hand grenade. Who knows what happens when a mobile explodes.

  I drag my toes against my heels, lifting the soles of my feet out of my boots. One drifts off, then the other, and
I can’t even afford to spare a glance at my beloved Hessians as they sink to the floor. Nor will I tell myself that they’re just shoes. They’re not.

  They were like a second pair of feet.

  The upward haul goes slightly faster, now, with the boots gone. I’ve still got the weight on my back to deal with. Only twenty feet or so away. Ears crackle as I close the distance, and then my temples flare under the pressure.

  That’s when I feel the first wave.

  It pushes me to the side, takes the rest of the air from my lungs.

  I open my mouth—I don’t want to; I know not to, but I swallow the greenish-tinged water by the mouthful. I’m only four feet, three feet. . . . Fingertips break the surface—they hit hard wood. My head comes up too quickly. Boardwalk, I remind myself, but the need to breathe trumps all. A thwump to my cranium, and outer space has direct mailed me every one of its stars. Planets too, free of charge. I see black, black, and more black. I won’t go under again though, and I grip the planks, keeping afloat.

  After a few retching gasps, I can actually begin to start breathing again instead of just hacking up water. I swim under the boardwalk till I reach the dockside. Wet and bedraggled, I haul myself over the edge.

  First things first—I reach around my back, feeling for the rubber pack.

  It’s there. Setting it down, I look for any holes in the rubber. Seeing none, I decide a little jig is in order. In honor of the sack, and me.

  People start circling around the edge of the walk, about thirty feet off, where a chunk of the wooden planks has gone missing. Someone calls the DI: “A huge collision under Mad Ave, yes,” I hear them say.

  Any other day of the week, the Blues wouldn’t care less about that sort of thing. They’d ignore the call till the monthly arrests. Then, maybe they’d send over divers.

  Today, though, they’ll be on it.

  And they’ll find my shoes.

  Soon enough, I’ll be off their radar for good.

  My cuffcomm beeps its reminder and I glance down:

  Q5/6. B-sickhouse on the Strait. Apt PH305

  Callum’s new address . . .

  I hardly believe it.

  And not because it’s all the way west, practically in the DI’s backyard. Or because he’s chosen to hide out in a sickhouse. Both those are either brilliant moves or sheer idiocy.

  But they’re not why I’m standing still. That sickhouse—the only one in Hell’s Kitchen—is the last place on earth I want to go back to. That’s where I found Aven after my DI training was up. Seeing her alone, looked after by strangers who could do nothing for her ’cause she had no money for daggers—I still feel the guilt of leaving her behind three years later, though I was snatched up, no choice in the matter.

  She’s alone right now. She could die like that.

  My chest holds in a boulder, one that keeps getting pushed up- and downhill, and the only thing that seems to make it better is being near her.

  Yet here I am.

  I should be with her—I want to be with her. But I’m so close . . . so, so close to getting her a cure.

  Starting the shoeless trek back to Hell’s Kitchen, a cure in reach, I wonder why my guilt feels no different today than it did the day I found her. Like nothing’s changed.

  Maybe nothing has changed. Instead of being with her, I’m always off someplace else. Off far, far away, thinking that I’m big enough and strong enough to fight her death for her—

  And win.

  PART THREE

  40

  6:00 P.M., SUNDAY

  The suspension bridge sways under my feet, heavy with me, and the sack, and other things like life and love that you simply can’t touch with your hands.

  Overhead, quiet and perfect like nothing could ever go wrong in the world, I see the stars. Out in full force.

  If Callum and I can pull tonight off . . . My brain don’t even know how to think that kind of thought—it can’t imagine it. The borders will open—I’ll be able to see the West Isle for the first time. But would I even want to? A city with people who’ll push for genocide?

  Maybe, when you’re not fighting to survive, you can afford to think about wiping others off the map. Either way, it’s not important. Tonight isn’t about getting tourist visas so we can take vacations to the Isle.

  I’m here—I see the roof of the Hell’s Kitchen sickhouse only feet away, but I stop moving. Stop crossing the bridge.

  Below, the wooden planks creak, and ahead of me the Strait splashes between us and the Isle. The Ward isn’t silent tonight, though. Not too far off I hear the high-pitched whistle of a firecracker. Then its thunderous finish. Like it is its own exclamation point announcing itself to the sky.

  Telling the world to get ready for what comes next.

  Tonight is about Aven, and the girl in the contagious ward, and everyone else afraid to go outside. It’s about putting us back on the map—as people, and as a city.

  We’re not hosts.

  I let go of my fist, tight around the suspension rope, and jump onto the rooftop.

