by Carrie Ryan
His eyes are so earnest, so full of pain, that I want to believe him. I can see in his gaze that he needs me to believe him. “But you were there when they let that boy die. How could you even watch that? How could you be a part of it? How can you stand to be around them?”
He opens his mouth and then shuts it again, pressing his lips together into a thin line. “They’re not monsters, Gabry. Everything in this world isn’t black-and-white. They have their reasons for what they do, for what they believe, the same way we do.” He shrugs. “My sister means everything to me. I’ll do anything it takes to find her.”
I shake my head, not wanting to hear more. “I don’t know,” I tell him. “I don’t know what to think.” My heart aches for him and his loss but I can’t reconcile it all in my head, can’t make sense of it.
I walk away from him, out of the shadow of the arch and down the bowl of the amphitheater toward Catcher. He still stands staring at the Mudo. I don’t get too close, a dread of their moans too deeply ingrained in me.
He turns to face me and I realize how terrifying it is, seeing him there so close to those monsters.
“I want to go back, Gabry,” he says. “I want it all to be normal again.”
Behind him the Mudo sense me, their arms reaching past Catcher for me. My breath catches as I try to swallow the unease. I close my eyes against them, against him. More than anything in the world I wish I could give this to him: normalcy. But too much has changed. Because of me we can’t go back.
“I can’t go back to Vista,” I tell him. “I’ve done something. I’m in trouble. And you can’t either. They know you were there that night. You’ll get sent away with the others.”
“I’m not leaving Cira,” he says. His voice thrums around me and then I feel his hands grabbing mine. I open my eyes. His face is so close that I can’t help but flash back to the night we first kissed. “And I’m not leaving you either,” he adds, his voice softer.
I exhale slowly, relief mixing with fear and guilt.
“We’ll go get Cira and we’ll run away,” he says urgently. “The three of us, we’ll go somewhere to disappear.”
“They’ll follow you,” Elias says and I jerk my head around. He’s walking past us toward the back of the stage where bags are stacked in the corner. “If you take something or someone from the Recruiters they’ll do anything to get it back. And you,” he says, pointing at Catcher. “If they find out you’re immune they’ll never let you go. You’re too valuable to them.”
My mind races, trying to think up options, and then I almost jump when it comes to me. “My mother’s boat,” I say, the chance of joy beginning to tingle through me. “Elias took it. Do you still have it?” I ask him. When he nods I continue. “We could take her boat. We can try and find somewhere else. We haven’t heard reports of pirates in years. We could make it and the Recruiters couldn’t follow us.”
“But what about your mother?” Catcher asks. “Will she let you go?”
I glance away from him, bring my fingers to my mouth and bite at the nail on my thumb. I want to tell him that she’s already let me go but the words won’t come. “She’ll be okay,” I finally say.
Elias raises his eyebrows at me as if he expects me to say more but I don’t.
“Now we just have to figure out how to get Cira,” Catcher says.
Elias still looks at me, making me feel uncomfortable. “That’s the easy part,” he says.
My hands shake as Elias and I pull the boat up the beach toward the lighthouse. We left Catcher back in the ruins—at dusk he’ll bring the Souler Mudo to the Barrier and push them over. They’ll spread through Vista, their moans signaling a breach—enough of a distraction that Elias and I will be able to break into the Council House and rescue Cira.
It’s just turning high tide but the beach is still clear. Elias sits in the shade of the lighthouse, watching to make sure no Mudo are washed ashore, and I head inside. I stand in the emptiness and quiet for a while, remembering the stories my mother used to tell me when I was growing up.
I can’t stop imagining her coming back here and wondering where I’ve gone. I think about leaving her a note so that she won’t worry but dismiss the thought—what if someone else found it? I climb the steps to her room, the book of Shakespeare’s sonnets still lying open on her bed. I flip through it before shoving it into a small pack along with an extra shirt and skirt. I dig around in the closet until I find some of Roger’s old clothes, which smell musty and feel well worn.
