WATCHING CAPTAIN BAI’S FACE GO blank—his opinion of me sinking with every word that comes out of my mouth—is almost physically painful. He agrees to take me on a tour of the perimeter instead of briefing me on Mother’s specific plans. Despite the urgency of the situation. Despite direct orders.
Every time he begins on that subject, I interrupt, trying not to acknowledge Mei listening intently at my elbow. The buildings feel so close together in the Third Quarter, clustering like comrades at the end of a factory shift. It makes it difficult to see the physical boundary of the area Captain Bai has cleared—torches set in concrete-filled buckets that form a line between us and the infected—until we’re right on it, the smoky blast from the torches an instant change from clear air to poison.
Mei draws in a shaky breath, her uncovered nose twitching.
Putting a hand on Captain Bai’s shoulder, I keep walking, focused forward as if I can’t see her struggle to inhale.
“I need…” She gasps, wet, ugly sounds that shake her solid frame. “Major Hong, give me a…”
I wave at the two soldiers trailing along behind us to pull her out of the gas cloud—“Find her a mask, would you?”—even as I push Captain Bai around the edge of the building where the torches start, each about ten feet apart.
“It’s unwise to bring your assistant any closer—” Captain Bai shuts his mouth when I put a hand up, leaning to peer around the old bricklayer housing to check that she can’t come any closer. Mei resists the soldiers, her eyes furious as she tries to follow us with an elbow shielding her nose and mouth. She stumbles to her knees, coughs racking her chest.
“I’d rather keep the General’s orders between the two of us.” I turn back to him. “Tell me the details of the directives she gave you. I want to start with distributing supplies, because I feel coordination with the people stuck here will be better facilitated if—”
Captain Bai’s head gives a jerky shake. “They didn’t send us supplies to feed anyone but ourselves, Major Hong.” He looks out at the buildings, everything beyond the torches that I can see silent. Waiting.
“What do you mean?”
The captain abruptly pulls his gaze back from the street winding between the crumbling brick of the buildings and stares fixedly at my collar, his eyes a little too hard.
The change is so abrupt it has me searching the worn cobblestones for an assailant or something that could elicit such a strong reaction from a hardened patroller. All I see is a bit of torn fabric on the street. Something black and fuzzy mixed with red… it takes a moment before my eyes sew the pieces together, the bits all that’s left of a doll. A comrade in uniform, the same ones factories turn out by the hundreds.
How did such a thing come to be shredded just on the other side of the torch line? I look back at Captain Bai, his eyes still focused on my collar, my stars. “What is it the General asked you to tell me?”
The Captain draws a heavy plastic envelope out of his coat, almost like a packet of water purifier but as long and wide as my hand. “Open it. But be careful not to get it on you.”
I turn it over, looking for a way to open it, but it’s sealed on all edges. The captain waits a moment before impatiently taking it back and pulling a knife from his coat pocket. “Don’t you have a knife? Standard issue for patrollers.”
Yet another thing wrong with me. I think back to the knife Sevvy and I passed around in the heli. I gave it to her when we were young as a way to defend herself. Back then, she treasured it because it was something of mine. I look down, forcing myself to focus as Captain Bai slits the envelope, then holds it open to reveal the brown powder inside.
The next time I saw that knife, it came out of Howl’s pocket. At first I’d thought he took it from her. That it was one of the reasons he frightened her. But after a while, it was apparent that she’d given it to him. Allowed him to swap out the unassuming blade to turn it into a true weapon. Something that had once been mine, and he made it his.
Sevvy was also mine, or so I’d supposed.
What does that even mean? Mine. I’d always thought the expression was supposed to be sweet, but maybe it never was.
“What is it?” I ask, watching the careful way Captain Bai holds the package.
“Growth regulators, sir.”
I rack my brain, trying to understand. The weaker variety can be used to ignite an explosion when paired with heli fuel, as I did back when Sevvy and I were breaking into the camp at Dazhai. But one explosion wouldn’t…
But then it hits me. In concentrated forms, growth regulators combined with water form a toxic gas cloud. Death within twenty-four hours for anyone who breathes it. “Growth regulators?” I almost can’t say it. We’re here on a mission to help people, and Mother sent me with poison?
