by Melanie Tays
This brings on a crooked smile, and I have to admit that if I didn’t know Vander, I would find him very attractive. Maybe if I’d grown up in the Flame but never actually spoken to Vander, it would have been him that I went to sleep at night pining for rather than Eason. All things considered, it would have been a far better option.
Slowly, I become aware of a sickly-sweet scent creeping into my nostrils and tickling at my brain. A familiar sensation that I’ve experienced once—no, twice—before. His theory about a mind-altering agent is disturbing and incredibly plausible all at once.
“The fog,” I whisper. “It’s like the fog that we passed through when we entered the Gold Trial. Dr. Hollen—your dad—told me that it made us all believe that everything was really happening—all the pain, all the injuries. Everything felt so real, even though almost none of it was. This has to be something like that—some kind of mind-altering chemical they infuse the air with each night to keep everyone docile and compliant.”
“Exactly. It took me a while to figure out why I was different, but then I had an idea. The fact that you’ve regained your bad temper is proof that I was right. This stuff Eason gave you is some kind of inoculation or antidote. It kept me from being affected, and it freed you from the effects.”
Everything he’s said feels true—the effects of the fog, the canister containing an antidote, and Vander being immune since he sprayed himself with the stuff moments after we arrived in the Ash. But why would Eason give me such a thing?
“Did Eason tell you anything else about the Ash? Or give you anything else?” Vander asks.
“What’s it matter now?”
“Emery, did he tell you anything that might help us get back into The City?” Vander presses. The unveiled hope in his voice is painful to hear.
“All Eason ever did was tell me lies.”
Deciding that Vander is not a danger to me, I return the fire poker back to its holder. I’m not sure who this little house belongs to—maybe one of the families here on the farm—but I don’t want anyone to know we’ve been here once we leave.
“Emery, how did Eason know about the fog or how to stop it?” he asks.
“Because his dad is on the Council and is one of the tyrants responsible for it,” I say, venom that isn’t meant for Vander seeping into my tone.
Vander takes a step toward me, and he’s close enough that I can see the intensity in his emerald eyes as he speaks. “Emery, if he gave you this, he must have been trying to help you. Did he give you anything else? Did he tell you anything else?”
Eason said lots of things to me—tales of how dangerous the Council is and promises of plans to deactivate the Safe Dome. But he never told me anything specific, and if he had, I’m sure it would have been just one more piece of the deception.
“Eason didn’t tell me anything useful, unless you think lies will help you,” I snap back.
“Maybe it wasn’t a lie.”
“Oh, it was. Everything was. It was all just a test, a game, a manipulation. And I bet all of this is just more of the same. I’ll never be free of him, and I don’t understand why. What did I do to deserve this?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m the subject of some kind of psychological experiment. Maybe I was the unlucky person at the other end of Eason’s test to prove his loyalty to the Council—to prove he would do anything, say anything, and hurt anyone, if they asked.” The possibilities are endless, each as horrible and hurtful as the next.
“But he gave you the antidote to the Mind Mist,” Vander counters. “It really does protect us from the happy juice. That’s got to mean something.”
“Yeah, it means that the games aren’t over, even now.”
“Please, Emery. Anything?” The gravity of his tone could suck in whole planets, it’s so strong.
I’m about to give in and tell him everything I know—which is honestly nothing, but Vander can make what he will of it. But as I’m trying to think where to begin, I notice something—or rather the disturbing lack of something.
“The music stopped,” I whisper. “We have to get out of here.”
But before we can twitch a muscle, the door opens and the overhead light comes to life.
We turn to face Ollie, who stands in the doorway, staring at us with an unreadable expression.
Chapter 7
“This stuff stinks,” Vander complains, pulling the collar of his shirt up to cover his nose as he shovels another mound of moist, steamy horse droppings. “How much of this stuff can they make in a single day?”
“Vander, no one here talks like that,” I warn under my breath.
He makes a sound halfway between a sigh and a moan but keeps his mouth shut after that. For being the one who figured out about the Mind Mist—that’s what we ultimately decided to call it—he’s really awful at playing along to avoid detection.
We have no way of knowing who knows the truth, and what lengths they might go to protect the Council’s secrets. The obvious people to be wary of are Ollie and Roe. Surely they must know—right? But there may be others, as well—spies for the Council who ensure that the tentacles of their reach penetrate as far as possible.
When Ollie returned to her house last night and found us lurking in the darkness there, I was sure we were going to be in trouble. Oddly, though, after we explained that we were simply waiting to speak to her about moving Vander to work with the animals—a request that visibly pleased her—we were both shepherded off to bed. It was easier than I’d expected, but that doesn’t mean that I trust her, or that she trusts us.
This morning, we were assigned to work together, and that’s what led to the shoveling of horse manure. But we haven’t had a single moment to talk in private since Ollie showed up last night. My guess is she has someone keeping an eye on us, even now.
We shovel in silence for a while, scooping the slop into buckets. Vander is right about the odor, even though I restrain myself from complaining. This morning, Cresta explained to us that these buckets will be sent to the fields to fertilize crops. The thought that this nasty waste is what my food grows in makes me want to swear off eating fruits and vegetables forever. Of course, meat, eggs, milk—it’s all weird and a little gross, if you let yourself think about it. A part of me longs for the days when I had no idea where food came from.
