WE HEAD SOUTH FOR A few days, moving quickly. My legs ache, blisters cropping up in the most inconvenient places possible, making every step feel like this is the worst mistake I could have made.
I hear Mei and Kasim whisper at night. Not enough to understand. About Mantis supplies and Menghu patrols and staying under them. Hanging back from the firelight after relieving myself in the trees, I catch Kasim with a link message glowing against his hand, Mei scoffing about how likely it would be that they’d ever see lab results.
“Wait. What lab results? What are they telling you?” I step into the firelight. Kasim’s mouth shuts tight and slips the link into his pocket, but Mei keeps her eyes on me.
“Is it Sevvy? Is she… cooperating? Or are they…” I can’t help but swallow the words down. Mother told me they were doing something to get her to help. “Please tell me. She’s my friend.”
“I have such a hard time swallowing that.” Kasim’s smile quirks. “Sev was too cool to hang out with someone whose collar is buttoned so tight.” He shrugs. “I guess brainwashing goes deep in the City. Glad she got out to experience real people.”
Mei snorts. “Didn’t you hear who she was with on the island?”
Rolling his eyes, Kasim gives Mei’s shoulder a push. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’ve met her?” I ask, forcing my fists to relax at my sides. “Do you think she’s cool enough for your leader to torture her until she gives up whatever it is she’s holding back about the cure?”
Mei puts a hand out to stop Kasim responding. “No one’s torturing anyone, so far as we know. Dr. Yang isn’t doing anything with Sev. That’s why we’re out here.” She gestures at the forest around us. “He keeps promising a cure but isn’t doing anything to get one. We’re all stuck doing whatever he says, just hoping he’ll come through.”
I lick my lips, shivering in the cold. That sounds exactly like something Sevvy said would happen whether Dr. Yang had the cure or not. “That doesn’t make sense. If he wants to finish this whole… bonding the City and Mountain together nonsense, he’ll need the cure to persuade the Firsts and Seconds to go along with it. And what do you mean, Dr. Yang not torturing Sev is why we’re out here?”
Kasim clears his throat. “Who has who trained here, Mei?” She shoots him a dirty look, but it’s the end of the conversation.
Is it possible the two Menghu in these mountains who aren’t aligned with Dr. Yang managed to find me and get me outside the City? Are there more? Sevvy told me Menghu believed it was her brain that could cure us, and Mei as good as confirmed it when we were still in the City. Which explains why Menghu came straight for us when I radioed for help back at the island. They dragged Sev away without so much as a discussion about which prisoner should go where.
Mei asked me how close I was to her. She jumped at the idea of having help to break her out. If Mei believes the cure is locked away in Sev’s brain and that Dr. Yang isn’t trying very hard to get it, then perhaps there was never much to puzzle out about this trek through the woods in the first place.
What if Mei showing up in my room was always meant to end this way?
Kasim appeared long before he should have been able to, considering the short space between the time I decided to leave and the time we actually left. Maybe I presented Mei with a way to make it seem like it was my idea instead of taking me from my post by force. The realization sits like a stone in my stomach.
Mei turns to look at me as I head toward the tree holding my hammock, but I don’t acknowledge her, relishing the feel of cold in my mouth and throat, the rough bark against my hands as I climb.
The cure was in that device. Why is Dr. Yang still telling everyone that Sevvy is the key?
The only option that comes to mind reinforces what I’ve thought this whole time: Sevvy must understand something about that device that no one else does, and, like Dr. Yang told my mother, she’s not cooperating, leaving him with some unfulfilled promises and a sickness he engineered running rampant.
He must be desperate.
The thought makes a heady trill of success run through me. But only for a moment. It doesn’t change where I’m sitting: swinging in a tree above two Menghu who intend to use me to get their hands on Sevvy. They’ll take her, and with it the cure and every chance my mother has of saving what’s left of the City.
Would Mei do that? The chatter between her and Kasim over the days we’ve been walking makes it sound like she knows Sevvy. Could she plan for her death while joking with Kasim and cackling over throwing snow in my hammock?
Mei stands up and goes to Kasim’s pack, pulling out a bottle of Mantis, and suddenly all I can think of is the feeling of cement against my back when she slammed me into the factory wall, desperation in her eyes as she begged for her Mantis back. I’ve seen SS up close now, so maybe I can believe it. Percentages and risks. One girl’s life, even if you happen to like her, traded for everyone else’s sanity.
When Mei sits back down by the fire, I begin to plan. Whatever happens over the next few days, it isn’t going to be Mei and Kasim who end up with Sevvy, the cure, or anything else.