I shake my head, trying to banish from my mind the only other time that has been said to me. “Here”—I offer my shoulder—“lean on me and I’ll try to get you free. The Menghu are coming. I need your help to stop them. I need the cure.”
She ignores me, the smile creeping up larger as she reaches out to touch my hand and clasp my fingers. Her skin feels wafer-thin and dry, as if all that’s left of her is paper and old memories. “You escaped the City. You must have. I used to hear your voice with that Second family when they brought you up here to see me. Waiting to hear you was the only thing that kept me alive. I knew one day you would realize . . .” Her voice starts to buck and rear, as though she’s losing control. A tear slides down her cheek, and the hand in mine gains strength, clutching at me.
Gui-hua takes a breath, rattling in her lungs as she lets it out. “You know about the cure?”
I nod, her eyes scorching mine in intensity.
“The Circle already had the cure to SS. I’m a fool.” She stops, coughs racking her lungs. “They told me to stop my research. SS cases started to crop up in the City, and I wanted to solve it, didn’t want to try to hide it from the Seconds and Thirds like they told us to. I didn’t realize Firsts were the ones infecting children and families. The Circle told me it was a waste of time after all these years to search for a cure at all, that my talents were needed elsewhere. When I kept going. . . . That’s when you fell Asleep. It was a warning. To make me stop.
“But with your eyes closed, your heartbeat so faint . . .” She stops again, and this time it’s emotion, not her dusty vocal cords, taking control of the words. “How could I stop looking for the cure?”
Warmth blooms inside of me, tears washing her face to a blur. Is Howl’s story true, then? She didn’t pump my veins full of SS as a last insult to our family before she defected, only to find the Watch waiting to drag her to the Arch. Mother came back, knowing she would probably get caught to save me. She didn’t make a cure for Outsiders. Not for the Mountain. It was for me. The years of stinging hurt rear up inside of me, rebelling. But I push them back. Was Gui-hua Jiang, the traitor, the child-killer, really just trying to protect her daughter? Her fingers closing around my wrist feel like they are meant to be an embrace, but she’s cold, her fragile grip breaking as she sags farther down.
Mother’s eyes focus on the leather thong around my neck, and her trembling hand jerks toward the shard of jade glowing red in the morning light.
“Dr. Yang.” Something like fear flowers in her clear black eyes and she tries to lift her head. “You know him, or you couldn’t have that. He took it. . . .” Her hands twitch against the restraints I am trying to unfasten. “Listen to me.” Her voice gains strength, sickly vibrato thinning to a murmur. “You need to leave now. Run. North. Port North. To the family.”
“I don’t understand.” I take the hand that is grasping toward me, holding it tight.
“He must be here. He knows he needs me to reproduce the cure. He never could quite put things together.”
The intensity in her expression is lethal, her whole face caving, burning to feed her last reserves of energy into me. “He took me to the Mountain. But when we succeeded, he wouldn’t let me leave. Dr. Yang didn’t want peace; he wanted power, to use the cure to control. I hid the formula from him and ran. Hid until I could get back to you. The family . . .” She trails off, eyes wandering as though she’s lost the thread of what she was saying.
“When I got back here, Dr. Yang had gone before the Circle to say that I had formulated a cure and was going to use it to overthrow them. They arrested me. But not because they wanted the cure. The Circle already had a cure.” Her voice fades, despair trickling down her face in wet trails. “They wouldn’t give it to anyone but their own. If you go to the family—”
“Mother! What family? What are you talking about?” The last restraints open, and she sinks down to the floor, head on my shoulder as I try to support her weight. The trailing tubes pulling at her are starting to show red feedback. You have to live! I want to shout at her. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do! If I can just get her out of here, we can go to . . . My mind stops. Go where? No one is going to help us.
“Your father . . . We escaped. . . . We tried to escape. But Dr. Yang was waiting for us when we came for you and your sister.” She looks down at her body, shudders flickering through her like an earthquake. “They threatened Dr. Yang. Told him not speak of a cure to anyone, then put me to Sleep. Left me to rot.”
Her words are becoming twisted with tremors, almost impossible to decipher one from the next. “Go. Port North. Find them. Don’t tell him. Don’t tell Yang He-ping. . . .”
“I don’t understand!”
Her mouth curves into the smile that I remember. “I love you, little rose. Now run.”
Her shakes quiet, and her hand’s white-knuckled grip on mine goes slack. “Mother?” I ask, my voice tiny and insignificant, dwarfed by the huge room, by the blood pooling underneath us on the floor and all over my hands. Her beautiful black eyes dim and stare out above me, unseeing. Empty, as though I can see the space where her life used to be and is no longer.
Alone. Again. With no answers. Just an ache in my chest, my heart beating faster and faster as if it wants to follow her wherever she went.
Cold metal sears an icy ring at the nape of my neck, and the quiet calm of Dr. Yang’s voice scrapes against my nerves like a razor blade.
“Thank you, Jiang Sev. That was just what I needed.”
CHAPTER 42
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” The cylinder jabs harder into my neck as I try to inch away.
“Getting what I need to finish this whole mess. She was so selfish, your mother. I didn’t realize she had hidden our work until I had already destroyed the First Circle—or rather, everyone who knew how to perform the cure procedure.”
“You are the one who murdered all those Firsts? And let them blame her?” The tears in my voice are just beginning to wet the conflict raging inside of me. Sorrow for a whole life lived hating my mother, anger that I couldn’t do anything to save her, just like she couldn’t do anything to save me. Angry to be alone again. Holding her close against my chest, I squeeze my eyes closed, tears dripping down my cheeks. It’s hard to concentrate on what Dr. Yang is saying, my brain screaming at me to do something when all I can do is hold her wasted body closer.
She’s dead. And the man who did it is about to kill me, too.
“Firsts use Mantis to control their labor force, even bombing their own City to keep up the appearance of being at war. To keep the infections spreading. They could have given the cure to everyone, but they saved it for themselves. Killing them was justice.” I can feel him shifting closer. “The whole Third Quarter might as well be a slave camp. And no one can complain. Not while my First compatriots control Mantis.”
“What does that have to do with you?”
“It has everything to do with all of us. Firsts control the City with SS, with Mantis. More than the City. Fourths out on the farms, convicted because they see that something is wrong.” His voice is grim, but respectful. Envious. “Thirds shelter behind Firsts and Seconds like a protective shield. Believing they are comrades, each quarter performing their appointed duty. But it’s all a lie. Parents down in the Third Quarter bring their compulsing children to doctors who deal out sugar pills so First medical experiments can continue in the Sanatorium. Third workers don’t know that the heli-planes dropping SS bombs on their families take off from Second airfields. Even if they do suspect, how can they fight? It has to stop.”