EVERYTHING INSIDE ME IS STILL—HEART, lungs, and everything else, as if something more than SS has taken hold. My brain replays what I heard over and over: Howl running out of the room. Shouts. Gunshots. Silence. Again: Howl running. Shouts. Gunshots.
Silence.
Tai-ge walks slowly, my legs and arms flopping with every step because I still can’t move. I’m not sure I’d be able to even if my body weren’t trying to die. Tai-ge sets me on the gurney and zips something up over my face: a body bag that’s sticky under me, smelling of death as if I’m not its first occupant. It settles on my nose and cheeks, the air inside too hot within seconds. The gurney moves under me, one wheel squeaking.
Then there’s the harsh crack of close-up gunfire. The gurney jerks to a stop. Shouting, swearing, bargaining. The zipper covering my face rips open. Air in my lungs, but it’s dead, like Howl might be. A blanket falls over me, the tightly woven fibers rough against my cheek. Tai-ge’s voice moves farther and farther away.
The gurney moves. Arms pick me up and put me on a familiar pad. Fiddle with the IV until something cold floods into my veins.
My body, exactly where it was only an hour ago, eternally at rest. Once again, the only thing moving is the quiet plink, plink, plink of fluid dripping.
When the Chairman comes to visit a few days later, his voice is dry and shriveled. A hopeless wheeze of a chuckle that might actually be tears. “I can’t save him.” His chair squeaks as he leans to one side or another. “Can’t save Howl.”
The momentary spike of interest goes away as fast as it came. I’ve already heard Dr. Yang crow over how Howl was wounded and now he’s safely locked up where he can do no more harm.
Go away, I think. I don’t need to hear your useless mourning. If you cared anything for Howl, he wouldn’t be in a cell. If you cared anything for anyone but yourself, we’d all have been cured a long time ago.
“I am a broken man, Jiang Sev.” The Chairman clears his throat. “Dr. Yang has taken everything from me. I knew Menghu were going to break the City walls down all those weeks ago. Take our Mantis stores. They were already inside the City, already spreading SS. He told me they were coming. That he could save me, save my son.”
My interest pricks again.
“My real son,” he amends. “He brought me a picture of my boy, grown. With his eyes closed, lying in a box.…”
The picture.
The picture. When Tai-ge, Howl, and I overheard the Chairman and Dr. Yang talking at Dazhai camp, Dr. Yang said it was a picture keeping the Chairman in check.
Letting the Menghu in to storm his own people. Giving them food and the farms. All of it has been about his son? Thousands displaced, infected, killed, enslaved. This whole war has been about one boy?
Voice choking, the Chairman grips the side of my bed, his fingers trembling against the sheets next to my arm. His voice is husky and raw. “Dr. Yang brought me the picture and vial of medicine—said I’d be able to wake little Yi-lai up, save him from your mother’s fate—if only I did what he told me to do. And now I give you that same option. Help me. You can save yourself from your mother’s fate if you do what I tell you to do.” Something clinks against the side of the bed, glass on metal.
Help him what? I’m lying here mostly dead with nothing to offer. I know where the cure is, but he doesn’t know that. What game is he playing?
The Chairman takes a deep breath, the sickly air brushing over me turning to a hot stream as if he’s leaning forward to look at my face. “Is it ironic to be giving this to you now? What I would have given to have this serum six months ago. To wake your mother up, to take back the cure trapped inside her head. You’re like her, you know. I know you’ll help me.”
The anger seething deep inside me seems to cool a degree, Mother’s face as it was before I fell Asleep at eight appearing in my mind. The Chairman isn’t the only person who has been willing to wage war over a single life that was important to him. Mother wouldn’t give up the cure because of me. I wouldn’t give the cure to Dr. Yang mainly because of June and Lihua. But they’re just the faces I know, two of thousands in the same position: needing the cure but with nothing to offer in exchange.
The chair squeaks again, and the damp brush of unfiltered breath is replaced by stale air. The hospital gown flips up at my side, and he pushes something cold against my bare skin, then presses something over it. Medical tape. The tubes at my elbow twitch as an awful coldness seeps into my arm. Panic wells inside me at the medicine in my veins that I know will kill me.
“There’s a dosing schedule. I’ve just given you the first measure. A medic will come for you soon to administer the rest. Now, listen carefully because this is an exchange. If you don’t hold up your part, I will find you and kill you and everyone else you love.”
My skin chills at how calmly he says it, as if he’s talking about the weather.
“Two Outsiders tried to break you out of here a few days ago. Howl was with them and the General’s son. One Outsider was caught by Dr. Yang’s men, the other by soldiers loyal to me. Dr. Yang doesn’t know of his betrayal, and the Menghu has agreed to take you and my medic back to the Mountain in exchange for our silence.”
The Chairman settles back into his chair with a creak and popping of knees. “There’s some group holding out at the Mountain, though who knows how long they’ll last.”
A group holding out at the Mountain? Sole?
His chair squeaks, his voice close to my ear. “The Mountain is where Dr. Yang was strongest, the only place he’d have the technology to preserve my son. You are going to go, you are going to find him, and you are going to bring him to me. I’ve taped a link to your side. The moment you find him, send me a picture. We’ll plan from there.”
My arm stings as the medicine enters my veins drip by drip.
“And I’m sorry, but you can’t go after Howl. I’ve heard what they say about the two of you from General Hong.”
From General Hong? What would she know about me or Howl, either one of us? Mei and Helix or Kasim would know a thing or two, but General Hong?
But then I remember Tai-ge’s arms around me, and if my teeth could have ground together, they would have.
“I know you’ll want to get him out. Dr. Yang knows it too, and he’ll try to use it against you once you’re gone. But you can’t come back unless you’ve got my son.” The Chairman pauses, thickness entering his voice again. “You’re the only hope I have in this world. The only hope little Yi-lai has. If you could have had even a moment with your mother, I know you would have taken it. Please, give me this.” His voice is too quiet, crumbling at the edges as if he can’t quite believe that he is asking for my help. That he has to ask for anything at all. “With my son secure, I can tell the Seconds to fight Dr. Yang. I’ll let you be a part of the First Circle, let you change the quarter system or hand the cure to every sorry Third in this whole mountain range. I’m ready to let things change, so long as I get my son back. You send me the picture proving you’ve found him, and I’ll get the both of you to safety. If you don’t find him… if you don’t contact me within two days of leaving, you know the consequences. I’ll start with the Mountain holdouts. We’ll clean the whole place out.”
The door’s hinges screech, and he’s gone, leaving me alone with the darkness inside my head, a circle of cold metal pressed hard into my ribs under the medical tape. Feeling as though I’m surrounded, but I don’t know by what.