“Emery,” Vander mutters, breaking into my food reverie. “Eason must have told you something. Please, just try to remember. You don’t have to help me if you don’t want to. Just tell me what you know.”
Cresta, Beatie, and a few other people are grooming horses nearby. We have to blend in until we figure out what to do with our newfound knowledge. I’m leaning toward my original plan to leave the farm, but it seems wrong to just abandon all these people to be slaves to The City forever. Still, we can’t very well just go around spraying everyone with the antidote, either. That little container can’t contain nearly enough for everyone. We need to think this through carefully and come up with a plan.
“Not here,” I whisper. “When we finish with this stall, we’ll find a place to talk.”
Mollified, he picks up speed. When we finish, I tell Cresta, who’s in charge of the horses, that we’re going to take a break, and we’ll be back soon. She doesn’t question it. That’s one of the nice things about people here—no questions, no suspicion.
We end up back at the girls’ dormitory. I know it’ll be empty at this time of day, and I don’t know where else to go. I’m not sure that Vander is technically allowed to be in here alone with me, but we aren’t technically supposed to have full access to our brains, either, so I’m not super hung up on the rules at the moment.
The minute the door is closed, Vander is talking. “Tell me what Eason told you. I need to know everything you know, whether or not you think it matters.”
“Fine, I’ll tell you everything I know,” I say bitterly. If he wants a good story, he’s going to get it. I don’t even bother trying to
make it short. If he wants me to talk, then he’s going to listen to every detail that I didn’t realize I’m aching to get off my chest until this instant.
I start with the morning that Whyle collapsed at breakfast, and tell him about stowing away in a courier truck and crossing the Wall of Fire illegally in search of medicine. He looks impressed by this. Then, how I unwillingly became a contestant in the Burning before I could get the Curosene.
“Emery, this is great!” Vander exclaims—which is awful, even for him. “So you understand. We need to get back in there,” he says, as though I’ve just given him the best news imaginable. “My dad’s a doctor. He can get Curosene for your brother.”
“I actually already stole Curosene from your dad,” I admit. “Let me finish.”
I explain how I was recruited by Terrance Enberg, Chief Enforcer, to spy on Eason under threat of being sent to the Ash. I tell him how Eason made me believe he cared about me—leaving out the finer, mushier details—and then convinced me that the Council was corrupt and endangering the inhabitants of The City. How Eason claimed to have returned to the Burning as a means of being sent to the Ash, from where he had the knowledge and means to deactivate the Safe Dome and free The City.
“The night before the Refinement, he gave me a map of the secret tunnels under The City, and—”
“He knows about the tunnels?” Vander says, cutting me off. He doesn’t say it like he’s surprised that the tunnels exist, but rather horrified that Eason knows about them.
“I’m not positive,” I admit. “Someone gave me a map. They slid it under my door the evening after the Gold Trial. I thought at the time that it was Jessamine.”
At the mention of her name, his eyes flash with an emotion more like frustration than longing or regret. Their relationship has always been a bit baffling to me—desperately in love one day and barely acknowledging each other the next. I wonder how much she has to do with his desperation to return to The City. But based on what I’ve seen of him and Kamella, I have to think he’s motivated by something else entirely.
“You thought it was Jessamine at the time, but now you don’t,” he prompts when I fail to continue.
“Yes, she was really upset with me for joining the Burning. She said I was taking someone else’s spot, and she was desperate to get rid of me.”
This draws a smile from him.
“I thought the map was her way of trying to get me to leave. But I’m sure now it was Eason because it all plays so perfectly into the trap. When I went back to the Smoke to deliver the medicine to my brother, I talked with a friend who was working at the Medical Center. He told me that the illness Whyle had was spreading to more and more people and that several people had died. He said the disease is caused by the food—the meal rations that the Council also started feeding to the Flame that very same day. He claimed that somehow it targeted people with a certain genetic marker and killed them. And that, even with the Curosene I brought him, Whyle was going to die in just a few weeks.”
Vander’s mouth hangs open slightly, trying to process this revelation. “Emery, I’m so sorry,” he finally says, his words coated in pain and pity. “But it’s not too late. Don’t give up. We have time. We can still do what Eason planned. We can bring down the barrier and save everyone.”
All I feel in this moment is pity for Vander. I know how captivating these lies can be. But I just shake my head slowly. My voice is gentle and imploring when I speak. “Vander, that’s just what one person told me in a dark alley. Don’t you see? What could the Council possibly gain by killing people? It makes no sense. I was stupid to believe it. And every confusing and twisted lie leads back to one truth—Eason was working for the Council to test me. He impressed them so much that they made him one of them. That can only mean that everything Eason told me about distrusting the Council and his plan to free The City were all made up—all tricks to see if I would go along with it. And I did. And now here I am.”
“But what about the antidote?” he persists. “Maybe he’s playing both sides. Did you ever think of that?”
“What? He got himself on the Council in an effort to destroy The City from the inside?” I ask, incredulous.