On my way out the door I grab another bag for Elias and toss in food and a few canteens. As I pack the boat with extra supplies Elias changes. He looks different now that he no longer wears the white tunic. He looks almost normal.
I realize that I’m staring at him and I go back to sifting sand through my fingers. He joins me and we sit side by side, waiting for the sun to sink into the water and for Vista to erupt with the breach. My heart thuds with anticipation as my mind races. I think of all the ways this can go wrong; it seems impossible that our plan will work.
But what other choice do we have? Except that there’s one variable that doesn’t make sense to me.
“Why are you still here?” I ask Elias, digging my toes into the cooler layers of sand.
Out of the corner of my eye I watch a muscle along his jaw twitch.
“I said I’d help and I am,” he says, not looking over at me. He pushes himself to his feet and walks closer to the water. The horizon is a mix of orange and red and purple. “Besides, the other Soulers are still in your quarantine. So long as they’re being held I’m not finding my sister.”
I look at his back, Roger’s old shirt a little big on Elias’s frame. “What’s her name?” I ask, wanting to understand him.
He’s quiet for a while and I stand, brushing the sand from my knees and walk toward him. There’s something that seems so strong, so safe and familiar except that I don’t know anything about him.
Together we stare at where the sun is about to collide with the earth. I hold my breath, whether waiting for him to answer me or for the fire to spread on the horizon, I don’t know.
“Annah,” he says softly. “Her name is Annah.” He looks at me and I look at him and I realize that I’m still holding my breath.
“What’s she like?” I ask him. His face twists just a little but he never stops looking at me.
“She’s strong,” he says. “Beautiful and sweet.” I see the memories swimming behind his eyes. It feels as though I’m intruding too far in his life and I’ve already turned away when he says, so softly, “She’s a lot like you.”
I stop. I look over my shoulder at him, wondering if I heard him right. Wishing that I could believe him.
“That’s not what I’m like at all,” I tell him, the words painful to admit. “I’d love more than anything to be strong. But I know I’m not. I’m weak and afraid and useless.” I swallow and he steps closer to me. I think about what Daniel looked like after I’d stabbed him. I think about the Souler woman who was killed at the gate to Vista. I think about Catcher the night he was infected.
I’m the cause of all of it. I’m the one who’s a monster. “Everything I do, I just mess things up.”
“You crossed the Barrier on your own to help Catcher,” he says, and I shake my head.
“I had to do that. The other ones who were caught that night were going to turn me in otherwise,” I say, needing him to stop believing that I’m something I’m not.
“You went back for him,” he says. “Why won’t you believe the best of yourself?”
“Because that’s not who I am,” I tell him adamantly. My heart trips for a moment as I wonder if I could ever believe him. If I could see myself through his eyes. If someone other than Catcher could make me feel worth something. But instead I shake my head.
“Then tell me who you are.” He eases closer. I can feel the edges of him in the space between us.
I can’t think with him so close. With his words encircling u
s, pulling us tighter together. I think about opening my mouth and pouring everything out—how scared I am, how terrifying it is to have lost my mother and wonder if she’s still okay. To have had everything in my life shift so fast that I still reel from it every morning and every night.
And how I’m worried that I’ll never really know who I am and what I want. That I’ll always be the girl messing everything up. The awkward one on the fringes wanting something more but too afraid to do anything about it.
“I don’t know who I am anymore,” I whisper.
He erases the distance between us until my head buzzes. “Yes you do,” he says, his voice hovering over me and around me as if we can occupy one space together. I close my eyes and wait for him.
My skin tingles with want but he doesn’t kiss me. Not the way Catcher did. He leans against me until our lips barely press together, our mouths open, every part of us twining through our breaths.
I want to press harder. I want him to pull me tighter. But he doesn’t. We just stand there barely touching.
