by Ann Denton
“Is Verrukter there yet?” Lowe asked, placing a hand on Dez’s shoulder. She tore her eyes from the video feed.
“What?”
“Verrukter. Is he there yet?”
“Oh.” She shook herself and turned to her radio, spinning dials until she found the right branch of static. “Verrukter, status.”
Three more children went to the spear, their bodies piling on the edge of the concrete lot.
Dez turned her eyes from the screen. Lowe leaned in further.
“Verrukter, status.”
Another child went over the edge, not waiting for orders. He ran through the Erlender spear line and took a running jump off the cliff. The General threw a knife at him, pinning him in the shoulder just before he fell.
“Verrukter, status.”
The radio gave a choking sputter and Verrukter’s voice came crackling through. “I’m at the hospital. West side.”
Dez sighed with relief.
Lowe gestured to the mic and she nodded, pushing it towards him.
“Verrukter, it’s Lowe,” he said, leaning over Dez. “I need you to go to the south side of the building, to the lot. By the main entrance.”
“Alright. Why?”
“There are ...” Lowe swallowed. “bodies there I need you to look at for me.”
“Bodies?’ repeated Verrukter, groaning. “Muck and shit. This isn’t gonna be good, is it?”
“It never is,” Lowe muttered. “Dez, can we get a live feed of that lot?”
Dez nodded, and a window of the live feed replaced the macabre recording. It was almost a relief.
Almost.
The kids were still there, stacked on atop the other, limbs pointing in all directions. Their blood was mostly dry by now, congealed onto their skin like mud. Their mouths hung open to reveal shiny white teeth, splintered by Erlender fists. Verrukter came around the corner, saw them, and came to a shuddering halt.
“Mucking hell …” he gasped as he approached them. “What …” He shook his head. “Deadwater be damned, this … this is low. Mucking Erlenders.” He turned and spat into the grass. “They’re just kids …”
“Verrukter, do they have any additional injuries?” Lowe asked.
“Additional injuries?”
“Yes, besides the spear wounds.”
Verrukter sighed, puffing out his cheeks, and slowly set to examining them. “Well … muck, that’s ugly. Big holes where the spears when through. Lots of little lacerations, probably sustained in the initial attack. Damned sludge-breathers …” He turned and spat into the grass again.
Lowe’s brow furrowed. “…Check their faces.”
“Their…?” Verrukter shook his head in disbelief, in grief, then nodded. “Okay. Hang on…” He bent closer to the nearest bodies and examined their cheeks, framing the small faces with his massive paws. They looked so fragile next to him, so breakable. “Yeah. We got cuts.”
Dez turned to Lowe. “Why would they do that?”
“They’re looking for something,” Lowe hedged. He’d only seen the first part of the ritual. No kiss.
“Looking for …?” Dez’s brow furrowed.
Lowe bit his lip. But went for it. “Kreis. I think.”
“Why are they looking for Kreis here?” demanded Verrukter.
Lowe grimaced. “I’m not sure.”
Dez sat back and crossed her arms. “Why would they be looking for Kreis at all? They don’t even know what we are.”
“Why do you think?” Lowe muttered.
“But … they don’t know what melting is,” Dez protested. “Or how it works.”
“You’re forgetting something,” Lowe said, turning to stare back at the screen.
“What’s that?”
Lowe looked at the orange flag and the cold bodies. He suppressed a shudder. “Blut.”
That made Dez bolt upright and Verrukter sputter through the radio. “What?”
“Mala thinks he wanted to recruit her a few months back. To find her. She saw him testing another girl in that massacre. Kiss. Cut. Kiss. He slashed her face.”
Dez paled. “But. The video feeds only show the slashing. Not—”
Lowe cut her off. “I know. That’s why I want you to keep looking. Verrukter, you too. Anything you can find.” He stood.
“Where are you going?” Dez called out.
“To research recruiting.” Lowe slammed a fist into the door. He knew he was right. He could feel it. The problem was proving it.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Lowe went to the Archive, leaving Dez to pore over the surveillance footage, hunting for anything they might have missed. A shadow on the corner, a blip just before or after they began forcing kids off the cliff. Anything that would tell them more about where they’d gone, what the Erlenders wanted.
