Dead Moon Rising

by Caitlin Sangster

  “June? What are you…”

  Holding it out where he can see it, I throw the blade directly at Loss’s head.

  He swears, sidestepping so the heavy knife lands blade-first in the snow at his feet. Then looks up at me, puzzled. “That was dumb.” He bends to pick up the blade. “Why throw your only weapon—”

  The back of his neck, exposed when he bends over, makes an easy target. The first stone from my bag hits him with a meaty thunk. He doesn’t have time to recover before I throw the next and the next, the stones hitting his head and neck until he doesn’t move anymore, slumped over the knife where it hit the ground.

  I breathe deep, trying not to look at the blood that marks the snow where the rocks skittered away from Loss’s body. The gore inside me gives an appreciative grumble, and for once, the wind is there too, patting my cheek and agreeing with the gore.

  I didn’t compulse. But that just means this bad thing is mine. No Tian telling me I had to, no Dad with his ribs showing. No SS twisting my head. I chose the rocks and the blood.

  I am the bad thing that no one wanted. That no one could survive for. Not even Dad.

  CHAPTER 35 Tai-ge

  WHEN I GET BACK TO our dead fire with our packs, Kasim is there bending over Mei’s curled form. He whispers something in her ear that makes her laugh, and then swear, because apparently laughing hurts.

  He stands at my approach, holding his hand out for his pack. A thrill of fear prickles through me as he takes it without breaking eye contact. My gun, recovered from Kasim’s things, feels cold against my skin where it’s stuck into my waistband. Kasim isn’t actively pointing any weapons at me, so Mei must have told him what happened. “You see any other patrollers?” I ask quietly.

  “No.” He sits down with his pack, unzipping the outer pocket. “It makes me worry.”

  “We need to get her to a medic.” I kneel by Mei, eyeing the coat she still has clutched to her side, red marking the fabric.

  Kasim shakes his head. “If we’re not the only ones who know the doctor has Jiang Sev, then—”

  “My mother does know Dr. Yang has Sevvy and that Sevvy has the cure,” I interrupt. “But she didn’t know where he was keeping her.” Mother knew we couldn’t fight him. Not with SS running rampant and Dr. Yang’s finger on the Mantis supplies. That’s why I was in the City.

  Wasn’t it?

  I’m not sure all of a sudden. Brushing the thought away—like so many that have stuck in odd places over the years—is more difficult than usual. “What about Mei? She can’t go in like we planned, and we can’t leave her here.”

  Kasim sits back down and pulls a roll of bandaging from the open pack. “There’s a place close by we can take Mei without blowing my cover here.” He rubs his hands across his face before looking up at me. “We have bigger problems than Mei bleeding a little. Sev’s Asleep.”

  “She can’t be Asleep; she was already cured.…” Dread seeps through me. “You mean Asleep like… like what Dr. Yang did to Jiang Gui-hua?” Mother’s words back at the camp feel like knives, every one. Dr. Yang’s had success waking patients when using the serum correctly. There’s a proper procedure. A dosing schedule. A dosing schedule we don’t know. Only that if anyone tries to wake Sevvy up without it, she will die. Another card Dr. Yang holds with no way to peek.

  Kasim pulls some bandaging out of his pack and kneels beside Mei. She averts her eyes for a second, but then her face hardens and she makes herself watch as he pulls the jacket back from her wound. “I’ve been stationed here for weeks, and it took Helix mouthing off tonight because of an SS outbreak in one of his units for me to realize they put her to Sleep.” He grins at Mei. “Never thought old stick-up-his-butt Helix Lan would ever say a word against a leader, but he’s angry. Asking if any of us know why Dr. Yang would have put her to Sleep instead of operating. Think Helix would go over to Sole?”

  Mei shakes her head, her eyes widening. “I don’t want Captain Lan anywhere near me.”

  “He’s annoying”—Kasim makes a face, giving an offhand shrug as he mops up the blood streaking down Mei’s side—“and maybe a little bloodthirsty, for my taste, but his support could change a lot, you know.”

  I only half listen as they argue about the captain, whoever he is, interrupting with my main concern. “The medicine Sevvy used to wake up Jiang Gui-hua killed her. Does your leader—Sole?—know how to wake up someone from Suspended Sleep safely?”

