The Ward

by Frankel, Jordana

  Of course, since Ter was the first to give me the benefit of the doubt, it should come as no surprise that Kent is the first to laugh.

  “Insane,” he scoffs. It breaks their thoughts. Turning to me: “How do you even know this?” He looks at Jones, then Ter. They hear his doubt and now they’re raising their brows, suddenly on the fence. “You guys believe her?”

  But no one knows how to answer, because no one else has heard the West Isle news. No one ever hears West Isle news. And I bet it goes both ways. Sure they can pick up the signal, but what news of ours would they care enough to listen to?

  “Look,” I tell everyone, taking off my cuffcomm. I flip it open and, sliding my finger across the screen, bring up the West Isle newspaper article Callum showed me. Then I project the headline onto the wall: “THE WARD: A CASE FOR DEMOCIDE.”

  I let them read the first few sentences of the column, and inhale, preparing to tell them the rest of the truth: how I know.

  I’d rather not, of course, but if they were to find out after the plan was already in motion, it could upset everything.

  “And I know about this because . . .” Brack, here goes. I can’t believe I’m telling them. I hold my breath as I look at Ter. The others already hate me, but Ter? This is going to cut him up the worst. “Because I used to work for the DI. Freshwater scouting, that’s all—”

  Someone cuts me off, but it’s not Kent.

  “You’ve been working for the Blues?” Ter asks, and I read hurt on his face in a hundred ways. He feels betrayed.

  “I’m sorry—” I start to say, but Terrence raises his hand to stop me.

  “I don’t want to hear it. Not now.” He refuses to look at me. “Later.”

  I can’t lose Ter. . . . My chest starts to shake like I’ve got wings in there, beating away at the air, pushing me to run to him. They want me to make it better, and that’s all I want to do.

  But he’s right. Not now.

  Kent scoffs. “You expect that we’ll believe you after you tell us that?”

  “Yeah, I do. ’Cause I just love pissing off the people I work for, for no reason at all. Brilliant plan of mine,” I spit back at him, probably harsher than I should, but I’m shaken by the thought of losing Ter too. After realizing who Derek really is, and now if I fail Aven . . . ?

  I can actually feel the threads of myself spinning out into nothing.

  The Vault is silent.

  When Jones opens his mouth, we look at him, stunned. Kent most of all.

  His sandy hair flops in his face, and he pushes it out of the way. Softly, he says, “Why’d you bring us here?”

  He’s not asking meanly, but with curiosity.

  Keep it together. I inhale, and grip on to the new air with my lungs. Focus.

  Somehow, this next piece is harder to say, even though I’ve seen the serum in action. I lift my eyes, finally, to meet theirs head-on. I want them to know the truth of what I’m saying.

  “A cure does exist.”

  I leave out the fountain-of-youth bit. Something tells me it makes the story a little less believable. And now that I’ve dropped the conversational (opposite) equivalent of the atom bomb, I wait.

  Jones makes no movement—he’s thoughtful. Kent laughs through a breathy snort, and Terrence waves his hands.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” He steps a few feet outside of our semicircle. Paces, crosses his arms, but finds my eyes again once he comes to a standstill. “You’re serious.”

  “I am.”

  “Can you prove it?” Jones asks.

  If it were ready, sure.

  “Yes,” I answer, firm.

  “Really.” Kent watches me carefully, like everything depends on my next words. “You can prove it?”

  “Yes,” I tell him again. “But first we come up with a strategy.”

  He nods once. “Then my father will get some, right?” he asks, about to reach out for an armshake. He holds back, though, and I can see that his answer is dependent on this.

  I grip his forearm, just below the elbow, wrapping my hand tightly around it.

  “Your dad will get it,” I say, trying to keep the giddy out of my voice. I’m bubbling over twofold—this right here is our first armshake. Ever.

  Plus, he’s the first domino. Kent’s the one that sends the rest of them over.

  And right before my own two eyes, I watch the balance tip in my favor.

  42

  8:00 P.M., SUNDAY

  “Why couldn’t we just drop it into each roof’s rainwater drainage pipes?” Ter offers. “Seems easy enough.”

