“WE NEED TO GET OUT of here. Now.” Aya holds the gun steady at her side. “Whatever you needed out of here, it’s not worth my life. That guy didn’t kill the rest of my team and yours by himself.”
Peishan shies back as Aya passes her, barely lit by the fallen quicklight. She doesn’t look at me or the dead or any of us, her eyes tired, as if her body wants to close her eyes so she doesn’t have to see anymore.
My stomach churns, eyes not wanting to focus on the pile of bodies making a centerpiece in the destruction of the room. I can’t stop myself seeing a curled fist, a braid with half the strands spilling free, though. “It is your life on the line. Mine too. And everyone’s. If we don’t find something on the grid, Chairman Sun’s going to send soldiers in to clean us all out.”
“Chairman Sun?” the Menghu hisses.
Xuan kneels next to the girl we carried in, checking her pulse, then bending down to check her breathing, a bleak look in his eyes.
“What do you need, then? It’s now or never.” Aya’s lack of expression makes my heart pound even harder, her fingers fiddling across the safety of her gun.
“We need to find something powered by an independent generator on the electrical grid. Sole said we might be able to see it from up here.”
Aya skips over a river of broken glass, stopping in front of a downed telescreen. She shoves her gun into her waistband, then gestures impatiently toward me. “Help me!”
I run to her side, helping to lift the shattered screen down to find a cube that’s a little taller than me stashed behind. It’s made from some kind of see-through plastic, the inside riddled with what looks like corridors, rooms, wide spaces, and a circle drilled about a third of the way through from the top. At the bottom of the drilled hole I can see a miniature reproduction of the triangle kitchen opening and the amphitheater where I first ate lunch with Howl, thinking my life was about to change for the better. It’s the Core, only much, much smaller.
Aya swears, rattling something plugged into the side, a twin to the mini generator the Menghu tried to use to activate Dr. Yang’s door, brought up by the two members of our team lying dead in the middle of the Heart. “I used to work in the Heart. That’s why my crew did so well up here. We knew it backward and forward.” When the cube is properly plugged in, the lights at the very bottom corner of the cube strengthen a hair, but the top goes dark—the only electricity running marking the safe haven in the basement. That leaves only a few isolated spots burning like stars in the night. Aya balances the cube, looking at me. “As you can see, most of the Mountain is out. How much power are you looking for?”
“I’m not sure.” The dark seems to push in on me, questions about where the man who attacked me came from, where the rest of his friends are, and how long before they get back making my words come out in a stutter. I can feel Peishan cowering behind me, Xuan at my elbow. “Something like… like the City Center, Xuan. My mother in her box.”
Xuan’s face quirks. “So, a generator big enough to power life support. Um, basic hospital functions. Food, water that’s somehow self-sustaining.”
“Where? Generally, I mean.” She pulls at the cube, and pieces come away, expanding so we can see inside the Mountain room by room, the little flames of light scattered across the top.
“Somewhere no one would think to look.”
A shot fires into the room, and the Menghu shrinks in her spot by the door, hands groping for weapons she was made to leave behind in Dr. Yang’s office. She darts forward, grabbing a long section of hard plastic, hefting it in front of her like a sword. Peishan remains a statue on the other side of the lintel.
“Hidden. Like down in the storage levels?” Aya concentrates on the plastic cube, hardly looking up as a second shot comes in from the hall.
I flatten myself against the wall. “Maybe? Would it be easier to hide something upstairs where no one would notice extra power being funneled out?”
“Maybe. But look at that.” Aya points to a pitch-dark section down at the base of the cube, opposite where Sole’s safe haven glows with power. “Who’s down there? That’s records, probably. Or maybe plate metal or wood storage. No outside doors are nearby. No food or water or supplies to glean.”
Xuan pulls Peishan away from the wall, leading her to hide just inside the doorway. “Faster, please!” he hisses, shouts clouding the air.
I pull the cubes out to expand, taking note of the designation etched into the plastic. BW12—SECTOR THIRTEEN. It’s down deep, the way Sole’s safe haven is. She’ll know how to get there. Another bullet sings through the opening, lodging in the electrical grid representation, little sparks flaring all around the melting plastic.
“Is there another way out of here?” I gasp.
