by Sarah Fine
He smiles, and the candlelight glints in his pale jade eyes. I see so many things there. Fear. Resignation. Sadness. And mischief. “Stay warm.”
He pulls my face to his, one of those sudden movements I don’t expect. But his kiss is only a touch of his lips to mine, a test, a request. I give him my answer when I fall into him, and he is ready and catches me. His hands are around my waist and his mouth is soft and I don’t know what I’m doing but he doesn’t seem to mind. He is playful and gentle, and in each of his kisses there is a whispered secret meant only for me. He tells me I am the one good thing he has left, that he does not regret any of the moments we have been together, that if things were different . . . if things were different . . . we would be in another dark room, and there would be a slow-burning fire, and he would be teaching me things I desperately want to learn from him. He doesn’t have to say a word; he weaves me wishes with his fingers and lips, with his sighs, with the way he finally decides he needs more and pulls me hard against him.
The candle burns low, and sometime later it sputters and dies. Now it is Melik and me in the dark and cold, with nothing but ourselves to keep each other warm. He coils his arms around me and sits with me curled between his knees, his legs arched up like a fortress around me. “I wanted to take you with me,” he whispers into my hair. “When you came to warn me, when I told everyone to run, I wanted you to run with me.”
“Why didn’t you ask?”
“Because you deserve better than anything I could have offered you.”
I would have gone. If he had asked me, I would have said yes. But it doesn’t matter now, because neither of us is going anywhere. I nestle my head against the skin of his throat and lift my chin so I can kiss his neck. I am so tired right now, and the chill has crept into my bones and made them ache. But I will not fall asleep; no, I will sit here with this boy who does not know his place, and I will be with him until our time runs out.
“You’re wrong” is all I say, so quietly that I’m not sure he hears me. I burrow into the fading warmth of his arms, and he wraps himself around me, whispering all his secrets against my hair and skin in a language I no longer need to translate.
And that is where we are when the cafeteria-side door to the chamber slams open and we are blinded by lantern light.
When the hands reach for me and pull me up, I sigh with relief because of the warmth on my skin. But my sluggish brain awakens quickly, and I look around to see that we are not surrounded by the regional police, or the local police.
We are surrounded by a mob.
Behind me, Melik is struggling. He grunts as someone punches him. Someone else has me by the arms, and I twist this way and that until I see it is Iyzu. They drag us through the kitchens and into the dining area of the cafeteria where all the men have gathered. Up ahead, Ebian is standing near the entrance, looking on with a blank expression. He frowns when he sees me and gestures to someone on my other side. My dressing gown is shoved into my hands a moment later, and I quickly put it on so that I am not on full display. My eyes search the crowd, which has grown huge during the night. The workers of the day shift are here and have obviously just heard of what has happened. There is hatred in their eyes as they see Melik hauled into their midst, pale and bloodied.
I call to Ebian, for he is the one person who could possibly stop this. “He was framed,” I yell, but I am not able to say any more because Iyzu’s hand clamps down hard over my mouth.
“We just received word that the regional police will not be arriving for at least a week,” Iyzu tells me. “There are food riots in Kanong they must suppress. So we’re having our own trial, right now.”
Someone has told the regional police that a Noor is to blame, and they will offer him no rights, no protection.
Iyzu wrenches me forward, through the mob packed shoulder to shoulder in this cafeteria. He stops in front of Ebian, awaiting orders. Ebian nods over at Melik. It is taking four men to hold him down—he knows he is fighting for his life.
“Take him to the killing floor,” says Ebian, and a shout goes up from the mob. This is exactly what they were hoping for.
At least a hundred grasping, groping, yelling men carry Melik and me through the open area by Bo’s altar and onto the killing floor, where Mugo’s blood still decorates the concrete. All is chaos and shouting, and I can’t reach Melik because I can’t move. I can’t breathe. I still struggle, though, until one of the men jabs me with a cattle prod and I lose control of my body as liquid pain flows through my veins.
A rope is thrown up into the air and looped over the metal braces that hold the hook system to the ceiling. It falls back into the crowd, and one man seizes it and begins to coil and knot it.
