Dead Moon Rising

by Caitlin Sangster

  He leans in, face only inches from mine. “This is your last chance, Jiang Sev. You know what your mother’s note meant. Was it instructions on where to find her notes? A key code to bring back the erased information?” He waits a moment, his voice so low, I don’t think even Helix can hear it over the din from where he’s holding my arms. “If you don’t tell me, you’ll watch your friends here die one by one. You’ll go back to Sleep. And if that still isn’t enough, you’ll die. You’ll die alone, knowing you doomed every person left on this continent. You’re leaving us all to SS.”

  “It wouldn’t be that way if you hadn’t given them all SS.” My words come out through gritted teeth.

  He smiles, a little chuckle escaping his throat. “Shall we see if you’ve grown a sense of shame since we last spoke?” He points at the Reds lined up, the Chairman a crisp exclamation point ending their ranks. The Chairman still fights against the Seconds holding him, issuing orders in a voice that sounds so strong and sure, and yet the Reds don’t seem to hear.

  “It was two of his own soldiers who came to me. Told me you were coming and when you arrived.” Dr. Yang sighs. “They see that he has fallen. Why can’t you?”

  “I don’t care what happens to the Chairman.” A truth I don’t like as it comes out of my mouth.

  “He is helping you because you’ve found his son? Or promised to find him?” Dr. Yang nods at his own question. “What are you willing to sacrifice to keep your secrets, Jiang Sev?”

  I shake my head. “There’s nothing for me to tell you, Dr. Yang.”

  “These Seconds were going to help you.” He points at the line of men and women, their uniforms dirty, fear in their eyes. The man who let me into the square stands at the end opposite the Chairman. “Just obeying orders, and now they’re going to die because of you. One by one, until you tell me where your mother hid her notes. If you can stomach their deaths, it will be Kasim next.” He puts a hand on the Menghu’s shoulder and Kasim refuses to break eye contact, disgust curling at his mouth.

  Swallowing hurts, the weight of all these lives feeling like stones enough to form a city on my shoulders. But I’ve seen more death. I’ve been responsible for so many already. I won’t be responsible for everyone who would die, forgotten, under Dr. Yang’s unchallengeable authority if he got the cure away from June.

  “After Kasim, it’ll be Howl.”

  My stomach clenches, two hot tears burning down my cheeks. Howl kneels under the Arch, staring at me as if he means to light the whole room on fire with sheer anger.

  “After Howl, I’ll take you to where I hid the Chairman’s son, and I’ll slit his throat.” I can’t breathe, thinking of June and Yi-lai crouched outside the walls. He was supposed to be our insurance. Our way to make sure Chairman Sun got on the heli. But I’ve just brought him back to the man who put him to Sleep.

  General Hong stands up, turning her back to the crowd and raising her weapon to point at the first Red’s face. It’s the man who let me into the square. I hardly register the shot, though it’s louder than the taunts and anger roaring in my ears.

  He falls, red painted between his eyes.

  “After the Chairman’s son, I’ll hunt down your little blond Wood Rat friend.”

  The next Red in line falls. Dr. Yang’s lips brush my ear, sending shivers of revulsion through me like waves of mud. “After her, we’ll go after Sole and everyone she’s got stashed under the Mountain.”

  Howl strains against the two Menghu holding him, his feet sliding across the floor. “At least tell me there’s hope.” Tears draw lines down his face, his voice choked.

  “It’s already done.” I pull back from the doctor, my shoulders screaming with pain as Helix wrenches my arms to keep me in place. “We’re jumping, Howl. You and me. It’s the only thing that’s going to give the rest of the world a chance.”

  All the breath seems to leave Howl’s body, another shot going off, another Red slumping to the ground. But he squares his shoulders and gives me a firm nod. “You found the cure? Why come here?”

  “You don’t get to tell me when your life doesn’t matter, Howl.”

  He stares back at me, his face crumpled. But his lips twitch up into a broken attempt at a smile. “We’ve won, then.”

  “That’s right. We’ve won.” Ejecting the word feels like a release. June’s smart enough to already be running. No Red could find her in the forest. I turn my attention back to Dr. Yang, trying to find enough saliva to spit in his face, but my mouth is dry. “You can kill anyone you want, but you’ve already lost. These people will leave you at the first whisper of a cure once it’s done.”

