It’s storming in the atrium, a dark bank of clouds on the ceiling pelting the LED meadow with rain. Except for a dead patch of pixels the size of someone’s head on the right side of the screen. It’s less obvious in the storm, but shows up in stark relief with each flash of silent lightning.
I’ve quit coming up here in the morning, when the sun rises promptly at 5:19. The real sun doesn’t rise this time of year until 7:00, and then not as a molten orb but a wan disk against the late winter sky. I used to think of this room as a fake window to the real outside. But now I know it isn’t a window at all—just a lie on a repeating loop.
I’m sick of the blue sky and flowing grasses. The butterfly that appears for exactly fifteen minutes every sunny afternoon. The stupid bee with the same route through the same white and purple flowers. The rain is the closest thing to the snow I imagine above us blanketing the lunatic world white. I miss the drifts, the smell of wood fires, the ice storms that turn trees into standing chandeliers.
By now, every infected person I encountered before we came down here is probably dead. And many of those infected since then are, too.
I finish outlining the week’s lessons and glance over at Truly, asleep on the sofa next to me beneath the churning clouds.
It’s four o’clock. The younger kids are napping after school as work shifts break until dinner.
Two nights ago Chase and I argued. He said he’d seen Micah and the others talking. That they fell silent whenever they saw him.
I know what that feels like.
“Why’d you and your fiancée break up?” I had asked.
He blinked at me as though I were mental.
“Don’t you think we have more important things to talk about?” He was planning to confront the others, to get them alone. Threaten them if he had to.
“No. Promise you won’t,” I said. I told him the best thing he could do was be predictable. Dependable. And barring that, invisible.
“That isn’t the Wynter I know,” he said, searching my face as though for a trace of someone else.
I gave a harsh laugh. “Wow. Really? Three whole months and you know me?” I said, irritated that he wouldn’t answer my question about his fiancée. Two months ago, we’d told each other everything.
Or so I thought.
“Better than most people, yeah. Maybe better, even, than you do.”
“Then you’d know I spent fifteen years of my life living behind walls like this.”
“It wasn’t living, Wynter,” he said, shaking his head in a way that only made me angry.
“No,” I said. “But it’s how I survived.”
We haven’t spoken since.
I glance at Truly, unwilling to wake her. Brush away the tendril of fine hair matted to her forehead. She’s always been a sweaty sleeper. And is the only thing down here that makes me wish time would stop, or at least slow to a crawl.
“You know, when Micah told me . . .” someone says from across the room. I jerk, startled, and glance up to find Preston standing near the tunnel. I hadn’t heard him come through. “I didn’t believe him.”
Something about the way he’s moving . . . Too carefully.
“Told you what?” I say as Truly murmurs and rolls over, roused by my sudden movement.
“That Noah’s harboring a fugitive.”
“What?”
“But then, this is no news to you, is it?” he says, coming toward me as two more figures emerge from the tunnel behind him.
Karam.
And Micah, carrying a phone.
I get to my feet, pulse ratcheting. Position myself between him and Truly.
“I don’t have any better idea what Noah’s doing right now than you do,” I snap.
Micah tosses me the phone—an object most people down here, Julie and Lauren included, cling to for the solace of their playlists, videos, and photos. Some even have movies stored on them that they trade with others.
But when I look, there’s no playlist or movies on the screen. Instead, a news article with a photo that never loaded, an error message in its place.
MURDER SUSPECT DISAPPEARS WITH PROMISING RESEARCH
It’s dated December 6.
“It’s the last news that ever got pushed to this phone,” Micah says.
“Okay . . . ?” I say, forcing my shoulders to shrug.
“What do you have to say about that?” Preston asks.
“Preston, I have no idea what you’re talking about and I’m busy planning school for our kids,” I say, indicating Micah and me with one hand as I thumb the article closed with the other, knowing it cannot reload.
“I think your teaching time is over,” Karam says, looking not at all pleased to be involved in this conversation until he tilts his head, gaze fixed on something behind me. “Hello, Truly. How was your nap?”
