Dead Moon Rising

by Caitlin Sangster

  Kasim helps me to Howl’s side, the Chairman’s face inscrutable as he moves over to make room for me. “My son,” he whispers. “You promised my son.” The soldiers standing around us seem to bristle, Kasim’s muscles going tense under my hands, where he holds me up.

  “Back off.” I push him away from Howl’s still form. One of the medics looks up, his eyes bouncing between the two of us. “I keep my promises. Your son is safe, but you’ll have to wait.”

  A firework’s heavy boom ignites right over the crowd, the fighting jerking to a surprised pause. In the split second of silence, Helix steps up, shouting into the speakers Dr. Yang set for the rally. “Menghu, attention! Any man or woman still fighting will answer to me personally. Lower your fists, now.”

  It seems a ridiculous command, but it gives Tai-ge the breath of silence he needs to step up next to the Menghu. “Captain Hao, Lieutenant Bai, rein in your soldiers. All of you who came to fight today. Listen for a moment, if you can.”

  The words ring oddly in my ears. If you can? The silence waxes a moment longer, broken only by ugly gasps and a few littered sounds of feet on stone. Not everyone in this crowd can listen with SS in their veins, but I don’t think of Tai-ge as one who houses sympathy for something he’s never experienced himself.

  Except… he does have experience now.

  Tai-ge takes a hesitant breath, his voice unclouded by filters. “My mother is officially stepping down from her post as General,” he announces. “Firsts and Seconds, I came here to find a way to produce more masks, but it’s an impossible job without raw materials from the farms. We don’t have a safe way to transport food or water, much less continue with mining and factories. We don’t have doctors or Mantis enough to meet SS victims’ needs even here within our walls. You see what’s left of our City.” Tai-ge’s voice is pained as he looks over the fractured ruin of the City Center around us and the broken graveyard of factories beyond. At the men and women who snuck in from beyond the torch line, their eyes hungry and their fingers clotted over with dirt. “We abandoned our own to die long before bombs started falling. We sent families to the farms to work until they withered away. The Chairman and my mother deserted even more of you at the first threat against them. That is not what it means to be a part of this City. We are all comrades. United with one purpose: to defeat SS.” He looks at Helix. “We’ve been fighting over Mantis for so long it’s hard to remember that sometimes fighting isn’t the answer. If it’s between settling old grudges and surviving, I know my choice.”

  Helix doesn’t nod, prickly as he stands up next to Tai-ge, and I can hardly believe what I’m seeing, the two of them standing there shoulder to shoulder, even if Helix doesn’t look very happy about it.

  “I’ve fought my whole life, thinking safety was at the end of the road,” Helix yells, his voice thick with emotion. “That if I killed just one more Red, if I stole one more case of Mantis, I was that much closer to carving out a space that might be safe enough for me to have a life.” He blinks, one hand going to the sharp teeth painted across his mask. “That someday, the fighting would stop and I’d be able to sleep at night, not worried if my friends would die while my eyes were closed. That I’d be able to have my own family and know they would be safe.” He raises a hand, his brow furrowed deep. “And every day the leaders I followed only took us deeper and deeper into the violence. There isn’t any path to peace through fighting. There is only more fighting. We have to change.”

  They yell out instructions for City and Mountain to separate, then send soldiers out into the crowd to physically separate wrestling matches that aren’t stopping. I can hardly pay attention or process the groups, people who listen to Helix or Tai-ge or anyone else, or why, because the medics won’t let me touch Howl, the Chairman holding me back. Howl’s skin is so pale, every inch of him motionless. A scream of anguish builds up like a geyser inside me, but I hold it back, watching.

  If he were dead, the medics wouldn’t care if I touched him. If he were dead, they’d have left him in a bloody heap on the stage, because there’s no point to extracting bullets from a corpse.

  We jumped together, so if he were dead, I’d be dead too.