And then the bells from town begin to clang. My eyes go wide and I stumble backward. I clasp a hand over my mouth as memories of Catcher slam into me: his smell, the sound of his voice, the feel of his skin under mine. I’d forgotten all of it—I’d let Elias erase it all.
Shame and anger roar in my head. And as if he can see it all tumbling through me, as if he can smell my regret, his face hardens. He turns and strides back up the beach. “I’m sorry,” I call after him, but he doesn’t respond and I chase him and try to grab him but he pushes off my touch.
“Where’s the Council House?” he asks, his voice cold and sharp.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him again but he shrugs it off.
“We don’t have time to worry about something that doesn’t matter,” he says. “They’ll realize the Mudo can’t infect, and we need to get your friend before that.” He picks up the pack I’d brought out for him and slings it over his shoulders.
My cheeks flame with embarrassment and I raise a finger and point up the path toward town. He takes off at a jog and I follow, the small bag carrying clothes, food and my mother’s book slapping against my back. I feel stupid. But what hurts most of all is that his almost-kiss did matter to me, and it clearly didn’t matter to him.
Vista is screams and moans and the glint of weapons. People pour from the center square through the streets, panicked and running for the safety of home. We’re lost in the cacophony of it all, everyone else so wrapped up in their own terror that no one bothers Elias and me as we sprint to the Council House.
I push everything else from my head and focus on the moment and the task at hand. No one guards the doors; everyone’s been called by the ringing bell to defend the town. “We don’t have much time,” Elias says. “It won’t take them long to figure out it’s not a true breach.”
I shove my way inside and down the stairs where Cira and the others are held with the Soulers. It’s a disconcerting sight, the Soulers in their white tunics on one side and the new Recruiters in their black uniforms on the other. “What’s going on?” one of them shouts. “Get us out,” screams another one. The air is thick with fear.
Elias kneels in front of the barred door and pokes at the lock with the tip of his knife. I search through the thin faces for Cira. She sits limply against the back wall, barely bothering to look up at the commotion.
“Cira.” I slip my hand through the bars, reaching for her. Her head rolls on her neck, her hands slack in her lap. “Cira,” I say again.
She looks up at me, her eyes hollow and unfocused. She raises a hand slackly as if to wave at me and that’s when I see the blood trailing down her wrist and dripping from her fingers.
Cira!” I scream, but it’s as if she sees right through me, as if I’m not there. “Someone help her!” I yell to the others crowded against the bars but no one does anything. No one moves, they just hover around Elias as he works on the lock. I try to push at them, I try to grab them and make them see Cira on the floor in the corner but they pull away from me.
These are her friends, the people whose fate she shared. She’s spent the last days with them, has lived with them here in this tiny cage. And yet no one seems to care. No one bothers to help.
The lock clicks and the heavy gate swings open with a groan. Everyone inside begins to spill against the opening and I shove through them, fighting the current of bodies to get inside. I run to Cira, sliding to a stop beside her.
I grab her cheeks, force her to look at me. Her lips waver a bit before turning into a smile, trembling around the edges. “Gabry,” she says, her voice soft, weak.
“Cira.” I choke on her name. I pull at her clothes, yanking back the sleeves of her black Recruiter jacket. The material is damp, her blood seeping onto my skin, staining it a deep red once again. The cuts on her forearms are jagged and wide and raw. They’ve begun to clot, the blood thick, but when I clamp my hand over them it begins to well again.
I don’t know what to do. “Help me!” I call out. I look over my shoulder at the now-empty cage, at Elias talking to one of the Soulers. “Elias, help!”
He looks up and in an instant takes in the situation. He rushes over, dropping his pack and kneeling on the other side of Cira. “Keep pressure on them,” he says as he tugs an old skirt from my bag and tears it into strips. He pulls Cira’s jacket from her. She tries to help but her movements are slow, uncoordinated.
“’S okay, Gabry,” she murmurs, her lips barely moving. “It’ll be me and Catcher now. You go.”