I whirl around to find her sitting up, hair mussed, looking from me to Micah.
“Good,” she says groggily. I gather her up, her little body warm, her head sweet-smelling against my neck as she wraps her arms around it.
“It’s time for us to get cleaned up for dinner,” I say, heart pounding against my ribs.
“Just one question,” Micah says.
I look wildly around, my gaze snagging on the pool table, and the rack of cues behind it.
Karam shakes his head faintly, as though saying I’d never make it there in time.
“What’s Winnie short for?”
“I told you—”
“Not you,” Micah says. “I’m asking Truly.”
My lips pull back from my teeth. “You leave her alone.”
“Truly? Seth wanted to know,” Micah says. “What’s Winnie short for?”
“We’re leaving,” I say. But as I start toward the door, Preston moves to block my way.
“Truly!” Micah says.
“Chase!” I shout toward the tunnel and the library beyond it. Knowing that if he’s in the maintenance room above it he’ll hear me through the stairwell. “Chase!”
“He isn’t there,” Karam says, coming toward me.
I go stone still. “What have you done?”
“He’s being detained in storage.”
Where Jax’s cell was meant to be—ten levels below, accessed by sealed stairwells.
“Wynter,” Truly says in my arms.
“What’s that, Truly?” Micah says.
She lifts her head.
“Shh-shh. We have to go,” I say.
“Wyn-ter,” she says again, in two distinct syllables.
“Yes, it’s winter outside,” Micah says, pointing upward.
“No. That’s Winnie’s name,” she says.
“Oh, is it?” Micah says.
Our eyes lock.
In an instant, I’m running for the tunnel. They grab me, hauling me backward, Truly wailing as Micah tries to take her. Silent lightning cracks overhead.
“Don’t you touch her!” I shout as Karam and Preston drag me toward the sofa. “Take your hands off of her!”
Micah pries her from my arms, and he might as well be tearing off one of my limbs. I scream and she starts crying, a handful of my hair in her fist.
“You hurt her and I swear I’ll kill you,” I say, voice rasping like that of a woman possessed.
Sharp pain in my neck. For a weird, disjointed moment, all I can think about is that stupid bee. That somehow it’s escaped the screen and stung me.
Before the room goes dark.
• • •
I’M AWARE OF voices, raised in argument.
Of cold concrete beneath my cheek.
Truly.
I shove up, but can’t move my arms and flop back. Find my hands zip-tied around a pole. I grab it and push to my knees, head spinning—and then double over and puke on the floor. It isn’t much, just a wet spot on the concrete, mostly bile.
“Obviously neither one of them knew!” someone says. Nelise. “Or why would she tell her to come here? And why would Noah let her stay? No. Impossible.”
“Why not just check her ID?” Delaney.
“We couldn’t find any.” Karam.
I cough and then spit as one voice rises over the others.
“You have no idea what you’ve just done. So help me, the day our justice system is functioning again, I will not only turn you over to federal authorities—and see your ass deported—but make sure she hits each of you with every lawsuit money can buy!”
Julie.
“For what? Restraining a murderer wanted by the federal government? I don’t think so.” Preston.
I lift my head, which feels like it weighs a hundred pounds, and sit back on my heels. Look unsteadily around.
We’re no longer in the atrium but gathered in a storage area partitioned by chain-link fence, the one pen not stocked with pallets of canned food and totes of freeze-dried stroganoff looking vaguely like a fight cage. But it isn’t a fight cage. It’s Jax’s cell.
And there, pacing inside it, is Chase.
“D’jou—drug me?” I manage to get out, the words cottony and foreign in my mouth. At the sound of my voice, Chase strides to the fence directly in front of me and crouches down, clasping the chain link.
“Hey,” he says. “You okay?”
And then I remember the summer storm. The lightning flashing as Truly wailed and Micah pried her from my arms.
“Truly. Truly!” I say, searching the assembled Denizens, their faces moonlike and round in the LED light.
I find her snared in Rima’s arms, the doctor crouched down beside her.