  CHAPTER 66 Tai-ge

  THE CITY FEELS LIKE SOMETHING unknown and familiar at once from my spot on the orphanage roof, the moon looming in the sky overhead. I shiver in the cold. Sevvy left almost before the shouting in the square stopped, hardly pausing for medics to make sure Howl was stable enough to move before wheeling him straight to a heli, the Chairman trailing behind her like a dog on a leash.

  He didn’t try to stop me from tying my own mother under the Arch or from stepping up to take control of the Seconds myself. The Chairman didn’t look back even once as I watched him get on the heli with Sev. My guess is he didn’t know what Sev had planned for him.

  She was right all those weeks ago, when we were in the heli trying to plan what to do next. If things are going to work, we need a new start. New leaders. People who haven’t lived with power clutched between their fists so long that the tiniest deviation feels like oppression.

  Helix and I have had our share of difficulties, though he has agreed to keep his forces to a separate part of the City from mine until a more substantial peace agreement can be met. We’ve put up barriers, established talks. Lieutenant Hao’s contacts among the Menghu who were left behind after the invasion have been instrumental in persuading Menghu from Outside to at least listen and see if we can work something out between us. Them and Mei.

  They want Mantis. The cure. My own soldiers want it more than anything too, willing to look the other way when they see Menghu insignia within the City if it means no more masks. If it means bringing down the chemical torches entirely, letting people we love back into our lives.

  Shots have been fired. More outside than inside the walls. But fewer than I would have expected. Everyone wants to believe the cure is real and is waiting for the first doses to arrive. And after that? Well, I guess we’ll take it one step at a time.

  The trapdoor leading downstairs squeaks, and I look back to find Mei climbing up the ladder. “What are you doing up here?” she aks.

  I turn back to the lights dotting the City streets, so many more than when I first returned. “Just looking, I guess. It’s almost like home again.”

  “Have you heard from Sev or Sole yet?”

  I shake my head. “They asked for scientists and some supplies to be flown in from the labs. Some things we needed to get from the farms, but it was a good start to freeing people who have been incarcerated out there, though the Firsts left over weren’t very happy about it. Our reach is sort of soft, but some of the people stayed on at the farms when we gave them the choice. More food. A promise of better living conditions, compensation, and the ability to stay or go in the future. I guess putting longtime workers in positions of authority and letting them take charge of their own bits of land helped.” I scrub a hand through my overgrown hair. I’ll have to find someone to cut it before it goes completely crazy. “Everyone seems much more… calm, now that we have a credible start on a cure.”

  Mei drops down next to me, kicking her heels over the edge of the roof. The light on her hair casts her over in silver. “After so many years of lies from Dr. Yang, it’s hard to not feel a little worried.”

  “Sevvy doesn’t lie. This is all she wanted. To give the cure to anyone who’d take it.”

  She narrows her eyes a bit, but nods after a moment. “You’re going to be late for the meeting with Helix.”

  The way she says his name makes my hackles rise. “You don’t like him.”

  It takes a second for her to answer. “It’s hard to like anyone who is responsible for your life. If you screw up, then you screw everyone else over too. Leaders handle that differently, and the way he handled it when I was in his company was… bad.” She smiles grimly, looking over at me. “But if there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that Helix wants the fighting to stop.” Peeling herself up from th
e roof, she puts out a hand. “I don’t think any of us thought this was how it would stop, but it seems kind of silly now, in retrospect, that I assumed we’d just kill all of you.”

  I let her help me up. “A little bit, I guess.”

  “I saw you gave Captain Bai’s knife back.” She doesn’t look at me, opening the door to the stairs down. “I didn’t realize you went back for it.”

  Captain Bai worked with Lieutenant Hao to clear the streets up to the Sanatorium, and we used the building as a place to set up a secure base. We were already planning a takeover of my mother’s regime when Mei contacted me over the link to tell me Sev’s plans. When I handed the knife back to Captain Bai, it didn’t feel like a betrayal anymore that it had been used against a Second. It was more like a symbol of what I wanted to be. Even less, actually, because I no longer want things to be thrust under my nose before I believe they exist.

