Mei draws in a shaky breath, her uncovered nose twitching.
Putting a hand on Captain Bai’s shoulder, I keep walking, focused forward as if I can’t see her struggle to inhale.
“I need…” She gasps, wet, ugly sounds that shake her solid frame. “Major Hong, give me a…”
I wave at the two soldiers trailing along behind us to pull her out of the gas cloud—“Find her a mask, would you?”—even as I push Captain Bai around the edge of the building where the torches start, each about ten feet apart.
“It’s unwise to bring your assistant any closer—” Captain Bai shuts his mouth when I put a hand up, leaning to peer around the old bricklayer housing to check that she can’t come any closer. Mei resists the soldiers, her eyes furious as she tries to follow us with an elbow shielding her nose and mouth. She stumbles to her knees, coughs racking her chest.
“I’d rather keep the General’s orders between the two of us.” I turn back to him. “Tell me the details of the directives she gave you. I want to start with distributing supplies, because I feel coordination with the people stuck here will be better facilitated if—”
Captain Bai’s head gives a jerky shake. “They didn’t send us supplies to feed anyone but ourselves, Major Hong.” He looks out at the buildings, everything beyond the torches that I can see silent. Waiting.
“What do you mean?”
The captain abruptly pulls his gaze back from the street winding between the crumbling brick of the buildings and stares fixedly at my collar, his eyes a little too hard.
The change is so abrupt it has me searching the worn cobblestones for an assailant or something that could elicit such a strong reaction from a hardened patroller. All I see is a bit of torn fabric on the street. Something black and fuzzy mixed with red… it takes a moment before my eyes sew the pieces together, the bits all that’s left of a doll. A comrade in uniform, the same ones factories turn out by the hundreds.
How did such a thing come to be shredded just on the other side of the torch line? I look back at Captain Bai, his eyes still focused on my collar, my stars. “What is it the General asked you to tell me?”
The Captain draws a heavy plastic envelope out of his coat, almost like a packet of water purifier but as long and wide as my hand. “Open it. But be careful not to get it on you.”
I turn it over, looking for a way to open it, but it’s sealed on all edges. The captain waits a moment before impatiently taking it back and pulling a knife from his coat pocket. “Don’t you have a knife? Standard issue for patrollers.”
Yet another thing wrong with me. I think back to the knife Sevvy and I passed around in the heli. I gave it to her when we were young as a way to defend herself. Back then, she treasured it because it was something of mine. I look down, forcing myself to focus as Captain Bai slits the envelope, then holds it open to reveal the brown powder inside.
The next time I saw that knife, it came out of Howl’s pocket. At first I’d thought he took it from her. That it was one of the reasons he frightened her. But after a while, it was apparent that she’d given it to him. Allowed him to swap out the unassuming blade to turn it into a true weapon. Something that had once been mine, and he made it his.
Sevvy was also mine, or so I’d supposed.
What does that even mean? Mine. I’d always thought the expression was supposed to be sweet, but maybe it never was.
“What is it?” I ask, watching the careful way Captain Bai holds the package.
“Growth regulators, sir.”
I rack my brain, trying to understand. The weaker variety can be used to ignite an explosion when paired with heli fuel, as I did back when Sevvy and I were breaking into the camp at Dazhai. But one explosion wouldn’t…
But then it hits me. In concentrated forms, growth regulators combined with water form a toxic gas cloud. Death within twenty-four hours for anyone who breathes it. “Growth regulators?” I almost can’t say it. We’re here on a mission to help people, and Mother sent me with poison?
“They’re diluted. Only enough to cloud a few blocks at a time. We’re meant to put them at strategic positions down the Aihu River, which, with our gas masks, will give us a clear path to the wall. Once on the wall, we can secure the gate. Then, after we’ve radioed for extra units to come, we’ll use the torches to push out from the river to enter the mask factory.” Captain Bai blinks a few too many times. “If we don’t contact the two units within range within the next forty-eight hours, they could move too far for us to reach. General Hong has, understandably, not shared our plans with anyone other than me.”
