TAI-GE APPEARS ON THE STAIRS, Kasim and Mei flanking him on each side. Helix and his soldiers tense, Helix looking from the two Menghu to Tai-ge’s red stars, blood and horror in his eyes. But instead of shooting at them, Helix takes a step forward, anger on his face that I don’t understand. “You?” He sort of laughs. “Mei told me there was a Red helping the Menghu stuck here, but I didn’t expect a Hong.” His fingers flex around the gun. “I think I owe you a good blow to the head.”
Tai-ge holds himself straight. “I’m not just helping Menghu. There are lots of people suffering out there.” He points to the still-fighting flood of people who washed into the square, some still brandishing guns that seem to be out of bullets. “Mother wanted to abandon all our people trapped here. Dr. Yang wanted to abandon all the Menghu left behind. Now everyone who was left behind gets to show how they feel about it.”
Mei steps between them. “If we don’t do something quick, there won’t be anyone left to save. It’ll spread down to where the soldiers who flew in are staying.”
It strikes me that she didn’t say “Menghu.” She said “soldiers.” The Reds, too.
Helix nods slowly, looking over at me. “You’re working with Sole?”
I nod. “I don’t know how complicated the cure will be to make, but we’ll need help from everyone on both sides to get SS under control.”
Tai-ge’s smile rankles a bit, solid and assuming as if he never thought I’d do anything else. But then maybe that’s trust. Even if I couldn’t trust him to believe me, he’s always known who I am and where I stand. Helix shakes his head as he goes down to join Tai-ge on the stairs, Mei a bridge between them. “I guess I was wrong about you, Jiang Sev. You’re not as idiotic as I thought.”
I don’t have the energy to answer, every inch of me hurting as Kasim steps forward to pull me up from the ground. All that’s left in me is one word: “Howl?”
He doesn’t answer, letting me lean on him as I hobble down the stairs, my eyes on the tattered heap where I left Howl under the Arch. The Chairman kneels next to him on one side, two medics on the other inserting tubes and bandages into Howl as if they’re trying to drain the last of his blood as a trophy. General Hong sits propped up against one of the Arch’s base supports with her hands and feet tied together.
The Reds who were slated for execution cluster along the edge of the stage, keeping back the brawl, gunshots noticeably absent—I suppose the people surviving outside the square probably didn’t have much ammunition to bring to this fight. Everyone else here wasn’t allowed a gun per Dr. Yang’s own orders. It makes me wonder if Tai-ge was a part of that conversation, pretending to have the new order’s best interest in mind but planning his own takeover instead.
Kasim helps me to Howl’s side, the Chairman’s face inscrutable as he moves over to make room for me. “My son,” he whispers. “You promised my son.” The soldiers standing around us seem to bristle, Kasim’s muscles going tense under my hands, where he holds me up.
“Back off.” I push him away from Howl’s still form. One of the medics looks up, his eyes bouncing between the two of us. “I keep my promises. Your son is safe, but you’ll have to wait.”
A firework’s heavy boom ignites right over the crowd, the fighting jerking to a surprised pause. In the split second of silence, Helix steps up, shouting into the speakers Dr. Yang set for the rally. “Menghu, attention! Any man or woman still fighting will answer to me personally. Lower your fists, now.”
It seems a ridiculous command, but it gives Tai-ge the breath of silence he needs to step up next to the Menghu. “Captain Hao, Lieutenant Bai, rein in your soldiers. All of you who came to fight today. Listen for a moment, if you can.”
The words ring oddly in my ears. If you can? The silence waxes a moment longer, broken only by ugly gasps and a few littered sounds of feet on stone. Not everyone in this crowd can listen with SS in their veins, but I don’t think of Tai-ge as one who houses sympathy for something he’s never experienced himself.
Except… he does have experience now.
Tai-ge takes a hesitant breath, his voice unclouded by filters. “My mother is officially stepping down from her post as General,” he announces. “Firsts and Seconds, I came here to find a way to produce more masks, but it’s an impossible job without raw materials from the farms. We don’t have a safe way to transport food or water, much less continue with mining and factories. We don’t have doctors or Mantis enough to meet SS victims’ needs even here within our walls. You see what’s left of our City.” Tai-ge’s voice is pained as he looks over the fractured ruin of the City Center around us and the broken graveyard of factories beyond. At the men and women who snuck in from beyond the torch line, their eyes hungry and their fingers clotted over with dirt. “We abandoned our own to die long before bombs started falling. We sent families to the farms to work until they withered away. The Chairman and my mother deserted even more of you at the first threat against them. That is not what it means to be a part of this City. We are all comrades. United with one purpose: to defeat SS.” He looks at Helix. “We’ve been fighting over Mantis for so long it’s hard to remember that sometimes fighting isn’t the answer. If it’s between settling old grudges and surviving, I know my choice.”
Helix doesn’t nod, prickly as he stands up next to Tai-ge, and I can hardly believe what I’m seeing, the two of them standing there shoulder to shoulder, even if Helix doesn’t look very happy about it.
“I’ve fought my whole life, thinking safety was at the end of the road,” Helix yells, his voice thick with emotion. “That if I killed just one more Red, if I stole one more case of Mantis, I was that much closer to carving out a space that might be safe enough for me to have a life.” He blinks, one hand going to the sharp teeth painted across his mask. “That someday, the fighting would stop and I’d be able to sleep at night, not worried if my friends would die while my eyes were closed. That I’d be able to have my own family and know they would be safe.” He raises a hand, his brow furrowed deep. “And every day the leaders I followed only took us deeper and deeper into the violence. There isn’t any path to peace through fighting. There is only more fighting. We have to change.”
They yell out instructions for City and Mountain to separate, then send soldiers out into the crowd to physically separate wrestling matches that aren’t stopping. I can hardly pay attention or process the groups, people who listen to Helix or Tai-ge or anyone else, or why, because the medics won’t let me touch Howl, the Chairman holding me back. Howl’s skin is so pale, every inch of him motionless. A scream of anguish builds up like a geyser inside me, but I hold it back, watching.
If he were dead, the medics wouldn’t care if I touched him. If he were dead, they’d have left him in a bloody heap on the stage, because there’s no point to extracting bullets from a corpse.
We jumped together, so if he were dead, I’d be dead too.