  Kasim doesn’t respond, wrinkling his nose as he sprays something into Mei’s side. She flinches, a tear streaking down her cheek. It stays there, a wet line through her freckles, beading at the corner of her wide mouth, as if by ignoring it Mei can refuse to acknowledge she’s crying.

  “Don’t know what that has to do with you, Major Hong.” There’s blood speckled across Kasim’s fingers when he pulls them away from Mei’s side. He glances down at them impassively, letting the blood stain.

  “I know what you think Sevvy is. You’re wrong.” I unzip my pack, groping for my waterskin to help Kasim wash his hands, but my fingers close around something pointed and metal instead. My stars. I peer inside to find the waterskin, pulling it out carefully so it doesn’t snag on the stars’ metal points. I don’t want to touch them anyway, not after killing the Second. And not after what he did to deserve being killed.

  Kasim clears his throat. “Doesn’t matter one way or another for you.” He extends his hand for me, waiting for me to pour water over it. “Since Sev isn’t in a position to care much who is wheeling her around, we don’t really need you to persuade her to come quietly.”

  I let the water spray into his palm, washing away the red. “There’s no way I’m just going to sit out here—”

  “That isn’t what we planned, Kasim,” Mei cuts me off.

  “But this guy’s a risk we don’t need to take now.” Kasim pulls a gun from his coat. He points directly at my head, the muzzle of the noise suppressor less than six inches from my eye. “We’ll just leave him with the other bodies.…”

  I drop the waterskin, everything moving too slow: my hands flying up to jerk the gun’s barrel up, a thermal blast of gas and powder burning across my face and hands as the weapon discharges. Droplets of water spray my boots and his, my waterskin hitting Mei’s leg and slopping liquid across her ankles.

  Kasim’s boot hits me square in the chest even as I drop down—still trying to avoid the bullet that already shot over my head—and slams me into the cold ground, the heavy treads pressing patterns into my chest through my coat. His toe crushes the bottom tubes of my gas mask, threatening to pull it away from my face. I twist, trying to get a hand to the gun in my belt, but it’s trapped under me.

  Mei’s face appears next to his over me.

  “You Reds all look alike.” It’s hard to hear all of Kasim’s words through the ringing in my ears after that shot. Even with a silencer, guns bite in more ways than one. I grab hold of his foot as he uses his toe to pull my mask up from my mouth and nose, letting it spring back against my cheek with a painful snap that leaves me exposed to unfiltered air. Kasim breathes deep, centering himself as I’ve done so many times at the range, my firearm steady on the target, ready to pull the trigger in the moment between exhaling and drawing a new breath. “The only difference between you and the patrollers out here is your soft hands.”

  He lets the breath out.

  The sound of the gun, even muted, blasts my world open and shuts it all at once, my eyes closed because I don’t want to watch myself die. But as the gun discharges, it’s muddied by a grunt, and the pressure on my chest is suddenly gone.

  Not sure if I’m in pieces or whole, I roll away from Kasim into a crouch, managing to pull the gun from my waistband, only to find Mei on the other side of it.

  The contoured insides of my mask press painfully against my cheek where they’re pulled askew, the smell of pine and snow like an icy glass of water over my head. It’s been so long since I’ve smelled anything but plastic, every molecule of ai
r in my nose scrubbed clean.

  Does SS cling to clothing? To the outside of my mask? To Mei, who had that Second breathing in her face? Mother told me that people who were already infected could be exposed again to a contagious host and restart the contagion process in themselves.

  Does any of it matter? Kasim is about to shoot me.

  “Put that down,” Mei hisses at me, placing herself firmly between me and Kasim, who is looking wildly between the two of us. He edges to the side, his hands still full of the gun, but not sure where to point it with Mei blocking his target.

  Mei slumps down to my level, holding her hand out toward me, every inch of her steel, despite the bloody wound marking her side. “Give me your gun, Tai-ge.”

  I keep my hold on the gun for a second longer, my hands shaking. Failure seems to taste more potent without a mask between me and the world. But I lower the weapon, then pull my mask straight, the familiar sanitized flow of filtered air resuming with a rasp.

