by Anna Day
“I know, I know.”
Arrogant manwhore, I think, but I keep on smiling, desperate to get the canon back on track. “I knew I could never betray you, even after I saw you with Alice. It’s one of the reasons I left the manor, so I could tell the rebels I’d tried and failed. Then they would leave you alone for good.” I know I’m being manipulative, but so much depends on winning him back, I just don’t care.
And it looks like he’s buying it. He smiles and gazes into my face. “Even after you saw me with another girl? You’re amazing, Rose, and I don’t care that you’re a rebel, I don’t even care that you’re an Imp.” He grabs the cup from me and scoops me into his arms. “It’s why I came—to take you back to the manor. The sergeant’s a family friend and he said he’d help me smuggle you and your brother out of here.”
For a moment, I’m tempted. The stink of the smoke and the burning flesh have yet to penetrate this far. I smell only the Pastures—crisp and pure and laden with pollen. But I know it’s all a lie.
He pushes my hair from my face. “Plenty of Gems have Imp lovers. But you would be more than that, of course. I mean, eventually I would have to marry a Gem girl, but it would be for show.”
A plan starts to form in my head. I squint slightly with the effort of thinking. I wish I had a pen and paper to write it all down so I don’t get snarled up in all the layers. If I get captured by the Gems tonight, Willow could still declare his love for me at the Gallows Dance tomorrow. I just need to get away from him without rousing his suspicion. Then I need to get Nate, Ash, and Katie to safety before surrendering to the Gems.
This could actually work. The excitement builds on my earlier panic so that I feel like I’m about to overflow with adrenaline. I could still incite a revolution. Still go home. Still save the Imps. Hope starts as a little flower.
I snake my arms around Willow’s waist, hoping to add weight to my words. “There’s nothing I want more than to be with you. But I need to get my friends to safety first. Will you help?”
“Of course.”
“Just fly us clear of the guards, and when I know they’re in the clear, safe inside the city walls, I’ll return to the estate.”
“I’ll come with you.”
I shake my head, remembering that lynch mob with a shudder. “The Imps will kill you if they figure out you’re a Gem.” And then you can’t complete the canon, I think to myself, followed by a spike of guilt.
He sighs, giving up a little too easily perhaps. “Please be careful.” He kisses me on the mouth. Only it doesn’t feel like kissing anymore—it just feels like two people bumping lips.
I gently pull away. “I will, I promise.”
“Quickly, then.” He crosses to the hatch.
“Willow?”
He pauses and turns, his hand drifting above a shiny green button.
“How did your father know about the raid on the Meat House?”
He shrugs. “He didn’t say. Why?”
This has niggled at me since I heard the roar of the Gem helicopters. How could the Gems have known we were going to raid the Meat House? In canon, Willow made the raid happen. But in the current, I made it happen. Not a single Gem could have known, unless there’s a mole in our midst.
“I was just curious,” I say, waving a blasé hand.
He hits the button and the door pops open. He strides across to the entrance. “Send in the two boys, please.”
Ash and Nate emerge from the darkness. I hear the hatch swoosh as it seals behind us. After staring into Willow’s clean, perfect face, Nate and Ash look like a couple of dirty, half-dead rats, covered in grime and blood and bruises. I feel an overwhelming urge to hug them both.
“What’s he doing here?” Ash asks.
I shake my head, urging him to fall silent.
Willow loops an arm around my shoulder and plants a kiss on my cheek. “I’ll fly us away from the soldiers, then.”
I’ve never seen Ash scowl quite so deeply.
I can’t help but grin—I’ve just had an idea. I wink at Nate. “We just need to find a manhole cover.”
“Manhole cover?” Willow says.
“Oh my God!” Nate squeals in delight. “We’re going into the sewers.”
