They built this place to house infected that aren’t responding to Mantis. But why would Mantis suddenly stop working? Siyu, that nurse back at the Mountain, seemed to think it was impossible.
Firsts gave me medicine to make me think I had SS. Why couldn’t they do that to any number of orphans, Thirds, people they don’t care about? Are there drugs to make you think you fell Asleep, too? My throat constricts as I think of my mother in her glass coffin. Of course there are.
Perhaps they started using SS victims for their experiments, giving them placebos instead of Mantis and then claiming they were resisting the Mantis so they had a healthy number of subjects to cart off to the Sanatorium for research. But now they don’t even have to give real SS to the people they want to experiment on. With their SS “simulants,” Firsts can cause an “outbreak” anytime they need to refill the kennels, but with an added benefit: When Thirds watch their families fall to SS, it keeps them scared, just like the bombs the City drops on itself.
And the medical discoveries kept us convinced as to how wise and powerful Firsts are. That maybe, someday, they would find the cure to SS. That their place above us was right. How many dead bodies are attached to each discovery? The Sanatorium is just one big operating table, allowing Firsts to play without anyone being able to complain. Or even realize what is going on.
Contagious SS, this new strain they gave to Cale and Kasim . . . did Firsts invent it in the Sanatorium? Disgust balloons up from my stomach, my throat tightening around the acid boiling up in my esophagus. If they use SS to control the City, are they even trying to find a cure? I doubt it.
I flip through pictures, faster and faster until I can’t even see the faces, just looking for the red and blue SIMULANT and PLACEBO boxes. About half are red, most of those who are actually infected with floor designations in the wet, dark halls I just came from below. They were all denied Mantis, so who knows how many have lost control of their minds from compulsions or solitary confinement? And the rest of the people here, blue SIMULANT boxes blinking over their pictures, are all unknowing, unwilling volunteers in a City-wide medical experiment when there’s nothing wrong with them.
At least Howl wasn’t lying about everything. The Sanatorium really is full of gruesome medical experiments. The thought pops up, a spot of hope in a gaping abyss, but I push it away. Howl doesn’t get any points for telling the truth about one or two things when he lied about literally everything else.
Sitting up, I motion June over, pointing to the picture in front of me of a girl with a prim little smile. “They’re going to kill her. They told her she has SS to force her into the Sanatorium, and now they are going to kill her.”
June scans the rest of the screen with an appraising air, shrugging one shoulder. “Are they running out of Mantis?”
“No. They’re reading all the old medical journals and trying to regain some of what doctors were able to do Before. This girl is a lab rat—a lab rat who allows Firsts to stay in control here.” I slap the table. “How do we fix this?” The same feeling of helplessness that I’ve always felt facing down the Sanatorium makes me feel glued to the table. Paralyzed.
June glances back out into the hall. “How about we get out of here before trying to solve any other problems? You can’t help anyone if Firsts catch us in here.”
The hallway outside is bare once again. Artificial lights glare down on the shirt underneath my jerkin, brown and slippery with sewer sludge, raggedy hair hanging in an uneven mess across my shoulders. June looks equally bedraggled, her gas mask and hood making her look as if she belongs here. Just another terrible science experiment.
Kneeling by the next pull-handle alarm we come across, I stuff my feet back into my boots, pulling the clasps tight against my calves. Next, the gas mask goes on, my face hidden behind its metal screen.
Now the alarm. I rip the glass door open and pull the handle from the wall. The high wail of a siren starts to keen through the building, and the hallway floods with confused Firsts calling to one another to ask what is going on. Three members of the Watch elbow their way up the hall, eyes falling to the broken handle chafing in my hand. I yell to them before they get close, my gas mask distorting my words. “Breakout on four! They’re newly infected!”
The lead Watchman swears and pulls a mask over his face. “How did they get down there? Testing is supposed to be restricted to ten. Actively compulsing?”
I pull at my torn Watch jerkin and muddy clothes. “I wouldn’t say they were friendly.”
“You alert Captain Zhao on two; I’ll set up a block.”
I nod as though I know what he’s talking about and catch June’s arm, the two of us riding the flow of confused uniforms up toward the ground floor and the exit. After a confused shuffle up a few flights of stairs, natural light pours into the cement stairwell. Pushing our way out, June and I run down the hallway, large windows that look out into a courtyard flowered in pinks and reds set into the walls every few feet. A knot of threadbare children stand out in the garden under the outstretched hands of a statue of Yuan Zhiwei. The stone’s red veins look like streams of blood all over his hands and face.
Their heads follow the tide of the panicked Firsts, eyes wide with alarm. An older girl bends down in front of them, wiping away tears. A girl I know.
I slam through the doors and the kids scatter like cockroaches under a light, leaving Peishan alone under Yuan’s hands. She faces me with firm resolution, only a hint of fear in the line of her jaw. Her hair is stubbly and short, different from the sleek locks I remember.
“You need to get out of here.” My monster voice makes her cringe away as it leaks through the gas mask. “Now. Come with me.”
She holds her ground, brow furrowing. “Sevvy?”
Surprised that she recognized my voice, I pull the mask down around my neck, and her face goes grim, more disturbed by me than by the gaping mouth of the mask. “Get away from me, Fourth.” Her eyes run over June, catching on to a blond snarl escaping from June’s hood like a fish on a hook.
“Fourth? Suddenly you care?” The children regroup in the corner farthest from me, eyes wide with tears forgotten in the presence of this new enemy. I can’t leave them here. Not to target practice and dirty syringes. “Come on!” I grab for her hand. “We need to get you all out of here.”
“Why don’t you just shoot me now?” she spits. “I’m not joining Kamar. Murderer.” She twists away, running to stand between me and the kids.
My heart stops. “What are you talking about?”
“What’s the count now, traitor? The people on the bridge. The guards you took out when you escaped. There’s even a body-cam video of you braining one of the soldiers Outside with a tree branch. And Sun Yi-lai . . .”
“I did not kill Sun Yi-lai.” His name rips through me like a rusty scalpel. Sun Yi-lai? Shouldn’t the real Sun Yi-lai be living in some laboratory up on the Steppe, unaware that a rebel used his name to seduce me away from this place? “But I do know that if you don’t get out of here, you will all die.”
Fear and anger war across her face. “We might as well be dead already. We are all infected, thanks to you and your friends in Kamar. Half of the orphanage stopped responding to Mantis after you left.”
Peishan’s file was marked SIMULANT. All those nights in our room when she whispered how afraid she was of the darkness lurking inside herself, and Peishan was never even really infected. The City just wanted that fear to keep her in line. “Peishan, please—” I start.
“You didn’t even stay to tell your pal Sister Shang good-bye.”
My breath catches in my throat. Sister Shang was the last one to see me at the orphanage, right after Tai-ge left. Did the First Circle think she helped me escape? All she did was give me my fake Mantis dosage and a comforting pat on the head. “What did they do to her?”