  Ter would make that suggestion. The Trump Card filters their rainwater before it gets rationed. “Most of the sickhouses are older buildings, Ter,” I tell him, trying not to let on that by “older” buildings, I really mean “poorer.” “It’s the same filtration system as th ’Racks. We do it ourselves, with sand. Put the medicine through the system and you’ll end up with decent drinking water, but not exactly a cure.”

  He goes quiet. “Didn’t realize that,” he mumbles.

  “That, and people need to think it’s the cure, or who knows if they’ll take it. They might not drink it beforehand, and that’s the only way it’ll protect against the poison.”

  Nodding, everyone is quiet for a moment.

  “We could route it like a roofrace,” Jones says as he looks down at a map of the Ward projected onto the floor. “Except . . . instead, we’d all start—and end—on a different building. How many sickhouses are there?” He pauses, then realizes something. “Do we even know how many people are sick?”

  “Just around eight hundred, I think,” I answer quickly. DI stats come in handy so rarely, and information like that is kept under wraps. Especially with a population of only a few thousand. “As for sickhouses—twenty, each with about fifty beds.”

  That I know from my time spent searching for Aven.

  “Some beds must be empty, then,” Jones says. We all go silent. Statute One, ruthless and irrational as it is, served its function: it reduced the sick population.

  “So that makes . . .” Ter does the math in his head. “Around forty patients in each sickhouse.”

  Jones nods. “Okay. What if we have your doctor friend,” he says, nodding to me, “put the cure in packages? We could make rooftop drop-offs at each sickhouse. Then we’d just have to divvy those up between the four of us and make up routes according to distance and what our individual mobiles can do.”

  Kent, Ter, and I all exchange blown-away looks, because I don’t think any of us thought Jones had that in him. Just as I’m about to chime in, remind everyone that my Rimbo might still be out of commission, we hear a noise coming from the outside.

  It’s got to be Benny. . . .

  I jump up and run to the window, peeking around the corner. I didn’t realize it, the thought of seeing him—it’s like new air fills up my lungs. As though it’s been years, not hours. He’d probably scowl if I told him this because he’s not one for cheese, but with him on my side . . . there ain’t nothing that feels impossible.

  When I see his white, wiry head of hair bob past, I rush out the archway and half tackle him. And when he sees me, his eyes go wide, then they narrow. He squints. Drops his bag. Covers his mouth, and then laughs until he cries, arms open.

  For someone who doesn’t hug, when Benny gets ahold of me, he keeps a pretty tight grip. But then again, so do I. “You’re going to be the death of me, Renata,” he says into my curls.

  I laugh but shake my head. “Sure hope not,” I answer.

  “I’d have it no other way.”

  At that—I can’t help it—I’m crying, and it’s not from sadness.

  Benny drapes his arm over me and we walk down the narrows, back to the Vault. But just as we’re about to step inside, he slows down. Stops. “Renata,” he says, and I turn to face him.

  “What is it?”

  I don’t like his tone. It’s too grave, considering that he just learned I’m alive.

&nbs
p; “It’s about your mobile. I wasn’t able to uncover anything, but I returned to the first roof to see if anyone had video footage of the race with their comm. Turns out someone did. And you’re not going to like what I saw.”

  “What did you see . . . ?” I ask, tripping over the words as they leave my tongue. I don’t know what I would do with more bad news. . . . I can only handle so much.

  “The footage showed Derek. Underneath your Rimbo. Right near the Plan B wiring. He’s the one who tampered with the mobile, not Kent.”

  My arms drop. My breathing stops. My own heart knifes me in the gut.

  He tried to kill me?

  It doesn’t make sense—Derek kissed me. Something is missing, some piece of information. “Are you sure?” I whisper.

  Benny nods, but he doesn’t avoid my eyes. That’s how I know how sure he is.

  When we walk back into the sanctuary, we’re quiet. Solemn.

