Dead Moon Rising

by Caitlin Sangster

  Two weeks. Does that mean Howl has two weeks as well? Somehow I doubt it. My chest feels hollow, electric, caged, and wronged. Howl’s going to die, and the Chairman isn’t going to give me any help fixing it. Leaning back against the wall, I pocket the link, my arms feeling too long and my mind moving too slow. Sole is still staring at me, her mouth full of condemnation she can’t bring herself to spit out.

  I’ll have to find my own way into the garrison. But I can’t find the Chairman’s son by myself. “Help me, Sole,” I whisper. “Give me a chance to prove what I’m saying about the cure is true. If I’m wrong”—I gesture vaguely at my head—“you can have at it.”

  She squints at me, her hands still in fists. But she nods.

  CHAPTER 49 Howl

  “I DON’T UNDERSTAND.” HELIX STANDS with his forehead pressed to the cell’s glass wall, his eyes glazed from alcohol. Odd because when I knew him, Helix wasn’t one to drink anything that could compromise his judgment. Impaired vision could be the difference between surviving or not when you live by the bullets in your gun.

  My eyes blur as I try to concentrate on Helix’s outline. Energy seems to be eating me from the inside at what I’ve done. I’ve closed the last door. The one between me and escape.

  I made Sev jump.

  Helix’s hand slaps against the glass, a loud crack that makes me shudder. “You know what Dr. Yang is doing, don’t you? Why he wouldn’t take the cure from Jiang Sev? Why he isn’t cutting you open now?” Helix slaps the glass again, his head going with it so he recoils with a pained snarl.

  “Everything he’s ever told you was a lie.” My voice croaks, stripped of any veneer. Raw, real, and honest. It feels good. “If there was a cure inside me, why didn’t he cut it out a year ago? Five years ago?” I stand slowly, walking over to the glass until Helix is just there on the other side. “There aren’t very many choices, and all of them are about power. If you think Dr. Yang has the answers, then you follow. If you think he just needs one more ingredient, one more weapon, one more hostage, and it will mean being free, you obey.”

  Helix’s glazed eyes water as he stares at me, his mask pressed awkwardly against the glass.

  “Dr. Yang is never going to set you free, Helix. There aren’t enough ties between him and the Menghu. You and the other captains are doing what he wants until he gives you the cure. Why would he give it to you?” I look over the smudged glass, eyes finally focusing on Helix’s battered gas mask. “This situation we’re in now, with SS spreading, with fighting worse than it has ever been? It’s your fault for still believing Dr. Yang when he has let you down over and over again.” I shake my head and turn away from him. “Sev says there is a cure. It’s not in my head or hers. Dr. Yang definitely doesn’t have it. How long are you going to keep running for a man who doesn’t care if you live or die?”

  Helix slams the window with his open hand again, rebounding away, glassy-eyed. “How did you manage to blow up the whole eastern side of the garrison? That’s tech we need, Howl. You used to be a Menghu. Loyal. On our side.” He chokes on the words as if he doesn’t believe them. Helix never was much of a liar.

  This isn’t my fight anymore. My stone has been placed on the weiqi board, and there’s no moving it now. It’s the things that I can’t fix, can’t change that feel like regrets now. Sev was so quiet, so angry. As if I’d taken back all my apologies and laughed in her face. Does Sev want anything to do with me now that she’s seen what I’m made from, past and present?

  Does taking those bombs to save Reds or giving myself up make up for any of it? Or am I condemned because stealing those bombs just provoked Song Jie and Reifa to follow me here instead?

  I don’t know if taking lives and giving them is something you can balance like weights on a scale. I don’t know if there are answers at all. Only that I did what I came to do. Sev is out. The world will continue. I just won’t be in it.

  “You are nothing,” Helix snarls. “Less than nothing. So selfish you want to take us all with you when you die. Just the way you always were.” He gets up close to the glass. “You are going to die, and I don’t care how it happens. Scalpel. Bullet. Whatever. I just want to watch.”

