AN ESCORT FROM THE SOLDIERS under Lieutenant Hao is the only reason I don’t end up in three other compulsion-induced fights as I walk back from the Second Quarter to the torch line. The infected soldiers check twice to confirm where we’ll be posting comrades on my side of the torches to allow hand signal communication between us and Hao’s people. Once everything is set, I slip between torches and walk to the orphanage. Mei’s asleep when I get back to the room, her blanket once again pulled over her head. I almost feel sorry at what she’ll find in the morning: her bag full of Mantis pills missing.
When morning light wakes me, Mei’s not in bed anymore. Something buzzes inside me as I sit up and tie my shoes, check the clasps on my mask. Will Mei appear from around a corner, a knife in her hand? Is she looking for the Mantis I took? Thinking about her makes me feel unsettled, as if there’s a gore loose in the compound and I’m not sure where it is.
Unless she’s already told Dr. Yang enough to do us damage here. Maybe he’s sent orders for my team to be eliminated. My head weighs down until it’s flat against my palms, my elbows digging into my knees. Failure. It’s right there, waiting to say my name again.
Failure seems like it was built into this mission. Why did Mother send us with gas instead of Mantis in the first place? It’s messy, I suppose. A resource we can’t make more of until we take back the City. Perhaps it was a gamble she wasn’t willing to take, and yet here I am, disobeying her. Maybe I’m too weak to do what’s required to be a leader. Too weak to be her son.
I get up and go to the wall where I hid my link, wondering what I should say. Tell her the risks I’m taking with these soldiers’ lives? Wait until the results are nailed to the ground and she can crow victory along with me? Or, if it doesn’t work, allow her the freedom to turn her back on the ashes of what’s left of us?
But my fingers find nothing but the pinch of cold cement inside the crack where I hid the link. It’s gone.
Panic stabs in my chest as I feel inside the crack again, and then again. Mei wasn’t as good as she’d thought at hiding her things. Perhaps I wasn’t as crafty as I’d thought, either. But without the link, Mother might think I’m dead. That I made it less than twenty-four hours in this steel trap. The room feels too hot, even as my skin breaks out in goose bumps.
“Sir?” Captain Bai’s voice makes me jump. “Are you all right?”
When I turn to face him, it isn’t concern lining his face. Every inch of him is wary. Finding your commanding officer tracing cracks in the wall when nothing stands between you and SS but a bit of plastic and metal would disconcert the best of us.
“I didn’t sleep well,” I say, stealing another look at the wall.
“We’re ready to move, sir. The regulators are all portioned and prepared to go in the river. We just need your command to get into position and…”
“No!” The exclamation sets a hard look on Captain Bai’s face. But I continue. “No. I…” I try to think of the best way to explain what I’ve done, remembering my conversation with Lieutenant Hao the night before, but it brings another thought to mind. “The market square… was it your soldiers who burned it?”
Captain Bai’s cheek tics. Then his shoulders sink an inch. “No, sir. But we did the cleanup after. Clearing the buildings.”
Every inch of the man seems to be made from brick and stone, but I’m not sure what’s holding the pieces together. Years Outside. Years of following orders. Only to be asked to kill his own people. I can see the percentages flashing in my head. Kill a few to save the rest.
“You are a loyal man,” I say quietly, not sure if I like the word.
Captain Bai straightens his shoulders. Looks just south of my eyes as a good Second should when talking to a superior. “I believe in my General.”
“Believe in me now, then.” I put a hand on his shoulder. “Last night I secured a safe path to the gate from the market square instead of having to follow the river. It’ll take us directly past the mask factory. Lieutenant Bai promised the buildings along the road we’re using will be as clear as the infected can make them.”
Captain Bai’s eyes dart to meet mine, and I hold them. For the first time since I set foot on the City’s familiar paving stones, I see a glimmer of hope in this man’s eyes.
Mei doesn’t appear at breakfast or when we line up in ranks to clear the streets. Her absence is like needles in my skin, stabbing every moment I don’t know where she is or what she’s doing. Perhaps losing her Mantis made her crumble into whatever it is Menghu are made of. Tarnished blades and stolen bullets, or maybe just a waft of bad-smelling air.
It smells bad enough down in the Third Quarter to be plausible. The whiffs of burning and chemicals I get as I adjust my mask match the layer of grime that seems to coat everything past the torch line. Captain Bai and his team seem to be walking over coals as we push toward the South Gate. We only have to clear the buildings lining the road and set torches on the other sides of them, protecting our people from Sephs who could shoot at us from above or jump from windows into our midst. Lieutenant Hao’s promise holds true, though. The buildings are mostly empty along our path.
Mostly. We uncover a few infected stragglers who either did not know to leave or could not obey. None resist being moved outside our path, fleeing the moment the torches’ chemical burn hits their lungs. We don’t have to shoot anyone. And, judging by the slightly easier set to my group’s shoulders, I’m not the only one who is grateful.
All the soldiers tense when I give the order to clear the mask factory, the darkness inside hiding the corners and ceiling when we walk in. My eyes catch on a flutter of movement above us just as a bloodcurdling scream erupts overhead. The sound echoes off the ceiling like a hundred brutal murders are happening right over us. The man next to me pulls his gun, pointing it toward the sound, but I put a hand on his arm.
The screaming cuts off as quickly as it started, and a pair of beady eyes peers over the edge of the catwalk. It’s an old woman.
Captain Bai nods to a pair of soldiers, and they go carefully up the stairs to the catwalk, approaching her slowly. I can’t help but tighten my grip on my weapon as they draw closer, hands up and open, as if she’s a wounded animal.