He’s making a noose.
The scream comes from me, rising high over the shouting. I claw and kick until someone shocks me again and I arch back and become nothing but agony. Iyzu holds me tight as the men clear a space around the noose, which hangs in front of the conveyor belt. Two of them climb onto the belt and pull the rope back over it. Melik is jerked forward and dragged up to stand between the two men.
He’s not struggling anymore.
He sees that it is pointless.
The men wrench the noose over his head while he searches the crowd until he finds me. His face crumples when he sees the shape I’m in, so I stop fighting Iyzu and stand as straight as I can.
Ebian says something to Melik, who shakes his head. He squares his shoulders and looks back at me again. For a moment everything is quiet, because I think everyone expects Melik to beg for his life or make some final, defiant statement of his innocence.
He does none of that.
With his gaze fixed on mine, he places his hand over his heart and then turns his palm to me.
The men grab his arms and yank them behind his back. As they tie his hands together, Melik stares at me, and I stare at him, silently promising that I will be with him until the very end.
When I hear the whirring noise, at first I believe someone has turned on the factory machines. So do the others. They look around, puzzled, toward the circuit box at the edge of the floor. But none of the machines are moving.
That’s when I see Bo.
He is standing on the second-level catwalk, though how he got up there, I have no idea. He is looking right at me, and I read something in his face that I do not expect to see.
Guilt.
“I’m sorry,” he mouths, and glances down at the red letters on the killing floor, then at the bloody hooks suspended above them. I gape at him, absorbing the truth of his confession.
Iyzu and Lati didn’t kill Mugo.
They didn’t frame Melik.
Bo did. He kept his promise; he didn’t hurt Melik. He set it up so others would do it for him. Just another of his traps.
Rage roars through me, destroying all my fear. “Did you come to watch him die?” I shout above the crowd, but my words are nothing compared with the chanting from the men, who all want to see Melik swing.
Bo seems to hear me, though. His lips become a tight white line, and he shakes his head. He presses a button on the forearm of his machine self, and the buzz of electricity streaks along his hand and flashes between his fingers in a sudden, popping spark.
Then two things happen at the exact same time.
Someone kicks Melik forward, so that he falls off the conveyor belt, his legs jerking three feet above the ground.
And the Ghost of Gochan One brings his spider army to life.
THE CREATURES EMERGE from the machines with a clicking, clattering sound that is loud enough to draw people’s attention away from Melik, who is dying right in front of them. It becomes so quiet that all I hear is the sound of spider feet and Melik’s legs flapping against the side of the conveyor belt. Iyzu breaks the silence first, screaming like a girl when he sees the melon-size spider crawl out from under the sl
urry machine, followed by three others, their fangs slashing. And then they are everywhere, swarming over the hook system, unfolding from their spots between conveyor belts, along the wall, among the wires . . . the floor is a roiling chaos of panic in no time.
Iyzu releases me so he can run toward the exit, but his way is blocked by at least fifty men who are trying to do the same thing. Now that I’m free, I could run too. Or I could wait for Bo to help me. But I won’t. I am the only person who can save Melik now, and I cannot wait for someone else to come to my aid. I have to be enough. I shove around men as they scramble past, pulling the scalpel from my dressing gown pocket. I lift my skirts, skipping over two plum-size spiders scuttling across the floor, and plant my foot on the gears under the conveyor belt. Clumsily I heave myself onto the belt, yanking my nightgown when it snags on a crank. Then, with a strength I did not have before I watched Melik start to die, I lunge and grab the rope, hacking at it furiously with my tiny blade, until Melik’s weight takes over and it snaps, sending him to the floor, purple faced and choking. Choking. Which means he is breathing. Alive.
But he’s not safe, nor am I. A few machines away blood soaks the floor as two of the largest spiders I’ve yet seen gnaw their way through the spines of two of the slaughterhouse workers, who drop like beef carcasses onto the conveyor belts, their eyes glazed with horror.
