My hand closes around the necklace, the shard of jade cutting into my hand as it presses against the long white tooth. Everything seems so still, as if the world has stopped. “If Howl is from here, then how did he end up in the City?” As the Chairman’s son, no less. What she’s saying simply isn’t possible.
“Dr. Yang brought Gui-hua to the Mountain.” Sole startles back when I stand up at my mother’s name. “They were so close to finding the cure, and there Howl was, ten years old, no parents to protect him. Dr. Yang infected him, then they used him as the trial. They succeeded. Your mother disappeared the next day with all the documentation. She went to the City to save you and never came back. Whatever Gui-hua and Dr. Yang discovered together, Dr. Yang couldn’t duplicate it without their notes.
“Howl was all they had. Dr. Yang waited until he was older, to see if it stuck. When he turned sixteen, they decided the tests weren’t enough, They needed more. Another person who was cured to compare him to or to dig deeper. They didn’t have the first, so Dr. Yang set a date for an operation. A dissection, really, to look at what Gui-hua did during that first procedure. Dr. Yang didn’t even pretend Howl was going to live through it, he just assumed Howl would be happy to give himself up for the good of everyone else. Howl went out on patrols the day before it was supposed to happen and didn’t come back.
“The Menghu tracked him down Outside, but he wouldn’t come back. Howl could hold his own against any of them. Dr. Yang managed to talk to him, convinced him to help run Mantis back to the Mountain until some other solution presented itself.”
“And then he met me.” My whole body is numb. “Some other solution.” I was Howl’s ticket back home. If Dr. Yang had me to dissect, then Howl would be free.
“He took the promotion into Nei-ge and went straight back to Kasim and his other Menghu friends.”
I can’t even hear the rest of what she is trying to say because a deeper, uglier memory crawls up out of my brain, context finally crystal clear. You know it’s going to come down to one of you in the end. That was what Dr. Yang said. And Howl answered, Yes.
Howl knew. I’ll bet Dr. Yang started sharpening his knives the moment we got here. It explains how well Howl fit in, how quickly “we” meant the Mountain instead of the City. Why I never heard a word of remorse for leaving. Not about family, friends. Nothing.
The fear I saw in Helix and Cale’s faces when Howl stood up to them suddenly takes on a frightening animal quality. If Howl isn’t who I think he is . . . then who is he really?
No.
Howl had the whole time we were in the forest to slip and show corruption lurking underneath his chipper exterior. If he were truly as horrible as Sole is saying he is, I would have seen it. I would know.
My thoughts flick back and forth, trying to speed through all of my conversations with Howl and Dr. Yang until something inside me snaps. I can’t think anymore. My hands are shaking and my legs are unsteady under me as I back toward the door.
“I can’t believe it. I knew Howl in the City.” Sole looks up as I cut her off, my voice breaking uncomfortably close to a sob. “He had parents, a family . . . People there knew him. Even I knew who he was.”
There’s nothing we can do to save my family. There never was. I push Howl’s words away and stumble out into the hallway. “It can’t be true. Howl would never . . .” The painting of the Chairman’s son hanging across from my mother. I’ve seen it thousands of times. It is Howl. It has to be.
She’s the only one like me.
I thought he’d meant we were both . . . but if Sole is telling the truth, then he really meant . . .
Sole bows her head, voice shaking like an old woman. “I wish it weren’t.”
I run.
CHAPTER 36
I HAVE TO FIND HIM.
I have to concentrate to keep from chanting the words out loud. The Core glows with the flush of lanterns and fairy lights. High above the crowded room, long streamers hang down in a pavilion, the top so high that the twinkling lights don’t touch the white, filmy fabric.
Tables surround the amphitheater where people are talking and laughing. The fountain centered on the cafeteria entrance is turned on and spouting red. A beautifully made-up woman leans down to dip her glass into it. It looks like blood.
I hardly recognize any of the Menghu because they are all so clean. They are easy to pick out, though, candlelight glinting on the dead fingers clasping at their wrists and necks.
Have to trust him. Howl wouldn’t lie to me. Not about who he is, not about being cured, not about . . . I can’t make myself finish the thought. Because if he did bring me here to take his place as the cure, then that’s exactly what he would have lied about. Everything. I never would have followed him out of the City if I hadn’t believed the mark on his hand.
Dancing couples crowd the sunken amphitheater floor, obscuring the golden star seal with a haze of swirling skirts. Masks obscure all of their faces, jeweled, feathered, and painted alike. It looks like a dream, a scene from another world. Maybe dancing is what this place was built for. Before the world revolved around SS.
Patting my blond wig down a little farther over my forehead, I stick to the shadows, black sweatshirt borrowed from Sole painfully casual in comparison to the sparkling scene before me. He isn’t anywhere. Not in the amphitheater seats, not at the tables. Leaning back against the wall, I bump my fist against the clear glass in frustration. Why should I believe Sole? Staring off into space as if the world the rest of us live in isn’t what she sees. The box full of trophies stolen from her victims. The frightening drawing I found on the desk. Can I trust someone so obviously damaged?
No.
The dancers below stop and clap as the song ends, the swell of instruments marking the beginning of a new one over the speakers. Most of the dancers remain on the floor, but stay on the outside, watching. Waiting for something.
A girl with fire-red hair flounces to the center, her black skirt twirling up around her hips as people laugh at her bravado, clapping and cheering her on. Rena.
She twirls again and strikes a pose, pointing into the crowd. Chuckles echo up to me as the crowd pushes a young man forward into the center of the floor. He’s laughing behind his black mask, shaking his head as Rena circles him like a shark. Finally, he stands up tall, throws a hand out toward her as the music starts up. A demand.
Rena’s bright coppery head glints in the lantern light as she coyly walks up to him. She lashes out suddenly, kicking his hand, but he catches her foot and draws it toward him, pulling her out into a split. The onlookers cheer as they start to circle the floor.
I can’t help but move closer, drawn by the dramatic strikes and pauses, kicking in and out between each other’s legs, her long ponytail snapping back and forth as he leads her across the floor. Hiding, I feel as though I’m just on the edge of something important, something that I should understand, but can’t.
They pause in the corner of the floor near my hiding place, arms wide as they pose together, cheers following them in ripples from around the steps. The young man lunges, backing away, and she follows, running after. And that’s when I see it.
Stuck through the top button of his shirt. A red flower. My red flower.
Howl’s eyes are dark behind his mask, the intensity between the two of them like a rubber band twisted and ready to snap. They look as though they were born in each other’s arms. Born here, born Menghu. I can’t tear my eyes away, dread and despair seeping in through my nose and mouth, the very air around me toxic. I keep waiting for clouds to start swirling down from the ceiling or shadows to leap out and rake at me with their sharp claws, but this isn’t a hallucination. This is real.
Helix’s voice rings in my head: You are going to die. You don’t even know why.
Howl, who can’t dance. Howl, who can’t shoot a gun. Howl, who says we are our own team, not a part of this place. Howl, who told me he was from the City, and that we were going to escape this place.
Howl, who brought me here to die.