Even if I wanted to sleep to pass the time, I couldn’t. The vitamin compound Alma had injected me with buzzes through my veins like beetles: I am a swarm in my cot. The room seems to get darker and darker, even with my eyes wide open. As the hours ooze into one another, a terrifying thought occurs to me: Had I imagined the whole thing? Had I hallucinated the light in Alma’s eyes?
There’s a sound beyond the door. Not the hum of it opening, but tapping, shuffling. Like someone has pressed themselves against the other side and inches sideways down the hall. I’m here, I want to call. Had Alma forgotten which room I am in? Or is this all a hallucination too?
My ears pick up a low, muffled beep. A long, heavy silence. Then the whisper of the door sliding open. It’s too dark for me to make out who stands there in the hall until they step into the room, and then the motion sensors bathe the room in harsh white light. I blink rapidly, and when the spots clear from my vision, I am rewarded with the two familiar shapes of Alma and Rondo.
Rondo immediately goes to the wall, his body blocking my line of vision. He does something to the lights: there’s a click, and two sharp clips, as if he’s cutting wires. They are abruptly extinguished, and the tower of blinking lights attached to my intravenous goes dark and quiet.
“I needed the light,” comes Alma’s voice through the pitch black, an irritated whisper.
“Use the slate,” he says.
“Are you . . . are you real?” I croak. Tears are gathering in my eyes.
Rondo is at my side a heartbeat later. I can’t see him, but his thumb caresses the back of my hand. A soft, gentle pressure that I had felt my first night in N’Terra . . .
“You were here,” I whisper. “I thought . . . I thought it was a dream.”
“I was here, O,” he says. He seems to know I’m crying, because his other hand finds my face in the dark, searching gently upward until his fingers find my tears. He carries them away, and for a moment all that is heavy in me is made light. I know those hands. I know this heart.
“Oh please.” Alma sighs. “No time.”
She appears beside us and a rectangular light glows from her hands. The slate illuminates one side of the bed, the crook of my elbow centered in the glare.
“First things first,” she says.
She passes the slate to Rondo, who reluctantly unhands my face, and with him holding the slate steady, Alma removes the bonds and my intravenous. The feeling of the needle pulling free of my body is as uncomfortable and bizarre as ever, but it’s as if light and life rushes into the tiny hole it left in my skin and fills me up. Free. I sit up from the cot and start to swing my legs over the edge.
“Whoa, whoa,” Alma whispers. “I know the injection I gave you makes you think you’re invincible right now, but if you go too fast you’re going to regret it later. Take it slow—”
“No time,” Rondo mocks.
“But not too slow,” she finishes. She shoots him a poisonous look, and the smile that stretches my dry lips is almost painful.
“What’s the plan?” I say. I’ve got both my legs over the edge now, and my toes stretch for the cold white floor. It’s strange feeling the artificial ground of the Zoo again, especially with bare feet. I hate it: just one more cold, dead thing in this place.
“The plan is stay with me,” she says. “I’m going to have to help you walk because Rondo needs to navigate with the slate. We’ve got a route laid out.”
Rondo gives my knee a comforting squeeze and moves toward the door. He raises the slate and bends his neck the way I’m used to him doing: hacking.
“This door is locked from the inside?” I say.
“Yes,” Alma says. “They all are now, thanks to you. They changed all the access points from handprints to ocular scans since the night we busted Adombukar out.”
“Speaking of which,” I whisper, leaning on Alma as she walks me closer to the door. “How are you working in the labs? You tranquilized Dr. Albatur, if I remember correctly.”
She chuckles under her breath.
“Yes, but I must have stunned the stars out of him because he didn’t remember a thing. I don’t know how it wasn’t on camera. All he remembers is you. He’s fixated on you as the cause of all of this. Now that . . . now that your mom is gone.”
The sound of Rondo’s fingers tapping away on the slate pauses for the briefest moment as the mention of my mother’s death blooms in the air around us. Gone, she said. Like my mother lives, just elsewhere. I don’t even know what they did with her body. A fiery lump forms in my throat.
The door hums open, light spilling in.
“Time to go,” Rondo whispers.