  I don’t believe it. But I have to. Benny wouldn’t lie. There’s something I don’t know. I’m praying that I’m right about that. And until I know what that something is, if there is a something at all, I have to keep myself sane. Focus on the moment at hand.

  The other racers tip their chins to him, even Kent. Because Benny’s a champ no matter how you slice it, and he gets respect even if he’s my mech.

  We bring him up to speed, and when he hears the part about my being a mole, he says, “Renata. Did you honestly expect me to not notice you installing that filter before each race? I knew what it did, and had my suspicions about who it was for. But the search for freshwater has always been an honorable one.”

  While grumbling to myself, pretty sure I’ve gone red in the face, I think I see Ter look at me. Reconsider how much he hates me . . . Maybe.

  Jones tells him about the plan so far, and Benny nods, agreeing that it’s a good one—until we get to the part where I don’t have a mobile. Callum even offered to let me take his before I left; I had to tell him what happened to it at that point, though I’d been avoiding it. He took the news pretty well, though he did say telling his mom was going to be the worst part. Then he actually said that he was “just glad I was safe.” It was pretty big of him.

  “Do you think you can have it ready?” I ask Benny. He could do it. With anyone else that kind of request would be impossible.

  Benny touches his chin, scratching his whiskers. “I think so.”

  Then, “Yes. Yes, I believe so,” he says, surer.

  For the next hour, the five of us grapple over maps, divvying up routes.

  “I call this building,” Kent says, pointing his finger over Quad Two, and we all look at one another like he’s nuts. When he adds, “My dad’s sickhouse,” we understand, and drop our heads, quiet.

  Still, we can’t let Kent take his dad’s building. He drives a Honda. Souped-up, yes. But it’s got no speed over the water, and we tell him so. His face flushes. Says he wants Jones to do it for him—but that doesn’t work either. The two of them drive basically the same mobile.

  “Terrence. You promise you’ll get it to him?” Kent insists when we decide Ter’s the only one who can do the job. Since he’ll be taking the Cloud—and the Cloud can cross Central Bay—he’s getting all the northern quads. Including Kent’s dad. The mobile’s not as fast as ours, but she’s good with distance, and sickhouses up north are few and far between. Most are in Midtown, in Quads Five and Six.

  “Yeah, man,” Ter says, sincere. “I got it covered.”

  If only that were the last thing Kent goes head-to-head on, though.

  We argue over every detail:

  Whose mobile is actually faster.

  How to drop off the packages: out the floor latch, or by slowing down and tossing them out the moonroof.

  If we should all start at once, or stagger the start times.

  We bang our heads together over each possible outcome, and when that’s done, we get to the real hard stuff: calculating headings between roof jumps. But with Benny and Ter here, they’re able to breeze through the math, so soon it looks like the worst is over.

  “Wait,” Ter says, and he points to a building in Quad Six. “We’re forgetting one thing.”

  I see where he’s looking and shake my head. “It hasn’t been forgotten.” Standing in front of the map, I black out that spot with my shadow. “Ward Hope is mine.”

  The guys give me the same look they had for Kent.

  “But it isn’t on your route,” Benny says, confused, and he passes his finger in the air over the zigzagging line I’ve been assigned.

  I was hoping no one would mention the hospital until after I’d made the delivery, but no such luck. As I glance at Kent, something in my gut warns me to tread lightly. He’s not going to like this.

  “And it isn’t going to be. The Ward Hope drop-off has to be done first, anyway. It’s not like we can just dump a package on the hospital roof and expect that it will make it to the patients. Drugs need to be administered. So Callum had the idea to add the serum to their water supply. Kind of like what you suggested at first, Ter,” I say, nodding at him. “But it has to be added after the water is filtered, and before it’s rationed. Callum’s showed me maps of where it needs to go. Then, during nightly rations and when nurses change IV bags, everyone will get it.”

  Quickly, Kent looks up. Soft all of a sudden. “I’d like some too.”

  Here it is. This is what my gut was warning me about. Knowing he’s not going to like why I’ve got to say no makes my blood pump a little bit faster—everything is so fragile. We can’t do this without him.