The Archive was dark when he arrived. The nightly skeleton crew swarmed up and down the ladders liked shooting stars, pillar candles in their hands as they navigated the seven-floor library.
Lowe scaled ladders until he came to the spot he’d last seen Beza: the new records department. No telling if Beza was working, but he was new—and newbies generally got the worst shifts.
Lowe was hoping Beza had had some luck getting Klaren’s file—there wasn’t much he could do for the hospital kids at the moment. He shuddered to think what the Erlenders were doing to those kids. After that brutal recruitment, scaring them half to death, what would they do with a bunch of baby Kreis?
He needed to tell Tier. But he needed a minute to calm his racing heart down first. And the Archive was quiet. But not as free as the Memorial Rooms. He couldn’t meltdown here. And he didn’t want to. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to stop.
And he wanted … no, needed something to think about besides the Erlenders and what they wanted with those kids. Mala’s melts were still tugging at his mind. His chest contracted when he remembered how she’d looked, admitting Ein had kissed her. Jealousy chewed his insides. He would find a solution for Mala. Something better than Ein.
Lowe squinted into the shadows scanning for Beza, or a Typical on duty.
“Can I help you?”
Lowe jumped. The voice came from right behind his ear. He turned. A grey-haired woman hung upside down from a ladder near his head. She’d clearly been descending from the floor above. She smiled but Lowe couldn’t help thinking she looked like a spider smiling at a fly. He cleared his throat.
“I’m looking for Beza,” he said. “He was … researching something for me.”
The archivist’s face fell. She pursed her lips. “You didn’t hear?” she asked, her voice suddenly heavy.
Lowe’s insides hollowed out. He swallowed, trying not to think the worst. “No. I didn’t.”
“He fell,” said the archivist, flipping agilely to the side so that she landed on her feet in front of Lowe. “Lost his grip on a ladder.”
The fall to the base floor was more than fifty meters. Lowe took a panicked step back, heart thrumming. “Is he …?” He couldn’t bring himself to finish the question.
“In the infirmary,” replied the archivist. Lowe sighed with relief. “But he wasn’t looking so good when I saw him, poor thing.”
Lowe nodded, clenching his fists. Beza had taken falls before. He’ll be fine. He just went to the infirmary. If it was serious they would have shipped him out.
It was hardly surprising, especially if Beza was trying to carry something. And compete with the archivists who liked to show off on the ladders.
Must be why he never came to me with the folder, Lowe thought. He wondered if it would have been better for Beza to stay up top at the bread ovens. Not that the running was doing him much good, either. He took a deep breath, the dread slowly ebbing out of him.
“Thank you,” Lowe said, and started off. But he stopped. “Wait, can you pull a file for me?”
“Sure. What do you need?”
“Everything we have on Kreis testing and initiation.” It wouldn’t be wise to ask her t
o find Klaren’s files—Lowe still had no desire to make it common knowledge that Mala’s Recruiter was examining the similarities between her melts and the melts of the mad Kreis. Enough people were afraid of her as it was.
The archivist nodded. “I’m on it. Don’t hold your breath, though. Ancient orders have to come first, it’ll be a while.”
“How long is a while?”
The archivist shrugged. “About an hour. Maybe longer. I’ll send someone to let you know.”
Lowe pushed his lips together and nodded—after all, with four attacks today, the night crew was probably drowning in requests. He left and headed for the infirmary.
Lowe’s face twisted with worry as he walked down the long, brightly lit halls of the infirmary—this part of the Center would stay lit until ten, and all the energy saved from the rest of the Center going dark would be channeled here, to the antique generators wheezing to keep the lights on in the pharmacy.
Maybe Beza can tell me where the files are. Hell, maybe he’d already pulled them and they’re sitting on a desk somewhere. Another thought stopped Lowe short, as he held a door half-open. Maybe Beza had the files on him when he fell.
