FIFTEEN
WHEN I COME TO, I’M no longer in the infirmary. I wake in a bed in a private room, still wearing my muddy pants and hooded shirt from Claysoot. It’s dark outside. I’m not sure how much time has passed—a few hours, days. I roll over on my side. My head feels abrasive atop the pillow, as if it is clinging to the fabric. I reach up, and a brittle, coarse landscape greets my hands. It feels wrong. I’ve never had such little hair before, never in all the years I can remember.
I sit up and swing my legs over the edge of the bed. Every muscle in my body aches. My arms feel like cumbersome weights, and a dull throb radiates from the base of my neck. Someone has left bread and fruit on a table beside my pillow, and I scarf it down before stumbling into a small side room beyond the bed. There, I find an outhouse—inside.
There is no tub, but when I twist a series of handles behind a panel of glass, water rains from a pipe mounted on the wall. It reminds me of the miraculous feature Emma and I had discovered back in the deserted building beyond Claysoot. I peel off my dirty clothes and step in. It’s much easier than bathing back home. I stand under the hot stream of water, scrubbing the dirt from my skin and watching the suds drip their way down the drain. The pain in my neck is finally beginning to subside when the water abruptly turns off. I jiggle the handle. Nothing. A small panel illuminates on the wall, flashing a message: Two-minute daily shower allotment used. I grab a towel and dry off, wiping away excess soap. Next time, I will have to be faster.
A pile of clean clothes sits on the bathroom counter: an Order uniform. The material is heavy, extremely durable. I wonder how they’ve stitched it. The pants aren’t half bad, but the top fits oddly. The collar is too tight, softly choking me, and the sleeves and body are narrow, causing the material to cling to my skin. I feel absurdly rigid, as though my movements are restricted and my neck limited to look only ahead.
In a mirror above the sink, I see my new haircut for the first time. My forehead now appears too large, and I look dull, my gray eyes no longer able to hide behind long bangs. My neck still hurts and the uniform isn’t helping. I tug the top off and leave it on the floor. Then I crawl back in bed and sleep easily, pressed into the bedsheets as if they could massage away the pain.
The next time I wake, the sun is just rising. I sit up in bed, my limbs still tight and sore, and pull on my boots before retrieving the other half of my uniform from the bathroom floor. I should find Emma. I still need to tell her what Frank told me about Harvey and his project. We could get breakfast together, talk over our meals, and attempt to block out all of Union Central around us. If we try hard enough, maybe it will be like we are back in Claysoot, where things were easy. Maybe.
As I approach my door, I hear voices on the other side: Marco and Frank.
“He’s still out?” Frank asks. I feel a surge of gratitude, knowing he’s checking in on me.
“It’s been roughly twenty-four hours, but that’s pretty standard,” Marco says. “He should be up soon.”
“I want to know the moment he is. In the meantime, get me answers. I’m too busy with Harvey to deal with this right now, and, so help me, I do not want all this hard work crumbling because of one missed Heist.”
“I understand, sir.”
“Good,” Frank says. His footsteps click down the hallway, but then they pause. “Are you coming?”
“I haven’t slept in a while. First the boy, then that meeting you called yesterday. I thought maybe I could take a break.”
“You don’t deserve one,” Frank says. His voice is still as buttery and smooth as ever, but it makes the obvious authority in his words that much more powerful. “We’re receiving an update from Evan’s team before they head out to the forest. I want you there.”
Marco sighs. “Yes, sir.”
I listen to their footsteps trail off, and then open my door a crack. The hallway is empty. I try to comprehend what this means.
Yesterday Frank told me I was a miracle, a mystery, the potential key to saving our town, but while talking to Marco just now, he hadn’t seemed nearly as pleased with this possibility. If I’m honest with myself, he sounded terrified by the idea.
I realize my hands are shaking. Frank is upset because he hasn’t been able to free the people of Claysoot or make sense of my escaping the Heist yet. That’s all. That must be it. I’m being irrational and suspicious because everything is so new here and I’m still trying to adjust.
I repeat this to myself as I leave my room in search of Emma.
The door at the end of my hallway is locked. I halfheartedly wave my wrist in front of the silver box as I saw Frank do when he led me to the dining hall, and to my surprise, the door slides open.
I walk through, staring at my hand. There is the faintest purple bruise on the inside of my wrist. I must have been granted access to these doors during my Cleansing. How, I’m not sure, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.
I wander the hallways until I come across a stairwell. I take it to the main level, again using my wrist to gain access, and walk to the dining hall by memory. I grab some food and find Emma eating oatmeal and sipping a hot cup of tea. After she reacts to my haircut, running her hand over my scalp and teasing me endlessly, I fill her in. I tell her about Harvey and the Laicos Project, Frank and his goals, the curious conversation I just overheard. Her fists ball up the way mine had when I tell her about Harvey’s experiment.
“I’m being paranoid, right?” I ask when I recount Frank’s tone outside my bedroom, how he sounded upset that the Heist failed to take me on my eighteenth birthday.
“I don’t know,” Emma says. “If he’s trying to solve the Heist and free Claysoot, he should be happy you weren’t Heisted, not worried.”
“Exactly what I thought.” I touch Ma’s letter in my pocket. The answer Frank seeks is written on that parchment, but I suddenly feel that sharing the note would be a terrible idea.
Emma looks down at her tray. “They think we’re dead, don’t they?” Her voice is dull and flat.
“Who?”
“My mother. Maude. All of them. Blaine told you they planted replacements. If he’s right, bodies went back, like they always do, and they think we’re dead.”
I picture Carter, collapsed and sobbing on a bed in the Clinic. She’d had a baby girl. She wasn’t supposed to lose her child. I don’t answer Emma’s question, but we both know the answer is yes.
“Let’s go for a walk,” I say. “We could use some fresh air. And maybe we can dig up some details on this place in the process.”
“What exactly are you looking for?”
“Why Harvey even started the Laicos Project. What kills climbers in the Outer Ring. Why the Heisted boys appear here in Union Central.”
She smirks at me. “And you think you’ll find those answers on a walk?”
“Who knows. Walls talk sometimes. Think of how much we learned from Harvey’s wanted poster the day we arrived in Taem.”
The dining hall begins to empty out, Order members returning to their duties.
“Will you always be obsessed with the truth?” Emma looks at me, her brows raised.
I shrug. “Until I see it with my own eyes, I guess. And you said you wanted answers just as badly, back when you followed me over the Wall.”
“I did. But now look where we are. I want it to be like it was before we left. If I could do it over, I’d stop searching and just be with you, Gray. You weren’t Heisted and so maybe we could have been together in Claysoot. Forever. Like the birds.”
“I would have been Heisted when I turned nineteen,” I point out. “And we’re not birds.”
“I know. But I wish we were. We could fly away. Right now.”
She stares at her tray again, and for a second, I’m afraid she might start crying. I reach out and take her hand in mine. “We can’t do that. Not yet. But some more answers, the truth, and then I promise we can fly anywhere you want.”
Her customary half smile comes first, the one I can never fully read. And then she leans across the table and kisses me, a quick, tempting thing that leaves me hungry for more. As we leave the dining hall, my heart races, and not because of answers waiting to be discovered.
It’s Emma. It’s always been Emma.