AT BREAKFAST THE NEXT MORNING, Mei is stone-cold, food forgotten in her lap. I take a look around the room before walking over. No one moves toward me, so I slide down onto the step next to her, but something in my pocket sends me right back up.
A bone bracelet. Cale’s, from last night.
I pull out the hundreds of tiny bones, all threaded together with fishing line. I can’t think the bracelet would be very comfortable to wear, with all the pieces sticking into you and catching on things. But to each her own, I guess.
Mei’s eyes fall on the bracelet. “Where did you get that? You shouldn’t have any.”
“Any what?” I hand it over. She holds it in a white-knuckled grip in her lap, resuming her gloomy silence.
Another girl I recognize from the dorms slides in next to us. “You two were shadowing Kasim and Cale last night, weren’t you?” she asks, twirling a bracelet on her arm. Bone, kind of like Cale’s. “Are they going to be okay?”
I wait for Mei to answer, but she doesn’t look up from her eggs.
“Kasim wasn’t out of surgery when I left, but everyone seemed to think he’d pull through all right,” I say. “I think they’re just going to watch them for the next few days.”
Another girl joins us, toying with a necklace, striking ivory against her dark skin. Bone.
They’re everywhere. Another bone bracelet on a Menghu a few steps down. Necklaces, anklets sticking out from underneath green canvas. The pattern is the same on every one, the same tidy rows of bone.
Mei is still clutching Cale’s bracelet as though it’s made of gold. Suddenly, I realize where I’ve seen that composition of bones. In an anatomy book Mother made me read through before she left.
They’re finger bones. Trigger fingers.
Hundreds of pieces wired together at the joints to make each pointing finger. Interlocked, clasped, dead in that bracelet. It couldn’t be. My mind flashes back to that first week in the forest with Howl, the soldier with bloody stumps instead of trigger fingers. And last night, Cale stooped over the dead Reds.
I felt so apart from everyone here, as though I would never be quite comfortable. The rigid military schedule, nothing that belongs to me, and the technology bubbling out of the walls wherever there is space. But that wasn’t why. Looking around with fresh eyes, I see hundreds of dead men. Each missing a finger or two.
I rake Mei up and down with my eyes, looking for her set, but she’s clean. Grabbing her wrist, I pull her up away from the group. When we’re out of earshot, I whisper, “Where are yours, Mei? Why don’t you have any?”
“Any what? What is wrong with you?”
“The bones. The fingers. Everyone over there is wearing a list of people they’ve killed.”
“Oh.” She shrugs, disinterested. “Don’t you know? The Menghu keep track. The General doesn’t like it, but . . .”
“You keep score.” My voice sounds flat in my ears. “Where are yours?”
The question hangs in the air between us, but Mei doesn’t even blink. “I’m still in training. I’m not allowed.”
She leaves me standing there, everything finally clear. Helix’s shoot first, smile about it later policy isn’t a savage exception.
It’s the rule.
They really are going to invade the City. Howl’s argument last night that invasion would be a bloodbath seemed so dramatic, but he’s right. The way Mei looks at Howl’s First mark, the way any of the Menghu talk about the City . . . They wouldn’t be doing it for the Mantis. Invasion would be revenge. A delight. A chance to add to their jewelry collection. It isn’t just Helix and Cale who are the monsters. If the Menghu invade, no one will survive. My fingers find the rusty ring on the necklace around my throat.
A pair of hands grabs my shoulders, and I spin around to fight them off, tripping over my boots. At first all I see is a woman in a white coat, her arms coming up defensively when I wrestle my way out of her embrace. But it’s Sole, the concern in her eyes at war with the way her mouth twitches into that odd grimacing excuse for a grin. “You’re so pale,” she says. “What’s wrong?”
I don’t have anything to say, the burn of realization still coursing through my veins.
“Still in shock from last night? Deep breaths, Jiang Sev.”
I want to run as my eyes latch on to each new set of bones on the people around me. Run and tell Howl that we can’t wait another three days. I have to keep Tai-ge from becoming just another trophy, fingers stripped down and bound into a bracelet at some Menghu’s wrist.
“I heard you stood down a gore to protect your roommate. Cale, right?” Sole is still talking. Oblivious to the twitch that keeps jerking her shoulder up toward her head. She used to be one of them. Killers. “You two must be close.”
“Close?” I shudder the thought away. I don’t even remember pulling the trigger last night. That thing just folded up in front of me like a paper doll in a fire.
“And you’re already taking keepsakes.” Even her voice is cold.
“Keepsakes? Like those bracelets?” I ask.
“I don’t think I would have stuck my hand in a gore’s mouth.” She points to the long white tooth hanging from a leather cord around my neck. Howl’s gift from last night. It seemed as though it was meant to be a secret when he pressed it into my hand, but I haven’t discovered anything exciting about it. After staring at it for a long time this morning, I threaded my mother’s piece of jade and the rusty ring onto the leather next to it. After some thought, I added my star pin and put the necklace on. Past, present, and future.
“Is that what this is?” The thought of the gore’s long, pointed teeth spearing toward me makes me want to take the thing off and wash my neck. “Howl gave it to me.”
“Howl gave that to you?” Sole leans forward, her eyes hungrily taking it in. “City Howl? The Howl you came in with?”
“Yes. Are there other Howls?” I shift uncomfortably, covering the necklace.
She shrugs, eyes latched on to my hand sheltering the tooth. Someone taps my shoulder, and I’m grateful, wanting to get away from that intense stare. That is, until I look up and see Helix.