  Dr. Yang pushes away from me, an angry gesture that leaves me stumbling to the side, Helix moving to keep from wrenching my shoulders out of their sockets. “Put Howl up next.”

  The two soldiers holding Howl’s arms jerk him up from the ground and lead him to the middle of the Arch. “Is this really what you want, Jiang Sev?” the doctor asks.

  “I wanted you to be the one who lived!” Howl keeps his broken smile, and it knifes through me, leaving nothing but pain. “I wanted it to be you.”

  I bite my lip, my whole body seizing up. I think of June, probably already on her way out of the City. Sun Yi-lai, his whole life stolen. Peishan, Lihua, Sole, Aya… Dr. Yang standing there less than an inch away, his breath filtering through his mask in an ugly hiss. And I keep my mouth shut.

  General Hong gestures for Tai-ge to come, and he obeys, feet dragging but unable to resist the string his mother always has had tied around his neck. She hands him the gun and steps back.

  Closing my eyes feels dishonest, as if no one will witness Howl’s sacrifice, so I keep them open. For a moment, Tai-ge just stands there. General Hong shouts at Tai-ge to shoot, and still he does nothing. Delaying. Then he takes aim, and I bite my tongue to keep from screaming.

  When the gun discharges, it blasts through me, though it’s Howl who crumples to the ground, blood blooming on his leg. I pull against Helix’s grasp on my wrists, falling to my knees when he jerks me back.

  Another shot, this one to Howl’s shoulder, the crisscross of scars still pink where they stick out from his shirt. He cries out in pain, and I can’t stand to move, can’t let myself look away as he keeps his eyes glued to mine.

  “I love you!” I say it as loud as I can, though it only comes out in a rasp. A horribly inadequate, squeezed-together sob that means nothing and everything at once.

  Howl holds my gaze. It’s the end of the world, but I keep watching, staying with him.

  The next shot shatters through us all, as if it’s the sky itself cracking open. Everything around me seems to grind to a stop, the sound dying out, nothing but the hiss of masks and robotic, confused murmurs. Because the last shot didn’t come from inside the square.

  CHAPTER 64 Sev

  IT HAPPENS SO QUICKLY, EVERYTHING sweeping straight over me like a wave in the ocean. Tai-ge’s voice is a horrible yell that hardly penetrates the volley of gunfire cracking the night into gaping fissures: “You have it? Sevvy, where is the cure?”

  When I tear my eyes away from Howl where he’s curled on the ground, my heart begins to pound in time with the shouts coming from the flood of people washing into the square. They’re threadbare, missing shoes, and dusted over with ash and dirt, their ribs showing through their torn clothing. Their fingers find masks, tearing them from the crowd as they boil closer to the Arch.

  “You ungrateful traitor for a son.…” I turn to find Tai-ge with an arm around his own mother’s neck. Reds who had been sitting around Tai-ge form a wall between where he holds his mother captive and the gobbled shouts and crushing mass of humans. A Menghu peels out from the crowd, pulling her hood back. It’s Mei. She slides to a stop in front of General Hong, training a gun on her forehead.

  Tai-ge flinches, his forehead knotted. But he holds his mother still.

  The second heli. Sole ignored me and sent Mei anyway. Orchestrated all of this with Tai-ge, only th
e timing came two shots too late.

  I run to Howl, his guards fleeing into the crowds as the newcomers surround us. Howl’s hand circles my wrist, clenching too tight. “Howl, look at me!” I yell it too loud, checking over him. His eyes are open but glazed even as he stares up at me. “I’m here. Just keep breathing.”

  “Sevvy!” Tai-ge yells, fighting his mother down as she bites at his arm. “Do you have it?”

  “Not here! It’s safe.”

  He tosses his gun toward me, sending it skittering across the floor to rest by Howl. “Don’t let Dr. Yang get away. Go!”

  I pick it up, the metal still warm from putting holes in Howl, but I can’t turn away from the blood and death unfolding before me. I kneel, brandishing the gun like a flag. “Listen to me. Listen to me!” My scream falls like droplets of water on a raging bonfire, but still I continue. “I have the cure! We don’t have to fight anymore!”