  “First off,” I say evenly, “it isn’t made yet. Callum’s working on that as we speak. Second, it isn’t going to be dosed per person. Callum knows exactly how many people there are in the HBNC wing, and he’s making one whole batch that he’ll give to me. The cure will get dosed properly in the rationing pipes. If you take out even a tablespoon, that’ll be one less drop for everyone else. And then the meds may not work.” I look at Terrence, hoping for some backup, but he can’t help with this.

  Kent jerks back, then strides up to me. Gets in my face. “This is brack and you know it.” The muscles in his neck ripple out, clenched tight.

  “It’s n-not,” I stammer, and look around, but no one has a life raft to throw me. “I’m sorry.”

  The tension in the Vault puts everyone quiet.

  Jones and Ter stand, ready to leave, but I don’t think anyone wants to end on that note. And no one wants to go up against Kent either, so I’m on my own.

  I wish I could tell him different. We’d made progress, armshake and all. Why is it that everything I decide ripples out in ways I’d never imagined? Even the good choices, if those exist, have a way of hurting someone. Sorrier than he’d believe, I watch him pass through the archway made of femurs.

  His whole body’s hardened like a boulder—for a moment I worry that he won’t help us anymore. Quickly, so he can hear, I say to the others, “Callum will show you guys how the cure works once you guys get there. I’ll comm you the address.” I tap my wrist before everyone steps out into the night.

  The city is quieter than before, the revelry’s died some, but not that much. It seems everyone’s got their windows open tonight, hollering between apartments or sitting in fire escapes. It’s a night unlike any other.

  I follow the guys out onto the narrows, expecting Ter to be waiting for me so maybe we could talk. But he hasn’t—I’m alone.

  I’m not alone.

  Waiting, back up against a building, is Kent. He’s holding in his rage, I can see that clearly. Whether or not he lets it loose all depends on my answer—and I still can’t tell him what he wants to hear.

  “One more time, I’ll ask you,” he growls. I look at him and step away. Didn’t know his black eyes could get any blacker, but that’s what they do. The look he gives me could cause earthquakes. Put a 9.0 on the Richter.

  “I—I can’t,” I stammer, my back pressed against brick.

  Kent th
rows his fist into the building—I jump to the side. He’s an animal, roaring away his anger, but under it, I can hear something else: he’s sad. Plain and simple. He kicks the narrows, storms away, and I slide onto the planked sidewalk, feeling guilty even after all that.

  When I can’t handle the sound of my heart in my ears any longer, I force my feet to lift me.

  They hammer against the wooden sidewalk.

  They don’t wait to see if more guilt catches up.

  43

  8:50 P.M., SUNDAY

  No one will recognize me.

  I bring the scissors to the final, frizzed-out black corkscrew that’s left on my head. The last man standing. The kinky lock falls to the floor, a fuzzy caterpillar, and joins the rest of the wiry mess that’s piled up there.

  The last thing I do is nick off the fuzzy patches that stand taller than their neighbors, brushing against my fingers when they shouldn’t. Then—

  I’m done. Finished.

  I exhale. I drop the scissors in the sink and rub my scalp clean. Stowaway strands float off in shaggy, black clouds. And then, between my feet . . . I see the bathroom floor.

  And I choke.

  It’s a crime scene. Except, instead of blood, my curls. Clinging for dear life to every possible surface—the toilet seat, the towels, the shower curtain. My hair is the victim. I’m the victim. All of that is me. Little pieces of myself, dead on the floor.

  I want them back. I know I’ve trash-talked those fuzz balls before, but I was wrong. You don’t get more than one Trademark Characteristic, and mine’s gone.

  I pull my eyes away, tell myself that hair grows. Remind myself why I did it, who I’m doing it for. A lifetime supply of hair-dyeing sessions and eye rolls, and getting to hear Aven say “good skill” before every race.

  But it still hurts.

  Then I look up.

  And if I thought the crime scene was down there, I was deeply mistaken.

  Gripping the porcelain sink, I gasp. My heart falls down a dozen flights of stairs.