Hollowpox The Hunt for Morrigan Crow - Jessica Townsend Page 0,64

and Morrigan knew it was so that he had time to think about how to answer.

‘It’s hard to describe, Mog. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve heard stories about hollow people – it’s sort of a dark fairy tale among Witnesses. Someone always knows someone who has a friend who once met a stranger who was completely hollow, but … I’ve never believed it was actually possible, until now.’ He shook his head, as if he still didn’t quite believe it.

Morrigan frowned. ‘What do you mean, “hollow people”?’

‘When I look at someone,’ he said, pushing his plate aside and leaning in, ‘– really look at them, I mean – I see a whole, complete, unique person. I spoke to Dame Chanda this afternoon, for example, and she had a song stuck in her head; it fluttered around her ears like a moth. She was cross about something; it cast a little black shadow over her face. Beyond the surface, she was cloaked in a deep, melancholy blue, like she was under the ocean. That’s the sadness she feels for her friend Juvela, I think.

‘Beyond that, she has this constant, steady kindness – right here around the sternum – like a candle burning in a windowless room. Some people only ever have flashes of kindness, but hers is a permanent fixture.’ He stared into the middle distance for a moment. ‘Beyond that … well, I don’t often look beyond that. The deeper layers are harder to unravel. People lock them down, hold them as close as possible, even if they don’t realise it. That’s a boundary I won’t cross unless invited.

‘But those Wunimals in the teaching hospital … there’s nothing there,’ he said softly. ‘Nothing on the surface. Nothing underneath. No past, no present.’

‘Well … I mean, they’re asleep, aren’t they?’ Morrigan reasoned. ‘Maybe when people are sleeping—’

‘They’re not asleep. They’re not anything. Someone in a coma still has all the things that make them a person. They still have dreams and physical afflictions and the imprints other people have left on them, scars and smudges from loved ones and enemies. They still have a past. But these Wunimals, they’re like … black holes. There’s nothing there.’

Jupiter’s eyes were wide, his pupils big and black. He was frightened. Morrigan felt the hairs on her arms stand up.

‘Honestly, Mog, I’d rather be dead than hollow.’

In the weeks that followed, it became clear there was no containing the Hollowpox, even if they could distract people from it.

Their C&D gatherings soon became Hollowpox gatherings for all intents and purposes, with all other matters temporarily shunted aside. There’d been at least one attack every week since Christmas, and the numbers kept rising until it seemed like every second or third day there was some fresh rumour, some new tale of a rhinoceroswun running riot in a grocery store or a catwun slicing someone’s face like a scratching post.

Holliday Wu warned them that it wouldn’t be long before the public started connecting the dots, and the truth came out.

Meanwhile, the locked ward in the teaching hospital on Sub-Three was already full, and a second ward on its way to filling up too. The meagre hospital staff worked in rotating twelve-hour shifts to the point of exhaustion, until one day Nurse Tim marched into the Gathering Place threatening to lead his fellow nurses in a strike. In response, the Elders drafted in any Society members with medical expertise who could assist, and they came from all over the Seven Pockets without hesitation.

Even some of the students were called on to help. Senior scholars with medical experience were promoted to positions of authority on the regular wards, and junior scholars like Anah had chunks of their timetable taken over by hospital duty.

It worked out well for Unit 919, because Anah became their personal hotline to information about the affected Wunimals – her quiet, unobtrusive nature made her an excellent eavesdropper.

‘They won’t let us assistants see them, of course – we’re not allowed on the locked ward – but I heard two of the nurses talking in the tea room,’ she told the unit one morning at Station 919, while they waited for Hometrain. ‘They said yesterday there were three Wunimals brought in the night before, a family of badgerwuns. The youngest was only our age! It’s just awful.’

Morrigan didn’t know why this news felt so shocking; after all, why would the Hollowpox discriminate between young and old? But somehow it made it seem so much worse to