SOLE GOES TO WORK WITHOUT question the moment Menghu wheel Sun Yi-lai and his box into one of the few empty spaces in the allotted hospital space: Xuan’s room. His vitals are written across the side in blocky characters that blink angrily when Sole instructs the Menghu to disconnect him. He looks like a doll the way my mother did, propped up and waiting for someone to take him down to play. Only, his skin hasn’t turned to paper, his muscles firm instead of wasted to nothing.
He’s alive. Healthy, as much as a boy who has been locked in a box for who knows how long can be. I shove Xuan over a few inches to sit on his bed, unable to stop staring as Sole works on him, snapping at her team of medics to do things this way and that, the boy’s eyes closed. Not a boy. He’s older than me. Howl’s age, or a little older.
He’s asleep the way I was. A weiqi stone so dangerous, Dr. Yang hid him away from the board.
He looks like Howl, a little.
He looks like a piece in my game of weiqi. One I’m not sure where to move next. Though the thought immediately sends spirals of shame from my head to my toes. People aren’t pieces to be played.
Sole looks up as a Menghu comes in, the girl walking straight to her to whisper something in her ear. Fingers tangled in a mess of tubing over Sun Yi-lai’s chest, Sole barely glances at me before going back to what she was doing. “They need you at the outer barricade.”
“Are you kidding? I’m not leaving until you tell me you can wake him up.” My hand goes to my pocket where I stowed the link. I have the Chairman’s son. Alive. He’ll want him back as soon as possible, which means a heli sent out in this direction, which means—
“A girl named June. You know her, right?” Sole kneels next to the box, her fingers pinching at the boy’s skin. “She’s coming up to the inner doors right now with… with Seth. Luokai. Whatever he calls himself now.”
I freeze. “What?”
“They’re both here. Keep them away from me, okay?” Her eye twitches, and suddenly I wonder if she’s not kneeling to get closer to Sun Yi-lai and the mess of tubes keeping him alive. She’s hiding.
“You okay, my little niangao?” Xuan prods my arm. “Isn’t June that girl—”
“The one you helped turn into an orphan. Yes. You call me that again and I’ll shoot your other side.”
I slide off the bed and run up to the surface level and through the two inner barricades to meet June, tears like fire in my eyes. June. Alive. June safe.
June here.
I was supposed to make the world a better place for June. Find the cure, bring it back to her. But the idea that I can is the worst kind of bravado, even if I didn’t know it when I made her those promises back at Port North. I’ll have to tell her that Howl is going under the Arch. That we have a way to the cure, but it’ll turn all guns on us. That I’m supposed to assassinate three well-guarded people but don’t know how—and that it might not help anything anyway. I was okay at weiqi, able to keep from disgracing myself, but this game seems to break all the rules I thought—
I stop just inside the barrier, hands raking through my hair. The Menghu guarding the inner barricade drops a hand casually to his weapon, watching me from the side of his eye.
Stones. June. The two together seem to close a circuit in my brain.
I know what the Chairman wants: his son.
I know what Dr. Yang wants: me. He wouldn’t be shouting all over the radios about having a gun to Howl’s head if this weren’t a play to get me to come to him.
I know where the cure is: under the floorboards in my old house.
I know where Howl will be. Under the Arch. Surrounded by Firsts and Seconds evacuated from Dazhai. Menghu flown in from the southern garrison. And whatever comes in between, the people who only follow because they need food and Mantis.
A picture of June’s weiqi game back when she, Tai-ge, and I were sitting under the heli, planning how to steal a map encryption key that would lead us to Port North. Too many people playing. All in each other’s way, she said. We can do whatever we want.
When June’s snarled curls, her scratched jade eyes, appear on the other side of the barricade, I can’t help but run, throwing my arms around her. To my surprise, her arms clutch at my back, holding me close, her face crushed into my chest.
We fall to the ground, laughing, crying, and everything in between, no words enough to encompass what being alive and together again feels like.
Later, as we sit in quarantine sharing bowls of soup, I can hardly look at June’s companion. Luokai is a horrible reminder and a motivation rolled into one, because I’d forgotten how much he looks like Howl. A battered, shaved version who has forgotten how to smile.
“Sole?” he asks quietly. “Is she here?”
I press my lips together. “If she wants to talk to you, she’ll come down.”
A humorless smile quirks at the side of his mouth, and he gives me a restrained bow from where he’s seated.
June’s so quiet, so still I can feel her heart beating against my skin like a little mouse held in the palm of my hand. “Howl?” she asks.