“Winnie!” she cries, straining against Rima, the sight, the sound of her tearing at my heart.
“Truly, can you tell us what you told me earlier today?” Micah says, leaning over to peer at her.
She shakes her head. “No!”
Chase grabs the chain-link fence. “Micah, leave her alone!”
“Truly . . .” Micah tries again.
“You. Get away from her,” I say very quietly. Homicide in my voice.
“Tell them,” Julie says, and I realize she’s talking to me. “For God’s sake, tell them!”
Chase gives the chain link a sharp rattle. I turn and find him staring at me with a warning in his eyes.
Rudy comes to stand in front of the cage. “If you have something to tell us, Winnie . . .” He pauses for effect. “Now would be the time.”
I’ve been here before. Except this time I’m not standing at the open gate of the religious community I grew up in but kneeling thirteen stories underground, facing not the loss of my eternal salvation, but a short walk into a freezer.
I clasp the cold metal of the pole. Haul myself to my feet.
“My name,” I say, “is Wynter Roth.”
Chase releases a harsh breath behind me as those before me exchange glances.
“Truly?” I say, looking at her.
Rudy lifts his hand. “She’s not the one—”
“Shut up!” I say. “Truly? What’s your mommy’s name?”
She looks up through her lashes. “Jackie,” she whispers.
“And what’s your last name?”
“Theisen,” she says, eyes roving over the assembled others.
“How does your mommy know me?”
“She’s your sister,” she says, the words a soft whine.
I give her a small smile. “Truly, what’s your daddy’s name?”
“Magnus.”
“Is he the leader of New Earth?” I ask.
She nods. “He’s God’s Ter-preter.”
I ignore the quizzical glances and turn to Micah, my head pounding. “Take her upstairs. I’ll tell you the rest.”
• • •
I SPEND THE next hour recounting life in the Enclave, shut off from the outside world. How Magnus’s first wife died and he married my sister, Jackie. How he tried to take me as a second wife. My failed escape, witnessed by the community, which Jackie orchestrated so Magnus would have no choice but to cast me out.
That I went to live with Julie and her family. How I learned Kestral—Magnus’s first wife—was not dead at all, but living here with Rima, Micah, Nelise, and the others who arrived before us.
Nelise’s eyes go wide as she exchanges a look with Karam.
“Two days after you came through here,” Micah says, “Kestral left without explanation.”
“She went back to Iowa,” Chase says. “We met her on the road outside the compound after Wynter retrieved Truly.”
“If what you’re saying is true, it seems that’d be the last place she’d ever want to go,” Preston says.
“Magnus was sick,” I say. “She knew it was safe.”
It’s a lie. Magnus was sick, but she couldn’t have known; he’d been infected for only a few hours.
It occurs to me that I never knew exactly why Kestral went back. Whether it was to confront Magnus, appear to the community as proof of his lies, help me get Truly out . . . or a combination of all three.
“Kestral never said anything about a Magnus,” Nelise says. “Or any of this.”
“She did to Noah,” I say. “Which is why he believed me when I told him about Magnus’s illegal business deals, including those with his former partner, Blaine—who conveniently died two weeks after delivering a set of stolen animal samples to Magnus. The same ones Magnus sent my sister to deliver to a third party. He threatened to kill her if she failed. She brought them to me instead.”
“Stolen animal samples?” Delaney says, looking lost.
“Of the pigs that first contracted the disease,” I say.
“You mean—”
“Rapid early-onset dementia.” The disease ravaging our nation.
“All these nights we’ve been talking about it, asking where it came from . . . you’re saying you knew all along?” Sha’Neal says, her voice going up an octave. “You and”—she looks at Julie and then Chase in turn—“you and you?”
“Wait,” Nelise says. “Why would anyone want those?”
I look at her like she’s stupid. Mostly because, other than being a botanical savant, she is.
“Uhh . . . a vaccine?” Julie says, sarcastically.
“Or good old-fashioned biological warfare,” Chase says, his forehead pressed against the chain link.
