“Oh.” I let him pull me down the bricked-in alleyway, away from the wall that separates the First laboratories and Second homesteads up the hill from the Thirds. I’m glad, actually, not to pass the City Center’s layered tile roof, just above the marketplace. After the episode with Peishan, I can’t face walking anywhere near the Traitor’s Arch—the place where they keep her.
Everyone talks about how my mother left, how she infected me then ran straight to the Kamari general, whoever he is, and told him where we were so they could try to steal our Mantis. But no one explains why she came back. Why she murdered half the First Circle, all old men who were barely hanging on to life by the tips of their fingers as it was. They do, however, have videos of her arrest, of my father and sister as they were dragged out of our house while I was still waking up from SS. This video shows Mother lying in her bed of glass and tubes in front of the remaining Firsts of the Circle. Standing at their head is the Chairman. Highest of the Firsts, too wise to be in the labs anymore, now called to lead us in Yuan Zhiwei’s place. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen him outside of paintings. No one beyond the Circle sees much of the Chairman or his family in person. The fact that he came himself to condemn Mother shows just how horrific her crimes were. Those few seconds of his face on the video seem like a doorway into another world, a place I’m not welcome, where I’m not even a person. He stands there under the towering hulk of Traitor’s Arch, one flick of his hand sending Mother to her fate.
We all have to watch her at least once a year on the grainy community telescreens. The Chairman injects her with something as if she’s the princess in that stupid story she used to tell me at bedtime, pricked by the crooked spindle and sent into an endless sleep. Everyone in the City Center cheers as they hoist her glass box up to the top of the Arch, on display for all to see. She’s still there, eyes closed, kept in limbo between life and death, her every breath pumped in and out of her in crackling bursts.
I have to blink away the thought, because it brings others. Real memories from after I woke up—not the ones manufactured from watching Mother’s last moments on a telescreen later—of standing before Traitor’s Arch, my face hot, and Aya so cold beside me when they finally let us leave our house. Of Father, white-faced and tired, waiting for the Circle to use Mother’s crimes to mark the rest of us.
Tai-ge and I circle back behind the blocky factory housing units, the crumbling bricks pasted up and down with big character posters, probably written during the evening’s announcements, since most of them have to do with the current campaign to “destroy revisionists” and to “strike at both tigers and flies.” I stop looking when I find my own surname in smudged ink.
They haven’t hung enemy soldiers up on the wall for months now. The City always leaves their heads bare so it’s easy to see they are from Kamar’s invading army, their odd-colored hair jarring. Blond, brown, coppery red. Vicious enemies now hanging limply against the bloodstained wall.
The same Watchman from earlier in the week opens the barrier to let us onto the bridge. The Aihu River looks so beautiful when it is lit up for the night that I can’t find it in myself to be annoyed at him when he growls at me as I walk past. The reflections from the paper lanterns frolic across the slow roll of water as it flows under the bridge.
“That guard’s all bark and no bite. A pleasant change.” Tai-ge smiles as he kicks a loose pebble over the side of the bridge and runs to watch it plop into the water. I join him at the rail, eyeing the tollhouse, where the Watchman is still glaring at us.
UNITED TO STOP SLEEPING SICKNESS. The words painted on the old timbers of the bridge make my eyes dance away, back down to the water, where I don’t have to think.
We watch ripples from the fallen stone snake out wider and wider, bending the reflected light from the bridge into swirls. The pinpoint light of a patroller blinks across the rushing surface of the river, but it looks oddly big. As though the light smoldering in the river couldn’t possibly belong to an aircraft so high up above us.
“It’s almost dark,” I finally say, taking my eyes off the light and turning to Tai-ge. “Even you can’t charm your mother into letting me off if I’m late for reeducation with your father tonight.” But Tai-ge doesn’t look at me.
“Tai-ge?”
His eyes are still glued to the patroller’s reflection dancing across the surface of the dark water. We both look up, as if squinting at the light will force it to pass the way it’s supposed to instead of buzzing over us. The light grows brighter and brighter, larger, until I can hear the scream of its engines bearing down on us.
Kamar.
Tai-ge grabs my hand, dragging me toward solid ground, but the light in the sky falls, falls until all sound is blocked out, everything eclipsed by the bright flare of a bomb. My feet leave the ground and Tai-ge’s hand twists out of mine as I crash through the railing of the bridge. Splintered wood lashes across my arms and chest, tearing through the dark wool of my coat. I keep waiting for the cement-hard crash that will mean I’ve hit the water, but all I can feel is a high-pitched squeal that hums through me.
When the impact finally comes, it seems as though I’ve been falling for hours. I sink in slow motion, the inferno of cavorting lights above the river’s surface diluted and weak in the watery darkness above me. Something clicks in my overloaded brain, and I start to fight the water as it sucks me deeper. Panic blossoms in my chest when my lungs begin burning, all the air crushed out of me and what seems like an impossible distance to the surface. I pull off my boots and unbutton my jacket, slipping out of its heavy embrace. Still, even frantic kicking does not speed up the funeral crawl toward open air. The light becomes brighter until it’s almost unbearable, and then I break through the surface, gasping in frozen lungfuls of air.
Choking and sputtering, I flail for a few minutes until a chunk of wood bumps my head. I cling to it, coughing all the water out of my lungs before noticing the wood is painted red with one word: UNITED.
The bridge is gone. Plumes of fire above my head blast me with heat, reflections igniting all around me in the water. Face pressed against the plank, I don’t look back at the bridge until I am far enough away to feel the cold again. Small, ant-like figures scurry back and forth, frantically attempting to quell the flames devouring the splintered remains of the bridge. The beams splay out like broken teeth. Where is Tai-ge? No matter how hard I squint into the bubbling mass of people, my friend’s fate remains a hard knot of terror in my chest.
Large columns of smoke billow up from the flames. I can still see the lights of the attacking heli-plane in the sky getting smaller and smaller. On its way back to Kamar.
I take a painful breath and start kicking my socked feet toward the shore. I need to find Tai-ge, to make sure he is safe. At least, that is my intention until my mind starts wandering with cold. I wonder if Sister Lei will call the Watch when I don’t show up for reeducation with the General. The thought sends me off into a fit of giggles. I can just imagine arriving on the orphanage doorstep, sopping wet, trying to explain to the angry Watchman from the bridge why I missed my lesson.
I hazily realize that my fingers and toes are completely numb and that every kick toward the shore is getting weaker, slower. The curls of flame dancing on the bridge remind me of a troupe of fire dancers Tai-ge took me to see when I first started reeducation with his family.