by Seth Fishman
He laughs at the irony, teeth red.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I’m not sure I mean it, and I’m not sure what I did. But he looks hurt, so wretched.
Randt takes a ragged breath.
I close my eyes, listening to Randt’s heart beat slower and slower and then stop.
• • •
He’s dead, on his back, his eyes wide open and staring into the nothingness above our heads. His lips are bright red, as if he licked them with a bloody tongue. Flowers are already beginning to overtake his body, sprouting from between his arms and legs. Growing out of him. As if he were just part of the field.
I think I turned off his heart somehow. Is that what the source does? Lets you sense the heart, the very fundamentals of another person’s life force, and then manipulate it—use it, heal it, extinguish it?
Sticking out of a pocket on Randt’s chest is something black and box-shaped. I pick it up in disbelief. It’s Rob’s OtterBox. It’s at 2 percent. I look at the map, the tiny shapes that seem to know me, that seem to speak to me. I see my father again, painted white. I see the spear. My instinct is to run, but instead I roll the phone around in my hand and try to focus. At the end of the map there is a Keeper—maybe a Keeper; I can’t make that mistake again—and a stream flows through his torso, right into his heart. And then the screen goes black and the power’s gone. I let the heavy phone slip through my fingers.
I close my eyes and feel a steady drumbeat on the edge of my consciousness, so faint it might as well be my own heart. Suddenly, four sounds, four beats come into focus. They’re close, pounding, afraid. One’s weak, sluggish. Somehow, I know whose it is.
Brayden.
I run, and my body moves faster than I know how to control. At the altar there are ten cups again, still a plain glass one but the blue and yellow cup, the one of topaz and sapphire, it’s been replaced by a cup of deep emerald. I try not to think about it as I run by. The cyclone turns behind me, the source that gave me these strange powers. I don’t look back, and instead sprint straight at the deadly waterfall. I don’t stop, just jump, as far as I can go. I hit the waterfall and its weight pushes me down for only the briefest of moments before I’m through, landing in the pool. The water doesn’t hurt me. It can’t anymore.
I feel three strong heartbeats and see three faces, Jo’s, Rob’s, Lisa’s. Blond, black and blue. They’re gathered around Brayden, who’s curled up like a fetus, an old withering man, his eyes cloudy and white.
“Mia!” Jo shouts, and hurries to me, arms open for a hug.
I hold up my hand to stop her, happy she’s alive and not wanting to kill her myself. “Don’t touch me!”
She freezes.
“The water, Jo. It’ll hurt you.”
“Why isn’t it hurting you?” Rob asks.
Lisa’s watching, her eyes shrewd and knowing. “Because she has been to the source. The water will not hurt her.” She pauses, grinning. “My father didn’t stop you? He must not be happy. What a change of this world to have a Topsider be part of the Three.”
I don’t answer. My stomach is hit with shame and guilt, but now doesn’t seem the time to tell her I killed her dad. I hurry to Brayden’s side and kneel; he looks awful, his face screwed up in a thousand wrinkles, a wispy white beard hanging from his chin. His eyes are sealed in yellow gunk, like he has a bad infection. And he wheezes, a disgusting smell, like the inside of a garbage bin. Death itself, and then his heart skips. It’s almost gone. With shaking fingers, I touch his lips. Lisa grabs my arm.
“You cannot give him the source.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” I reply, not bothering to explain to her. I came here for the source, to get water for my dad, but after being stuck in the well again I realize that you can’t just give it to someone else. You have to enter the source, and find it yourself.
I feel Jo’s hand on my shoulder. Panicking, hand on Brayden’s chest, I listen to his faint heartbeat. I try to focus on the feeling, on what a healthy heart might sound like, the rhythm and the noise. I’m getting the hang of whatever the source gave me. I’m a walking EKG. Great. But it is great because—and I don’t fully understand how, yet—I give his heart a little nudge. It’s like kicking a piece of coal in the fire. His body pulses with life, and I can feel the water I just gave him begin to circulate through his limbs. His eyes flutter, gunk stringing across his eyelids, and I wipe them clean with my shirt. Brayden groans, stretches, and as he does so his body seems to grow, to thicken and strengthen. He rubs his face, and pulls off a dead layer of skin, a wrinkled mask of himself. It smells like the locker room back at Westbrook and for a moment he stares at this skin dangling from his fingers like a newborn discovering his hands. He blinks, his scar gone, his gorgeous eyes alert.