Men are clogging the exits, knocking one another down, and when the ones at the back fall, their Achilles tendons cut away by spider fangs, they cling to the clothes of the ones in front as they scream.
“Wen!” Bo shouts, and I reel around to see an enormous spider climbing down the central column, where Melik got caught by the hook. “You’re on its path!”
I jump from the conveyor belt right as the stabbing spider feet step off the column and march my way. I land in a heap right next to Melik and cut through the rope that binds his hands, almost slashing his scrabbling fingers in the process. With a wrenching tug I pull the noose off his neck, wincing at the bloody, bruised, torn mess of his throat.
“What’s happening?” he rasps. The whites of his eyes are bright red with the blood of burst vessels.
“We have to get out. Now. Can you get up?”
“I don’t know,” he mouths, then coughs and coughs and coughs, curling into himself.
Over the broad span of his back I see a spider approaching, the size of a kitten, on delicate legs, fangs raised and ready to kill. I throw myself over Melik’s body and bat at it with the noose. It leaps onto the rope and clamps down with its fangs, and I sling it away. It hits the stone column with a crunch.
Melik gets to his hands and knees, but he’s struggling. His face is a deep red, and it’s like he’s trying to lure thoughts back into his brain with every breath. He raises his head and looks around, because the sounds of slaughter surround us. Men are lying dead or dying just a few feet away, spiders digging into their guts or spines or heads or chests. One man streaks by with a spider clinging to each arm. His shirtsleeves are soaked in blood.
As I put my arm around Melik’s waist and help him to his feet, I glance around me, seeking an exit. But everywhere I look, the spiders are marching across the floor, searching for prey. They keep coming from every conceivable crevice, and I know that Bo has been sneaking in here night after night during the quiet season, setting up these self-winding killers so they could hibernate in the vibrating machines until he chose the perfect moment to wake them and wreak havoc.
Bleeding workers are piled against the metal doors of the main exit. Some of the men beat feebly against them, but their friends, in a frenzied panic, have slammed the doors shut and left the rest of us to die. I start to lead Melik toward the plastic flaps that will take us through the passage to the cafeteria, but stop dead as no less than six spiders traipse down the metal doorframe and form a line in front of the archway, blocking our escape. My shoes are too soft to kick them without having my toes detached, and Melik is in no shape to jump over them, seeing as they are as large as lapdogs.
A small thud and telltale clicking on my back has me twisting frantically. It’s on me, one of the spiders, and any second it will snap its legs around my head and cut through my skull. I hear my own gasps and shrieks as Melik stumbles away and crashes into the conveyor belt, still weak and off-balance. And then . . . my head is lighter, and on the concrete floor is a spider feasting on what’s left of my braid. My hair has saved me, but now most of it is gone. The rest of it flies around my face as I grab for Melik, right as a spider scuttles across the belt toward him.
Everywhere I look, there are killers, large and small, digging their metal teeth into flesh and bone and brain and guts. The killing floor is exactly that today, and Melik and I are about to become part of the carnage.
Bo lands with a crash on the conveyor belt. “Here,” he says, pressing a cattle prod into my hands. His arm is bleeding and torn, and there’s a wound on his thigh as well. His pants are a bloody, shredded mess. He’s been attacked by his own creations. “If you shock them, it triggers the kill switch.”
Melik looks up at Bo, at his half-machine face, at his mechanical wonder of an arm. He doesn’t look scared or awed, perhaps because of the oxygen deprivation of the last few minutes. “You must be the Ghost,” he comments hoarsely.
Bo’s expression turns rigid and he looks away.
“I owe you a thank-you,” Melik says.
Bo gazes at Melik, at his rust-colored hair and torn neck, and at his arm, which rests heavily around my shoulders as he leans on me for support. “Trust me, Noor, you don’t.”
He twists in place and jams his metal index finger into the back of a spider that is less than a second from leaping onto my dressing gown. It vibrates and shakes itself into a pile of metal shavings. “Come on. There’s another way out.”