“They’re diluted. Only enough to cloud a few blocks at a time. We’re meant to put them at strategic positions down the Aihu River, which, with our gas masks, will give us a clear path to the wall. Once on the wall, we can secure the gate. Then, after we’ve radioed for extra units to come, we’ll use the torches to push out from the river to enter the mask factory.” Captain Bai blinks a few too many times. “If we don’t contact the two units within range within the next forty-eight hours, they could move too far for us to reach. General Hong has, understandably, not shared our plans with anyone other than me.”
My mind spins, remembering the inadequate-looking piles of boxes we brought with us under the heli. Poison. It’s fast. Efficient. But my chest seems to clench at the thought of using it on infected here in the City. The people I came to help.
“Let me think.” I look back out into the quiet buildings past the torch line. Isn’t staff part of what we need? Thirds who know what materials are required to make masks and how to use the equipment in the mask factory? “Have you had a chance to communicate with the people here? There must be someone out there of rank who could help us coordinate clearing a safe pathway to the gate. They’re our people.”
Captain Bai’s sigh is a little tired. “Perhaps if we had more time. There’s some organization out there. A leader. He approached us when we first landed, but the directives we’ve been given leave no room to help.”
“But there is some kind of structure. A way we’ll be able to coordinate relief efforts after…” After what? After we gas entire blocks of people?
Taking a step back from the torch line, Captain Bai puts a hand to his forehead, rubbing it across his eyes. He looks down at the doll, torn and dead on the cobblestones, and a shadow passes across his eyes. But then his expression hardens, a shield sliding in place across his face. “You’re young, Major. It isn’t our job to choose who lives and who dies. Which life is more important. That’s why leaders who can see the whole picture are the ones giving orders.” He raises his eyebrows, the shadow of disgust returning to his face. “You think your mother handing you that title made you smarter than the rest of us? That we can just discount the General’s weeks of strategizing because you don’t like seeing the results up close? That’s treason, Major Hong.”
He’s gone too far, and he knows it. I can see it in the way he tucks his chin under, as if he expects an angry radio dispatch from Dazhai once I’ve had time to whine over the link about the way he’s treating me.
One word he said really sticks, though. Treason. It shivers through me.
“Give me another way, Major Hong, if you’ve got one.” Captain Bai’s teeth sound gritted even through his mask’s filters, and there’s a vein bulging in his forehead. “Give me another way, and I’ll take it.”
That night, it’s well past midnight when Mei finally goes to sleep. At least, I think she’s asleep. She’s still fully clothed, a threadbare blanket pulled over her head. But her breaths have finally slowed, rasping out from under her covers in even lines.
If the snoring is any indication, she has a cold. Or maybe the torches have long-term effects on one’s sinuses. When Captain Bai and I retreated from the line of chemical torches, she was standing there waiting for me, eyes murderous, nose running.
Before we were within earshot, I warned Captain Bai to only use soldiers he knows well as he prepares the growth regulators. We only have twenty soldiers here, but he did mention that some of them were new to him. Hopefully we can keep whoever it is Mei is working with in the dark about what we’re doing tomorrow morning.
Morning. I roll to my back, eyes tracing the ceiling. I have until morning to think of a way around gassing my own people that will still get us the gate within the forty-eight hours. There are cracks in the ceiling plaster, lines to mark the hundred years this orphanage has been standing just off the market center. I didn’t truly believe Sevvy when she told me Outside patrollers would use chemicals to clear whole areas of the forest around farms, choking the life out of everything left unmasked for miles around. Now, though…
Shifting to my side, I put the information into a box in my head, looking at it from all angles. I suppose if the only other people Outside are enemy combatants—or at least people who could very easily become enemies the moment a thought strikes them—it makes sense to use the biggest weapon you can afford. Cost-to-benefit ratio. Kill five to save a hundred.
Mei stirs, and the muscles in my neck contract in response, pinching down my back and into my arms, leaving me stiff until she rolls to face the wall.
