I nod. “And the infected? What strategy do we have for helping—”
“Captain Bai, your second-in-command, has specific instructions. We don’t have Mantis to spare at the moment, but hopefully once you’ve accomplished your objectives, that will change. The moment you’ve made progress, notify me over the secure link I’ve given you.” I feel the press of the little device in my pocket, uncomfortable knowing that once I’m in the City, it will be our only reliable way to communicate without being overheard. “We’ll begin hiding raw components and stashing them in supply runs to the City to facilitate successful Mantis manufacture.”
“Which will allow us to have some autonomy from the Chairman and, therefore, Dr. Yang. You’ve thought of everything.” I say it quietly.
She smiles patiently before turning straight-ahead again. “There’s one thing I couldn’t help.” Her mouth hardly moves as she speaks, almost as if she’s humming to herself. “Dr. Yang is very suspicious of this venture. He doesn’t believe our comrades trapped in the City deserve relief. When I insisted, he allowed the Chairman to relent. However…” She picks an imaginary speck of dust from her sleeve, rubbing it between her fingers. “The next day, Chairman Sun insisted on providing you with proper support.”
“What do you mean?”
“A handpicked assistant. A specially trained Second to represent his personal stamp of approval on the effort to save the people trapped inside City walls.”
Saving people who are trapped. What would Sevvy think of that? It’s difficult to feel the glow of being right, because she isn’t here to see that her ridiculous fears about the City leaving behind anyone who will be a drag on our resources were unwarranted. But it does make me feel a little bit of pride in the midst of our awful situation in this war. I am the hands of the City, and I will do what it takes to rescue anyone who still has enough left of them to save. I was right about that at least, whatever Sevvy might think.
Or whatever Howl taught her to think. After all, Xuan wasn’t the instigator of Sevvy turning traitor.
Mother’s words sink a layer deeper. A handpicked assistant from our Chairman, who is under Dr. Yang’s thumb. I can feel the girl behind me staring into the back of my head, her attention like the brush of a razor against my skin. She doesn’t fit in with Mother’s people. I definitely didn’t ask her to come. Which leaves one empty space for her to fill. I’m suddenly glad for the heli propeller roar, keeping this conversation private. “My assistant is the Second sitting behind me, right?”
Mother nods.
“She’s… Menghu?” Hot anger floods my throat, folding in on itself over and over. Menghu destroyed the City. Menghu slaughter us, steal our food, our masks, our Mantis. Menghu are Dr. Yang’s bloody fingers disassembling everything in the world I love.
Mother’s miniscule nod confirms my suspicions. “I’d bet my favorite star pins on it. You can’t let Captain Bai know.…” I nod, unable to hear the words just as much as Mother can’t bear to say them. If our soldiers knew the Chairman is dancing to an Outsider’s tune, that would be the end—or, perhaps, a very bloody beginning, and we aren’t ready for either of those outcomes. “You need to take care of her,” Mother’s gas-mask whisper rasps through the headset. “Before she sees what we are doing, but after you’ve found her method of communicating and can mimic her.”
My stomach clenches. Take care of her. A dome of rock appears through the cockpit window, an island of stone floating in a sea of cloud, smoke still billowing up from it in ugly charcoal streaks. My home, polluted by SS and Menghu filth. The pistol holstered under my coat presses into my side, begging to be set free. We could take care of this right now.
I can feel the girl shift behind me, all of my muscles tensing in response. A softer thought comes underneath, though. The Menghu have Sevvy and everything she knows about the cure. That’s the battle coming next, the one that’s going to matter.
Is there a chance this girl knows where Sevvy is?
“I can trust you with this, can’t I?” Mother looks over at me, her expression etched in steel, and it kills me that she feels the need to ask, as if I’m a young child who doesn’t understand the importance of this task.
“Of course you—” The heli drops, taking my stomach with it. I glare at the pilot as she fiddles furiously with her controls until we’re out of the updraft she should have seen coming.