The hallway is empty. It must be very late. Even the most dedicated whitecoats have gone home to their communes.
“No guards?” I whisper.
“Sometimes.”
I lean on Alma only slightly: the injection she had administered thrums through my veins. I shiver in the flimsy gown the whitecoats had dressed me in.
“I need clothes eventually,” I say as we slowly round a corner, Rondo squinting at whatever system on his slate guides us.
Alma nods.
“I have a package hidden outside,” she says. “Water and a skinsuit and shoes and stuff. We just have to get there.”
“Shh,” Rondo hisses, and throws an arm backward, pressing us against the wall. I hold my breath. Some distance away I hear one pair of steady footsteps. Rondo peers around the corner. “They’re going the other way. Just wait.”
We remain frozen, the blood pulsing in my ears.
“It was a guard,” he whispers when I can’t hear the footsteps anymore. “They must not have had a comm or they would have shown up on my screen.”
“New program he made,” Alma whispers. “He had a lot of time on his hands when they had him on house arrest.”
“House arrest?” I breathe.
“For knocking out that guard. Aiding and abetting or something,” he says, motioning with his head for us to continue. I want to touch him, inspect him for harm. The task at hand stands between us. We creep down the hall as before.
“Speaking of which,” I whisper to Alma, “Dr. Albatur doesn’t remember you tranqing him, but they must know you helped get Adombukar out, right?”
“Not really,” she says. “Honestly, they were incredibly disorganized about the whole thing. That’s definitely changed, by the way. But they knew I was your friend—I just convinced them I was jealous of you and never really liked you.”
“Who is they?” I hiss.
“In here. Now.” Rondo jerks sideways in the hall and we immediately follow suit. After a few lightning-fast taps on the slate, a section of the wall hisses open, revealing what seems to be a linen closet. Racks of antimicrobial cloth. Shelves of gowns like the one I’m wearing right now. Rondo shoves me and Alma into the small space. “In.”
The door hisses closed behind us, and the only light inside is Rondo’s slate. I smell everyone’s breath, the worst of which is, of course, my own. I try to breathe shallowly and away from Rondo, straining my ears for any sound in the hallway. I detect the faint murmur of two or more voices, and peer over Rondo’s shoulder at his screen.
“Two guards,” he whispers. “Both have comms.”
On his screen is what appears to be a map of the labyrinthine Zoo, an orange line winding its way through the corridors. The route, I assume, that Rondo has laid out for us. Very close to one section of the orange line are two red glowing dots, moving slowly along.
“Is that them?” Alma whispers, nodding at his screen.
“Yes. The program picks up the comms and registers them as red dots. I don’t have any way of tracking the whitecoats unless they have a slate, which registers as a blue dot.”
“Where are we?” I ask.
“We’re invisible,” he says, and I can see his smile from behind by the rise of his cheekbone. “I’m encrypted.”
The voices beyond our linen closet sound clearer: they are very close to passing just outside the door. I fasten my eyes on the two red dots, praying they won’t pause in this little section of orange line. Keep going, I think. Keep going. Let me out of here.
“They have them on a stricter patrol now,” Alma whispers. “Since Adombukar escaped.”
“Who is they?” I repeat.
“The Council,” Alma says, her voice sounding jagged in the dark. “It was honestly Dr. Albatur’s dream: a reason to crack down. A couple of the animals we released killed some of the guards in the stampede. Dr. Albatur blamed Adombukar. Called it an act of war.”
“He was already sowing the seeds before. All his fear tactics,” Rondo mutters, his eyes glued to the screen. “This gave him all the justification he needed. He’s running the Council like his private army.”
“And my father?” I hear myself say. I hadn’t wanted to say it.
“He—he still sits on the Council,” Alma says softly.
I watch the two red dots continue down the corridor, going deeper into the maze. My father could be with them for all I know. Walking like a ghost beside them and Rondo’s program wouldn’t know the difference. I shudder.
“They’re gone,” I whisper.
“Yes. Let’s go.”
We don’t meet anyone else as we make our way along Rondo’s orange path. Occasionally I widen the Artery to see if there are any animals here that I might be able to take with me. But the tunnel is dark, lifeless. What if they are here, imprisoned as before, but Albatur and his Council have discovered how to keep us from hearing each other?