  “Give it to me.” She slides closer, wrenching the gun out of my hands, the handgrip scraping against my fingers, burned from shoving Kasim’s gun away from me as he shot. It’s a moment of hope when she points it toward Kasim.

  Kasim keeps his gun pointed at the ground, curious enough to wait for an explanation. “You didn’t tell me he managed to get his hands on a gun. You know you’re not supposed to let yourself get attached to pets, Mei.”

  “Not attached. I’ve thought this through.” She keeps the gun trained on him. “We both know I don’t want to hurt you, but if this is what it takes for you to listen…” She looks him over. “You could still shoot a gun less a few fingers.”

  “You are so dramatic. I’m not even pointing…” Kasim rolls his eyes, putting both his hands up. “Fine. Tell me why we should leave this gore excrement alive.”

  “If you’re going to be wheeling Sev out somehow, you’re going to need someone to pretend to be a medic. Even if you put her in a body bag and pretend you’re on cremation duty, it’s going to take two people to carry her to the fires out back. I was never supposed to go in, and we can’t risk it with Helix on duty. He knows I’m not supposed to be here.”

  “What if those Reds who shot you are in the area because of your little friend here, Mei?” Kasim’s eyes narrow as I sit back from my crouch, spine so straight it feels fused in one vertical line. “If his side knows why Sev’s important now, we can’t afford to make any mistakes.”

  “He doesn’t have any way to communicate; I made sure of that. And he shot two of the Reds, Kasim.” Mei’s teeth are bared over every word, as if defending my existence physically pains her as much as it does for me to hear it. “Just now, to help me.”

  “So, we know he shoots both his own kind and ours. I don’t see why—”

  “But you trust me, right, Kasim? He’s on our side enough to make this mission work.” Mei glances at me, then looks down at her own hands, her mouth pressed closed. “Nobody knows Tai-ge in there. If we put him in a white coat, his mask will make him look just like those Firsts Dr. Yang pulled in right after we went into Kamar.”

  Kasim’s mouth goes hard. “So what if I do take Hong in there with me? What about you, Mei?”

  Hong. As if I’m an object to be stowed and forgotten. From my mother’s pocket to Kasim’s. She’d be so proud.

  “You’re just going to hope no other Reds trip over you or our patrols don’t notice your tracks all over the place?” Kasim continues. “Getting you and Sev to Sole is our first priority. Having to deal with Hong is going to muddy all this up.” He doesn’t even look at me as he says it.

  Mei forces herself up onto her knees and then her feet, grimacing the whole way. The way she’s holding her side makes me think of Sevvy’s fractured ribs after the Aihu Bridge bomb. “I’ll open the back door from outside like I was supposed to. And while you’re in there, I’ll see what I can do to draw Menghu toward those dead Reds. If that shakes up the hive, there will be fewer guards inside watching the halls. Everyone will be trying to figure out how close the Reds are, how many there are, and what they know. And you aren’t going to cause any trouble, are you?” She looks at me.

  I don’t have time to respond, and don’t know what I’d say in any case, before Kasim answers. “They aren’t going to pull guards off the east side, where Sev is—”

  “Wait, the east side?” I interrupt, my stomach dropping to my feet. “I think you need to tell me exactly what the plan is.” The east side of this building is walled in by a morgue and a detainment unit. In other words, there are no easy exits unless you’re a pile of ashes in a box.

  “You know this place?” Kasim raises an eyebrow.

  “Only what I’ve heard from reports.” I keep my head down, hoping the dark disguises the lie. I know the floor plan. The most likely guard stations. The exits. Where the heli-field is. Whether or not there are aircraft coming in and out here is another question entirely.

  “Jiang Sev’s not in the cells,” Kasim finally continues after a moment of quiet between us. “The detainment facility on the east side of the garrison has been quarantined because SS was spreading too fast inside. When I left a week ago, they were still working on how to fix the filtration system so it didn’t poison the air everywhere else, though I can’t see anyone wandering around without a mask at this point unless they’re like us.” He shares a look with Mei. “It’s mostly political detainees in the detention block, and since they’re all sick now, Dr. Yang and his First buddies are using them to observe the new strain of SS. Jiang Sev’s on the southeast corner. In the real labs.”