Mother puts a hand on mine as a sort of reassurance, and shame blossoms inside me. She thinks I’m scared, not indignant the General of the People’s Army is stuck behind an inferior pilot. I pull my hand out from under hers, collecting myself.
“I can do this, General.” The staccato rhythm of my heart quickens when her steely expression doesn’t change. As if she handed me Father’s boots and has already decided they’re too big. “I won’t make any more mistakes.”
CHAPTER 3 Howl
THE WORLD IS GORE-HOLE BLACK around me.
I have cause to know just how black that is. Of course, I don’t mean the hole most people think of when you say “gore hole.” I’m unfortunately acquainted with the mouth and throat portion, but I’ve been lucky enough to stay away from the other end.
Taking a deep breath through my nose doesn’t do much to calm the steady thump of my heart. Where am I? The room is too quiet, no buzz of electricity waiting to be used, no whine of air through a duct. It’s as if I’ve been completely disconnected, put in a not-place in a not-world where there isn’t anything but the mat I’m lying on.
Pain from my shoulder bites through me and down my side. My fingers slide across the raw wound over my collarbone and the thick string threading it together, as if I somehow got switched with a Jiaoyang mending project and the kids sewed me up instead of old Menghu uniforms.
Broken collarbone. Gore bite. The thought comes with unwelcome memories: the smell of death enveloping me, teeth fencing me in. Of June, tears streaming down her face, her mask lying next to her on the floor. Sev pressed up against me, stone dust falling around us as the walls tried to shake themselves apart. Luokai with his teeth bared. The island, Port North, surrounded by waves, the whole world pulsing as a heli falls from the sky. The cure, on a paper that we sent to Sole… something about a device with more information. Sev climbing.
I sit up, ignoring the pain and the wave of nausea that sweeps over me. Sev left me. I mean, of course she did. I couldn’t climb, and we had to get up to that tower to find some device her mom left to make sure we got everything Jiang Gui-hua recorded about the cure.
Rolling onto my knees is difficult, and I have to hold my arm close against my ribs, the sling Sev made for me gone. But once the pain dies down, I begin pulling at the rough braids of the mat until the itching, straw-like strands unravel. I break the strands into six-inch pieces, then tightly bind them so the sharp, severed ends stick out at either side.
Not much of a weapon, but enough to surprise someone if they think I’m unarmed.
Just as I’m finishing, there’s a stone-on-stone click. Light makes a line on the floor that expands as a door slides into the wall, the person who opened it casting a shadow into the darkness of the room.
Surely no one here is dumb enough to walk into a dark room without backup. My muscles tense, ready to launch myself at the stranger. Just as it becomes apparent that this person is that stupid, light blasts from every direction, blinding me. I throw my arm over my eyes.
“You were going to stab me?” A voice asks. “With straw?”
My brother Luokai’s voice.
“It seemed better than trying to strangle you with the blanket.” My shirt would have made a better strangulation device, but strangling people isn’t very useful if there’s more than one to fight.
I let myself slump down to the ground, willing my eyes to adjust to the light as I hold my injured arm close. Pain stabs through me over and over, but I don’t let go of my bunch of straw. The last time I saw my brother, he was trying to take a bite out of my leg, and the only reason he s
topped was because I gave him the bruise still shadowing his temple.
And then he apparently locked me in a room underground when I was supposed to be escaping with Sev. Where is she?
I hold still, waiting for the adrenaline surge to calm before I say anything. If I can’t control the information I give by regulating my tone of voice, then I cannot afford to speak.
By the time my eyes are properly adjusted, Luokai is standing above me, his face bled dry of any feeling. “Feeling a little better, I think?”
“Where’s Sev? And June? Is she awake yet?” Swallow. Maintain eye contact. Watch his hands, his feet, his eyes…
“June’s safe. Jiang Sev is…” His eyes narrow a fraction. “Gone. I would have told you sooner, but they were keeping you under until they were sure you were stable.”