  It doesn’t come easily for me. But it’s like those cots back at Dazhai. I shouldn’t have to lie on one to know it’s itchy. A good leader listens. Investigates. Changes, if necessary.

  I let Mei go ahead of me down the stairs, trying not to think of that night, the blood, and everything wrong in the world that still needs to be fixed, contenting myself to say, “I went back for the knife because I didn’t want Captain Bai to think I’d stolen it.”

  She nods, as if that somehow isn’t nonsense. “I don’t think your reputation could take another black mark.” But then Mei looks at me out of the corner of her eye. “Hopefully, no one will have to use it again.”

  We walk toward the Sanatorium, passing through one of the padding zones between our armies: the less militant of our numbers—engineers, cooks, doctors, teachers, and scientists—who consented to be part of the barrier between guns. Those actively infected with SS have agreed to stay beyond the torch line now that they have access to our food stores. Every day we move the torches back a block as more and more have access to Mantis.

  Their patience isn’t only about having unspoiled food and clean water, though. Sev finding the cure changes everything. There’s an end in sight. It’s a lot easier to wait in line than it is to wait at the bottom of a hole, forgotten.

  It’s not that our wars against each other have really stopped. But I’m hopeful this pause will be enough for everyone to seriously consider why they would want to go back to a life of hiding, shooting, worrying. I look at Mei, walking along beside me as if we aren’t from opposite sides of this conflict. Proof that no matter how deeply rooted hatred is inside you, there’s always hope to find some common ground.

  Once we get to the City Center, Mei plops into a chair, growling at the person seated next to her until he moves to let me take the seat. I smile my thanks, and she shoots me an annoyed look, as if my noticing that she wants to sit next to me is impolite.

  And, for all I’ve trained my whole life to deal with hostile forces, it seems like Mei so close beside me is a battle I’m not sure how to approach, much less win.

  I think she likes it that way.

  I think maybe I do too.

  CHAPTER 67 Sev

  IT WOULD BE RIDICULOUS TO hope for the fighting to actually stop. Not when June hands Mother’s precious box of notes to a First who volunteered to come back to the Mountain with us to work with Sole. Not when the primary cure trials are ready, volunteers holding out their arms.

  The first fractured moment of peace doesn’t come until I’m standing by Lihua in her bed, Sole drawing a dose of Mother’s cure into a syringe. Lihua’s eyes scrunch shut as the needle pokes her, a tear rolling down her cheek. Peishan crowds next to me to hold Lihua’s hand, using her elbows to move a First doctor out of the way.

  Lihua opens her brown eyes, her eyelashes so long it’s a wonder they don’t weigh her eyelids closed. “Am I better now?” she whispers. “No more of those green pills? They’re so hard to swallow.”

  Sole smiles, all her teeth showing. But she doesn’t twitch. “Yes. You’re all better.”

  I lean down to hold Lihua close, to feel the flutter of her heart and the steadiness of her breathing. She pushes away after a moment, ready to be out of bed, to play, as if she never quite understood what was wrong with herself in the first place.

  Peishan follows her, leaving me to go to the next bed alone. June doesn’t mind, though, her eyes hungry on Sole’s next syringe.

  Once June’s injection is done, she looks up at Sole. “Luokai next?”

  Sole blinks once, twice. “We’ll give it to everyone who gets in line so long as we have the materials to make it. We have to give priority to—”

  June stands up, cutting Sole off. She turns to me, putting a hand on my shoulder. “You do it.”

  “Persuade her?” I ask. “She’s right that there’s a priority list. Skilled workers, like the people who agreed to stay out on the farms—”

  “He’s family.” June squeezes my shoulder until I smile and push her off. “Dinner?”

  I nod. “I’ll see you then.” I guess her ideas about who lives inside her circle of friends has expanded, June’s family growing by one. I shake my head as she walks out, watching her diminutive form disappear down the hallway, wondering not for the first time what happened with June and Luokai on their way here.