“Nope. Let’s get moving.” Aya darts toward the girl on the floor and hoists her up by the shoulders. I take her feet, then follow as Aya leads me to the open doorway. There’s nothing but darkness outside, but noise enough to fund an entire war. “We’re pinned down here.”
“You think?” the Menghu snarls back at her, brandishing the plastic strip.
“Yeah, get into the hallway wiring. Hit it the second you can.” Aya’s voice stays calm.
“What are you talking about?” My voice rises an octave, fear pinching it tight.
Which is when the lights in the hall flick on. My eyes scream in protest, barely able to process the blobby dark blurs against the painful white stab of light. One falls to the ground under Aya’s gun as he blinks at the sudden light, the other two taking off down the hall when they see they’re outnumbered. More shots pepper my ears, leaving them with nothing but a high-pitched whine. Aya drags me straight into what sounds like an assault, Peishan running to help me with the girl’s weight, not stopping until three girls come into view ahead, their ears covered with protective gear.
They signal to Aya to turn the corner. We run, the girl’s dead weight dragging more every second until we get to a hallway where the sound has died down. The three girls who covered our exit herd Xuan and the Menghu behind us, checking over their shoulders as they holster their weapons. “Why are we doing this, Aya?” one mouths, the sound stopped at my eardrums. “We’ve already attracted way too much attention—”
“Gather your things, ladies.” Aya’s voice thumps against me, muffled as she hands her injured friend over to the Menghu. “We’re headed downstairs.”
The girl we’ve been carrying doesn’t wake up. The next time Xuan forces us to stop so he can check her, he spends a long time listening before finally sagging back. Aya waits for a moment, as if she believes Xuan will tell her it’s going to be all right, but when he’s silent, she just nods and steps back from what’s left of her friend. We leave her in an empty corridor, Aya and her compatriots hiding her body inside a closet and covering her so thoroughly it makes me wonder what they’re hiding her from.
Then I force myself to stop wondering because it’s too easy to come up with reasons, and it doesn’t make running any easier.
Because Aya and her friends will have to go through quarantine, we have to go Outside to the main entrance to the safe haven. Only, with all the dodging and hiding it takes to get to one of the Outside doors, by the time we to a door that leads to the outdoors, light has fled the sky, and hungry gores sing from the trees.
We settle into the corridor near the Outside door and block off the passage that leads upstairs, though after everything today, no matter how many old desks and doors we use to barricade the hallway, I can’t imagine closing my eyes ever again. Gore cries aren’t much comfort either, filtering through the heavy door even after Aya pulls it shut and locks it down. Memories of Howl in a frame of jagged yellow teeth…
Howl. Kasim said Dr. Yang only kept him alive because of me. The Chairman said the doctor would use him to draw me out. I close my eyes, breathing in deep and letting the air flow out of me until I’m empty inside.
I’m going to get him out.
Aya’s eyes remain expressionless as she settles on the ground across from me, crossing her ankles and leaning back against the wall. The three girls left of her crew sit around her in a too-quiet huddle, clumsily cleaning their guns. The Menghu watches them from the end of the hall near the barricade, her eyes narrowed on Aya like a cat watching its prey.
Peishan stays near the Menghu, cowering in her shadow as if it gives her something to do other than talk to me. She did the same when we first left the City, spreading her arms out to protect the little ones we pulled out of the Sanatorium from me, from June and Tai-ge, from anyone who came close, because it was easier than facing the enormity of the City burning under her.
She won’t look at me. As if everything is, once again, my fault. I suppose it’s true. I’m the one who got her sent up here. We found the little blip of power where it didn’t belong down in the Mountain’s intestines. With my luck, it will probably be a storage room light some overworked record filer forgot to turn off. All this for nothing.
I swallow the thoughts down where I can’t see them, my hands clenched as I sit down by Xuan. “How’s your shoulder?” I murmur.
“Probably gangrenous. That’s catching, you know, so if you won’t carry me the rest of the way, I’ll rub it all over you.”
“You are the worst medic ever. Gangrene isn’t contagious—even I know that.” I lean back and put a hand to my aching head, my ears still ringing. “And if it were, wouldn’t carrying you get it all over me?”
“I’m too tired to make sense. I need sleep.” Xuan nods to Aya and the other girls. “And they need watching.”
“Yeah. I’ll switch off with Peishan and… the Menghu. Do you know her name?”