“I’ve been drugged? When did Sev leave?” I catch myself leaning forward and force myself to slump back, adopting a calmer tone. If Luokai knows what matters to me most, he could use it to take more from me than he already has. “How long have I been down here?”
“A while.” He smooths his robes across his knees. “And our deal is at risk of not being fulfilled.”
“Our deal?” This time my hands clench down to keep me from doing something I’ll regret. “The one where you infected my friend in exchange for giving Sev the cure her mother explicitly set aside for her?”
“It wasn’t the cure. At least, the notes I gave you weren’t.” Luokai puts a hand in his pocket and draws out the link he took from me, hesitation a heavy weight on what he’s about to say. “Sole says the formula we sent was something to do with long-term Sleep.”
“Why am I down here, Luokai?” I’m out of patience. “Where did Sev go? Was the cure on the device?”
“I sent Baohujia—our soldiers—to find you once the bombs stopped. Both of us are down here because Gao Shun—the Baohujia leader—knows we were exposed to contagious SS.”
“I’m immune!”
“Yes, well, Gao Shun isn’t willing to take chances. She wasn’t happy about me setting the two of you free the day the Reds came since you both were exposed to me when I was contagious. The right formula for the cure had to have been on the device Jiang Sev was supposed to get from her.”
I go up on my knees, anger poking through the holes pain is making in my wall of self-control. “Where is Sev?”
Luokai licks his lips, slipping the link back into his pocket before meeting my eyes. “Soldiers from the helis took her. And the device.”
The words sting inside me, numbing everything so I can’t speak, can’t think.
“From what I gather, there was an incident up in the tower—” Luokai’s still talking, but the words fall flat in my head, meaningless in the face of the plans I need to start making.
“Who took her? Menghu? Reds? Which one?”
Luokai takes being cut off gracefully, merely inclining his head. “By the time Gao Shun woke up, there was no one left alive to identify the aggressors. They were definitely not from our island, but they were all dressed like Baohujia.”
The hairs on my arms stand up. Using enemy uniforms in order to access a secured place sounds like a Menghu tactic if I know anything. Dr. Yang announced the mission to invade Port North to a bunch of Reds, but there’s no way he sent just Red soldiers here. He has only managed to keep Reds in check because he has some kind of hold on the Chairman. It was that hold that allowed Menghu to invade the City, that allowed them to take masks and Mantis directly from Red camps after contagious SS began to spread, all because of some picture.
A picture that makes Chairman Sun obey Dr. Yang. It could be anything. A past indiscretion, a medical implant waiting to kill him—it could be a picture of his dead wife in the ground for all I know. The days when I could have snooped until I found the answer then used it as leverage myself are long gone.
Dr. Yang must know that whatever his hold is on the Chairman, it couldn’t possibly be absolute. If, during the invasion, Red soldiers managed to get the cure to Chairman Sun or General Hong, it probably would have destroyed any power Dr. Yang had over City forces. My guess is the doctor sent Menghu in to make sure that wasn’t a possibility.
So Menghu probably have the cure. They probably have Sev, too. The information sits like a bomb inside me, fuse already ignited and burning fast.
“As I said, our deal is in jeopardy.” Luokai’s face is closed enough I can’t read it. No convenient eyebrow furrows or looking away from eye contact. No fidgeting or adjusting his position. Is it possible this man has no tells? “We need to get you out of here as soon as possible to recover the cure.”
“Just so we’re clear. You’re saying if I don’t bring a cure back to you, you’re going to hurt June?” I watch him. Wait.
Luokai doesn’t break eye contact, sitting up straighter if anything. “I am not a monster, Howl. But without a cure, she’s probably better off here with people who know how to take care of her.”
“I want to see her.”
Luokai shakes his head. “I can’t facilitate that. I’m sorry.”
My hands twitch toward my side as if there’s a weapon I can use to persuade him, but all I have is straw. “You touch a hair on that girl’s head and you won’t live to be cured.”