  The few people in the crowd who look up at me seem hungry for more blood than what already decorates their hands and coats. One of the women starts toward me and Howl, but falls to her knees before she can come close, her hands twitching back and forth as she paws at the paving stones.

  “I have the cure.” I’m almost whispering now, my throat hoarse as the crowd looks hungrily up at me. “And I’ll give it to anyone. Anyone who will just stop fighting.”

  Another shot rings out, zinging right past me to bury in Howl’s chest.

  For a moment, I can’t process what just happened. “Howl?” I crouch over him, my voice rising to an unearthly shriek that tears my throat in two. “Howl?”

  His eyes roll back into his head, his whole body going slack under me.

  “No, you can’t.…” The words won’t come as I pull off my coat, ripping out the lining to cover the spot bubbling red. “You can’t.…”

  “Sevvy! He’s above us!” Tai-ge’s voice zips through my mind, leaving blood and fury. Because that’s where the shot came from. Above us. From the ugly gap in the Arch where mother stood watch for so many years. Another bullet whips by me, and I duck out from Howl’s arm to lay him flat on the floor. Once he’s down, my feet slip out from under me in my race to get to the stairs.

  The Arch runs parallel to the crumbling wall behind it, the platform balanced precariously with space behind the Arch in which a man could hide. The darkness seems to sing to me, warning that he’s here, the man who killed my mother and put me to Sleep. The man who just shot Howl.

  I run up the stairs to the back side of the Arch, my ears screaming one long, high-pitched note. He’s here, I can feel it. Raising my gun, I point it behind the bend of the Arch closest to me. But there’s nothing there. When I turn to check the other side, a body slams into my back. My head cracks against the Arch, and suddenly I’m on the floor and my arms and legs don’t seem to work.

  Cold washes across my body as Dr. Yang’s shadow leaks across me, his silhouette burned into my brain. “You think you can use the cure against me?” he whispers. “When I’ve known who you were, who your mother was… when I’ve spent my whole life waiting to destroy this corrupt system and stop all the killing? You think you can steal it from me?”

  He chuckles softly, the sound rusted and rotting through the filters of his gas mask. His hands latch onto my shoulders, fingers like claws piercing my skin as he rolls me over, the gun limp like a dead thing where it’s caught in my coat.

  “I know you wanted to give it to Sole. If she already has it, then I don’t need you anymore.” He coughs it out like a gore crowing over its prey, but his eyes seem to be smiling. “I can kill you. Howl. Sole. Anyone who helped you. You’re all dead.”

  The air feels hot around me, pressing hard against my skin, slowing everything down to move centimeter by centimeter. Dr. Yang’s voice is an unhealthy drone in my ears. The gun slips free of my coat, my sweaty hand gripping it too hard as it seems to swing by itself toward the doctor’s chest.

  But it’s me, my finger, that pulls the trigger.

  The sound flares in my ears, the awful crack of gunpowder. Dr. Yang falls forward onto me. Something warm leaks through my clothes and drips down my leg.

  Awful stillness only lasts a split second before his hands snake up to my neck, thumbs jamming painfully into my throat as he tries to cut off my air. My muscles scream with the effort it takes to pull his strangling grasp from my neck. Dr. Yang’s hands are shaking, and his breaths are coming in wet gasps that don’t seem to be taking oxygen to his lungs. The bullet landed, even if it wasn’t in his heart.

  I push him off me, the gun heavier than it should be when I point it at his head. But before I can shoot, hands grab hold of me and wrench me back, pulling the gun from my hand. A Menghu steps into my vision, dragging the doctor up from the floor, the whole ring of guards who were supposed to be protecting him finally doing their job.

  “This is where it stops, Jiang Sev,” Dr. Yang gasps. “What were you going to do with Sole and her pathetic operation under the Mountain anyway? Sneak into our camps and inject us in our sleep? Free the Sephs in the Mountain and hope they decided to side with you? I have the resources and Firsts to make the cure. Anyone who crosses me will die compulsing. Anyone who refuses to do what I want will have nothing to look forward to but death. All you have is a gun that’s out of bullets.”

  He nods to the Menghu propping him up, so certain of obedience he doesn’t even make eye contact. Or maybe it’s pain, his mouth spewing all the things I’ve known were locked in his brain. “Shoot her.”

