nothing could ever go wrong in the world, I see the stars. Out in full force.
If Callum and I can pull tonight off . . . My brain don’t even know how to think that kind of thought—it can’t imagine it. The borders will open—I’ll be able to see the West Isle for the first time. But would I even want to? A city with people who’ll push for genocide?
Maybe, when you’re not fighting to survive, you can afford to think about wiping others off the map. Either way, it’s not important. Tonight isn’t about getting tourist visas so we can take vacations to the Isle.
I’m here—I see the roof of the Hell’s Kitchen sickhouse only feet away, but I stop moving. Stop crossing the bridge.
Below, the wooden planks creak, and ahead of me the Strait splashes between us and the Isle. The Ward isn’t silent tonight, though. Not too far off I hear the high-pitched whistle of a firecracker. Then its thunderous finish. Like it is its own exclamation point announcing itself to the sky.
Telling the world to get ready for what comes next.
Tonight is about Aven, and the girl in the contagious ward, and everyone else afraid to go outside. It’s about putting us back on the map—as people, and as a city.
We’re not hosts.
I let go of my fist, tight around the suspension rope, and jump onto the rooftop.
Opening the door out of the stairwell into the top-floor hallway, I nearly gag. Have to hold my nose as I walk. The smell . . . it’s worse than the dying stink of the hospital.
Rank viscera. Old, decaying flesh. Blood loss, coppery and acrid.
This high up, and they usually just weight the bodies before tossing them into the canal below. But sometimes the flesh is dying and the body’s still alive. The smell is the same.
I can taste it all in the air, passing room after room. My stomach twists, and though this isn’t the floor I found Aven on, it may as well be. All the doors look the same, and I can almost see myself pushing them open. Frantic.
Yelling for anyone who might’ve seen the girl with the near-white hair.
I come up on apartment 305, my footsteps quiet and even. Candlelight flickers under the door, and I don’t even have to knock. It opens, and there’s Callum.
He pulls me in. Wraps me up in a hug. Seeing the sack, his face is a mixture of wonder and even more wonder. “You made it. . . .” he says, and kneels beside it. “Is this really it?”
Disbelieving, he lifts it up by the straps to feel its weight.
“To the brim,” I say softly, and I pat the rubber, a little bit proud. Then I look at him—really look at him—give him the once-over, two . . . three times. “You’re whole,” I say, wide-eyed, and he manages a weak laugh, nodding.
Even with the cure . . . everything is tense. There’s too much dying.
As he carries the sack to a corner of the room—a huge room—I see all the big furniture’s still here from after the Wash Out. Everything else, though—picked clean.
“That I am,” he answers, lowering the sack onto a bulky wooden table. Careful not to spill, he pours the water into a glass basin, shaking his head as he watches. He murmurs, “Only you,” then glances at me with that strange, awed look again.
I avoid his eyes; each time that happens, I find myself going more and more red in the cheeks, like I’m too unusual.
As he pours, the tiny green mushrooms fall out too. “What’s this?” he murmurs, leaning in to get a closer look. Then he answers his own question. “A bioluminescent fungus . . .”
I don’t know much about that first word, but I nod anyway. He’s talking about the aliens, all right. “It’s the plant you were talking about, right? It’s how the water got those phytothings,” I ask, but he don’t answer.
He’s totally absorbed, filling an eyedropper with the springwater. “Amazing,” he murmurs.
Through the tube, I see now that the water is darker than I thought. A brownish, reddish color. Flecked with neon. When he swirls it around, a glow-in-the-dark galaxy whirlpools in his very hand. He droppers it onto a glass slide, then adds a dye or something. He lays that under his ’scope’s lens. For a moment I’m surprised—I’m thinkin’ the ’scope got lucky. Survived the ransacking of the first lab. But then I see Callum hold a