  Once she’s out of earshot, I turn back to Sole, her hands full of things to do and reasons not to look at me. “You can’t keep pulling special status to get the cure to the people you like most,” she says. “If you only give it to your friends, then how are you different from the Chairman or Dr. Yang?”

  “I’ve seen your lists of recipients for this first wave, and many of them are not friends of mine.” I did see Aya’s name on the list, the girl we brought down from the Sleep-infested Mountain above us. I know it’s probably because she’s well acquainted with the Heart and some of the Mountain’s systems, but it’s still nice to imagine the ghost of my sister with a cure. Brushing that image aside, I focus on Sole. “Do we have enough Mantis to last us while we manufacture more of the cure?”

  She hedges, picking at her fingernails. “We should be able to maintain stability. Especially if we end up connected to City resources the way you keep saying we will be. And so long as those resources are responsibly produced. Not by slaves.”

  “It’s happening. You know that from Mei and Kasim.” I wait for a second. “So why are you trying to make sure Luokai doesn’t get any of the cure? How is you not giving the cure to someone you don’t like any different from Dr. Yang or the Chairman either?”

  Sole sets down her tray of implements with a rattle.

  “Didn’t you just say yesterday that one of the Firsts has ideas on how to turn it into an aspirant, so it might not even be that difficult to fix the widespread infection?”

  Sole walks toward the door, her hand still clenched around the plunger as if she can’t quite let go. “That still has to be tested.”

  “Are we seriously refusing the one representative from Port North a cure?” I follow her toward the door, swallowing the lump in my throat at her icy expression. “They need to be a part of this… whatever it is we’re building. We need to get out there as soon as possible to make sure they know we want to work with them so no more helis come this way. And because they deserve the cure same as we do.”

  “Luokai is not the only representative from Port North here.” Sole shoves the syringe into a safe container in her medic bag. “And the cure might be a beginning, but it isn’t going to end a hundred years of mistrust.”

  “That’s why we need people like you not taking sides, Sole. You’re a bridge. One of the few people interested in helping anyone who is sick rather than remembering who is supposed to be their enemy.” Sighing when she won’t look at me, I move to stand in front of her, willing her to meet my eyes. “You know that’s exactly who Luokai is too. A bridge to a whole people who need you. Us.”

  She won’t look at me, hands crunching the clean white fabric of her Yizhi coat “I’m not…” She sighs and looks up
at me, her clear blue eyes piercing. “I’m not who I was when he left. I’m someone else, and so is he, and our lives aren’t going to just snap back into place. Now, if you would please go away, I have work to do.”

  Something she said clicks into place in my mind as she walks out the door. “Wait—what do you mean Luokai isn’t the only person here from Port North?”

  Sole glances back. “My very next syringe full of cure is going to her, as a matter of fact.” I follow her into the hall, and she pulls open the next door. A woman swathed in bandages lies inside, patches of ebony-dark skin showing between bandages. Tiny braids sit around her head like snakes on a pillow, though most of them seem to have been burned off at the ends. “She’s from the heli.”

  “The heli?” I think back to the shadow jumping from the aircraft just before it fell from the sky. “The black heli? The one that was bombing—”

  “Howl said if there were survivors, we needed to find them. I guess they’re connected to Sun Yi-lai somehow.” The woman’s eyes twitch open at Sun Yi-lai’s name, only to fall closed again. Sole gives me a pointed look as she begins undoing a bandage on the woman’s arm. “Did I not ask you to go away?”

  My throat is still clenched at Howl’s name, my words suddenly gone. Howl is up? He’s talking? He’s been talking long enough to ask Sole to send people out to the heli in time to save this woman?

  But I don’t say any of that. Instead, my eyes drift down to the patient. “How is she supposed to be connected to Sun Yi-lai? What’s her name, do you know?”

  “Reifa something.”

  “Reifa…?” It’s like a question mark inside me, too frightening to look at. It can’t be… can it? But I’m already pushing past Sole and running for the dorms.