I HAVE TO FIND HIM.
I have to concentrate to keep from chanting the words out loud. The Core glows with the flush of lanterns and fairy lights. High above the crowded room, long streamers hang down in a pavilion, the top so high that the twinkling lights don’t touch the white, filmy fabric.
Tables surround the amphitheater where people are talking and laughing. The fountain centered on the cafeteria entrance is turned on and spouting red. A beautifully made-up woman leans down to dip her glass into it. It looks like blood.
I hardly recognize any of the Menghu because they are all so clean. They are easy to pick out, though, candlelight glinting on the dead fingers clasping at their wrists and necks.
Have to trust him. Howl wouldn’t lie to me. Not about who he is, not about being cured, not about . . . I can’t make myself finish the thought. Because if he did bring me here to take his place as the cure, then that’s exactly what he would have lied about. Everything. I never would have followed him out of the City if I hadn’t believed the mark on his hand.
Dancing couples crowd the sunken amphitheater floor, obscuring the golden star seal with a haze of swirling skirts. Masks obscure all of their faces, jeweled, feathered, and painted alike. It looks like a dream, a scene from another world. Maybe dancing is what this place was built for. Before the world revolved around SS.
Patting my blond wig down a little farther over my forehead, I stick to the shadows, black sweatshirt borrowed from Sole painfully casual in comparison to the sparkling scene before me. He isn’t anywhere. Not in the amphitheater seats, not at the tables. Leaning back against the wall, I bump my fist against the clear glass in frustration. Why should I believe Sole? Staring off into space as if the world the rest of us live in isn’t what she sees. The box full of trophies stolen from her victims. The frightening drawing I found on the desk. Can I trust someone so obviously damaged?
No.
The dancers below stop and clap as the song ends, the swell of instruments marking the beginning of a new one over the speakers. Most of the dancers remain on the floor, but stay on the outside, watching. Waiting for something.
A girl with fire-red hair flounces to the center, her black skirt twirling up around her hips as people laugh at her bravado, clapping and cheering her on. Rena.
She twirls again and strikes a pose, pointing into the crowd. Chuckles echo up to me as the crowd pushes a young man forward into the center of the floor. He’s laughing behind his black mask, shaking his head as Rena circles him like a shark. Finally, he stands up tall, throws a hand out toward her as the music starts up. A demand.
Rena’s bright coppery head glints in the lantern light as she coyly walks up to him. She lashes out suddenly, kicking his hand, but he catches her foot and draws it toward him, pulling her out into a split. The onlookers cheer as they start to circle the floor.
I can’t help but move closer, drawn by the dramatic strikes and pauses, kicking in and out between each other’s legs, her long ponytail snapping back and forth as he leads her across the floor. Hiding, I feel as though I’m just on the edge of something important, something that I should understand, but can’t.
They pause in the corner of the floor near my hiding place, arms wide as they pose together, cheers following them in ripples from around the steps. The young man lunges, backing away, and she follows, running after. And that’s when I see it.
Stuck through the top button of his shirt. A red flower. My red flower.
Howl’s eyes are dark behind his mask, the intensity between the two of them like a rubber band twisted and ready to snap. They look as though they were born in each other’s arms. Born here, born Menghu. I can’t tear my eyes away, dread and despair seeping in through my nose and mouth, the very air around me toxic. I keep waiting for clouds to start swirling down from the ceiling or shadows to leap out and rake at me with their sharp claws, but this isn’t a hallucination. This is real.
Helix’s voice rings in my head: You are going to die. You don’t even know why.
Howl, who can’t dance. Howl, who can’t shoot a gun. Howl, who says we are our own team, not a part of this place. Howl, who told me he was from the City, and that we were going to escape this place.
Howl, who brought me here to die.
• • •
I don’t know how I get back to Sole’s room, whether anyone notices my uneven stagger through the halls of Yizhi. When I open her door, she’s waiting for me the way I left her, head bowed, tears glistening against her light skin. Eyes fixed on her hands.
The last threads of hope inside of me flare up, bright and rebellious inside my chest. I want to fight for him, for myself. Trying to find a place for the Howl I know inside of this terrible story.
“Even if he did lie about who he is, he saved me from that operation. Or sent you to do it, anyway. He’s done nothing but stand between me and Dr. Yang. We’re leaving, right? If I am the sacrifice he’s offering to the Mountain, then why am I still alive? Why didn’t he just hand me over the first day we walked in?”
Sole bites her lip. “Howl is a survivor. No matter what, no matter the cost. When he first brought you here, it was for you to take his place on Dr. Yang’s table so that he could come home. He knew what was going to happen to you. He knew. Everyone knew.”
“But he changed his mind.” Even trying to wrap my brain around that thought leaves my lungs constricted, twisting the air out of me. How could his intentions ever have been so foul? “If we wake Mother up now—”
“He hasn’t told you about any of this. Why?” Sole’s voice is quiet but unapologetic. “What if waking your mother up doesn’t work, Sev?”
“If it doesn’t work . . .”
“Whatever Howl has convinced you of, about how important you are to him, about . . . this.” She holds up one hand, something cupped in her palm. “It’s not the whole picture.”
A jade bracelet. It’s lying on top of a note, bold characters I can hardly make myself recognize.
It says, For good luck. I love you, H.
A present. Like my flower. Made with love. Or with something much, much worse. My fingers twitch toward it, as if holding something he made will tell me that Sole is lying.
“I love you.” The words sound twisted and evil coming from Sole’s mouth. “Perhaps that’s true. But Howl loving someone more than himself . . . ? If it comes down to a choice between you and him, Howl will be the one who lives. And, if it’s possible, the Mountain will be what comes second. The things he did before . . . even Helix has been trying to keep away from him.” She swallows, her throat pulsing. “Why else would Howl have lied to you? When it was your life on the line? When you could have escaped and put him back in the surgery waiting room?”
The silence between us is tangible, liquid. My mind is crushed under the weight of what she is saying. I want to believe that what the note says isn’t a lie, isn’t bait to keep me here, to string me along just a little longer. But even if Howl does love me, how could I expect him to love me more than he loves his own life?
If he’d told me about being cured, that my life may mean thousands more could be saved from SS, I might have come anyway. I might have walked straight to the hospital and handed Dr. Yang the scalpel.
But he didn’t tell me. He didn’t tell me anything. He actively kept it from me, flirting with me, kissing me when I asked too many questions.
The last bits of fight inside of me smolder to ash, that tiny flame extinguished. I pull the gore tooth from the leather cord around my neck and set it on her desk.