The Ward

9


6:00 A.M., SATURDAY


Crossing town is a pain—ramshackle rooftop suspension bridges the whole way. Old, rickety things, thrown together early on, when no one knew if the waters would keep rising. And though I’m only one quad north of Derek, the ’Racks are as far east as possible before you hit open ocean.

So . . . lots and lots of bridges.

I grip the cord on either side, fighting against the wobble, and try to ignore how old these planks are. I try not to look down, either. A hundred feet under the bridge, a wide-open canal flows where a street used to run. Instead I look ahead, to a view that’s clear for miles. Miles and miles of water. Glancing left, just a few blocks south, I can see where Ter lives. A massive black tower, fitted with electricity. The Trump Card. Its windows are dark at this hour though, even if it is the Ward’s swankiest residential building.

Our well-to-do citizens aren’t that well-to-do.

I face my route once more, continuing the slog across one bridge, then another, until thick smoke ahead stops me short. Following its trail, I find the fire, then I listen.

I groan when I hear it, the sounds of woozy laughter.

A beggar campout up ahead, atop the roof of a sickhouse for patients who are no longer contagious. They’ve set up tents pitched from old, holey blankets, around a metal pit filled with burning planks stolen from bridges or boardwalks. This sickhouse isn’t much different from a homeless shelter—sick with family don’t end up here. Mostly these folk are drifters, hopped up on pain meds that work a little too well—“daggers,” they’re called, and they’re pricey. I should know. Meds don’t come free, not even at the sickhouses.

The nearer I get, the tighter I hold on to the canteen at my belt. Of all the times I’ve had water jacked, this would be the worst. I quicken my pace. As I walk by, I hear them calling out to me for “just a drop.”

If they only knew where I got this fresh.

When I’m a hundred feet from the ’Racks, I breathe easier. Up ahead, they loom dreary and gray, but it’s home. One tall building built atop an even taller building, entirely of stone slabs. The government erected it right after the Wash Out, keeping few comforts in mind. It was a place for dryness and warmth, no more. No waterfront views for us, not the first four floors anyway—all built without doors or windows. A safety precaution.

Rough to get into, though, seeing as Aven and I live on the first floor. Gotta climb the fire escape up five levels, only to climb down five. Don’t usually mind it myself, but after the night I’ve had, I’m not at my best.

Placing one foot after another, I hoist myself up the ladder to the fifth floor, where I can cut through a window. A little nudging and it unjams, and I swing myself into an old, empty storage room. From there I make for the hallway, where there’s a trapdoor for access to all the lower-level corridors.

I climb down those skinny stairs another four flights, landing on the first floor. Apartment 105, only three doors down on the left. A few candles in glass jars line the hallway. Instead of light fixtures, periscopes line the ceilings. Some show views of the roof, the others, views of the boardwalk. I take Aven out here sometimes to remind her what the sun looks like.

Reaching into my pocket, I remember: my suit is at Derek’s; my key is in my suit. Ugh. It’s not even like we really need a key; that would mean that you have something worth locking up. No one’s going to be stealing a sick girl like Aven, that’s for sure. Beyond her, I’ve got nothing of value.

Nonetheless, we keep the door locked, which means I have to knock.

I don’t like making her walk on her own—she’s not steady on her feet these days—but the alternatives are limited: sleep on the floor or go back to Derek’s.

I tap quietly, then a little harder when Aven doesn’t come. After five more minutes of light knocking, unruly paranoia sets in.

What if she’s gone? What if the doctor overestimated how much time she has left?

An image of her sprawled across the floor—she could have been there for hours and I’d never have known it—ties knots in my stomach. A jolt of adrenaline powers up my legs, even though I have no place, no reason, to run; I just want Aven to open the door. I lean into it, rapping harder.

Finally, it creaks open and five twiggy fingers wrap around the edge, dotted with the purple nail polish she found years ago during one of her abandoned-building penny searches. In spite of the Blight, there’s still a hint of the old her. Just as quickly as it came, the adrenaline drains away and I’m left with that burning feeling like I ran a marathon. Then I can breathe, and I realize that I hadn’t been.

