“Do I pass muster? Or are you trying to decide if you can get away if this turns bad?”
“From you? Easily.” I mimic his careless tone. “All I have to do is yell that someone is kidnapping the Chairman’s son, and I’ll be right back where I started. What are you going to do when the Reds storm in? Think we can take them?”
He narrows his eyes, evaluating me from cracked leather boots to messy hair. “Hard to tell. You look pretty skinny under all those layers. But you did grow up in an orphanage with a bunch of infected, so you have to be at least a bit tougher than you seem.”
I laugh, tension lifting a bit from my shoulders. I am a little skinny. But he’s right: I’ve had my share of fights. Unfortunately, experience with compulsing ten-year-olds doesn’t exactly match up to facing down a Second with his gun jammed against your forehead.
“So, what exactly is your plan? We can’t hide down here forever. I mean, it is a very nice basement.” I make a show of looking around. “But I don’t drink.”
Yi-lai smiles. “Dr. Yang will get us out.”
“Oh, is he best friends with the Premier like you?” Dr. Yang was wearing three stars, and last I checked, the First Circle didn’t take advice from that quarter. “What’s he going to do, empty the Chairman’s wine cellar down their throats until they don’t remember anything about a bomb?”
“I meant he’ll get us out of the City. No wine necessary. Much less expensive.”
“Are you serious?” I jump up, hitting a few bottles on the way. “Out of the City? That is not . . . ! You see this?” I thrust my branded hand in his face. “This isn’t mine. It is my mother’s. I am not a traitor, and I am not going to Kamar! How could the Chairman’s own son get mixed up in—”
“No one said anything about Kamar,” he answers, not seeming very concerned that my fist is only inches from his nose.
“Who is Dr. Yang? How did he corrupt you into working for Kamar?”
“There is no Kamar, Sev.” Yi-lai smiles that infuriating smile again. Like I should just shut up and believe that the war we’ve all been fighting for the last eight years was a bad dream. “It’s a ghost. The country that invaded back during the Influenza War fell to pieces when SS spread, just like everyone else Outside. The First Circle just keeps up the lie.”
“What do you mean, a lie? The bomb everyone is blaming me for came from a Kamari heli-plane. I saw it. And I work night and day to feed the Liberation Army. It might not pinch up here, but down in the factories we have to sacrifice a lot to support the war.”
“Calm down. Dr. Yang will explain everything. Just wait.”
I look at the tiny door that leads up to the main house, then back to Yi-lai. If I run now, will I be rabid by the time I get out there? Will they just shoot me down? I hunch against the wall, crossing my arms.
“Your father isn’t going to wonder where you’ve disappeared to? Or get thirsty?” I look up at the wine bottles.
Yi-lai’s smile is more a grimace. “He’s out with the Reds. Waiting for them to find you so he can pronounce the City safe again.”
I look back down, not sure how to respond to that. The silence begins to itch. Maybe a deep, dark cell under the City and an execution sentence would be better than sitting here waiting for a Kamari spy—or whatever Dr. Yang is—to show up. At least then I would know what to expect.
Not that I have been down in the prison levels of the City. We call it the Hole: floor after floor of slimy pits and a population of rats waiting for anti-Liberation prisoners to be thrown in. Even thinking about it makes me feel constricted, as though my mind is trapped hundreds of feet underground in the dark—the kind that swallows you whole and never gives your soul back. I take a deep breath and close my eyes, trying to blink the image away as the shadows in the corners of our little room start to writhe. When I open them, little ant-size men march out of the black in serpentine lines toward me, each with a miniature weapon flickering in hand. I blink, and they are gone.
I swallow. It’s just a hallucination. It’s not real.
But then I blink again and the little men are back, converging in on one another, melting together to form something larger: fangs dripping down from a gaping black hole of a mouth.
“What are you looking at?” Yi-lai scoots over next to me, our shoulders are touching. “Sev, are you okay?”
I blink again and it is gone, but sinking dread blacks everything out. I’m ashamed of the tremor in my voice. “Remember when you asked earlier if I’m afraid of the dark?”
As if Tai-ge’s angry ancestors heard me, the lights suddenly go out.
I gasp and grab at Yi-lai, but his voice is calm. “It’s a blackout. Sometimes they enforce power conservation, even up here on the Steppe.”
The words stick in my brain, but I’m not sure what they mean, lost in the inky black of the little room. The walls close in until I can feel them against my arms and back, crushing my head down toward my knees. My breaths come faster and faster, gulping down black tendrils until they squirm in my stomach, burning and wriggling. Cramps turn to sharp pain as darkness tries to burrow its way back out through my skin.
I feel an arm close around my shoulders, and a quicklight ignites in front of me. “Sev?” Yi-lai’s voice is too loud. “What’s wrong?”
Squinting into the light, I try to answer, but the darkness constricts around my throat and I can’t breathe. His arm tightens down around my waist, and my broken ribs scream in protest. Suddenly, all I can think of are the bottles lining the walls above us. My fingers start twitching.
I jump to my feet, leaving Yi-lai sprawled on the floor. He grunts in pain when I step on his hand to get to the bottles, the dusty glass singing my name in the dark. I need one of the shiny bright blue ones from the top. The blue bottles will save me from those black tendrils inside me. Something in the back of my mind screams at me to stop, but my hands start searching for a way up. I can’t stop.
The blue bottles are just beyond my reach, so I climb, sending the other bottles sloshing and shattering to the floor. The case shakes under my weight and glass bottles above me fall from their places, breaking against the shelves, bits of glass and droplets of wine raining down on my face and arms. The sharp smell of alcohol fills my nose, curling up into my brain. Glass falls across my coat, catching in the collar and pockets. Holding tight to the case with one arm, I gather the glass splinters together in my other hand and move to shove them in my mouth, but arms wrap around me and a heavy weight bears me to the ground.
“Let me go! I have to swallow them. I have to get them out!” I thrash on the floor against Yi-lai’s weight pinning my body to the cement. Darkness worms to my insides, tearing holes through my stomach all the way out to my skin.
“Sev. Stop. It’s going to be okay.” His breath brushes my ear. His head is an unbearable weight pressed against my neck, holding my head down.
“Let me kill them! Please!” I can feel tears run down my face, stinging where my scratches from before mix with cuts from the glass. If I don’t swallow the glass, I am going to die. I know I am going to die. I am going to die. I know I am. Blue glass. Die.
Another light cuts into the darkness around us, and a man swears. “Hold her arms!”
A hand reaches into my coat, and I feel a sharp pain in my hip, fire pulsating out from the bite of a needle. My limbs fall away from me. I am only a bubble of consciousness in the dark room.
“What in the name of the Liberation were you thinking? This girl could be the end . . .” The words fade out slowly as the room swirls to nothingness.
CHAPTER 7
A LIGHT SWIMS OVER MY head. I can hear voices floating around me, but they don’t make sense. A grating voice whispers, “We have to get her out as soon as possible. They are starting to realize that she must still be in the City.”