THE IRON RUNGS of the ladder feel gritty and damp beneath my fingers, like I’m grasping at wet sand, and the cylindrical walls close around us—the rhythmic peristalsis of a giant throat. I feel grateful to the circle of light hanging above, delivering a blast of fresh air, a sense of escape. But Ash begins to slide the lid back into place, and I feel anxiety taking hold. The grind of metal on concrete, the shrinking crescent that eventually clunks to black; it’s like watching a terrifying lunar eclipse. And it reminds me briefly of the Dupes, stuck in that windowless room with only a circle of ceiling removed.
I hear several splashes as Nate jumps from the ladder. The flashlight Willow gave him clicks on, highlighting the texture of the bricks, the jagged rungs stained red and orange by time. I follow him into the water, which soaks into my boots, thick and cold.
I survey my surroundings. A tunnel, similar to the ones in canon, arched above and flat beneath my feet, stretching endlessly in both directions. Smaller tunnels branch from it—a row of black, staring eyes. I can stand in the passage with ease, but I still feel confined, thinking about the tons of earth pushing down on us, held back only by a network of ancient, damp-mottled bricks.
Nate sloshes up to the wall and runs his finger over a yellow marking. It looks like an angle, two lines connected at a point. “The lovebirds never figured these out, remember? They ended up hideously lost.”
I nod. The markings were made by the rebels years ago, signaling the various exit ladders. But they were coded, a precautionary measure in case the Gems ever made their way down here. And Rose had never been told how to interpret them. Eventually, she found a rebel safe house—an old garage with a Humvee stashed inside—but it took her several hours. They ended up crossing the rest of the city in it so they could reach the river. We need that Humvee, I think to myself.
I look at those yellow markings and can’t help but smile. It’s like the canon never gave up on us, like it knew we would catch up eventually. Just like Baba said—a story needs to unfold.
Ash pauses to examine the markings while Nate sloshes in my direction, seizing the opportunity to grill me. “So, what was Willy doing in that hovercraft?”
“He’s still into me,” I whisper. “The canon’s back on track. If I get myself captured by the Gems, Howard Stoneback will see that I make it onto the gallows, then all that needs to happen is Willow saying his lines and … voilà!”
“You’re serious?”
“Nate, we can go home tomorrow.”
His face unfolds into a massive smile, the same one he used to wear when I pushed him full force on the swings. “Oh my God, Violet, this is immense. OK, OK, so how do we get you captured?”
“Well, the canon seems to come true whatever we do.”
“So, we go to the river? Where Rose and Willow were finally caught?”
“That’s what I’m thinking. We get the Humvee from the safe house, we bust Katie out of headquarters, we head to the river, then you and the others cross to No-man’s-land. I’ll wait for the soldiers and surrender.”
“My God, sis, check out your balls, they’re positively gleaming.”
I grin. “Katniss and Tris—they’re just a couple of Girl Scouts.”
Nate looks thoughtful. “Is there time? Maybe Katie and I should find another hiding place?”
“No-man’s-land is the safest place. If we hurry, you can easily cross the river before the soldiers arrive—we just need to navigate the sewers better than Rose, buy back some time. Can you remember where she went wrong?”
“Maybe, these tunnels all look the same,” he says.
Ash joins us. The movement of his legs causes a gentle wave to lap against my calves. “So, what’s the plan?” he asks.
“We’re just discussing our
next move,” I say.
Ash looks at the bricks above, purposefully avoiding eye contact. “I thought that was what you and Willow were doing.”
“Oh, get over it, Squirrel,” Nate snaps. “She wasn’t about to dick off the only person who could set us free.”
Ash exhales sharply. I can tell he isn’t convinced.
“We find a vehicle,” I say. “Get Katie, then we all cross the river to hide in No-man’s-land.” Except for me, I think. I’ll be surrendering to those Gem soldiers.
“There’s just one problem,” Ash says. Even in the gloom, I can tell he’s blushing. “I can’t swim.”
None of the Imps can swim. I know this from canon. The only water available is filled with sewage and debris.
“Don’t worry, there’s a boat,” I say.
Nate swings the flashlight beam over the first marking. “If we could figure these markings out, life would be a lot easier.”
Ash glances at the markings again. “Two lines, one slightly shorter than the other. Are all the markings like this?”