“Hmm?” She’s disoriented. Her eyelids droop so heavy it’s a wonder she can see at all. A curtain of wispy hair, so blond it’s nearly silver, dangles across her face and hides her from view. Even as she is—skin too sallow, features too sharp from poor nutrition, eyes too large—she’s beautiful. None of that matters. I love her so much, everything on the outside is irrelevant.

“Morning, Feathers,” I say too cheerfully, trying to gauge if my obscenely early wake-up call has somehow placed her closer to death’s door, though I know it’s irrational.

Aven doesn’t say a word, just moves away from the door.

I step in and close it behind me, flipping on the flashlight from my tool belt. The strange egg-shaped beam bounces round the room, and I use it to draw Aven a path to her bed. We walk together, one of my arms wrapped around her waist, the other steadying her by the shoulder.

She crawls in, angling her head so that there’s no pressure on the tumor.

“How’s the noggin?” I sit on the bed next to her, pulling the covers up so that she’s warm enough—the night’s still cold.

No answer. Not a good sign.

“Why didn’t you comm me?” I ask. “That’s why you have the thing. I could’ve had a neighbor check in . . .”

“It’s not so bad,” she insists, but her chin drops ever so slightly and her eyelids flutter open and closed.

I know Aven’s every gesture. This one means the hurt is worse than she’s letting on. “I’m getting the Dilameth,” I tell her, and I reach my arm under the bed and grab the orange bottle.

Daggers. Just one of these pills costs more than a month’s worth of protein bars. They’re so potent, Blight victims, along with half the city’s beggars, love ’em, if they can get their hands on the stuff.

I fish one out of the bottle. Aven opens her mouth and I drop it under her tongue.

The pill dissolves almost instantly, gets circulated into her bloodstream. Within minutes she’ll be comfortable. I watch it start to work; the furrow between her brows relaxes and she’s smiling, almost.

This will last about eight hours. Dilameth shuts off the brain’s pain receptors—it does something so that the body registers pain as pleasure. That’s why it’s such a popular drug. You can have the tumors anywhere, at any stage, and it works just the same. Daggers won’t fix anything, though. The tumor’s still a death sentence.

“Is it summer yet?” Aven says, through a yawn.

If I didn’t know her so well, I might think that the tumor lodged in her brain has finally taken its toll on her mental faculties. But I do know her. This is her. What’s left of her, anyway.

“Hate to disappoint, darlin’.”

She looks at me through still half-closed eyes. “Yes, it is summer,” she says, resting her hand on my knee.

“I’m sorry I woke you,” I say quietly. “You feel better now?”

Aven ignores the question. “The race went late tonight.” Then she sees something disturbing, like my face, for instance. “What’s this?” She looks a little closer at my temple, pulling her tangled, whitish hair to one side. Her hazel eyes go wide. She stifles a gasp. “What happened?”

I want to tell her everything. The race, the accident. Water.

And isn’t this awful . . . but most of all I want to tell her about Derek. Would it be too much to ask? To be a girl for five minutes? I’d tell her how he saved me, sort of. How afterward I was naked, though it was much tamer than it sounds.

But I can’t tell her this, because she’s dying, and somehow that means I need to shut my life up in a box from her. For her. How do you tell someone who’s three months from dead that you’re all boo-hoo because your crush doesn’t fancy you? You don’t. They’ll always have bigger things to worry about than your sorry love life.

Aven eyes the largest of the cuts on my face, her fingers dangerously close. Instead of answering, I just say, “Hey, easy—you don’t want to touch,” and dodge the graze of her hand. I slide off the bed, thinking I should take a look at the abstract art that’s been made of my face.

I decide against it. Only going to make me depressed. Not only do I have to go to the Tank tonight as a loser, but I have to go looking like this. Now, I’m not vain, but a girl’s gotta draw the line somewhere.

