STARING AT THE CEILING FROM my bunk, I trace the hairline cracks in the paint with my eyes. The memory of the kiss up on the roof tingles through me, but I force it down. My mother’s face keeps popping into my head, her beautiful smile glowing over me right up until the moment she abandoned me.
Why do I trust Howl? Even Tai-ge couldn’t put our not-quite relationship before who he was. Tai-ge’s commitment to his parents, his stars, kept an unbreachable wall firmly between us. It didn’t matter what he wanted, the times I felt his hand against mine, his eyes lingering a little too long on my face. The times I imagined looking back, pulling him into an alley, and kissing him, just to see if there were any chinks in that wall.
I never did it because I knew there weren’t. I’ve had the word “traitor” chasing after my name since I was eight. Now someone is treating me as though I’m worth something, and I’ve been ignoring how weird that is.
I push the thoughts away.
My feet start moving before my brain catches up. I find myself walking up one of the stone staircases spiraling up from the Core, people milling back and forth across the twilight-dark chamber below me. I look up into the waning light, the huge mouth of the Mountain peering up into clear sky.
I don’t know where Howl sleeps. Somewhere up here. Skipping past the rabbit warren of rooms and passages, I go up, up to where the carpet is thick and the walls are not cement. Where the telescreen disappears, and the funny little icons flashing after me can no longer warn that my approved activities don’t take me anywhere near the Heart.
After running past the book room, past Dr. Yang’s office, I burst through a closed door and find myself looking up at the stars, blurry through the high glass ceiling. Two Menghu guards stand at attention next to a door at the other end of the room.
One unconsciously touches his cheek, mirroring where my birthmark sits. Nose in the air, I stride past them, and they don’t stop me. Down a dim hall to a door, slightly ajar and leaking light onto the floor. Voices float out from inside the room.
“. . . our only hope. They’d kill her before we got close.” It’s Dr. Yang, sounding depressed.
“Don’t you think that is a bit extreme, He-ping?” General Root growls. “Invasion? Are there no other choices?”
“We might have had success another way, if we could all come to an accord. . . .”
Howl’s voice surprises me. “We had a deal, Dr. Yang.”
“You knew what was going to happen if everything didn’t fall into place.” Dr. Yang sounds amused, despite the heavy words issuing from his lips. “Are you volunteering now, Howl? After all these years?”
There’s a substantial pause before Howl answers. A whisper. “No.”
“You know it’s going to come down to one of you in the end.”
Even quieter. I almost don’t catch it. “Yes.”
“That being said,” another voice chimes in, “if we aren’t prepared to force our resources here, we have to go back to the source. Why can’t we get to Gui-hua?”
My mother? Waking her up now wouldn’t help much, would it?
Dr. Yang answers, “There’s no telling if she would help us, even if we did get to her before the First Circle did. Like I said, the Mantis stockpiles—”
Howl cuts in again, “You know what would happen with Menghu in the City. Whatever their orders, the whole thing would turn into a bloodbath. The people you are trying to save, all the Thirds—”
General Root’s voice booms out over his, “This isn’t about saving anyone; it’s about survival. It’s between us and them. It always has been.”
My jaw clenches, anger bitter on my tongue. Is that the real stance, what lies underneath all the feel-good, new life, equality business? Anything to get Mantis, all of it, not willing to share a single pill.
And how can Howl just sit back and let him talk like that? His family and friends are all still in the City. Isn’t that why all these people left? Because Firsts decide who is going to live and how? Is Dr. Yang going back on a bargain not to invade? After all the help Howl has given them?
A woman’s voice pipes up, muffled by the whispers of conversation spidering out from the General’s ultimatum. “We could be ready to move out within a week.”
“General Root,” Dr. Yang interjects, “I don’t want any lives to be lost unnecessarily. The reports of SS experimentation and new types of chemical weapons coming our way are frightening. We do need to move quickly in order to secure enough Mantis to support the Mountain, but if I can have authorization to use Jiang Sev . . .”
Use me? Everything goes cold, my breath frozen inside my chest, Helix’s warning cutting across my brain.
“Sev?” I jump at the man’s voice at my back, managing to school my face into a smile before I turn around.
“Raj. Howl asked me to meet him. . . .”
Raj jerks me away from the door. “I’m sure he did. Howl doesn’t like following rules.”
I pull against him, straining back toward the meeting, but he’s too strong for me. “Please, Raj, I need to talk to Howl.”
“No.” He stops at the top of the stairs leading to the Core, the height almost dizzying through the glass. Poking at the telescreen, he whispers, “Jiang Sev,” and my schedule pops up under his hand. “You’ll find out along with everyone else. I’m calling your captain now. . . .”
“No. I’ll go. I’m going.” I take the stairs at a swift jog, putting as much distance between me and Raj as quickly as possible, worried Raj would send the message, that I might bump into Helix on his way up.
When my lungs start to complain, I slow to a walk, my mind bending around the conversation I so desperately wanted to hear the end of. Dr. Yang wants to use me? What could one infected Fourth do to tip the balance between City and Mountain?
And invasion? General Hong would be first on the list to die, Tai-ge right after him. What could be so terrible that trying to break down the City walls sounds like the best defense? How many Menghu would have to die? Running my fingers along the wall, I walk without seeing, trying to piece things together.
“Sev!” The voice only pushes through my thoughts when the owner grabs my shoulders. Kasim’s grin is a little too close to my face. “I was supposed to report five minutes ago and you aren’t even dressed.”
“Dressed?” I look around at the unfamiliar hallway. Hand-painted numbers hang from the ceiling, the walls made up of tiny broken tiles arranged into a mosaic of animals in a forest. A lizard sits next to me on the wall, tongue lashing out to catch my hand. The movement startles me, just as impossible and frightening as the Red in the forest speaking to me from the dead, or the glass bottles singing my name back in the Chairman’s basement.
No. Not again.
“Aren’t you coming out on patrol with me tonight?”
I pull my hand away from the wall, brushing my sweaty palm against my pants. It’s just a picture. It can’t move. This hallway must be Jiaoyang. Where all the little kids go to school.
“I thought you were kidding,” I reply, still trying to rub the twinges of hallucination away. “How did you find me?”
“Telescreen. Tracks your ID card.”
I pull the card from my pocket. I don’t remember bringing it with me. “It tracks me wherever I go? Why?”
Kasim shrugs. “Let’s get out of here.”
Howl made sure I didn’t get a permanent ID chip. Talked his way around all of the blood tests and whatever else Dr. Yang is asking for. And somehow seems to know a whole lot more about what is going on than he did last night. Helix’s words repeat over and over in my head, spinning until I feel dizzy.