“Yeah,” Nate says. “Just a load of different angles.”
“They look like the hands of a clock,” Ash says.
He’s right. A minute hand and an hour hand. I can’t believe I never noticed this before—a result of living in a digital age, I suppose. Count the minutes, not the hours. Where have I heard that recently?
“The skipping rhyme,” I say to Ash.
“Count the minutes,” he replies. “Do you think the rebels hid the answer in an old nursery rhyme? One that only the Imps would know?”
I nod. “The minute hand must point to the correct tunnel. Clever.”
Nate grins. “OK, then, let’s buy back some time. Follow the human sat nav.” He runs down the corridor, kicking up his boots so the water sprays around him, arcing from his feet and catching in the flashlight.
“Keep up, slowpokes,” he yells over his shoulder.
Ash and I follow. The air grows increasingly humid the farther we get from the manhole, and running requires more and more effort, like pushing through molasses. Nate pauses at another pair of clock hands before jogging down a different corridor.
“So, what did the demigod want?” Ash says, the damp and the moss of the walls absorbing his voice.
“Look, Ash, what you saw in the hovercraft—”
He cuts over me. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I had to keep up the act so he’d let us go. It wasn’t real.”
“It looked pretty real to me.”
We round a bend, pass another clock face. The passage tightens.
“Bear right,” Nate shouts.
The ground below us suddenly curves. This tunnel is entirely tubular, and my feet take a moment to adjust. Ash catches me as I lurch toward the murky water. I collect myself, only to see a rat weaving past my boots—slippery and black, half-running, half-swimming. I grip Ash’s hand, the warmth branching up my forearm, and push on through the warren. Something about that skipping rhyme bugs me. Where did it come from? The clock markings were in canon, so perhaps the coded skipping rhyme was, too. But could a rhyme exist in canon if Sally King didn’t write about it? Perhaps not. Rose never figured out the yellow markings, after all. And she would have known the rhyme had it existed; Ash made it sound like it was well known by all the Imps. Maybe the rhyme really is a prophecy about me.
Hope starts as a little flower.
Nate stares up a ladder. “You have reached your final destination.” He gestures to a single yellow brushstroke on the wall. “It’s the mark from canon. It means the safe house is overhead.” The beam of his flashlight explores the manhole cover resting above.
“What’s he talking about?” Ash says. “And what’s this canon you keep mentioning?”
“You wouldn’t believe us if we told you,” I say.
“More secrets?” Ash twists his hand from mine and begins to climb the ladder.
I feel a stab of loneliness. Right now, that wall of secrets feels more like an impenetrable forest of thorns and brambles. A voice interrupts my thoughts. Deep and familiar, and so very out of reach. And the princess slept for a hundred years. Though she never did have the face of the dead, her cheeks remained pretty and pink like the day she was born. It’s Dad’s voice again.
I look upward. “Dad?”
A mixture of excitement and concern crosses Nate’s face. “You heard Dad again?”
I pause, listening intently to the drip of water, the scuffle of rats, the clang of Ash’s boots on the rungs. I shake my head. “No, no, I’m just hearing things. Ignore me.” I don’t have space in my head for anything else right now.
I place a hand on the ladder, ready to haul myself upward, but Nate shines the flashlight in my face and whispers, “Violet, I’ve been thinking … How did the Gems know about the raid at the Meat House?”
“I don’t know, and Willow couldn’t tell me in the hovercraft.”
He wrinkles up his nose. “I can’t figure it out. In canon, the only Gem who knew about the raid was Willow, because he made it happen. But in the current, Willow wasn’t even captured by the rebels, so how could he have possibly known about the raid …” He shoves his hands in his hair. “Agh, it’s messing with my head.”
Ash interrupts from above. “Are you guys coming or what?”
I look up at him, the soles of his boots so badly cracked I swear I can see the blisters on his feet. “Yeah, just a sec.” I turn back to Nate. “Willow said his father told him about the raid.”
He frowns. “What really gets me is the Gems knew we would be at the Coliseum—that didn’t even happen in canon.”