  Labs. He must mean the annex on the southeast corner of the complex. It’s set up for crop testing with sterile rooms. That’s where the First’s offices and living quarters were too. It makes sense that Dr. Yang would install himself there.

  “We knew sneaking her out through the lab doors was a long shot when we came. But it’s the only shot we can take.” Mei looks down at me. “You’re still set on getting her out, right? Even if Kasim here is a little friendly with the firearms? If Sev stays in there, she’s dead.”

  If she goes with Mei and Kasim, she’s dead too. She could be as good as dead already with Suspended Sleep in her system. I file that thought away, though. If there’s no cure and Sevvy’s out of the picture, then all of us might as well be dead. We could possibly manage to get mask production going, Mantis production too, but it won’t ever meet our needs. The world will just get worse than it is now. Not just dangerous outside the torch line in the City and the camps. It’ll be unlivable.

  I can’t accept that. So hope is what I’m choosing right now. Hope that the device had the cure and that Sevvy knows why, like her mother’s directions to find family at Port North. I choose to hope that Firsts will be able to get her awake again, and that when she wakes up and sees me, Sevvy won’t try to stab me in the eye.

  That she’ll come back to the City with me, not as a prisoner but as an equal. Because I don’t believe she was completely wrong about everything anymore.

  That Mother, when we come up with the cure, will be proud.

  “If you stay here alone, you’re dead, Tai-ge.” Mei’s voice brings me back to the forest, to the guns no longer pointed at me. Her tone says something else, though. It’s not a threat so much as the beginnings of a plea. As if, maybe, it’s not just wanting to use me that put her between me and Kasim’s gun.

  Maybe. But if I choose to believe the world isn’t going to end, does that mean I have to think about how Menghu like Mei fit into that? She’s the same as the Mountain forces in the City who were left behind. Not a part of the enemy we need to fight right now.

  “Tai-ge?” Mei’s voice sharpens. “Should I be regretting that Kasim’s bullets aren’t lodged in your heart?”

  “No. I’m not going to back out now.” I shake my head, still trying to think things through. Wherever they are planning to take Sev after extracting her from the garrison must be close. Otherwise Kasim and Mei would be more worried
about the bullet shards trapped under Mei’s skin. I’ll have to get the device and escape before they can take us to wherever that is.

  Heli propellers hum overhead, lowering into the darkness in the garrison’s direction, not the first I’ve heard in the days we’ve been out here. So they are keeping helis at the pad here.

  “Good.” Mei looks back at Kasim, lowering the gun. “And you’re good with this?”

  He gives a one-armed shrug. “Yeah, I guess. If he pulls any crap, it’s on your head, though.”

  I take a shaky breath, not wanting to look away from Kasim and the gun he holds so casually. “I need you to tell me exactly what we’re doing. Getting shot in the head because you drag me down the wrong corridor isn’t the way I want to die.”

  Kasim’s eyes are still narrow, but he lowers himself to the ground, arranging his braced leg carefully in front of him. “Dr. Yang’s leaving for the next two days. We’re going in with the evening guard change, just in case something delays him leaving.”

  “That’s a start. But what about waking Sevvy?”

  “We’ve got doses lined up already. Sole says there’s a way to administer it that is safer than the way Jiang Gui-hua got it. We’ll be able to get her awake again.”

  If we need to. The unspoken addendum chills me to my bones. But if there’s a way to do it, then that means I can get my hands on it. Mother can help. She’s got access to Dr. Yang and all the Firsts who escaped the City. If we need to steal the serum, then we will.

  “All right. Let’s plan this out.”

  As we go through our options one by one, I fashion myself an escape hatch. With an active heli-field providing a getaway and the floor plans like a beacon in my head, I can make this mission mine and give Kasim and Mei no way to follow. I’ll get Sevvy out of here. We’ll be safe. Free. Done with this war.

  It isn’t until after we’re done planning and I’m huddled alone in my hammock that I let my hands anxiously check all the tubes on my mask, the filters, the clasps. As if my brain is frantically trying to fix something that can’t be taken back. The air tasted so clear in those few moments my mask pulled away from my face, more than I’ve breathed of the real world between bites of food since I was on the island, trying to pull Sevvy to safety. Kasim and Mei have both been infected long enough that they’re probably not contagious. The few breaths of air I took shouldn’t matter.