  I look back over my shoulder, waiting until he meets my gaze. “I do have one thing that might help you. If you see a heli that doesn’t belong to the City—a black one?” Helix’s eyes focus on me for a second, and I wait a second before continuing to make sure he’s listening. “Whatever orders Dr. Yang gives you, find a way to bring it down. You think the blast here was bad? It’s going to come for you and every other person alive in these mountains. Drop it out of the sky, or there won’t be a war anymore because there will be no one left to fight it.”

  They’re not my people, but they’re still people. I can see myself in Song Jie. Thinking if he can just show Reifa what he’s capable of, she’ll change her mind about him. I regret Reifa’s sadness, her mourning for a son she’ll never see again.

  I don’t want them to die, but I don’t want hundreds, maybe thousands, to die here in the mountains, killed for no other reason but revenge.

  Gein was kind of a gore hole, so whatever.

  I lie back on my cot and close my eyes. Shut out the too-bright light, Helix’s voice as he continues to yell through the smudged glass. This is what the world has always been. It’s blood and death and tears and wishing things were different. I guess that’s why Sev needed me. Not just to talk her into letting go of the past so she could look forward. She sees the world as if it’s a gore that’s going to turn into a butterfly if only she talks to it long enough. I’m the one who twists it to the ground while she casts her spell, because gores don’t dream of butterflies. They dream of meat and blood.

  The cot feels plasticky and uncomfortable, a sad place to let my body rest when I’ve spent so long pretending I could run forever. But, for the first time, it’s my choice. I’m choosing my own end. Not Dr. Yang. Not the Chairman or that Seph-cursed gore that tried to bite me in two. I chose this.

  I close my eyes and wait.

  CHAPTER 50 Sev

  LIHUA PLOPS DOWN NEXT TO me at the table, her eyes wide on Sole, who is sitting across from us. When Sole smiles, the little girl buries her face in my side.

  Sole’s eyes fall to her hands clutched around her bowl, the conversation we had yesterday heavy over us. I can almost hear what she must be thinking. If I’ve left behind the bad things I’ve done, then why is this little girl frightened of me?

  I wish I could tell her it’s because of her expression, not because of some killer aura hovering over her. But then I notice the link peeking through her fingers. Maybe she’s not thinking of Lihua or me at all.

  She said Luokai thought it would be safe to hide here. With her. Does that mean he’s coming? And if he’s coming, does that mean… the thought of golden curls, of June’s scratched-glass eyes. I can’t imagine her staying with Luokai. Not after everything that has happened. But I hold on to the idea of her, alive and on her way.

  “So, we have two weeks,” Sole murmurs, poking at the gray-and-brown mush that is supposed to be dinner. She lowers her face to her plate, inspecting the grains of rice that have mixed with her vegetables. “Given our supply situation, I’d say two weeks is the longest I could give you before we need to start being more aggressive about the cure. If the boy is still alive and here somehow, the setup would have to be self-governing as much as possible. If there’s a machine performing vital functions, feeding him, giving him medicine, keeping him clean… that would take power.”

  “Isn’t there a way to see where power is being used? Or if Sun Yi-lai is here, wouldn’t Dr. Yang have to have easy access so he could take care of him? So we should probably check… I don’t know, Dr. Yang’s office? The Yizhi wing?”

  A girl sitting down looks up at the mention of power. Sole doesn’t notice, her chin tipping up as she looks at the ceiling. “Most of the power through the Mountain is down. We managed to link into the main solar panels from down
here, but it cut things off upstairs.” She goes back to stabbing at her meal with her chopsticks. “It’s more likely we’re looking for a…” She glances at Lihua. “Not a live person.”

  “I can’t think Dr. Yang would just let Sun Yi-lai die. If he left him here, wouldn’t he have thought through that problem? Like, with a generator or something.”

  “With enough supplies hooked up on timers so he’s fed and hydrated?” Sole shrugs. “That seems very unlikely.”

  “But possible? Dr. Yang couldn’t have risked leading anyone to him by accident, so whatever setup he had would have had to be mostly automated.”

  “We won’t know until we find him, I guess.” Sole’s only saying it because she doesn’t want to argue. Though she can’t seem to stop herself from tacking on a caveat. “If we do.”