  Opening the door out of the stairwell into the top-floor hallway, I nearly gag. Have to hold my nose as I walk. The smell . . . it’s worse than the dying stink of the hospital.

  Rank viscera. Old, decaying flesh. Blood loss, coppery and acrid.

  This high up, and they usually just weight the bodies before tossing them into the canal below. But sometimes the flesh is dying and the body’s still alive. The smell is the same.

  I can taste it all in the air, passing room after room. My stomach twists, and though this isn’t the floor I found Aven on, it may as well be. All the doors look the same, and I can almost see myself pushing them open. Frantic.

  Yelling for anyone who might’ve seen the girl with the near-white hair.

  I come up on apartment 305, my footsteps quiet and even. Candlelight flickers under the door, and I don’t even have to knock. It opens, and there’s Callum.

  He pulls me in. Wraps me up in a hug. Seeing the sack, his face is a mixture of wonder and even more wonder. “You made it. . . .” he says, and kneels beside it. “Is this really it?”

  Disbelieving, he lifts it up by the straps to feel its weight.

  “To the brim,” I say softly, and I pat the rubber, a little bit proud. Then I look at him—really look at him—give him the once-over, two . . . three times. “You’re whole,” I say, wide-eyed, and he manages a weak laugh, nodding.

  Even with the cure . . . everything is tense. There’s too much dying.

  As he carries the sack to a corner of the room—a huge room—I see all the big furniture’s still here from after the Wash Out. Everything else, though—picked clean.

  “That I am,” he answers, lowering the sack onto a bulky wooden table. Careful not to spill, he pours the water into a glass basin, shaking his head as he watches. He murmurs, “Only you,” then glances at me with that strange, awed look again.

  I avoid his eyes; each time that happens, I find myself going more and more red in the cheeks, like I’m too unusual.

  As he pours, the tiny green mushrooms fall out too. “What’s this?” he murmurs, leaning in to get a closer look. Then he answers his own question. “A bioluminescent fungus . . .”

  I don’t know much about that first word, but I nod anyway. He’s talking about the aliens, all right. “It’s the plant you were talking about, right? It’s how the water got those phytothings,” I ask, but he don’t answer.

  He’s totally absorbed, filling an eyedropper with the springwater. “Amazing,” he murmurs.

  Through the tube, I see now that the water is darker than I thought. A brownish, reddish color. Flecked with neon. When he swirls it around, a glow-in-the-dark galaxy whirlpools in his very hand. He droppers it onto a glass slide, then adds a dye or something. He lays that under his ’scope’s lens. For a moment I’m surprised—I’m thinkin’ the ’scope got lucky. Survived the ransacking of the first lab. But then I see Callum hold a super-duper bright flash
light over it: Kitaneh’s handiwork must’ve included bulb smashing.

  “Shine it here, please?” he asks.

  I take it from him, trying to beam the light where he wants while he looks through the lens. After a few moments of him lifting his eye, moving the slide, adjusting the focus, and repeating the process about a half dozen times, Callum stands.

  In a whisper, eyes glazed like he’s way too happy: “This is . . . I have no words. The fungus—it grows underwater, and the hot spring seeps out its nutrients. Kind of like a tea. You know, I’ve heard of something like this before.” He pauses, recalling as he looks up. “There’s a place called Siberia where a tree-growing mushroom exists, one with similarly beneficial properties. Antiviral, antitumor, antibacterial, et cetera. Locals make tea out of it. Still, this one blows it away. Far more potent. Take a look.” He nudges me in front of the ’scope.

  Peering down, I see a half dozen other patterns, similar to the desert dunes and the bubbles. One looks like a fence, all Xs and diamonds. Another ripples like the Hudson on a windy day.

  “The antivirals, along with all the other necessary chemical compounds, are there. We can cure the Blight with this,” Callum tells me, tapping the table. When I look up he adds, “Along with your blood, that is.”

  I laugh, nervous. “Again?” I say, gesturing to myself. “Remember, Callum, limited quantities only.”

  He chuckles and walks over to me, syringe in hand. Motions for me to roll up my sleeve. “Don’t worry, I won’t need much.”

  I step back—I don’t believe him for a minute. We’re talking enough for at least eight hundred people. “Why? I thought with the mushrooms we’d have enough antivirals. . . .”

  “We do. But, like I said before, your blood does something to jump-start the recipient’s immune system. With it, we only need to administer one dose. Follow-up doses would be necessary otherwise, and we just don’t have enough time—or water—to do that.”

  I nod. Without another thought—we’ve come too far to get tripped up over a little blood donation—I extend my arm, exposing my inner elbow. The tip of the needle pierces flesh. I watch my blood go away. And away. And away . . .