“I know. But the Meat House is only a few streets from the Coliseum. If the Gems knew about the raid, likelihood is they flew over the Coliseum and saw us. There must be a mole, maybe one of the Imp rebels. Someone we don’t know, or maybe even Saskia or Matthew.”
“Maybe. Or someone else who knows the canon.”
We stare at each other. The realization scrapes out my insides. I reach for the split heart and end up pinching my bare throat instead.
“Why would Alice do that?” I ask. Everything seems to slow. The dripping water, the scuffling rats, even my own heart.
Because I already know the answer.
I can’t complete the canon if I’m dead.
LOVE. PEOPLE TALK about it like it’s a mental illness.
Crazy in love, addicted, lovesick, obsessed …
And maybe they’re right. Alice has loved Willow for two years. And I don’t just mean the actor, Russell Jones, I mean the fictitious character, Willow. That’s verging on insanity, surely? And if anyone should know, it’s me, having suffered from the same affliction.
OK, so Alice has dated the odd footballer, the odd boy band (yes—the whole band). But she always returns to her keyboard, tapping out her fanfic, the only place she could enact her Willow-related fantasies … until now, that is. But would she really have her best friend killed in the name of love? Perhaps, if she’s lost her mind. I risked the canon because of Ash, after all. But kill someone?
“I’ve known her since primary school,” I say.
“I’ve known her since I was born,” Nate says.
“She’s … good.” The image of those four bronzed legs wrapped in satin appears in my mind’s eye. “Well, she’s not a monster, at least.”
Nate nods. “You’re right. This place is making me paranoid.”
“Come on, you two,” Ash shouts. He’s already shoved the manhole cover to one side and a downward breeze caresses my face. My heart starts pumping again. We clamber from the hole, leaving a patchwork of soggy marks on the surrounding concrete—hands, feet, knees. Even though the night is cold and dark, just the movement of the air, the sense of space, makes it feel like we’ve burst from a grave into a summer’s day. Of course Alice didn’t tell the Gems about the raid. I feel guilty for even considering it.
I glance around. The safe house from canon—just another st
inking alley with an orange garage door. We flatten our bodies against the wall. Ash circles his weapon through the air as though searching for trouble, but the alley remains still, just like it should. We creep toward the familiar door, coated in blotches of flaking paint. I pull the latch and it swings open.
“Bingo,” Nate says.
I can see little in the dark, but the stagnant air tells me the door hasn’t been opened for a while. Nate runs the beam of his flashlight over the contents of the room. Shapes rise up from the ground, concealed beneath oilcloths and sheets. A forgotten museum. More like I imagined it when I read the book. In the film, the room was bigger, better lit, less claustrophobic. Quickly, we pull the cloth from the Humvee, flipping up dust and matted cobwebs. I stifle a cough. Ash finds a water bottle in a cabinet and hands it to me.
I hadn’t realized how dry my mouth feels—the inside of my throat caked in a fine layer of grime—until the cool liquid hits my tongue. I only think to stop swallowing when Nate coughs.
“Sorry.” I wipe my mouth with my sleeve and pass him the bottle.
Ash climbs into the Humvee and runs his fingers over the controls. “I’ve no idea how to drive.”
“You didn’t know how to shoot a gun, but you managed that pretty well,” I say.
Ash grins. “I missed. I was aiming for his balls.” He flicks a switch and the headlights strike the alley wall, reminiscent of the helicopter searchlights.
We made it out of the sewers in record time thanks to the skipping rhyme; there should be plenty of time to get Katie and make sure they all reach No-man’s-land safely. So long as the canon keeps true to form, haunting us, pushing us down the right path.
Nate inspects the front of the car, his smile wide. “Still not the DeLorean, but it will do.” He steps back into the alley to survey the vehicle as a whole. And the way the headlights fall on him—illuminating his skin, turning his hair to gold—lends him the appearance of some heavenly spirit. Something draws his attention, something in the alley hidden from my sight. Fright darkens the taupe of his eyes. The water bottle slips to the ground.