The corner of Luokai’s mouth curls into a smile. “We’re clear, Howl.” He pulls himself up from the floor and goes to the door. “There’s a group of Islanders that set out for the mountains this morning. If you can walk, you should be able to catch up with them and get into the thick of things quicker than you would be able to alone. Sole is still holding out under the Mountain. If you go to her, I’m sure she’ll help you find where they took the cure, and then we can get it back.”
What’s the likelihood that Sev and the cure are in two different places? The thought feels almost like hope. Jiang Gui-hua wanted Sev to find the cure. It’s probably coded for her somehow. Dr. Yang has to be trying to force Sev to work with him.
I sit back, trying to think through the gaps. To find reasons why I could be wrong. But it’s the only information I have, so there isn’t much else I can do but hope I’m correct and act accordingly. My mind begins worrying on the next question: the quickest way to Dr. Yang and, probably, Sev. Attempting to join an Islander caravan could help—then I wouldn’t have to scavenge for food or wander through territory I’m not familiar with. But that plan comes with problems. “You think they’ll just welcome me into their group?” I put my hands up, showing him my First mark. “I don’t know about you, but I tend to be choosy about the people allowed near me while I sleep.”
He smiles. “You will be exactly what they want. You can’t tell them you came from the island or quarantine. About me. But if they believe you to be a First who is sympathetic to the island, then they will take you exactly where you need to go.”
A wave of nausea pulses from my core to my throat as I push myself up from the ground on shaky legs, but it doesn’t have much to do with the pain. If the Menghu really do have Sev, this isn’t going to be pretty.
We’ve lived very different lives. Had very different choices. Sev said it before she left me to climb up the island, helis buzzing in the sky. She stopped me before I could tell her the rest, what Sole and the rest of the Menghu believe of me. That I didn’t just kill Reds. That I’d destroy anyone who rubbed me the wrong way, friend, enemy, or anything in between.
I trust you, Sev said.
Taking a deep breath doesn’t help, the words like a knife in my brain. I trust you.
I knew the things the Menghu said about me, but I never countered them. I never told them that Tali was killed because of a sniper hiding in a tree, not because we argued two nights earlier. Or that Gaohua made the mistake of going off alone and was cornered by gores. That Helan, who told everyone he was as good as dead after I disagreed with him rather violently about tactics, went down under a Red bullet. No odd circumstances, any of them, and yet somehow their murders belong to me.
I di
dn’t do it. Not on purpose, in any case. But I let everyone else believe it, even Sole. When the other Menghu thought I was someone to fear, there weren’t any sideways looks, no references to where I came from. The Chairman and I shared a name. My reputation made me more than my dead parents. Dangerous. In control.
I had to be a gore, I thought, to survive.
A memory of a little girl bleeds up into my mind. No, not the girl, but the husk I left of her, blood-splattered hands still clutching her doll. I take a long, deep breath and then another, trying to make it go away. To somehow make it not true.
Luokai’s face is blank, watching me impassively.
Two years in the City taught me to see more than uniforms when I looked into a crowd, that people weren’t bad or good or enemies or friends just because of the insignia they wore. But right now those same people, no matter what it is they believe, have Sev.
Where does that leave me?
The air inside me is the only thing holding me up. I know what it means to go up against Menghu, and if it means Sev gets to live, then that’s what I’m going to do. I know how to be a gore.
“I can walk.” My legs shake under my weight, but I tell myself it’s the truth. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER 4 Tai-ge
WHEN THE HELI LANDS, I find myself listening for the Menghu girl behind me, keeping track of her without actually watching her. But the moment I climb out of the heli, all thoughts of Menghu blow away in a swell of smoke. The market, a warren of wooden dens and stalls—a place I’m accustomed to elbowing through the crowds, weaving through lines of workers waiting to exchange their ration cards—is nothing but charred bits of kindling. The square above it is white with ash, right to the base of the only thing that remains upright—Yuan Zhiwei’s statue at its center. It’s dusted over with the tiny particles of ash, the marble scorched by flame. Up the hill, where the City Center once stood, there are only blasted remains, stones blackened and strewn in every direction, though the Arch still stands.
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