“Ren!” Aven snaps with more gusto than I thought she had left in her. “Earth to Ren?”

“Hmm?”

“What’s wrong with your face?”

“What’s wrong with your face?” I answer, knowing she’ll laugh. But I’m in a bind. I don’t want to tell her how close I was to The End.

“An accident. No big deal.” Not quite a lie, but nearly. If she knew how bad it was . . .

“You hurt?” Her voice is thin as a breeze, but I can tell she wants to ask more questions. I cut her off before she gets too worked up.

“Don’t worry, I’m made of bricks.” I almost died of them, too. “I lost the race. . . .”

For just a moment, Aven scrunches her face up tight, confusion registering. Then she shrugs. “We’ll get by.” She says it with such confidence that I have to think my bedridden fourteen-year-old sister is stronger than I know.

Am I really not going to talk about the fresh find?

Screw the Codes and Violations Handbook. Something tells me a fourteen-year-old girl, nearly dead from the Blight, might compromise the mission. I may not feel right talking to her about Derek, but this . . . this I can tell her.

“We won’t have to.” I kneel down on the floor and cross my arms over the quilt, resting my chin on my wrists. “Aven, I’ve got a secret.”

“Oooh.” She smiles, barely. “I hope it’s going to make me feel better about your face looking like a scratching post for Moo.”

“Don’t make me sad,” I say. “I miss Moo.” She loved the spotted stray tabby more, I’m sure of it. The cat came around when we lived in the orphanage, and we haven’t seen him since we left.

She doesn’t say anything, just closes her eyes, smiling. “Mooooo.” A giggle breaks away from her, thin and gone too fast. When she opens her eyes again, all she says is, “Secret.”

I unclip my canteen from the utility belt.

“I’ve found it,” I whisper.

“Found what?”

Pulling one of her hands closer, I fold it into mine, and rub my thumbs over her candy-colored nails. “Fresh.”

Even while burying my face into our clasped hands, the word sounds as clean as the thing itself.

Her eyes widen, her brows lift up. “You’re serious.”

“I’m serious.”

“Did you taste it? What was it like? When will it be—” She’s grinning as the questions tumble out. Almost immediately, though, she falls into a wheezing fit. Months in bed have destroyed her stamina. Doesn’t stop her grinning, though. The gasping becomes laughter that dissolves into another bout of rasping. Every time she so much as snickers, it morphs into a cough, and the ludicrousness of it all—her utter inability to even break down in giddy, side-splitting joy—sets her laughing-wheezing, laughing harder into the bed.

I follow her lead, cracking up from watching her unable to talk, unable to laugh, unable to not laugh. Once I finally get control of myself, the fits start all over again. It’s sad and horribly funny at the same time, and we’re cackling like maniacs, because I’ve found one of the two things that life cannot exist without, and yet it does. Right here. In the Ward.

This goes on until I have to remind her to inhale. “Deep breaths,” I insist, which seems to calm us both down a bit. “Yes, I drank it. Tasted like pure nothingness. And no, I don’t know when it will be piped off.”

Then the fit dies down fully, and when Aven speaks again, her tone is sober. “I won’t be around to taste it, will I?”

Do I give it to her? The CVH would say an adamant “no.” The fresh should really be tested—I know from memory what section 72(a) states:

Any and all findings from Government scouting missions* [*see 21(a), (b), and (c) for term “Government scouting missions”: [(a) approved, (b) financed, or (c) assisted]] must be registered immediately with DI Headquarters, where it will be sent out for testing of infectious foreign bodies.

I shouldn’t give it to her. Infectious foreign bodies don’t sound like a barrel of fun.

On the other hand, I did taste it, albeit accidentally. And I’m fine. If there were something wrong with it, I’d be upchucking over the john right now.

Okay, then.

I unscrew the cap to my canteen. Drops of water trickle along the sides. “Taste,” I say, pushing it into her hand.

Aven sits up slowly. “You have some?”