“She’s the other one I kind of want to watch all night.” He puts his hand up, stopping me before I can tell him to be quiet. “Not in a creepy way. In an I don’t like getting stabbed while I sleep sort of way.”
I look over at the Menghu, her legs curled up so her knees brush her chin, her hand pressing her gas mask hard against her face. A buckle broke at the back during one of our altercations today, forcing her to do everything one-handed or risk SS sneaking in.
“Hey, Sev?”
I drag my attention back to Xuan.
“There is a very real possibility I won’t be able to get up in the morning. Adrenaline does a lot for people when their lives are on the line, but it only goes so far. So I just want you to tell me something before I close my eyes. You know, for, like, motivation to get them open again.”
“I’m not wasting any pity on you, Xuan.”
“I just want to know that this has an end.”
I look down, wrinkling my nose. That’s what Sole said too. How do you see this ending, Sev?
“That story you told me and Sole about the cure being in the City. That’s true, right?” The strain of hope in Xuan’s voice sets my jaw. “This whole…” He tries to gesture to the group, to Peishan huddled alone, the Menghu’s predatory gaze, Aya and her crew… but more than that. To the Mountain. To everything we all gave up to be here. If there is anything left to give up. The whole world has already cracked open and is gobbling us up, one by one. Like the Outsider upstairs. There—stupidly, annoyingly, aggressively there—one second. Now gone. “This was for a reason, right?”
“Yes. It was for a good reason.” I reach out and squeeze his hand. “Thank you for believing me.”
He smiles, sinking down to the floor, making a pillow out of one arm, the other leaden on his chest over his bandages. “You’re the only thing left to bet on. What choice do I have?”
I wake to a ghostly buzz in my pocket. The link.
Peishan looks up when I sit up from the floor. She agreed without arguing when I asked her to take the second watch. Didn’t even ask what she was supposed to watch for. Even now, she prefers silence to wondering why I’m awake.
Turning my back to her, I squeeze the link to see the message.
Execution postponed.
Postponed? I didn’t even know when it was supposed to be. Postponed until when? Howl’s face burns in my head, the Chairman’s insufficient information stoking the flame.
It continues: If you know anything about the heli bombing our camps, please share.
A heli? Howl’s confession about bombers rises in my mind, but it sounds like the Chairman knows that much.
Yang’s already moving southern garrison forces to the City by heli. Soon the General and I will follow.
My insides churn. Dr. Yang is headed back to the City? What if he figured out Mother’s message all on his own? Or decided to go through our old house again just to see what he can find?
The link buzzes again. Yang is using the rogue heli threat as a reason to band everyone together. They bombed the garrison while you were there and have since grounded most of the helis at the airfield at Dazhai. The execution is in four days, under the Arch. After that, I might not have enough sway to get a heli out to you. I’d rather leave everything in ruins than allow my soldiers to die under Yang. Find my son. Four days.
Four days. Four days. That’s a lot less than two weeks.
Four days until Dr. Yang kills Howl. Under the Arch, just like my mother. Like my father. My sister didn’t make it that far. Four days until Dr. Yang, General Hong, and the Chairman are all going to be in one spot.
How do you see this ending, Sev?
Outside, a lonely howl breaks the night’s silence, escalating into a series of excited yips. Other voices join the first, turning it into a hair-raising chorus, gunshots joining the cacophony. And then a scream.
I clamp my hands hard over my ears, trying to drown out the hunted creature’s death.
Something shifts in the hallway behind me, the movement catching at the corner of my eye. It’s Peishan getting to her feet, coming toward me too quickly for it to be just for a chat. “She’s gone,” she rasps through her mask, pointing toward the barrier. “I wasn’t watching, and now she’s not there anymore.”
I sit up all the way, fear bubbling up inside me without even knowing who she’s talking about, just that something’s wrong. Xuan’s next to me, his chest moving up and down with the long breaths of sleep. Aya with her girls from the Heart are all here, the one who is supposed to be keeping watch snoring so loud it echoes off the ceiling.
But when I slide over next to Peishan, it’s not hard to see. In the spot just around the bend in the hall, where the Menghu is supposed to be sleeping, there’s a startling emptiness.
I grope through Peishan’s pack until I find the cool glass and metal of a quicklight and break it, the red light washing clear down to the end of the hall and the door we barricaded. It’s untouched. But when I come back around the bend to where Aya and the others are sleeping to check the Outside door, the Menghu is standing over Aya, a knife in one hand.