Melik and I follow him as quickly as we can. I have to keep stopping to shock the spiders that come at us. A few of them manage to leap onto the hem of my nightgown, but the cattle prod is amazingly effective. They flop onto their backs, spindly legs stabbing at the air, and we move on before they fall apart. Bo leads us past the refrigerator chamber, through the grinding room, to a locked door at the very rear of the killing floor. “I know you have the key,” he says to me.
I do. But as much as I don’t want to be here, I’m not sure I want to go with Bo. He is a master of death, and he’s already tried to kill Melik twice. And now Melik is pale and weak, at his most vulnerable. I won’t survive watching him die again.
Over Bo’s shoulder something catches my eye—a spark. No, a flame. The bitter smell of burning rubber is filling the air, which grows hazier each second. The spiders are chewing through the wires, and I can hear the pops and sputters of electrical fires breaking out. Bo glances behind him, and then he looks at Melik, who is leaning against the wall with his eyes closed, focused on drawing breath into his lungs.
“I can keep you safe, Wen,” Bo says. “I can keep you both safe.”
I look into his brown eye, into his human, warm, kinder self, and I nod. He takes the key from me, unlocks the door, flings it wide, and shoves Melik through it. The last thing I see before he yanks me through the doorway and slams the door behind us is the killing floor erupting in flames.
BO LEADS US down four flights of steep metal steps. I anchor my arm around Melik’s waist and descend slowly, focusing on moving my body and not on the horrifying images in my head. My heart beats like a caged bird. All those men. All that pain. All that blood. So far beyond what my father could ever fix. And yes, I am glad Melik was spared. But I can still hear the screams, the pleas for mercy and help. Some of those men had families. Some of them had daughters. Did they deserve this kind of end?
My fingers curl into Melik’s side. Maybe they did, if they were so eager to kill him. If I had had the power, maybe I would have crushed them just as mercilessly, if it meant saving Melik. I’ll never feel good about it, but i
f this is the cost of protecting someone I care about . . . Melik’s steps falter and I hold him tight. “You’re doing well,” I say to him.
He doesn’t answer. He is intent on breathing and putting one foot in front of the other, and that is as it should be. Bo is impatient and agitated. He keeps turning around, watching us while he grinds his teeth. I want to snap at him, to scream at him. We wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t been so vicious, if he hadn’t been determined to destroy the boy next to me.
We also wouldn’t be here if he didn’t have a conscience. If Bo were all machine, if his heart were made of cogs and springs, Melik would be dead now, strangled by the noose, and I would probably be standing on the conveyor belt, awaiting my turn to die.
I have never been so confused, and now is the time to be certain, because I have to get Melik out of this alive. His brother needs him. His people need him.
I need him too.
“Where are we going?” Melik asks me in a raspy whisper.
“My home,” Bo answers.
Melik tenses. “I don’t suppose there are more of those spiders down here.”
“Of course there are,” Bo snaps. “But they sleep until they are awakened, and we won’t do that.”
I bow my head so Bo cannot see my angry expression, and that’s when I notice the bloody footprints he leaves with each of his steps, the streaks of wine red against the walls. He is very hurt, and no doubt in terrible pain. But he is not complaining, and so I won’t either.
We make our clumsy way through a wide corridor with doors every few feet. This place reminds me of a giant catacomb, a huge hive of the dead, and I fight the feeling that the walls are closing in on me, that I will be buried here forever, that I will never see the sky again. Melik’s arm is tightening around my shoulders, and at first I think he needs more support to walk, but when I look up at him, I see his bloodred gaze has sharpened. He is recovering, quickly, but still weak and torn.
The air here is dank and cold. Even in my dressing gown, I shiver as goose bumps ridge my skin. Water trickles in green black rivulets down the walls, upon which grow patches of fuzzy brown moss. The emergency lighting glints off spider bodies nestled in corners and crannies, but they remain still and silent. Every once in a while Bo tells us to step over a trip wire, or to avoid a square depression cut into a step, or to tuck our arms against our bodies and walk single file to keep from brushing the walls. He is harsh with his words, but he does not fail to help Melik when I am not strong enough.