  In a way, it’s fitting that I die here, same as my mother. I close my eyes, feel the waft of air as the Menghu raises the gun, and wait for the air to splinter.

  But nothing happens. Footsteps crinkle through my damaged ears, and I open my eyes to find another Menghu stepping into our circle wearing a mask with gore teeth painted across the filters.

  Helix looks at me. “Dr. Yang really did infect the Mountain on purpose? You have proof?” he asks quietly.

  I nod.

  “And you really do have a cure? Proof of that, too?”

  I nod again.

  He sighs, then points to the Menghu holding Dr. Yang. “Take his mask and give him to the Sephs.”

  Dr. Yang’s eyes go wide. “Captain Lan, you can’t give orders to—”

  “You promised to make our lives better, Dr. Yang.” Helix doesn’t yell. He doesn’t need to. His voice is so cold I shrink back. “You destroyed my home. Killed our real leaders. Let us starve, let us get shot. Sent us to the north in helis, every moment telling us you had the answer. You were the answer the whole time. You were the enemy. We were only waiting for the cure to appear before we killed you.” He wipes his hands on his coat, turning away. “I’m glad it’s finally done.”

  The Menghu around Dr. Yang hold him still while one wrestles the mask from his face. The doctor’s face turns red as he fights, holding his breath once the filters are torn from his mouth and nose. His feet skid as he tries to pull himself free, blood dripping down from his side where I shot him. There are shots still sounding below. But the crowd pulls back as SS victims from outside the City Center slide up to meet the Menghu holding Dr. Yang. They take the doctor from them and drag him out into the shattered City, where his screams are lost in the chaos below.

  CHAPTER 65 Sev

  TAI-GE APPEARS ON THE STAIRS, Kasim and Mei flanking him on each side. Helix and his soldiers tense, Helix looking from the two Menghu to Tai-ge’s red stars, blood and horror in his eyes. But instead of shooting at them, Helix takes a step forward, anger on his face that I don’t understand. “You?” He sort of laughs. “Mei told me there was a Red helping the Menghu stuck here, but I didn’t expect a Hong.” His fingers flex around the gun. “I think I owe you a good blow to the head.”

  Tai-ge holds himself straight. “I’m not just helping Menghu. There are lots of people suffering out there.” He points to the still-fighting flood of people who washed into the square, some still brandishing guns that seem to be out of bul
lets. “Mother wanted to abandon all our people trapped here. Dr. Yang wanted to abandon all the Menghu left behind. Now everyone who was left behind gets to show how they feel about it.”

  Mei steps between them. “If we don’t do something quick, there won’t be anyone left to save. It’ll spread down to where the soldiers who flew in are staying.”

  It strikes me that she didn’t say “Menghu.” She said “soldiers.” The Reds, too.

  Helix nods slowly, looking over at me. “You’re working with Sole?”

  I nod. “I don’t know how complicated the cure will be to make, but we’ll need help from everyone on both sides to get SS under control.”

  Tai-ge’s smile rankles a bit, solid and assuming as if he never thought I’d do anything else. But then maybe that’s trust. Even if I couldn’t trust him to believe me, he’s always known who I am and where I stand. Helix shakes his head as he goes down to join Tai-ge on the stairs, Mei a bridge between them. “I guess I was wrong about you, Jiang Sev. You’re not as idiotic as I thought.”

  I don’t have the energy to answer, every inch of me hurting as Kasim steps forward to pull me up from the ground. All that’s left in me is one word: “Howl?”

  He doesn’t answer, letting me lean on him as I hobble down the stairs, my eyes on the tattered heap where I left Howl under the Arch. The Chairman kneels next to him on one side, two medics on the other inserting tubes and bandages into Howl as if they’re trying to drain the last of his blood as a trophy. General Hong sits propped up against one of the Arch’s base supports with her hands and feet tied together.

  The Reds who were slated for execution cluster along the edge of the stage, keeping back the brawl, gunshots noticeably absent—I suppose the people surviving outside the square probably didn’t have much ammunition to bring to this fight. Everyone else here wasn’t allowed a gun per Dr. Yang’s own orders. It makes me wonder if Tai-ge was a part of that conversation, pretending to have the new order’s best interest in mind but planning his own takeover instead.