“You’re alive,” I say, relief making me dizzy. I realize now that I have the ability to reverse—not just halt—the virus.
“Am I?” Brayden asks, his voice a croak.
“Apparently.”
He smiles and reaches out to touch my forehead, and somehow, dizzyingly, I can see myself. I look pale, my lips nearly the same color as my skin. My hair’s all over the place, covering my face, stuck to my sweat. I look feral. And terrified. I watch myself get more terrified. I watch myself through Brayden’s eyes. I watch myself through Brayden’s eyes.
“What the fuck is going on?” I whisper. It echoes through my ears. Through Brayden’s ears.
Rob and Jo and Lisa watch me, their concern and fear flashing like beacons through their bodies. Etched in their faces. I close my eyes and can almost see the pounding. I can do more than sense their heartbeats. I can touch them.
“Jo,” I whisper, holding out my hand, keeping my eyes closed. She reaches for it, and suddenly I can see myself again through her. Color drained from my face. I touch my cheeks and watch my fingers move. This is crazy.
“Mia, what’s happening?” she says, not sure whether to be scared or relieved. I can feel what Jo’s thinking, I can sense her confusion and rising alarm. I look at Rob through Jo’s eyes. I can feel an ache in Jo’s hip. Lisa’s standing up now, and is watching me warily. She’s looking at the waterfall, then back at me. Seeing her through Jo’s eyes is disorienting and scary and I let go of Jo’s hand and then there’s only darkness because my eyes are closed.
“What is it?” Rob asks.
I breathe deeply, letting their heartbeats fade from my mind, and focus on what’s in front of me, on the smell of the room and the warmth in the air.
“It’s nothing,” I say, looking at each of them. I don’t want to even try to explain; would they want to know that I can see what they see?
“Friend Mia,” Lisa says, her voice hesitant, staring at the waterfall. “Where is my father?”
She can see it in my face. She gives a small shake of her head. Rebellious or not, her eyes sheen with tears. She’s trying hard not to cry, her pale chin quivering.
“He attacked me,” I whisper. I don’t want to hurt her, but I’m not going to lie.
“And you killed him?”
I clench my jaw. The others stare at their feet, shifting uneasily. “Lisa . . .” I pause, my stomach feeling queasy. “He hurt me, and I managed to stop him. I don’t even fully get how I did it. It happened so fast.”
“Go bring him back, then,” she says. “Go restart his life like you just did Brayden.”
I remember his body, the flowers growing through him. He’d be decomposed by now. “I can’t,” I say. “Brayden was still alive. Your father’s . . . He’s not even him anymore.”
She comes so close her breath presses against my face. She raises a hand and I somehow don’t flinch and then she lifts my hair, exactly where it had been ripped out. There’s blood there still, I know. Her enormous eyes study me, calm and curious, but inside of her I feel the rage and hatred build. She presses a thumb to my cheek, right below the eye her father kn
ocked in. It takes everything I have to let her do it.
“Lisa,” Rob says, stepping forward.
“He hurt you?” she asks, watching me intently. I nod. Lisa swallows, pushes down her anger. “We have to stop the fighting,” she says. I can’t tell if she’s trying to distance herself from her father’s death, or whether she means it.
We’re a pretty pathetic group, all of us covered in blood and grime. How can we stop a civil war?
“But Mia needs to bring the source,” Jo says.
Lisa looks at her strangely. “Look at Brayden, Jo. Mia does not need to bring anything.” She turns and begins to jog out of the tunnel, leaving the others looking at me. Rob shrugs apologetically, and follows Lisa, disappearing into the tunnel too.
“I’m glad she didn’t just kill you,” Brayden says. Physically, he’s looking better, but his eyes are troubled, as if bearing a weight.