My muscles all freeze, the gores beginning to howl again Outside. The creatures outside just want to eat, sleep, perpetuate their species, but the ones inside have learned how to hate.
My body won’t move, brain refusing to make sense of what’s happening right in front of me—the knife, Aya in her stolen mask, the Menghu—not until Peishan beats me to it, sliding between the Menghu and the girls from upstairs.
“What do you think you are doing?” Peishan whispers, her hands up as if she’s being held at gunpoint.
“She killed my friend for no reason.” The Menghu hefts the knife, her balance off because one hand is glued to her mask, keeping it in place. “Get out of my way or I’ll get rid of you first, City girl.”
Aya stirs at their feet, her eyes opening. She elbows the girl next to her, and suddenly they’re all awake, oozing violence as the Menghu brandishes her knife. Her arms look too thin, limp almost, as if the blade is the only strong part left of her.
“We don’t need you,” the Menghu growls, backing away from Peishan and the girls who rise behind her. “Not any of you. You’ll eat our food, take our medicine. We didn’t even need to go up past the air lock because we were fine.…”
I stand when Aya’s gun comes out, putting myself between her and the Menghu alongside Peishan. “There’s no need for that. You are all from the Mountain except Peishan. You’re all from the same side.”
“That was before she got sick.” The Menghu snarls, jabbing the knife to point at Aya. “Before she killed—”
Aya starts to push past Peishan, but Peishan grabs her arm, putting a hand over her grip on the gun.
“Do you mean before Dr. Yang let SS spread through the Mountain without telling anyone? Before he abandoned Aya and everyone else up there?” I turn back-to-back with Peishan, grateful when she stays firm behind me, shoring me up the way I’m trying to help her.
It’s surreal, defending Aya who I saw murder a member of my own team. “What would it help?” I ask, my voice cracking because I honestly don’t know. “What would it help to kill me or Peishan or Aya or anyone here?” Xuan lets out a snore from where he’s huddled against the wall, oblivious. “It would just add to the dead.”
“It would be a life for a life. His life for hers. She took his life, his mask, before he’d even gone cold.…” The Menghu’s hand presses hard against her mask’s filters, muffling her words. “I need that mask more than she does. She’s already sick. Why should I listen to you anyway, cozy with that Red medic? He didn’t even try to help when—”
“Xuan risked his life to come here,” I croak. “If we can’t walk peacefully into the safe haven when nothing is blocking us, then what do we have to look forward to? This is how the war started between the Mountain and the City. Refusing to help each other, assuming the other side would take everything… Wait.” I pull the buckle on my own mask, tearing it from my face, relishing the first taste of stale air in my mouth. Making sure my hair covers my birthmark so this girl doesn’t recognize me and make things even worse. “Here. Take my mask. Just please don’t hurt anyone, either of you.”
The Menghu’s eyes go wide, her knife hand shaking as she looks over my naked face, eyes trailing down to the mask in my hand, extended toward her.
“It’s a time for friends. For trust. For giving. For sacrifice and forgetting. If any of us want to get through this…” I link my arm through Peishan’s, her whole body trembling against me, but she stands firm. “None of you mean anything to Peishan, and yet here she is standing between you. She probably could have gotten out of this mission. Could have stayed safe downstairs, but she’s risking her life to help people she doesn’t even know.”
Peishan pulls her arm away from me. “No, you came because you didn’t have to, Sev. Is that the point you wanted to make? That you’re so fabulous to risk yourself instead of playing the I’m important and don’t have to do dirty work card? I just want everyone to calm down.”
“Let me go back to sleep, all of you, or tomorrow you’ll be less a medic.” Xuan’s voice runs ragged through his mask filters. He waits for a second before rolling over, his back to us. “None of us are good or bad. None of us want to die. There’s no instant karma that lets good people survive and bad ones die. We’re all just here. It’s random and unfair, so let’s leave it at that and get some rest. Sev, if they don’t listen to reason, just let them kill each other. We’ll just leave their bodies here, and they can see if it makes them feel better.”