“Fits as well as any other theory.”
“Vander, we…lost,” I say, fighting back tears. “I’m tired of trying to do the impossible. I’m tired of being manipulated and lied to. I don’t even know what’s real anymore, and I’m just so tired.”
“What about your brother and all those people who were sick? Or all the others who are going to get sick if we don’t do something to stop it?”
I start laughing, a note of hysteria creeping in. It’s all just so crazy that the only reaction my brain can come up with is laughter, despite the fact that it’s not the slightest bit funny. I feel like I might be losing my mind in a million different ways. I wonder if there’s some new mind-altering mist drifting through the air now, but I suspect it’s just that the human mind isn’t meant to deal with so much deception and manipulation in such a short period of time.
“Don’t you get it?” I shout back. “Eason is a liar!”
Vander claps his hand over my mouth. I know he’s right to do it—I’m being way too loud—but it still annoys me.
I bat his hand away, but when I speak again, I do manage to control my volume better. “It was all part of the test, the experiment, the…whatever. Eason gave me the map to send me back to the Smoke where he knew I would encounter the one piece of information that would make me trust him, would make me help him, would make me throw everything away for him. The Council probably planted that information. Liam flat out said it didn’t come through official channels. So, who knows if that information was true at all? Oh, wait—I know. It wasn’t. Whyle is fine. He is going to be fine. And so will everyone else.”
“And what if you’re wrong?”
“I’m not wrong,” I say through gritted teeth. It takes every ounce of self-control I possess not to shout again.
I feel as though all the anger, hurt, frustration, confusion, betrayal, hope, and hopelessness that were held at bay yesterday by the Mind Mist are crashing back in on me. And even as they smother me, they’re my lifeline to what’s real. If I let go for even an instant—to even consider the possibility that Eason isn’t a liar, and that Whyle might be dying—I think I’ll go insane. Permanently, irrevocably gone.
I can’t be wrong.
There are no more walls I can breach to come to Whyle’s rescue.
Vander grinds his teeth. “Look, Emery. I don’t know what exactly was going on between you and Eason, and I honestly don’t care. But if there’s even the slightest possibility we can bring down that barrier field, then I’ll never stop trying. I would think that you—being from the Smoke—would be the first to want to stop this madness. Don’t you have family you want to see again? People you know who would be better off if they weren’t under the Council’s thumb?”
I sigh heavily. I feel so tired—the kind of tired that doesn’t go away with any amount of sleep. The kind of tired that seeps into your soul. “Why? So they can become a different breed of slaves out here?”
“We can stop that, too. Look around, Emery. There’s nothing to fear out here. No Roamers, no disease, no reason for the Safe Dome.”
When I don’t respond, he sighs in exasperation and walks to the window to stare out, as though an answer lies in the ashen dirt or budding trees. Suddenly, he turns back, opening his mouth as though he’s just thought of another argument. But before he can utter a word, there’s a loud cracking of branches outside the window, and we both go rigid.
Vander puts one finger to his lips and shuffles silently to the door.
There’s more haphazard rustling outside.
In a single flurry of motion, Vander throws open the door and bursts outside.
Tense, I listen to the scuffle as Vander apprehends whoever has been spying on us. Moments later, he’s back, pulling a man by the collar of his shirt.
&nb
sp; “Beatie?” I say, not truly surprised that he would be the one following me.
“Why were you spying on us?” Vander demands, shaking him.
“Stop it,” I command, coming to Beatie’s rescue. “He’s just a confused old man. Leave him alone.”
Vander releases Beatie, but blocks his path to the door. “Why were you listening to us?” he repeats, a little gentler this time.
“You do know…him. You know…Ee…Eeee…Eason,” Beatie stutters with great effort, as though fighting some invisible force bent on preventing the utterance of that single name.
“Is Eason who you were asking about yesterday?”
He nods.
“Well, he’s not coming,” I reply with more venom than he deserves.
“Did you expect Eason to come here, to the Ash?” Vander asks.
Again, Beatie nods.
“Why?”
Beatie opens his mouth several times in an effort to speak, but no words escape.
Vander pulls me aside, our backs to Beatie. “He knows something about why Eason was planning to come to the Ash. Maybe he knows about the plan to deactivate the Safe Dome.”
“Eason wasn’t—” I start to argue, but Vander cuts me off.
“Let’s give him the antidote and see what he knows.”
I glance doubtfully over my shoulder at Beatie. He’s staring at us with a panicked expression, eyes unfocused. I find it hard to believe he has anything to say aside from confused ramblings. But Vander is so bent on pursuing this whole Eason thing. Maybe once he sees that this man’s just suffering from some form of dementia, he’ll finally give it up, and we can get on with figuring out a real plan—one that accepts that we will never get back into The City again.
“Fine,” I agree.
Vander pulls the canister out of his pocket and prepares to administer a dose to Beatie.
“You’re just carrying that around with you?”
“You have a better idea? The last time we left things unattended, they were taken. It wasn’t easy for me to get my stuff back. I was digging around in that Supply Barn for over an hour last night before I got this back. I’m not about to lose it again.”