Luokai looks up again from his soup, setting his spoon carefully into his bowl.
My stomach clenches, my lungs contracting. “June, I need your help.”
She listens as she always does. Howl under the Arch. A black heli, Luokai’s eyes narrowing at its mention. Menghu and Reds together in the same space. People infected with SS trapped inside City walls, the Chairman waiting for word of his son.
“I’m going to tell him we found Sun Yi-lai and that we have conditions upon returning him.” I stand as Peishan and Lihua rocket through the door, masks tight over their noses, crashing into June and bowling her over. Luokai blinks at the ruckus, inching back as if to give June some room, but it’s with the shadow of a smile. Once they’ve quieted down, I continue. “If Dr. Yang is following traditions around the Arch, there will be a big denunciation before they…” I look at Lihua, pressing my lips together. “Could we finish this reunion at dinner?”
Peishan, who perked up at the mention of the Arch, nods, herding Lihua back out of the room, though she complains the whole way. “I made a walking stick, June!” she yells over her shoulder as Peishan hands her off to Menghu outside. “One of the Menghu helped me carve it, and he says it’s like magic and will keep bad guys away and…”
June’s smile is so big it hurts, and I don’t want to quash it down, but we don’t have time to be happy just yet.
“If Dr. Yang is going to execute Howl the way they used to under the Arch, it’ll be a big gathering with speeches and yelling and throwing things, anyone who is important there to watch. It’s not enough to just get Howl or the cure. We need people to listen to us. They’ll all be there, together, scared, and unless we can persuade them to follow us instead of breaking into little groups, it’ll turn into anarchy.”
June nods, her forehead wrinkled. “So many people in the City at once.”
“Yes, that’s what I was thinking. Lots of confusion about who goes where. Lots of helis flying in right now to evacuate the camps, and all the people on them hate one another. I don’t want the Chairman to get his hands on his son before we get something out of him, so we can’t have him send a heli for us.” I pinch at my fingers, sucking on my bottom lip. “Kasim—one of the Menghu who was working at the garrison—maybe he could get us onto a heli going to the City.”
June’s face scrunches as she thinks, an expression so familiar that I don’t know how I’d forgotten it. I can’t believe she’s here. As if she’s a ghost, a memory, a hallucination. Even as I watch, she brushes a snarl from her face, and her hand freezes in her hair, her whole body going tight. Her other hand jerks to the side, knocking her porridge to the ground.
“June? June!” I kneel down, pulling her hand out of her hair as she tries to yank it out. Peishan holds her down on the other side. June’s lungs are moving too fast, breaths blowing in and out of her like a stormy gale. I don’t let go until her shoulders relax.
I try to help her up, try to hold her, but she brushes me off, glancing at Luokai. He gives her a small smile and closes her eyes, calming the breaths racking her chest until they smooth into something deep and calm.
“Are you okay?” I ask, the idea of compulsions lurking inside my friend when she’s spent so many years running from them burning like acid inside me. “Oh, June, I’m so sorry.” How did I not notice that the soldiers down here didn’t give her Mantis?
She inhales again, her shoulders upright. “Send the picture. You said the Chairman wanted a picture.”
The way she sits so straight… It reminds me of Luokai and his compulsions. Of accepting them. Living through them. Letting them pass, not a storm inside you so much as one overhead, not worth paying attention to as it rails against the roof.
June reaches out to touch my hand, her eyes soft. Her hand on my arm feels like strength, as if for the first time since we’ve met, I feel like she’s solidly here. Not on her toes, ready to run.
“Tell me what he says once he’s seen his son and find out about Kasim’s heli.” June pulls Luokai’s bowl in front of her and takes a bite. He smiles and allows it. “Then we plan.”
I try to hold on to the image of June’s strength, her control, as I speak to the woman in charge of quarantines, asking her to give June and Luokai Mantis. But it disappears as I head up the stairs. We’ve used most of today hunting for Sun Yi-lai, which makes it only two days and a few hours until they put an ax to Howl’s throat.
When I get to Xuan’s room, it’s clustered full of medics with Sun Yi-lai’s body inert at their center, like bees serving their queen. The Chairman’s son merits a bed now, only a normal number of tubes feeding into him rather than the horror-show glass box that seems to be yanked right out of a scary movie from Before. His eyes are still closed, though. It feels like the first stage of panic, churning inside my chest. Did Sole start giving him the anti–Suspended Sleep serum yet?