My mind spins, remembering the inadequate-looking piles of boxes we brought with us under the heli. Poison. It’s fast. Efficient. But my chest seems to clench at the thought of using it on infected here in the City. The people I came to help.
“Let me think.” I look back out into the quiet buildings past the torch line. Isn’t staff part of what we need? Thirds who know what materials are required to make masks and how to use the equipment in the mask factory? “Have you had a chance to communicate with the people here? There must be someone out there of rank who could help us coordinate clearing a safe pathway to the gate. They’re our people.”
Captain Bai’s sigh is a little tired. “Perhaps if we had more time. There’s some organization out there. A leader. He approached us when we first landed, but the directives we’ve been given leave no room to help.”
“But there is some kind of structure. A way we’ll be able to coordinate relief efforts after…” After what? After we gas entire blocks of people?
Taking a step back from the torch line, Captain Bai puts a hand to his forehead, rubbing it across his eyes. He looks down at the doll, torn and dead on the cobblestones, and a shadow passes across his eyes. But then his expression hardens, a shield sliding in place across his face. “You’re young, Major. It isn’t our job to choose who lives and who dies. Which life is more important. That’s why leaders who can see the whole picture are the ones giving orders.” He raises his eyebrows, the shadow of disgust returning to his face. “You think your mother handing you that title made you smarter than the rest of us? That we can just discount the General’s weeks of strategizing because you don’t like seeing the results up close? That’s treason, Major Hong.”
He’s gone too far, and he knows it. I can see it in the way he tucks his chin under, as if he expects an angry radio dispatch from Dazhai once I’ve had time to whine over the link about the way he’s treating me.
One word he said really sticks, though. Treason. It shivers through me.
“Give me another way, Major Hong, if you’ve got one.” Captain Bai’s teeth sound gritted even through his mask’s filters, and there’s a vein bulging in his forehead. “Give me another way, and I’ll take it.”
* * *
That night, it’s well past midnight when Mei finally goes to sleep. At least, I think she’s asleep. She’s still fully clothed, a threadbare blanket pulled over her head. But her breaths have finally slowed, rasping out from under her covers in even lines.
If the snoring is any indication, she has a cold. Or maybe the torches have long-term effects on one’s sinuses. When Captain Bai and I retreated from the line of chemical torches, she was standing there waiting for me, eyes murderous, nose running.
Before we were within earshot, I warned Captain Bai to only use soldiers he knows well as he prepares the growth regulators. We only have twenty soldiers here, but he did mention that some of them were new to him. Hopefully we can keep whoever it is Mei is working with in the dark about what we’re doing tomorrow morning.
Morning. I roll to my back, eyes tracing the ceiling. I have until morning to think of a way around gassing my own people that will still get us the gate within the forty-eight hours. There are cracks in the ceiling plaster, lines to mark the hundred years this orphanage has been standing just off the market center. I didn’t truly believe Sevvy when she told me Outside patrollers would use chem
icals to clear whole areas of the forest around farms, choking the life out of everything left unmasked for miles around. Now, though…
Shifting to my side, I put the information into a box in my head, looking at it from all angles. I suppose if the only other people Outside are enemy combatants—or at least people who could very easily become enemies the moment a thought strikes them—it makes sense to use the biggest weapon you can afford. Cost-to-benefit ratio. Kill five to save a hundred.
Mei stirs, and the muscles in my neck contract in response, pinching down my back and into my arms, leaving me stiff until she rolls to face the wall.
Is the cost-to-benefit ratio here too high, or does this just seem so untenable because I’ve never been the officer making the decisions? Sacrificing a few comrades to ultimately give the rest of us a chance against Dr. Yang seems like it should be an acceptable bargain, but I find myself thinking of the doll I saw in the street, what was left of her hair caked with mud.