His weary tone falls flat between us, the tension bubbling down as we all look at him, the packs of medicine we brought from above piled around him like pillows. Peishan doesn’t move an inch behind me, her hands still firm on Aya’s gun. “I don’t want anyone else to die,” she whispers. “Not you”—she meets the Menghu’s eyes—“or any of you.” She can’t quite look back to acknowledge Aya or the two girls flanking her on either side. “I’ve seen you do impossible, brave things. You are people I want to know. I hope there’s still a chance that’s possible.”
The Menghu blinks too slow, taking in Peishan’s trembling lip, the way she fights back tears even as she firmly keeps Aya’s gun pointed at the floor.
The Menghu lowers her knife. Reaches out and takes my mask. Closing her eyes, she holds her breath and lets her own mask sag away from her face. Placing mine over her nose and mouth, she turns away, walking to her spot by the barricade, out of sight.
I swivel to face Aya. “You didn’t have to kill that man upstairs. You didn’t have to threaten us.”
“He would have killed me. The rest of my team did die, all because you all came up here.”
“If you had tried talking to us instead of attacking us—”
“You gassed us. None of you wanted to talk. Would we be here with you, headed downstairs, if I hadn’t stood up to you?” She leans forward a hair, her teeth bared. “None of us would be fighting at all if they had let us all go downstairs in the first place.”
“Just stop!” There are tears trailing down Peishan’s cheeks now.
I hold myself very, very still for a moment before I step back. Aya rolls her eyes, but she puts her gun away. It’s true what she says, only there isn’t enough Mantis or food for everyone. If there were enough, the City and Mountain never would have started fighting in the first place. Or maybe they would have, and it would just be about different things. About the places we live, the food we eat, or the language we speak. It seems like there’s enough reason to push the Chairman from his throne because he didn’t just want to live, he wanted everyone else’s lives too. Is that what power is, squeezing others until they rise up and bite, only to take your power for themselves?
Is that what we are? When there was safety only a few hours away, food, water, a bed to sleep in, still the Menghu drew her knife. Aya didn’t apologize, didn’t back down, didn’t curl up and wait for forgiveness.
And I understand why.
Maybe this is all we have to look forward to. Even if I find the cure, Sole makes it, and we give it to everyone… maybe they’ll keep their uniforms and their scars and their grudges and find new reasons to kill each other.
In fact, if we don’t give them good people to follow, I know they will.
I settle next to Xuan while the girls from upstairs huddle close to one another across from us as if they can’t bear to sleep alone. One of them stays up to keep watch. To my surprise, Peishan slides to the floor next to me.
“You’re brave,” I whisper.
She swallows. “I’m still mad at you.”
I nod, too tired to argue.
Peishan looks at the floor, her hands still shaking. “How did the world turn into this? Death and knives and guns and…” She takes a shuddering breath. “I feel like one moment we were alive and happy, even if it wasn’t easy. You and me, the other orphans. We had lives. And then in one day, it became… this. Unlivable. The worst.”
All I have is another nod. Everything is the worst. If I can’t even help two people who grew up in the same community stop and listen to each other, how can I even begin to help the people Outside? The ones who have been shooting at each other with no remorse since the day they learned how to fire a gun.
Peishan leans forward to touch my arm. “I’m still mad, but I’m glad you came up here with me. I think… I miss being your friend.” She looks up at me, her brow furrowed. “Would you sit up with me to keep watch? Everything that happened today… those girls…” She gives Aya and her friends a leery look. “I’m scared.” It comes out in an ashamed whisper.
“Of course I will, Peishan.” I know the shame of fear. It’s like an aftertaste to the horrible things you couldn’t stop. The Menghu and Aya stopped fighting because of Peishan. Because she’s human, and she showed them. But still, the shame remains.
Howl. His name tastes like hope this time. Sole. They changed. Because they started seeing humans instead of enemies.
How do we show everyone with guns out there that most of us—minus the ones manipulating people like stones on a board—just want to live?
One thing I do know, though. Fear is the tool of the powerful. Fear is easier than hope, easier to share, easier to grab hold of. Unless I can find a way to give people hope stronger than fear, then it’s like Sole hinted. There will be no end to this war.
I know what I have to do. It feels like tar inside me, like the blood still staining my clothes and caked on my skin. But the people who use fear can’t continue. Not if we want these things to stop. For all that death is unwinding in my chest, having Peishan there next to me feels like hope, too. We sit up the rest of the night, back-to-back, watching. Together.