“Excuse me,” Rudy says. “But nobody’s talking about the issue, which is the fact that this woman is wanted for murder! What about the murder?” he demands.
“There wasn’t one,” I say. “Magnus reported that I stole ‘research’ from an off-site New Earth lab and killed Jackie in the process. But the last time I saw Jackie, she was alive. Sick . . .” I pause, swallowing back emotion at the memory of that night. The sound of her heels on the pavement as she ran down the street will haunt me the rest of my life. “. . . which is why she couldn’t take them to Colorado or rescue Truly herself. But alive.”
Micah glances down, scrolls through a set of screenshots of the article I thought I deleted. Reads: “. . . potentially life-saving research was stolen in a violent break-in at the New Earth lab in Ames that claimed the life of Theisen’s wife, Jaclyn.”
“Except I’ve never heard of an off-site lab. And I would never harm my own sister,” I say.
“It’s all she talked about!” Julie says. “Trying to get Truly and Jackie out of New Earth and somewhere safe!”
“So she gives you the samples. Then what?” Preston says.
How do I tell the story of those five days? On the run after Julie’s SUV broke down. Stuck in a snowstorm with Chase, whom I had to convince I was not a terrorist. Crossing into Colorado after I thought Chase had been killed.
How do I tell it without saying whose daughter Truly really is?
“Julie’s husband, Ken, would have been the perfect person to give them to,” I say. “It’s the reason Jackie brought them to Illinois. But Ken got sick while traveling with the CDC team. So I took them to a Dr. Ashley Neal at Colorado State—someone Jackie met while working the New Earth ministry in Ames, where he did his graduate work.”
It sounds so simple, stated like that. “I took them.” May they never know how frickin’ hard it is to travel hundreds of miles in the middle of a blackout without enough gas when you’re wanted for murder.
“After the attack on the CDC, the National Guard flew him and the samples to the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. I assume by now he’s in England or Switzerland or wherever the companies are that have agreed to help make it.”
“Unfortunately, Noah’s not here to corroborate her story,” Micah says. “And without the Internet I can’t verify the identity of Dr. Neal, if he exists, or anything else she said.”
“I’m telling you the truth!”
“So after this Dr. Neal left for Omaha, you drove back to Iowa and kidnapped your niece,” Rudy says, frowning.
“Her father was infected,” I say. “I’m her only surviving family.”
I don’t say that he infected himself—with a vial he thought was a vaccine meant for Truly.
“Why didn’t you take the samples to the authorities, or the CDC?” Preston says.
“You ever tried walking into the CDC with stolen samples at the outset of a pandemic?” I say.
“But then at least they would have had them! It would have been a small price to pay to save—”
“I’ll tell you why! Because Dr. Neal knew my sister and trusted me. Because Colorado is a lot closer than Atlanta, where I had less chance of getting through the city alive, and if I had, who knows what would’ve happened to them in the attack!”
Rudy shakes his head. “I—this is . . .” He laughs. “This is very elaborate. And all a bit much. Don’t you think?”
“No one could make this up!” Chase says.
“As Micah pointed out, there’s no way to verify any of this,” Preston says.
Julie’s face is white. “She’s told you the truth!”
“Yes,” Nelise says. “She admitted she’s wanted for murder!”
Ezra turns on Julie. “You seriously believe one man could dupe the government into hunting for an innocent—”
“That man?” Julie says. “Absolutely. I wouldn’t put anything past that lying, manipulative psychopath. He had money. Friends in high places!”
“Be that as it may, I don’t think any one of us feels safe with a wanted murderer living among us,” Rudy says.
“No,” Reverend Carolyn says. “We can’t go through this again. Just keep her locked up until Open Day!”
“We’re talking about our children’s safety!” Sabine says. “My daughter’s safety!”
“Stop!” Chase shouts from behind me. “She’s telling the truth!”
I glance over my shoulder in time to see him close his eyes with a curse. When he opens them, his expression is terrible.
“I can prove it,” he says.