“You’re needed downstairs. Now.” His face is carved into an eternal frown.
Mei is waiting for me by the door. “Cale didn’t wake up this morning. She’s Asleep.” Horror leaks through the cracks in her voice. The Mountain isn’t letting infected in. . . . What if contracting SS means Cale can’t stay here anymore either? The way Dr. Yang was talking about stockpiling Mantis last night makes me think the odds aren’t good.
“And Kasim?”
“They won’t tell me what’s happening with Kasim.” Mei swallows. “He’s awake, but something’s wrong. They won’t let anyone see him. Yizhi asked us to come down to Cale’s room. They’re hoping we can help them figure out what was going on with those disks.”
I shake my head, starting to back away, but Helix is right behind me. I can’t go to Yizhi. Not after all this time running away. Not even knowing what it is they want from me. Not with all the dead walking around on display. “They won’t need me.”
But Mei drags me through the door, Helix following close behind. A pair of Menghu are on the other side waiting for us, and I catch one with a hand on her gun, crowding in after Helix as we start toward the doors that lead to the hospital.
• • •
The white walls in Yizhi make everything seem cold. Medics sporting gas masks flow in and out in a constant stream, all giving Mei and me a wide berth, squeezed onto a bench in the corner of the room.
Mei’s angry reserve from this morning seems to have sucked her dry, her head lolling sleepily against the wall as she draws crosses down her leg with one finger. Cale looks pathetically small under her blankets in the center of the room, dwarfed by the large hospital bed. Like a child.
I feel like an unwilling spectator at a fight, waiting for the bloody show to start. I can’t just sit and watch while Cale’s heart monitor beeps slower and slower. But pacing the short length of the room isn’t helping. Why are they keeping us down here? It could be weeks before she wakes up.
I catch myself rubbing the gore-tooth necklace between my fingers. The smooth surface is stained ivory and no longer sharp, as though it has been many years since it was taken from the gore’s mouth. As my fingers explore the wider base, they stop at a small ridge I didn’t notice before.
Restlessly walking back to the door, I hold the tooth tight in my hand, as if squeezing it might somehow get me out of here. A masked Yizhi squeezes by me to shift a tube in Cale’s arm, connecting it to a bag of clear fluids hanging up above the bed.
I remember what it felt like to be Asleep. The terror of not being able to move, not even twitch. Voices all around you saying that you might as well be dead. That you could be already. I tried to tell them. I tried to reach for the doctor, to shake some sense into the hand that was constantly feeling for my pulse. But nothing worked, nothing moved. My body was a prison.
I shrug the feeling off, looking back at the tooth. I almost drop it in surprise. It’s glowing.
I can barely tell in the brightly lit room, but there is definitely a light inside of the thing. When I pull along the ridge at the top, a line appears and the tooth comes apart in two pieces, something falling out and rattling on the floor.
The medic by Cale’s bed looks around for the source of the sound, but I bend down to pick up the fallen object before she sees, pretending to stretch. It’s black, about the size of my thumbnail. I hold it in my fist, flinching when the back of my hand begins to glow.
Slipping into the bathroom attached to the room, I turn the light off and sit on the edge of the low sink with my fist balled around the object. The entire back of my hand glows orange, black characters spelled out in the faint light. It says, Where are you? I can’t find you.
I unclench my hand and the characters disappear. When I clench it again, a set of character radicals appears along the side of my hand, a purple circle of light pulsing below my pinkie knuckle, as if it is asking me to write my own message. Cale mentioned Zhuanjia was experimenting with some new communication device. I press one radical and it appears in the space below, a small box blinking for me to write out the rest of the strokes for my desired character. I type the words In Yizhi with Mei and Cale slowly, not used to putting characters together this way.
Leave. Now, he responds.
I flip the light back on and return to the room, now empty of medics. Mei jerks awake as I walk by, expression hard as her eyes follow me. The guard sitting outside looks up when I open the door. Her hand is on her gun.
I go back into the bathroom and bring up the set of radicals, writing out, Not an option.
The reply comes almost instantly. I’m coming.
Fitting the thing back into the tooth, I make myself go out of the bathroom, switching places with Mei as she jumps up from the bench, hands restlessly touching everything on the walls, the equipment crammed into the room, then ducking down behind Cale’s bed.
“Mei?”
Something rips. Suddenly, she’s up, eyes wide with something I can’t identify. Fear? Her chest is heaving and her hands are hidden behind her back. “Mei? What are you doing?”
If I didn’t know better, I would think . . .
She runs at me, a long piece of wire stretched between her hands, and it’s around my neck before I can yell. The force of her running knocks me over the edge of the bench and onto the floor, Mei straddling my stomach. I manage to get a hand under the wire before she pulls it tight, but she’s much stronger than I am, and the wire is starting to cut across my palm, my windpipe, air choking out of me as she pulls. Her breaths come in shuddering gasps, face twisted with panic.
Three gas-masked Yizhi burst into the room. Two pull her off me, trying to contain her flailing limbs as she kicks and hits. Mei catches the third medic in the stomach with her foot, knocking a long syringe out of her hand. I roll over onto my side and grab it, flinging the wire away from me. The two holding Mei manage to get her facedown on the floor, one holding her arms, the other her legs. I jab the syringe into her exposed hip. She immediately goes limp.
“What in the name of Yuan’s bloody ax is going on?” I yell. The nurses don’t answer, impassive behind those masks. “She isn’t infected! How could she—”
Something jabs the side of my own leg, and everything goes gray, spinning into black.