“No, I’m giving you liquor and getting you drunk. Yes, I have some, silly face. Drink. Not too much . . . I need some as a sample to send to headquarters.”

She takes a sip; it dribbles down her chin.

Pulling away, “It does taste like nothing,” she says. “Why, it doesn’t taste too much different from our drainage water.” But she drinks the canteen nearly dry nonetheless. Leaves me just enough to get to Dunn.

“Fine, then,” I say in mock insult. “Give it back.”

“No.” She laughs. “It’s wonderful. I’m sorry. I know what it took to find this. And now you don’t have to work for them anymore.” She smiles, and it dawns on me.

What happens now that I’ve found fresh? I need this job. . . . Without it I can’t care for Aven. The DI has to keep me on as a mole. We can’t afford otherwise. And the report I missed . . .

What’s he gonna do? The thought makes me lose my balance, sends fear all the way to my feet. Glancing down at my wrist for my cuffcomm, I remember it’s busted.

My backup. It’s around here somewhere.

The mattress. I flop onto my bed and reach between the popped springs and the stuffing falling out on one side. Finding it there—whew—I pull it out, see the neon-blue screen blinking frantically.

The comm beeps twice.

Brack—it’s been beeping for the last three hours, but stuffed in my mattress I couldn’t hear it. Quickly, I flip it open—I’ve got one message, from Dunn:

Potential Stat. One Violation at the ’Racks, 17:00. Prepare to report afterward.

A raid? Here?

I don’t like the DI this close to my home. Despite the fact that I work for them.

Aven and I are silent. Still, I don’t consider telling her about the raid. She’ll insist they’re coming for her, even though she’s not contagious, and never fall asleep. Instead, I set my alarm for ten to five, so I can warn her just before it happens.

“Ren?” she calls to me from the bed.

I arch my head back so I can see her better. “Yeah?” I answer, watching her as she stares at the ceiling like there’s a movie playing up there.

“I can feel it getting closer.”

In my throat, a sigh catches, stuck there. Waiting. Every once in a while, something dark gets the best of her, like it is now, and I hate it.

Aven talking like this kills me. I go teary and numb, all at once. As though my brain shuts down at the very thought of her . . . not being around anymore. It can’t even think that word. It’s a curse.

I watch the ceiling too, but I see no movie. “No, it’s not,” I say. I insist. I’ll force it to be true if I have to. “That’s just tired you’re feeling.”

“Okay,” she says. Then, a little bit more determined, “Okay.”


“Water, Ren?” Aven groans only an hour or two later.

I jerk awake, body buzzed from too little sleep, and stagger to her bed. I feel her palms, try to calm the razor-sharp queasiness I get in my stomach whenever she randomly wakes up like this. Her hands are usually cold as glass, but not now. They’re hot. Sticky. She’s red-cheeked and breathing through her mouth. When I nudge her slightly, she clutches at my wrist.

“It hurts?” I ask, confused. The Dilameth should still be working. . . .

She shakes her head. “Hot.”

I nod, and hurry to bring her rainwater from the drainage system.

In the bathroom, I light a candle to see the glass tank. This is how the cheaper buildings do it. It’s a simple setup: tank + sand = filtered water. The rain passes down the roof pipes, into each home’s individual filtration system to be cleaned by the sand. Too bad it don’t work with brack. Funneled rooftop rainwater makes up 100 percent of our water supply.

I fill a glass under the spigot and return to her in the main room. Pushing it into her hands, I feel her forehead again. There’s nothing I can do. Not right now, anyway. Without last night’s winnings, we’ve got no money for another visit from the doctor. A few more hours, I tell myself, thinking of my meeting with Officer Cory, when I can get the green he promised.

I crawl back onto my mattress and listen to the uneven rise, then fall, of her breathing.

Maybe it’s from lack of sleep, but when I shut my eyes again, I start to imagine Aven’s a plant—rosemary, or mint, something that grows in land. I give her water because that’s all I can do, but air and water ain’t all a living thing needs.

I want to give her sunlight, but no one bottles that.