“Are you here to help me?” she whispers, loud enough it echoes through the whole factory.
I breathe out, proud as one of the soldiers extends a hand and says, “I’ll help you, Grandmother. You don’t need to be afraid.”
After checking things over and securing all the doors, my team heads out of the building. I hang back a step, watching as the soldier who brought the old woman down from the catwalk helps her up from a chair by the door and leads her outside. Now I’ve only to keep the promise he made her. That there’s no need to be afraid.
I promised Lieutenant Bai we were on the same side, and I don’t break promises. Looking around the shadows of the factory floor, hope feels like a space empty of weight. I need Thirds who know how to work these machines. I need Seconds humble enough to learn from them. Materials to replace the mess left here by Menghu and Sephs. Food and Mantis enough to keep all of us sane.
We can do this. We’re going to do it.
I nod to the empty room before turning toward the door. But before I can follow my team, a hand darts out from the shadows and pulls me in, a finger snaking between my chin and my mask. “You yell, and you’ll have so much SS inside you that there won’t be room for anything else.”
Mei. I hold extra still, letting her back me into the wall as I snake one hand up to press the mask firmly against my nose and mouth.
“Where is it?” she hisses. “You took all the Mantis I had.”
“If you want to know, I’d suggest getting your fingers out of my mask.”
There’s a moment where we’re stuck in the flash between pressing the trigger of a gun and feeling the bullet leave its chamber. Then she withdraws her finger. “What do you want?”
“I don’t want anything. I didn’t particularly want to kill you myself, so this seemed a better alternative.” I try to move away from the wall, but she slams her weight against me, pressing my shoulder back against the bricks. “Are you going to kill me now, Mei? Or is it your friend who’s going to do it?” If she really had a friend bunking with the other Seconds, I would have seen blood by now.
Mei swears. Or I think she does. It’s hard to tell when everything that comes out of her mouth seems as if it’s meant to offend. “I need Mantis, you dirty Red.”
“Yes. That was the point. Should have thought of that before hiding it in a building I know like the back of my hand.”
“I’ll…” She chokes on the words, taking in a ragged breath through her stolen mask. No one has complained about their mask going missing, so we must have had one to spare. “I’ll give you anything you want. I’ll walk out of here. I’ll leave. Just give it back.”
“You’d give up your mission and run away? For Mantis?”
A rusty gush of air issues from her mask. It takes a moment before it registers that she’s laughing. “Last night I thought you were being brave. Going out into the open with all the Sephs.”
“I…”
“But now I see that you’re just too stupid to know what it is you’re up against.” Mei pulls back a step, letting her hands fall. “You don’t know what it’s like to have SS lurking inside you. Waiting to take your hands or move your feet. That fear makes it worse. It gives you bad thoughts.” Her hands twitch.
A rumble of dread rolls through me before I can quash it. “I guess you chose the wrong side. If you can’t imagine a world where your superior officer is willing to risk his life for you—”
“I’ll do anything, Tai-ge.” Her use of my first name itches, an irritating flouting of convention. “I’ll tell you where the Menghu in the City are hiding.”
I step toward the door.
“I’ll tell you where the camp I was based in is. The orders I was given, what I was after here. How Dr. Yang wanted me to handle sabotaging you if your purposes here conflict with his.” Her voice rises as I get to the doorway. “I’ll tell you where they took Jiang Sev.”
My feet stop.
A choked laugh comes from behind me. “Out of all the things I just said, that’s what you want? To know where Jiang Sev is?”
“Yes.” Unease unfurls inside me, because if she doesn’t know why finding Sevvy would be important, then maybe it isn’t. I turn slowly to find her staring at me, something charged in Mei’s eyes that I don’t understand. “I might be able to help you if you tell me where she is. As soon as we get more Mantis, anyway.”
“What did you do with mine?”
“I made a deal.” I gesture to the factory, empty of everything but potential. The street outside, bare of fighting, gas, bodies. Mei’s eyes narrow.
But then she nods. “You’re smarter than I gave you credit for.”
“Not so dirty as you thought?”
Mei laughs again, but if there was any warmth in it, it’s sucked out by the filters of her mask. If she’s telling the truth, that she knows where Sevvy is, it could be everything I hoped for yesterday. The end of this war we’ve been fighting for so long. The end of Lieutenant Hao’s shaking hands, the torches, the City’s broken promises to protect its comrades.
It would be easy for Mei to give me coordinates that I could pass to Mother, but if I’m going to make sure this isn’t yet another failure on my part, I’ll have to do the footwork myself. The payoff, if what Mei is saying is true, is too good to let go of.
I square my shoulders, look her straight in the eye. “I’m not dirty. Or dishonest, or a killer, or whatever else it is you believe about Reds. I came here to save people, and I’m doing the best I can. If you want Mantis, I need two things.”
“Coordinates to your little traitor slave aren’t enough?”
“Sevvy was my best friend.”
“Some friend you are, letting her live the way she did up here. Letting Dr. Yang take her.”
I swallow, echoes of Sevvy’s voice loud in the open room. The way her face crumpled when I carried her up the stairwell at Port North, and how she screamed at me to get out of the heli when she realized I was… the same thing I’ve always been. A Second. A patriot. A soldier. A good son. Breathing deep, I find my center, my control. Arguing with Mei isn’t going to help anything. She doesn’t understand any more than Sevvy did. “I’ll get you Mantis. But first I need my link back. And coordinates aren’t going to be enough. I want you to walk me straight to wherever she is and let me in the front door.”
Mei’s forehead wrinkles, her mask twitching over what must be a snarl. But then she gives a slow nod.
“My life for Jiang Sev’s? I think we can work that out.”