“I don’t know who I am anymore,” I whisper.
He erases the distance between us until my head buzzes. “Yes you do,” he says, his voice hovering over me and around me as if we can occupy one space together. I close my eyes and wait for him.
My skin tingles with want but he doesn’t kiss me. Not the way Catcher did. He leans against me until our lips barely press together, our mouths open, every part of us twining through our breaths.
I want to press harder. I want him to pull me tighter. But he doesn’t. We just stand there barely touching.
And then the bells from town begin to clang. My eyes go wide and I stumble backward. I clasp a hand over my mouth as memories of Catcher slam into me: his smell, the sound of his voice, the feel of his skin under mine. I’d forgotten all of it—I’d let Elias erase it all.
Shame and anger roar in my head. And as if he can see it all tumbling through me, as if he can smell my regret, his face hardens. He turns and strides back up the beach. “I’m sorry,” I call after him, but he doesn’t respond and I chase him and try to grab him but he pushes off my touch.
“Where’s the Council House?” he asks, his voice cold and sharp.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him again but he shrugs it off.
“We don’t have time to worry about something that doesn’t matter,” he says. “They’ll realize the Mudo can’t infect, and we need to get your friend before that.” He picks up the pack I’d brought out for him and slings it over his shoulders.
My cheeks flame with embarrassment and I raise a finger and point up the path toward town. He takes off at a jog and I follow, the small bag carrying clothes, food and my mother’s book slapping against my back. I feel stupid. But what hurts most of all is that his almost-kiss did matter to me, and it clearly didn’t matter to him.
Vista is screams and moans and the glint of weapons. People pour from the center square through the streets, panicked and running for the safety of home. We’re lost in the cacophony of it all, everyone else so wrapped up in their own terror that no one bothers Elias and me as we sprint to the Council House.
I push everything else from my head and focus on the moment and the task at hand. No one guards the doors; everyone’s been called by the ringing bell to defend the town. “We don’t have much time,” Elias says. “It won’t take them long to figure out it’s not a true breach.”
I shove my way inside and down the stairs where Cira and the others are held with the Soulers. It’s a disconcerting sight, the Soulers in their white tunics on one side and the new Recruiters in their black uniforms on the other. “What’s going on?” one of them shouts. “Get us out,” screams another one. The air is thick with fear.
Elias kneels in front of the barred door and pokes at the lock with the tip of his knife. I search through the thin faces for Cira. She sits limply against the back wall, barely bothering to look up at the commotion.
“Cira.” I slip my hand through the bars, reaching for her. Her head rolls on her neck, her hands slack in her lap. “Cira,” I say again.
She looks up at me, her eyes hollow and unfocused. She raises a hand slackly as if to wave at me and that’s when I see the blood trailing down her wrist and dripping from her fingers.
Chapter 24
Cira!” I scream, but it’s as if she sees right through me, as if I’m not there. “Someone help her!” I yell to the others crowded against the bars but no one does anything. No one moves, they just hover around Elias as he works on the lock. I try to push at them, I try to grab them and make them see Cira on the floor in the corner but they pull away from me.
These are her friends, the people whose fate she shared. She’s spent the last days with them, has lived with them here in this tiny cage. And yet no one seems to care. No one bothers to help.
The lock clicks and the heavy gate swings open with a groan. Everyone inside begins to spill against the opening and I shove through them, fighting the current of bodies to get inside. I run to Cira, sliding to a stop beside her.
I grab her cheeks, force her to look at me. Her lips waver a bit before turning into a smile, trembling around the edges. “Gabry,” she says, her voice soft, weak.
“Cira.” I choke on her name. I pull at her clothes, yanking back the sleeves of her black Recruiter jacket. The material is damp, her blood seeping onto my skin, staining it a deep red once again. The cuts on her forearms are jagged and wide and raw. They’ve begun to clot, the blood thick, but when I clamp my hand over them it begins to well again.
I don’t know what to do. “Help me!” I call out. I look over my shoulder at the now-empty cage, at Elias talking to one of the Soulers. “Elias, help!”
He looks up and in an instant takes in the situation. He rushes over, dropping his pack and kneeling on the other side of Cira. “Keep pressure on them,” he says as he tugs an old skirt from my bag and tears it into strips. He pulls Cira’s jacket from her. She tries to help but her movements are slow, uncoordinated.
“’S okay, Gabry,” she murmurs, her lips barely moving. “It’ll be me and Catcher now. You go.”
I squeeze her wrists tighter in my fingers and she doesn’t wince.
“No,” I tell her. I gulp back tears and terror. “No, Catcher’s here. He’s okay, I was wrong.”
Her eyes open wide before drooping shut. “But you said …” Her breathing’s shallow.
“Hold her arms above her head,” Elias says. “Keep the pressure on.”
“Where’s Catcher?” Cira asks. I can see her struggling to understand, fighting the energy leaking from her body.
“He’s here,” I tell her but her eyes slip shut and I’m not sure she heard.
A shadow falls across me and I look up. Blane stands in the opening to the cell, hesitating before following the others out. It reminds me of the night in the amusement park, the moment I chose to leave them all and run. She looks afraid; she looks ashamed. As if she’s waiting for my permission to abandon her friend. “How did you let this happen?” I ask her.
She looks at me a long moment, her eyes bright and her mouth opening and closing on a hundred excuses. “I couldn’t stop her,” she finally says. “I tried.” Her voice is thin and hitches with regret. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. She stands in front of me, as if I could tell her anything to make it okay. She reaches out her fingers and brushes them against my own and then she turns and runs up the stairs.
I look across Cira at Elias. I want him to say that she’ll be okay. That she’s going to be fine. But I can tell in the way he glances at the door that he’s worried. That he’s more than worried.