I squeeze her wrists tighter in my fingers and she doesn’t wince.
“No,” I tell her. I gulp back tears and terror. “No, Catcher’s here. He’s okay, I was wrong.”
Her eyes open wide before drooping shut. “But you said …” Her breathing’s shallow.
“Hold her arms above her head,” Elias says. “Keep the pressure on.”
“Where’s Catcher?” Cira asks. I can see her struggling to understand, fighting the energy leaking from her body.
“He’s here,” I tell her but her eyes slip shut and I’m not sure she heard.
A shadow falls across me and I look up. Blane stands in the opening to the cell, hesitating before following the others out. It reminds me of the night in the amusement park, the moment I chose to leave them all and run. She looks afraid; she looks ashamed. As if she’s waiting for my permission to abandon her friend. “How did you let this happen?” I ask her.
She looks at me a long moment, her eyes bright and her mouth opening and closing on a hundred excuses. “I couldn’t stop her,” she finally says. “I tried.” Her voice is thin and hitches with regret. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. She stands in front of me, as if I could tell her anything to make it okay. She reaches out her fingers and brushes them against my own and then she turns and runs up the stairs.
I look across Cira at Elias. I want him to say that she’ll be okay. That she’s going to be fine. But I can tell in the way he glances at the door that he’s worried. That he’s more than worried.
“What do we do?” I ask. I think about the little sailboat, about dragging her through town.
“We should leave her,” he says, his voice barely a whisper. “She needs rest, she needs someone who knows what they’re doing. She shouldn’t be moved.”
I look at her. At her pale cheeks and white lips. All the blood. He’s right. I know he’s right. Any chance we would have of escaping is at risk with her. She’ll slow us down.
I press my forehead against hers. “Cira,” I whisper. I can hear the tears in my voice. I want to ask her why but I already know. Inevitable, she would tell me.
For the space between heartbeats it feels as though it’s all my fault. If I hadn’t run that night but stayed with her. If I’d allowed myself to be caught, to be caged with her and sent to the Recruiters. I could have been there with her. I could have given her someone to lean on. Someone to hold on to.
I could have stopped her. We
could have made it together.
“I’m not leaving her,” I say.
I lean back and look at Elias. He searches my face with his eyes but he doesn’t question me. He just nods and takes her arms and wraps them tight with the strips of cloth.
“There’s not a lot of time left,” he says. “They’ll realize the breach is by the Souler Mudo—that they pose no threat but terror.” He looks across the room to the dark stairway where everyone else ran. And I realize that he could have run with them. That he should be with them, out looking for his sister.
“You can go,” I tell him. “She’s not your responsibility.” The words are harder to say than I thought they would be and I realize that I’ve grown to trust him. “Neither am I,” I add.
He turns to look at me, his body still, and he squints. “I’m going with you, Gabry.”
I stare at him too long. I should tell him to leave. I should tell him that I have nothing to give him and that he’s better off with the Soulers looking for his sister. But before I can say any of that he slings his pack onto his back and puts his arm under Cira’s shoulder, helping her to her feet. My throat feels raw and tight when I see him so tender and gentle.
He turns toward the stairs and I slip under Cira’s other arm. “Thank you,” I tell him, though those words will never be enough to express my gratitude. He grunts under Cira’s weight as she slumps against him trying to walk.
Together we get her out of the Council House and into the confused streets beyond. The buildings around us are shuttered and reinforced, most families tucked inside. And yet people, mostly boys and men, still stream through the streets shouting and waving weapons. They race to the Barrier to help defend the town.
A few people run to us, offer to help, but Elias just murmurs “Infected,” and they eye the blood-soaked bandages before stumbling away and leaving us alone. As we near the edge of the buildings and start on the path leading to the beach a figure bursts out of the darkness.
I almost drop Cira in my fright and before I can even reach for my weapon Elias has his knife brandished in his free hand.