That would end up causing a lot of awkward questions, and even more muttering about Mala. Lowe sighed. Only one way to find out.
He entered a large waiting room, where an information desk sat front and center. The desk was empty. Lowe frowned. Some nurses had likely been sent to the attack sites, but there should have been at least one down here to tend to the patients that remained. That’s when he spotted the sign.
Had to Twinkle. He almost laughed out loud. Oh, night shift! He was very familiar with the sleep-deprived sense of humor. He felt like he’d been awake for days. But that was just the adrenaline of these attacks. Dead kids. And the President wants a response. The pressure made him feel sick to his stomach.
Lowe’s eyes scanned the room. On the left was a dumbwaiter for ferrying papers to and from the head medic’s office. Glowing neon lights sizzled like lightning bolts in the four corners of the room. Wooden chairs lined the walls, most of them empty.
Most of them.
In one chair there was a woman, her face in her hands, shoulders shaking with violent tears. Lowe’s heart constricted when he recognized her: Beza’s mother.
“Dea.” His voice cracked. He sat beside her. He put a hand on her shoulder and, for a long and terrible moment, he said nothing. He couldn’t bring himself to ask.
Dea looked up, her eyes red and wet, her cheeks shiny, stained with Deadwater-knew-how-many-hours of tears. Her small nose was bright red.
Lowe cleared his throat again, harder this time, and louder. “What happened?” He could hardly get the words out. The archivist said that Beza’s fall hadn’t killed him. NO. NO. Lowe flashed through images of wolves and lug nuts, architectural plans, plants that bloomed in spring. He would not, could not think about Beza being gone.
Dea opened her mouth but started sobbing again. She threw herself into Lowe’s arms, her tears warm through his wetsuit. He bit his cheek as dread billowed up like a cloud, like a thunderstorm, black and rumbling and ominous.
“Dea,” Lowe started. His cheeks wavered. “Dea, where is Beza?” He started shaking and forced his body to stiffen.
“I … he …” Dea couldn’t catch a breath. Lowe stroked her hair and shushed her, trying not to think what had driven her to such hysterics. He’s not dead. He’s not dead. Someone would have told me. He’s not dead, he can’t be—someone would have told me.
A minute passed and Dea didn’t quiet. Lowe leaned back and took her face in his hands, forcing her to look at him. He tried to keep the panic from his eyes but he could feel it there, boring into her and demanding answers.
“Dea,” he said slowly, softly. “Where is Beza?”
“They …” she sniffed, and Lowe thought he would lose her again. But she pursed her lips and sat up, drying her tears. “He broke his tibia. Displaced fracture. They needed the beds here and …” She covered her mouth and closed her eyes. “They had to operate.”
Lowe felt his whole body turn to stone. A cold static passed through him like a wave, paralyzing him. Operate. The Center operated on Kreis, and on the occasional Typical. But, when push came to shove, they prioritized soldiers over civilians. If they’d run out of beds, they’d have sent Beza out.
“Muck,” Lowe whispered. He could barely hear himself. He stared at Dea, reading her lips, because his ears had suddenly ceased to function.
“They sent him to the hospital at Gezundartz in Einholz.”
Lowe froze. Beza had been in the hospital when the Erlenders attacked.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Lowe arrived at the hospital at dawn. The sun molten light burnt through winter storm clouds. The Gottermund glittered, snow frosting the banks.
Lowe rubbed his eyes and stifled a yawn as he checked yet again for his knife and his radio. It had been years since he’d felt so insecure. Unsure. It had been years since he’d gone out on his own, without a mission objective guiding his every thought.
“I’m close,” he said into the radio at his shoulder. It crackled and spit like it was angry at him.
Dez’s voice rattled back. “Copy.”
Lowe sighed, his breath misting. He’d left Dea the second she’d told him Beza was in the hospital. He’d barely remembered to tell the dockworkers where he was going. He’d checked out a boat, and halfway down the river Dez had radioed him.
“Fell would like to know where the mucking hell you are.” Dez’s voice had been as harsh as the darkness.
“The hospital,” Lowe had said breathlessly. “Beza was there.”