“What do we do?” I ask. I think about the little sailboat, about dragging her through town.
“We should leave her,” he says, his voice barely a whisper. “She needs rest, she needs someone who knows what they’re doing. She shouldn’t be moved.”
I look at her. At her pale cheeks and white lips. All the blood. He’s right. I know he’s right. Any chance we would have of escaping is at risk with her. She’ll slow us down.
I press my forehead against hers. “Cira,” I whisper. I can hear the tears in my voice. I want to ask her why but I already know. Inevitable, she would tell me.
For the space between heartbeats it feels as though it’s all my fault. If I hadn’t run that night but stayed with her. If I’d allowed myself to be caught, to be caged with her and sent to the Recruiters. I could have been there with her. I could have given her someone to lean on. Someone to hold on to.
I could have stopped her. We could have made it together.
“I’m not leaving her,” I say.
I lean back and look at Elias. He searches my face with his eyes but he doesn’t question me. He just nods and takes her arms and wraps them tight with the strips of cloth.
“There’s not a lot of time left,” he says. “They’ll realize the breach is by the Souler Mudo—that they pose no threat but terror.” He looks across the room to the dark stairway where everyone else ran. And I realize that he could have run with them. That he should be with them, out looking for his sister.
“You can go,” I tell him. “She’s not your responsibility.” The words are harder to say than I thought they would be and I realize that I’ve grown to trust him. “Neither am I,” I add.
He turns to look at me, his body still, and he squints. “I’m going with you, Gabry.”
I stare at him too long. I should tell him to leave. I should tell him that I have nothing to give him and that he’s better off with the Soulers looking for his sister. But before I can say any of that he slings his pack onto his back and puts his arm under Cira’s shoulder, helping her to her feet. My throat feels raw and tight when I see him so tender and gentle.
He turns toward the stairs and I slip under Cira’s other arm. “Thank you,” I tell him, though those words will never be enough to express my gratitude. He grunts under Cira’s weight as she slumps against him trying to walk.
Together we get her out of the Council House and into the confused streets beyond. The buildings around us are shuttered and reinforced, most families tucked inside. And yet people, mostly boys and men, still stream through the streets shouting and waving weapons. They race to the Barrier to help defend the town.
A few people run to us, offer to help, but Elias just murmurs “Infected,” and they eye the blood-soaked bandages before stumbling away and leaving us alone. As we near the edge of the buildings and start on the path leading to the beach a figure bursts out of the darkness.
I almost drop Cira in my fright and before I can even reach for my weapon Elias has his knife brandished in his free hand.
“Cira,” the person gasps, and I realize with relief that it’s Catcher. He steps toward us, then races to his sister hanging limp between us. “What’s going on? What happened to her?” He grabs her face. “Cira,” he calls to her, “Cira, look at me!”
Her eyes droop open and a small smile barely touches her lips. “Catcher,” she says, her voice exhausted and dry.
He looks at us. “What happened?” he asks again.
I don’t want to tell him what she did and so I brush aside the question. “She’ll be okay,” I say. “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you at the boat?”
He shakes his head. “Militiamen are all over the lighthouse and beach,” he says. His eyes cut to me in the darkness. “They’re looking for you, Gabry. I overheard them talking about Daniel.” He pauses a moment. “He wasn’t dead when you left him, Gabry. They found him before he died. He told them it was you.”
I feel like I’ve been punched, all the air sucking from my lungs at once. I stumble under Cira’s weight and Catcher takes her arm from me. Behind me I hear Catcher and Elias talking rapidly, trying to figure out what to do. Where to go. But all I can think about is Daniel.
I knew I killed him and yet hearing it from someone else—knowing it for sure—makes it somehow different. I realize then that there’s a difference between the possibility of hope—the idea of things that we can never know—and the starkness of reality. The weight of knowledge.
Elias and Catcher debate whether to go back to the ruins, to try to make a run for the boat. Around me I can still hear the echoes of town, the ringing of bells and shouts of men. I realize again that there is no escape. That everything is catching up to me, the end.
Gravity pulls me and I think about giving in. I think about my mother and how horrified she would be if she knew what was going on.
And she’s what makes me realize where we can go. Where we can run that they might not follow us. “The Forest,” I say flatly. I feel a crazy urge to laugh at my own words. Just a few days ago I was too terrified to even think about going into the Forest with my mother and now I’m suggesting that we follow in her footsteps.
Catcher and Elias don’t hear me and I turn around to face them. “The Forest,” I say louder. They both stare at me, their mouths open in midsentence.
“That’s crazy,” Catcher says. “There’s nothing in there—we’d be killed as soon as we crossed the fence.” And then his face blanches. “I mean, you would all …” His voice trails off and it hits me again just how much his immunity has changed him.
Elias stands there quietly and then he says, “She’s right.” He starts to nod his head. “She’s right, it’s the best place for us to go.”
Catcher pulls Cira away from us. “This is absurd,” he says.
“No,” I tell him, wanting to stop the words from coming. “My mother’s from the Forest. There are paths—a village.” Even as I’m explaining I want them to talk me out of it.
“There aren’t paths,” Catcher scoffs. His cheeks burn red, his eyes narrow. “We’d know about them if there were any. There’s a bridge across the waterfall and then a gate to nothing.”
“But if there are paths,” Elias says, looking straight at Catcher, “you’d be able to find them. You can go into the Forest and look.”
I nod my head. Catcher opens his mouth to protest but Elias cuts him off. “Look, we need to go somewhere else,” he says, his voice low. “We’re not safe standing here.”
Catcher glances between Elias and me and then at his sister. He purses his lips and then he wraps his hand around her waist. “You promise there are paths? That we’ll be able to escape?” he asks. “That we’ll be safe?”