  I push my bowl away. The girl who has been eavesdropping on our conversation slides closer. “Are you guys wondering about the power grid? It would pick up an individual generator. They geared it to pick up any power flares so people couldn’t slip in and then squat in places with lower traffic, like down in the storage rooms.” She ducks her head when Sole’s frozen stare finds her. “I mean, not unless they wanted to sit in the dark all the time. The grid’s up in the Heart.”

  The Heart. Up above the sectioned-off hallways, up past the Core with its windows to Outside. Above the greenhouses, to the very top of this place. Through how many levels of people who are infected, too scared or too confused to escape? “Could you take me up there?” I ask the girl.

  The girl is already shaking her head, eyes wide. “I couldn’t go up there. I just…” She swallows. “I was just barely learning about it, anyway. I was in my last year of school with Jiaoyang.” The teaching collective that took care of kids.

  Sole waves her away. “You should probably eat, Gala. They need more hands over in the hospital rooms, and I know you’ve been helping a lot in there.”

  Gala ducks her head again, blushing. “Yes, ma’am,” she says, then slides away.

  Lihua looks up from where she’s nuzzled against me. “I’ll go with you, Jiang Sev. There’s lots of stuff up there, I hear. Peishan was talking to one of the guards, and he said that’s where everyone used to live, so there were windows and stuff.”

  Sole takes a too-big bite of rice. “What we need is more medical supplies, and the Yizhi wing has been completely cleaned out. You can’t ask people to risk their lives up there with no definite benefits.”

  My cheeks heat up at her cool tone. “You mean like maybe saving a kid’s life, no matter that he’d be a valuable asset.”

  Sole shakes her head, slow and steady. “Unless you could think of a way to get something we need—”

  “What about Dr. Yang’s office? He had to have some things up there.…”

  “He had a whole lab.” Sole taps her lips thoughtfully with her chopsticks, but she goes back to eating. “It’s probably coded shut, so there’s a good chance his supplies are undisturbed. It’s likely there are devices and materials inside that could be valuable… but if you’re suggesting a joint mission—checking the power grid and bringing back supplies at the same time—we’d have to send medics up with you to identify what to take, and I’m afraid we can’t spare even one, Sev. We need our medics down here.”

  “I can think of one you might be able to spare.” I hate myself even as I say it.

  * * *

  It doesn’t take long to find the medic I have in mind, because he’s confined to a hospital bed. Xuan smooths his blankets, sitting with his back against his pillow. “You want me to help you go play with the infected people upstairs?” He looks at me. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve been shot. A couple of times.”

  “We need your genius medic brain, Xuan. I don’t know flesh-eating bacteria samples from painkillers.” I lean closer. “Remember how you got me out of the bunker because of the cure? This is how we get it.”

  “I’ve done my part.” Xuan pulls his blankets up to his chin. “It’s my turn to lie in bed and pet furry animals.”

  “The only animals we have down here are chickens.…” Sole’s brow creases. “They haven’t let chickens in, have they?”

  “Sole says she could spare a few Menghu to get us up there to check the power grid.” I explain about the Chairman and the deadline to find his son, and our plan to get anything of value from Dr. Yang’s office while we’re up there. “I’m not going to pretend this is a really good idea. The Heart is up really far.”

  “Where most of the infected seem to be.” Sole glances up from Xuan’s charts, biting her lip. “This man shouldn’t be out of bed, Sev.”

  “See?” Xuan points at Sole. “She’s a good medic, says exactly what I want her to.”

  I lean in close so Xuan has no choice but to look me in the eyes, my finger an inch from his nose. “If you don’t come through for me here, I’m going to go find the guy who shot you and—”

  He puts his hands up. “Calm down! You are so violent. I didn’t say there was no circumstance under which I could be induced to help. What’s one more poorly planned excursion with you that will most likely end in worms eating my eyeballs? I just want to make sure that if I’m being assigned to a suicide dive that there’s a cookie at the end.”

  “With Jiang Sev?” Sole’s eyes zero in on me. “She’s not going.”

  “Yes I am, Sole.” I lean forward in my chair, not wanting to meet that mechanical gaze.