Dez hadn’t responded. So he figured he’d been approved. But he knew he’d have hell to pay when he got back. He ran a hand through his hair. Stelle’s delusions. Four attacks. Mala’s theory. Beza. Things were piling up too fast.
Lowe turned to his radio as he walked up the short rise. “Alright, Dez, I’m here. Where’s Verrukter?”
“First floor, north side,” the radio hissed. “Secondary sweep.”
“Copy that, thanks.”
Lowe passed through the front doors of the hospital. The lobby was an unpleasant sight, but less gruesome than Lowe had imagined. Chairs, tables, vases with plastic flowers overturned. All the windows were shattered.
Muddy footprints and rusty streaks of dried blood stained the floor. The Senebals hadn’t complied easily. Lowe scuffed the red stains with his toe. He was almost afraid to go further, of what he would find.
“Well,” said a deep, gravelly voice, “look what the Recruiter dragged in.”
Lowe looked up. Verrukter clapped dirt from his hands, grinning. “Heard you pissed some people at home off. About time you grew a backbone, man.”
Lowe shrugged, still not quite able to drag his feet to a patient room. He had to find Beza. Had to see. But now that he was here, he really didn’t want to.
“So, did you come to see the party?” Verrukter’s smile was dark with the weight of terrible things that couldn’t be unseen.
Lowe swallowed, forcing himself to ask. “How bad is it?”
Verrukter whistled, and when he spoke there was no trace of his token sarcasm. “Not good. Few bodies left behind. A lot of blood.”
Lowe thought of the flour mill farther upriver and wondered what kind of carnage had been discovered there, how many mangled bodies had been left behind. He sighed, puffing out his cheeks and fighting the urge to cross his arms.
“How many bodies?” Lowe asked.
“Twelve. Mostly staff medics.”
“What about outside?”
“You mean …”
“The kids.”
“Thirteen piled up.”
Lowe bit his lip and asked the hardest question yet. “Is Beza …?” He couldn’t finish. Couldn’t get the words out.
“No.”
Lowe nodded, staring at a blank wall. If he hadn’t been speared…
Ver
rukter pushed his lips together and shook his head. “Nope. Nothing. Place is totally empty. Except us, of course.”
Beza isn’t here. A small part of him was whispering that Beza was damn good at hiding. It was a thin hope, that Beza was squeezed into an old ventilation shaft or above the ceiling panels of a dark closet. “How … is your search going?” He almost said how much have you looked, but Verrukter might take it as an insult.
Verrukter scanned the lobby, his eyes lingering on a mound of shattered glass beneath a window. The light cast a quivering rainbow against the wall.
“You alright?” asked Verrukter.
He cleared his throat. “Haven’t slept.”
“I hear that.” A quiet moment passed. The only sound was the wind coiling through the fragmented windows.
“You really haven’t seen him?” Lowe asked. He had to double-check.
Verrukter shook his head and Lowe allowed himself to breathe again. “Not in here. Maybe …” Verrukter trailed off, but they both knew what he was going to say. Maybe at the bottom of the cliff.
Lowe sighed and turned to the doors, his expression hard. “Come on,” he said. Verrukter followed him without a word.
The mound of bodies had been rearranged into a respectful row, ready for funeral rites. Relief and grief poured through Lowe in equal measure as he peered down at the faces—Beza wasn’t among them. Verrukter had said so, but he needed to see for himself.
But they were someone’s children, Lowe thought. Someone’s little brother … muck, someone’s Beza …
Lowe straightened, and the wind picked up, making the hairs on his neck prickle. The cliff taunted him. “You have any rope on you?” Lowe asked, looking up at the tall branches of a tree near the edge of the cliff.
Verrukter followed Lowe’s eyes to the tree. “What do you want to go up there for?” He frowned.
Lowe swallowed the anxiety that surfaced with his answer. “The security footage. The Erlenders were … herding the kids from the hospital off the cliff.”
Verrukter made a face and slung a small backpack to the ground and rifled through it, producing a long coil of black rope with a heavy black hook at the end.