The medics part for me, letting me pull out the link and hover it over his face, the purple light brushing his angled features, to take a picture. I round Xuan’s bed, tucking his blankets around his sleeping form before jumping up next to him to send the photo, and with it, my message to the Chairman: If you want him, there are some things I’m going to need first.
Xuan’s eyes flicker open at my weight next to him on the bed, and he groans, turning onto his side. “Go away.”
“You don’t like being tucked in?” I watch to make sure the message went through, holding the link tight in my fist, willing the Chairman to answer immediately. Preferably offering the world and then some to get his son back. He did as much for Dr. Yang. “Where’s Sole?”
Xuan opens his eyes all the way, looking over his shoulder to glower at me. “You are the one vertical with your eyes open. Think through the logic of asking me of all people that question. And while you’re realizing how silly you are, would you please tell all of these ridiculous excuses for medics to get out of here?” He pulls the blanket up over his head, muffling the rest of his words. “There’s a thing called bedside manner!”
I pull the blanket back down. “Why isn’t Sun Yi-lai awake yet?”
“Medicine is complicated, Sev. He was Asleep longer, he’s bigger than you, his contamination was different. We came up with a dosing schedule most likely to succeed based on what I know about the anti–Suspended Sleep serum.” He grabs the blanket back from me and flips it up to cover his floppy hair. “Now go get me a custard bun.”
“Not likely.” I slide off the edge of his bed and head out the door, stopping one of the medics to ask her to get Xuan his custard bun before heading toward Sole’s room.
Worry and curiosity war inside me as I remember the way she crouched behind Sun Yi-lai’s box, telling me to go find June at the barricade. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by Sole since I don’t actually know her that well, but it just seems like she’s so in control of herself now. Focused. She was upset about finding Luokai on the other end of the link, sure, but for some reason I thought she’d give him a reserved bow and then go back to sticking people with needles if she ever came across him again, not hide under the covers. When I get to her door, I hesitate with my hand on the knob. Then take a step back and knock. “Sole?”
Nothing.
“Sole, I’m coming in!” I push the door open to find Sole sitting cross-legged on her sleeping pallet, a girl across from her, back to me. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt—”
The girl turns around, a familiar round face, wide mouth and dark brown hair sending bolts of surprise through my chest. “Mei?”
She smiles, brushing shaggy bangs from her eyes. “I was glad to hear you didn’t die.”
“What… how…?” I swallow, jerking my attention to Sole. “What is she doing here, Sole? Mei was with Helix when I got caught at Port North.” My voice rises, the horror of those hours sitting in the belly of a heli, knowing I was dead like molten lead burning through my veins. “She can’t be here. She’ll tell everyone—”
“She’s been with me ever since Dr. Yang put you under. She and Kasim aren’t the only Menghu who realized he wasn’t going to be handing out anything but orders that weren’t necessarily in their best interest after he didn’t use you to make a cure.” Sole’s face has moved from skull-like and brittle to some kind of iron. “Mei was one of the Menghu who tried to break you out of the garrison, but she got caught.” She gestures for me to sit down, but I don’t, my hand clenched on the doorknob, not sure if I should run or fight. “And she says she can help with our plan to get the cure and… save Howl.”
Our plan. I refrain from rolling my eyes. Wasn’t it only yesterday that Sole was calling it a fairy tale?
Mei’s jaw clenches, her eyes widening a fraction. “We’re doing what, now? Cure, yes. Save creepy murderers, no.”
“He is not creepy or a murderer, thank you very much.” The Chairman’s link buzzes in my pocket, and I take it out, shading my hand to see the message drawn in light across the back of my hand. Proof that he’s alive first. After that we can talk.
“Sev.” I look up to find Mei’s wide mouth twisted into a smile. Her wrists are bare of bones, her hair a familiar mess of mud and twigs. “We’ve got a window of opportunity here with the execution going on. Sole says you have some leverage on the Chairman. I’ve got some people who will help on General Hong’s side. We could sneak in, arrange for the guards at the execution to be people on our side—”
“A window to do what, exactly? What’s your end goal, Mei?” Is Mei already feeding Sole my plan, centering it around herself and putting Menghu back in control instead of where our focus should be: on saving Howl and changing out bloodthirsty leaders for people who can see that SS is what we need to fight, not each other? Needles shiver down my arms and up my neck as I remember the last words she said to me in the heli before she signed me over to Dr. Yang: I hope you die better than this.
“There’s a high-ranking Red who is sympathetic to working with people like us. You in particular, Sev.” Sole looks up at me, her eyebrows quirked. “I believe you have a relationship with Hong Tai-ge. Is that correct?”