“Should be right around here,” Rondo says, finally raising his eyes from the screen and scanning the empty hall before us.
I pause, leaning on Alma’s shoulder, sweeping my eyes over the motionless corridor.
“What should be?”
“Our route.”
“You don’t know where it is?”
“I’ve only seen it digitally. We didn’t have time to come check it out first since we didn’t exactly know you were coming.”
“What is it?” I demand in a whisper.
Alma shushes me. “Let him concentrate!”
Rondo passes me the slate, whispering, “Hold this. Look out for red dots.”
“What about blue ones?”
“Those too.”
He moves slowly down the hallway, running his hands along the walls inch by inch.
“Here somewhere . . . ,” he mutters.
“What are we looking for?” I whisper.
“It’s a ventilation shaft,” he says, pausing to inspect a seam in the wall. “The early blueprints of N’Terra show it as being in this corridor. They closed it off twenty years ago when they learned a better way to cycle the air. It was one big shaft before that served as a kind of vacuum to force the air to move. . . .”
He pauses again, inspecting some tiny spot I can’t see from where I stand.
“So hot here, you know . . . ,” he murmurs. “They dealt with the noise just to get some airflow.”
“Rondo, focus,” Alma hisses.
“I am.”
He continues to inspect each inch of the wall. I’m starting to sweat, even wearing this stupid skimpy gown. It’s fear that sends my pores into overdrive, not heat. I hold the back of the gown closed with one hand and hold the slate with the other, anxiously glancing down at it every few seconds before looking back at Rondo to see if he’s found anything. Alma has moved to the opposite wall now, mirroring his inspection of every seam and irregularity in the smooth white clay walls. I stand alone in the middle of the hall, helpless except to keep watch and try to tame my pulse.
“What are we going to do when we find it?” I say. “Break through the wall?”
Alma taps her hip pocket but doesn’t look up. “I have pavi extract. I steal a little whenever I can. Just like it dissolved Adombukar’s cage, it should dissolve the wall.”
“Not exactly subtle,” I mutter. “All it takes is someone walking by and seeing a huge hole in the wall and we’re busted.”
“Yeah, well . . .” Alma trails off.
“Stars,” I groan.
“I think I found something,” Rondo says, and Alma and I rush over before he can go on.
A ridge in the clay, raised ever so slightly above the surface of the rest of the wall. I sweep my eyes anxiously over the surrounding area, looking for more. Sure enough, there is another ridge farther along to the right, running parallel to the first.
“Up there,” Alma whispers, pointing. We all take a step back and tilt our heads, taking in the ridge near the ceiling.
“A square,” Rondo murmurs, gazing at a faint line near the floor. “This is it. They just patched it up. It is huge.”
Alma is already reaching for her pocket, withdrawing a long vial of pavi extract.
“I hope I have enough.” She frowns, and crouches. She uncorks the vial and extends her hand to pass me the stopper.
But my hands aren’t free. I’m gripping the slate with all ten fingers, staring at the maze of the Zoo, trying to map where we are. Trying to decide if the blue dot coming in our direction is actually our direction or somewhere else in the lab.
“Rondo,” I whisper, scarcely daring to breathe. “Is this . . . is this where we are?”
I want to be wrong. I shove the slate in his face, and he has to wrench it from my shaking hands.
I watch each muscle in his face go slack.
“What? What is it?” Alma demands, standing, craning her neck to see the screen.
I’m not looking at the screen anymore. I’m looking at the corner just six feet away, hearing the sound of footsteps over the pounding of my own heart. They’re coming right toward us. Not a harmless blue dot. But a person. Blue means whitecoat. Blue means . . . it’s over.
There’s nowhere to hide. I stare at the corridor before me, at the shadow bearing our capture.
He comes around the corner. White coat. A slate clutched in tan fingers. I only see pieces at first, the horror of being caught causing my brain to fire in intermittent bursts. Then in a rush of adrenaline it all comes together as the whitecoat takes one step toward us and stops.
It’s not just a whitecoat. It’s my father.