We can’t even explain fully to the soldiers what it is we’re trying to accomplish without reports going straight to Dr. Yang. What will they think tomorrow, cleaning bodies out of the buildings that line our route to the City gates? Looking for familiar faces as they drag the dead away to be burned. My chest tightens, each inhibited breath coming too slow through my mask.
Pulling myself up into a sitting position, I place my feet on the cold floor, my skin feeling raw everywhere my gas mask rubs: against my chin, across my cheekbones and nose. There is no relief from it.
I creep over to Mei’s bed and pull her pack out from underneath. Inside, there’s only a pair of dirty socks. Where would she have hidden her things? She must have clothes, at the very least. A link to whomever she reports. Mantis.
Pushing the pack back under her bed, I study her. She’s still covered with a blanket from the crown of her head to her calves, her grimy boots making a speckled halo of dirt on her mattress underneath them.
I know this orphanage inside and out. Sevvy and I hid things for each other—notes, food, gifts—in all the nooks and crannies of this place. Wherever Mei’s hidden her things, they have to be close, somewhere easy to access without calling attention to herself, or she wouldn’t be able to take a consistent Mantis dose.
Unless she’s got a bottle hidden on her person.
With the link I’m supposed to take. A link that might point me toward a Menghu base. Toward Sevvy.
I put a hand out, hovering just over where her shoulder must be. The blanket balloons out over her face as she exhales. If I pull back the blanket now, unzip her coat—
“If you touch me, I will kill you.” Her voice is a muffled whisper. “Why don’t you go back to your own bed like a nice little boy?”
Stepping back, I sit down on my bed and lean forward, elbows on my knees. “Do you know where Sevvy is?”
She pulls the blanket away from her face, blinking at me. “What?”
“Jiang Sev. It was Menghu who took her. Do you know where she ended up?” I look down. “I’m . . I’m worried about her.” It’s not a lie. But not the whole truth.
Mei watches me for a beat longer than seems called for, the words setting something off in her brain. But then she just sniffs. Turns over toward the wall and pulls the blanket back over her head. “What kind of a nickname is Sevvy? It’s longer than her real name.”
“Have you made any headway on the cure? Mother said Sevvy wasn’t being cooperative when they opened up that device.”
“Not like they need her to cooperate.” Her voice is muffled by the blanket.
Fear stabs like a frozen knife in my stomach, the stories Sevvy told me about her time with the Outsiders crackling like a fuzzy radio channel at the back of my head. “What do you mean? Dr. Yang’s not still telling you people that she’s the cure, is he?”
Mei sits up in one graceful motion, the puffy hood of her jacket standing out like wings from her shoulders. But she doesn’t say anything.
I press a hand to my cheek, trying to think. “We found a device with the cure on it at the island. Your friends took it right out of my hand. That’s what Dr. Yang wanted, isn’t it? The cure? That’s why he made Reds invade Kamar.” Mei still doesn’t respond, her eyes thoughtful.
We stare at each other a minute longer before I give up. “I’m going to get a drink of water.” I push myself up from the bed. “Would you like one?”
She shakes her head.
Stepping into my boots by the door, I shoulder my way into the hall, frustration a steel trap around my jaw. The cafeteria is dark, so I walk past it, wondering if some fresh air will help me solve the growth regulator problem. Outside, everything looks wrong; the lights that used to dot the City at night extinguished. I look up the mountain toward the Second Quarter, wishing for something familiar, something to tell me what to do.
I freeze when my eyes find a light. No, more than one, all congregated together near the center of the district, close to where my home is. Where it was, I suppose, the thought an uncomfortable ache inside me. Our family compound is empty now. Empty of my family, the Thirds who cleaned and cooked for us. Empty of anyone but the sick and the dead.
This whole city will be nothing but dead men, women, and children unless I do something.
I give the lights a hard look. Then go inside for a coat.
CHAPTER 8 Howl
MY HEAD SWIMS, MOLD-LACED DIRT filling my nose every time I try to breathe. Rough hands haul me up from the ground, the knife sharp against my throat.