Is the cost-to-benefit ratio here too high, or does this just seem so untenable because I’ve never been the officer making the decisions? Sacrificing a few comrades to ultimately give the rest of us a chance against Dr. Yang seems like it should be an acceptable bargain, but I find myself thinking of the doll I saw in the street, what was left of her hair caked with mud.
We can’t even explain fully to the soldiers what it is we’re trying to accomplish without reports going straight to Dr. Yang. What will they think tomorrow, cleaning bodies out of the buildings that line our route to the City gates? Looking for familiar faces as they drag the dead away to be burned. My chest tightens, each inhibited breath coming too slow through my mask.
Pulling myself up into a sitting position, I place my feet on the cold floor, my skin feeling raw everywhere my gas mask rubs: against my chin, across my cheekbones and nose. There is no relief from it.
I creep over to Mei’s bed and pull her pack out from underneath. Inside, there’s only a pair of dirty socks. Where would she have hidden her things? She must have clothes, at the very least. A link to whomever she reports. Mantis.
Pushing the pack back under her bed, I study her. She’s still covered with a blanket from the crown of her head to her calves, her grimy boots making a speckled halo of dirt on her mattress underneath them.
I know this orphanage inside and out. Sevvy and I hid things for each other—notes, food, gifts—in all the nooks and crannies of this place. Wherever Mei’s hidden her things, they have to be close, somewhere easy to access without calling attention to herself, or she wouldn’t be able to take a consistent Mantis dose.
Unless she’s got a bottle hidden on her person.
With the link I’m supposed to take. A link that might point me toward a Menghu base. Toward Sevvy.
I put a hand out, hovering just over where her shoulder must be. The blanket balloons out over her face as she exhales. If I pull back the blanket now, unzip her coat—
“If you touch me, I will kill you.” Her voice is a muffled whisper. “Why don’t you go back to your own bed like a nice little boy?”
Stepping back, I sit down on my bed and lean forward, elbows on my knees. “Do you know where Sevvy is?”
She pulls the blanket away from her face, blinking at me. “What?”
“Jiang Sev. It was Menghu who took her. Do you know where she ended up?” I look down. “I’m . . I’m worried about her.” It’s not a lie. But not the whole truth.
Mei watches me for a beat longer than seems called for, the words setting something off in her brain. But then she just sniffs. Turns over toward the wall and pulls the blanket back over her head. “What kind of a nickname is Sevvy? It’s longer than her real name.”
“Have you made any headway on the cure? Mother said Sevvy wasn’t being cooperative when they opened up that device.”
“Not like they need her to cooperate.” Her voice is muffled by the blanket.
Fear stabs like a frozen knife in my stomach, the stories Sevvy told me about her time with the Outsiders crackling like a fuzzy radio channel at the back of my head. “What do you mean? Dr. Yang’s not still telling you people that she’s the cure, is he?”
Mei sits up in one graceful motion, the puffy hood of her jacket standing out like wings from her shoulders. But she doesn’t say anything.
I press a hand to my cheek, trying to think. “We found a device with the cure on it at the island. Your friends took it right out of my hand. That’s what Dr. Yang wanted, isn’t it? The cure? That’s why he made Reds invade Kamar.” Mei still doesn’t respond, her eyes thoughtful.
We stare at each other a minute longer before I give up. “I’m going to get a drink of water.” I push myself up from the bed. “Would you like one?”
She shakes her head.
Stepping into my boots by the door, I shoulder my way into the hall, frustration a steel trap around my jaw. The cafeteria is dark, so I walk past it, wondering if some fresh air will help me solve the growth regulator problem. Outside, everything looks wrong; the lights that used to dot the City at night extinguished. I look up the mountain toward the Second Quarter, wishing for something familiar, something to tell me what to do.
I freeze when my eyes find a light. No, more than one, all congregated together near the center of the district, close to where my home is. Where it was, I suppose, the thought an uncomfortable ache inside me. Our family compound is empty now. Empty of my family, the Thirds who cleaned and cooked for us. Empty of anyone but the sick and the dead.
This whole city will be nothing but dead men, women, and children unless I do something.
I give the lights a hard look. Then go inside for a coat.