I think about Randt’s body, the flowers, the source. We all have our weights to bear.
• • •
There are no more Keepers guarding the entrance to the tunnel. Whether that’s good or bad is hard to tell, because there are Keepers strewn about, moaning or dying or dead on the ground. Others, thousands, still fight down the avenue. I see a blue and yellow Keeper go down with a cut to his chest and almost immediately another Keeper splashes water on his wound and helps him up. The Keepers can regenerate so quickly that the battle might be endless. The ones who are dead on the ground were hurt so badly the water couldn’t help them. They have catastrophic injuries; I see many with heads cut off, some with a half dozen arrows embedded in their backs, others with two or three spears quivering from their chests.
As soon as I take a step from the tunnel, I’m hit hard by the insistent pulsing of all these hearts nearby. My knees wobble and I put my hands to my ears, but of course that doesn’t help.
“Mia?” Brayden asks, holding me up.
Very slowly, deliberately, I try to push down the noise. I try to block it out, but I can’t. It’s like someone implanted headphones into my skull, and I can hear the beat internally. Like an alarm going off only for me.
“Where do we go?” Rob shouts, and I can barely hear him over the noise.
Lisa scans the crowd. “We find Arcos. He is the only Keeper left of the Three.” I want to argue, to say we have to find Dad. I need to try to help him. I need to bring him back.
“No way,” Jo says. “We need to go. We’re done with this place.”
On the edge of my vision I see a glimmer of light. The wall that circles this city is freaking tall, and I can make out the entrance to the city, the gates with their enormous columns shining. But there’s something else there now, bright and moving.
A spark of light from the lip of the crater drifts lazily into the air and then seems to pick up speed, faster and faster until it strikes the side of one of the taller buildings. Arcos’s building.
A flash, and I feel air get sucked from my lungs. The building explodes, the dome bursting apart and toppling down, crushing smaller buildings below in a flaming pile of wreckage. My mind can’t process what I’m seeing.
Lisa cries out. All the Keepers stop and stare, their faces shining in the brightness of the explosion.
There’re more noises now, small cracks, and gashes of light. I feel ill, remembering the sounds from Furbish Manor, the buzz of bullets whistling through the air. It’s the sound of an attack.
“Sutton,” Brayden says over my shoulder. I start so badly I lose my balance and slip, but he catches me. For a second I lose control and watch through his eyes, not mine. He puts his arms around me and we watch Capian on fire as if this was fireworks and not the end of this world.
24
JO TURNS TO BRAYDEN, HER FACE ETCHED WITH ANGER.
“You did this, didn’t you? You did this again.”
My stomach turns. I remember the moment he betrayed me back in the Cave. The moment he opened the back door for Sutton.
“What?” he says, raising his hands. “How could I? I’m here with you. I told you he sent me here to get the source. I’ve been with you the whole time.”
“Who? For who?” Lisa asks. She’s skittish, I feel it in her heartbeat and see it in her pale face; she’s almost shivering. I don’t blame her. Her entire world has changed in the blink of an eye.
“For Sutton,” Rob says, trying to be helpful. “He’s the one who replicated the effects of the waterfall water in a virus Topside. The guy who’s responsible for the explosions.”
The Keepers on the street stand side by side now, confused and distraught. Some are running to Arcos’s tower to help. Others use the time to see to the injured. It’s an opening in the fighting and I feel a little more in control of my body so I’m gonna take it.
I jog unsteadily to the mini-aqueduct in the center of the boulevard, toward where my father was, and the others follow. Keepers run to and from the water, filling their little bags like firemen in a bucket brigade, rushing to help others. I find him there, his head bent over the edge by the weight of the spear. Blood pools around him, swirling in the water.
I touch his face, my shaking hands betraying me. His skin is clammy and cold, and I concentrate and try to reach out to him but am not sure it’s working. It’s hard to understand what you can’t see, what you can only feel, and when I try to will his heart into beating nothing happens. I wait; the others give me a moment even though we have none to spare. But nothing happens. Maybe I can only heal the living, maybe I can’t bring back the dead.