Four Islanders crowd around me in the tent like kids on their first encounter with a dead body. Words fly back and forth, all of them passing straight through my ears without making an impression—Port Northian, I hope. The alternative—that I’m so sick I can’t understand speech—is too horrifying to contemplate.
The man who took the knife isn’t one of the two I saw before. He wears Baohujia robes like armor, making a barrier between me and an old woman, the fourth of the group. The other two—the portly one and the thin one I attacked—hang back, watching.
When the Baohujia pulls my bag from my shoulder, he doesn’t seem to notice pain hissing out from between my teeth, and tears open the pockets one by one. He takes out the bottle of pills Luokai gave me, squinting down at them for a moment before handing them to the old woman.
Next, he searches my person. This is when I should jump up, kick the soldier in the head, grab one of their packs, and run, but instead my body sways from side to side, my arms like rubber snakes.
The Baohujia’s hands stop when they get to my wrists. He turns to the old woman, speaking softly. She raises her eyebrows, fixing me with a curious stare. The momentary reprieve doesn’t last long, though, because the Islander hands the old woman the knife, then pulls a thin, plasticky cord from one of the packs. He uses it to tie my hands and feet, wrapping it tight enough that my fingers immediately begin to swell.
They’re not going to kill me. The thought registers too slowly. Why aren’t they killing me?
Once the Baohujia is finished tying me, the old woman raps out a set of what sounds like orders that result in the Baohujia and the overeater exiting the tent, leaving her alone with me and the young man I attacked. When they’re gone, she settles on the ground directly in front of me, carefully arranging the knife I was holding minutes ago in plain sight on her lap. The young man stays by the door, his breaths still coming too quickly, his hands clenched around the long slash I made in his coat.
Alarm beats in my chest, my brain ticking off a list of considerations. Wrists bound. Ankles tied, though the Baohujia did it over my boots, so I might be able to do something about that. The long knife is accessible, gripped only between an old woman’s wrinkled fingers, though it’s countered by a flash of gunmetal gray at her hip. I could throw one of the packs behind me, lob a fistful of dirt into their eyes even with my hands tied.
But the list flickers down to one solitary item: I still can’t move.
I can’t even see more than fuz
zy outlines, and the floor seems to be spinning. The woman hefts the knife, leaning forward to examine the single line carved into the spot between my thumb and forefinger, the same spot the Baohujia paused to look at while tying me up. My First mark.
She turns to the young man, making an impatient gesture with her hand.
“Why did you break into our camp?” he asks.
“Why did…?” His language is perfect, not choppy and squeezed the way every word Luokai said was, as if he’d forgotten the words he was born with. “I was hungry. You have food.”
His eyes skate down to touch the First mark carved into my hand, his fingers white as he clutches at the tear in his coat. But he turns to the old woman, speaking to her in Port Northian. A translator. The woman, her shoulders hunched and her neck bowed, seems to be just a bit of skin wired to a frame, her movements pained. She speaks for a moment, then pulls my shirt collar back to show the scabs stuck to my skin like leeches.
“You are important, and yet you have gore teeth in your shoulder. You’re miles away from a place sanitized and safe enough for your rank…” The young man takes a shaky breath, his shoulders hunching as he speaks. “She asks if you are thirsty.”
I lick my lips, dry from my sprint to get to the Islanders before Reds found me. “Yes, I am thirsty.”
The young man’s lips purse into a grimace before he shares what I’ve said with the old woman. She nods and jerks her head at him as if he doesn’t even deserve the effort it takes to say out loud what she’s asking for. The young man stands, goes to one of the packs, and comes back with a waterskin. Hesitating a moment, he opens it and holds it out toward my mouth, but I don’t drink.
Sitting forward, the woman runs a finger along the edge of the long knife I held only moments ago. As she speaks, the young man translates. “What are you doing so far from your guards? Your camps?” She holds up the bottle of pills. “Injured, no less. I’ve never seen someone survive a gore bite like that.”
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