  “You have no tactical training, and if this mission is going to succeed without casualties that we cannot afford, I can’t send more than one person who’s going to need hand-holding the whole way up,” Sole says sharply. “Not to mention if we don’t find the cure the way you say we will, you will be our only path forward.” Brisk and brutal. As always. “You honestly thought I’d risk your head upstairs when we need it so badly down here?”

  I touch the back of my head, wondering where the first incision will be. “I’m going, Sole.”

  “Think what we would lose if you get killed, Sev. Sometimes being a hero means staying behind.”

  Xuan raises his hand again and clears his throat, adjusting his shoulder theatrically when we both look at him. “If I might interfere before the two of you begin knifing each other.” He points to Sole. “You’ve been taking infected in from Outside. Did a girl come in? Uh… a woman? She’s twenty-six. Gorgeous. Answers to Fan Luyuan. First marks.” He touches his own thumb and forefinger, rubbing at scars that mark him a Second. My heart stills a second, his pain sticky like glue. “I might find myself significantly more motivated if you’ve got any information on her whereabouts.”

  Sole sighs, rubbing her temples. “We do have some Firsts who have come in. She’s the kind of First who does experiments or the kind who knows only how to eat?”

  “She’s a medic. Taught up on the Steppe in the City until…” He pauses. Until we evacuated to Dazhai. “Her specialty was infectious diseases. The things that girl could do with a test tube…” Xuan trails off, his heart not really in it.

  “I’ll ask down in the quarantines. She’s infected?”

  Xuan nods slowly, his eyes still stuck on Sole, who is now fiddling with the bedsheets, one hand sneaking into her pocket where she stowed the link.

  Infected. Missing. I wonder whether she finally wrote back to Luokai.

  “If you find out she’s here, will you let me know?” Xuan asks.

  “That’s all you want?” Sole’s head bobs forward as if it’s about to fall off.

  “I would also like a continuation of the fabulous service here. Including a chicken or two to pet.” He grins. Or he tries.

  “Right.” Tapping the telescreen next to the bed despite the long scratches marring the surface, Sole points to Xuan’s shoulder. “Your medical reports indicate your wounds are clean of fragments and that you should heal quickly, so long as you stay still.” Sole blinks a little too hard. “If you’re going to go up there, then I’ll give a list of materials you ne
ed. You’ll have to check if the things you find are viable, which means we’ll need you coherent.”

  Xuan sighs. “So this chipmunk’s dose of painkillers you’ve got me on is going to go away.”

  Sole nods. “You’ll be going through with a full protective detail and—”

  “Some packhorses to carry all the crap we find and walking machine guns to shoot the bad guys.” He scratches at his neck, grimacing when spatters of dried blood come away under his fingernails. They haven’t cleaned him up beyond the wound.

  Sole glances at the reports again before letting them fade from the screen. “Do you feel capable of executing this plan? There will be stairs. Running.”

  “What, I have choices now?” Xuan looks at me with a shadow of a smile. “You’re the worst, you know that?”

  I smile back, tears unfolding inside me, and its only force of will that keeps them hidden. “Yes. I know.” Sole waits until I look back up to gesture for me to follow her.

  Sometimes being a hero means staying behind. As I trail after Sole, I wonder what she has given up to save people. Running into danger isn’t Sole’s life anymore. Now she has to ask others to do the dirty work. If she dies, this place loses its fair-minded leader. If I die, what would we lose?

  Howl. No one would try to save him. Sole knows where the cure is now, though. I don’t know that I ever had much more to contribute.

  She stops me just outside Xuan’s door. “You know you have to think further ahead than if we miraculously find the Chairman’s son.”

  “Yes. I get it. You need me to be alive even if you do know where the cure is and—”

  “No, Sev.” Sole’s teeth dig into her bottom lip. “The Chairman knows we’re here, and he knows we’re after the cure. He might say all he wants is his son, but that man has been ordering kidnappings, beatings, and killings since before either of us were born, to keep his seat on top. Dr. Yang wants to take his place. The Red General does too.” When her eyes meet mine again, a chill runs through me. “I know you think getting the cure will magically fix everything, but really it would just point every powerful person in these mountains toward us. They’re snakes, all of them, and they’ll bite the moment they feel threatened.”