“Oh, Mia,” Jo says, joining me. She hugs me from behind, but all I want is to make his heart start again. What’s the point of this power if I can’t bring back my dad?
There are more shots, many more, and it’s clear that Sutton and his crew have made their way into the city proper. Another rocket launches, smashing another building, and the Keepers around us let up a moan. Their hearts flare up in my mind, the noise unbearable.
“We have to stop Sutton,” Jo says, and I feel her rage through the warmth of her embrace.
“How?” Brayden asks. “He has guns. We have a spear.”
“It does not matter. There is no choice,” Lisa says, looking grim.
I move closer to Dad and put my hand on his chest. Please, I say to myself or to the source, the little bit of it that I have inside me.
“Come on, damn it,” I grunt, pushing at him. He sloshes in the water. I push again, I reach out, I try to imagine his heart starting. I try. But I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t understand or realize what the source has given me. The others watch me, and then Jo puts her hand on my shoulder and I stop, breathing hard.
I can’t take him with me. I can’t bury him. I can’t do anything.
“What have you done?” a voice bellows, and we all startle up. Everyone near us is surprised. Hurrying our way, now armored in fine, shining red chain mail, is Arcos. He seems bigger than I remember, his bulk bulging from the armor. There’s a gash on his forehead that’s closing as he walks, and by the time he gets to us he’s healed, and pissed.
“You brought them?” he shouts, pointing toward the gunfire. “Do you think I do not know of your metal pieces that rip open bodies? You think we do not understand how to make your gunpowder, that we do not have your charcoal or sulfur? You are unwanted, you usher in the death of Feileen, and now . . .” He stops, looks at me for the first time. His pupils dilate and I can feel something tugging at the edge of my conscious, like he’s searching for something.
“What did you do?” he asks, his voice barely audible.
Lisa steps in front of me, hiding me in her shadow.
“She has taken Feileen’s place.”
“This is not possible. I cannot feel Keeper Randt. Where is he?” he asks, confused. He blinks rapidly, his face flustered, and I can almost see him reach out with his mind to find Randt’s beating he
art. I try to mimic him and extend my senses his way. Suddenly, the world around me flashes into color and heat, every person around me shining with energy and pulsing with light. Like little halos. Jo and Rob and Brayden, even, their skin tints gold and shivers with every movement. I’m getting tired, a headache growing on the spot, and I realize quickly that whatever I’m doing I can’t do for long. Arcos, though, is unlike the others. He’s a bonfire among twigs. He could turn into a phoenix and fly away and I wouldn’t be surprised—the amount of energy pushing through his veins and out of his body is mind-boggling. Does he see the same from me, now that I’ve drunk the source?
“You abominate yourself,” Arcos finally says, his lips flapping like bright butterfly wings. I pull back, let the brightness around everyone fade and take a tired gulp of air. “The Topside is dying, as are we. We keep and protect the source from you.” He pauses here, his eyes searching. The gunfire gets closer. Keepers nearby don’t move. They’re shaking, real fear of this new enemy swelling all around us. But I keep my gaze on him. He is, in some ways, the only one who’s like me now. “And we failed,” he says, almost to himself.
I gently touch my father’s cold and lifeless hand. He has no aura around him, like a battery gone dead. “I didn’t ask for this. For any of this. But it seems like now it’s just you and me. And the real danger is them.” I point down the street. “There’s the man who’s killing your people. Who’s trying to get to the source. Who will use it in ways I can’t even imagine.” I stare him down. “You will help us leave. Stop this man, and I’ll destroy the entrance to the well when we get back. No one will bother you again.”
“But you drank of—”
“I’ll leave, you’ll be alone. The Seven are gone. You will choose Randt’s successor and rule however you want to. Now help us.”
He considers. The Keepers around look on eagerly. They don’t want to be fighting one another. They’re all cousins, they’re all Keepers, and just down the street is a threat that they probably used to whisper about in bed, the Topside, monsters from above coming down here to get them, to kill them. Trying to steal the source.
