The Ward

18


2:00 A.M., SUNDAY


Fifty-one Rough Block and Mad Ave.

Prime location, right off the most popular boardwalk east of Central Bay. Prime apartment number, too: 1A. First floor. No walking up any stairs, or across any suspension bridges; sea-level apartments have use of the narrows—planked sidewalks for first-floor tenants. So they don’t step out onto water, and all.

The walk is maze free, as most of the vendors are sleeping. But in a few hours, they’ll all be selling hotcakes and oatmeal. My mouth can practically taste it, I’m so hungry. Thirsty, too. When I see Rough Block, though, I can push aside the wanting.

I turn left into the gutterway, where the only sounds come from the groaning narrows underfoot. At 51, I knock. Loud. I’m not going for quiet. Callum’s probably sleeping, and I want him to hear me.

A few more knocks, but no one comes. I can’t help but examine the padlock.

Maybe he’s not even here.

The cuffcomm at my wrist reminds me that we don’t have much time—three hours before Chief gets to quad nine. I need to know if Callum can do anything for Aven; otherwise I’m not about to go switching teams. Making enemies with the DI ain’t on my to-do list, but if it’ll help Aven . . .

In which case, Callum won’t mind if I have a look around. Get some answers on my own.

Most apartments use the same standard type of lock, as the original keys for the knobs got lost. First I tug, making sure he hasn’t left it unlocked, which he hasn’t. Not surprised at that; he’s a West Isle boy. Probably thinks the whole of the Ward is crawling with criminals. Which it ain’t. Just some of the Ward.

I pull out that paper clip he used for the money and fold it up so that the loops make a T. If he’s as desperate for this information as I think he is, I doubt he’ll hold a little lock picking against me. Not with what I’ve got to tell him.

Then I take off one boot and use the edge to push the steel wire together. Sliding my foot back into the boot, still snug from its earlier dunking, I push the new-and-improved paper clip turned lock pick into the padlock. After some jiggling around, the lock pops open, and I walk right in.

The room is dark. It feels empty. When I flip the light switch, nothing happens—he did say he was trying to stay off the grid. Soon my eyes adjust, and I cross the apartment toward what looks like blackout curtains. I throw them open, letting just enough light from the walk in so that I can see, and I turn around.

The walls . . .

They must be under there somewhere, but I can’t see them. Every inch of space is covered with topographical maps, not just of the city today, but of the city under the water. Manhattan. Pictures, too. From over the years. Black and whites of the skyscrapers, only three of which I recognize. The Empire Clock, the Slant, the Chrysler. Color photos in neons, the buildings lit in ways I’ve never seen. Like electric three-tiered cakes, each frosted in fluorescence. Awful waste of energy. But imagine racing with those lights on. Damn.

It’d be like running at light speed. Intergalactic travel here on Earth. Brainbuzzed with just the idea of it, I scan the rest of the walls, distracted. A photo catches my eye.

It’s me.

Age thirteen. Scrawny, no build, no muscles. Barely even the beloved ass that follows me around everywhere. The good ole days. Hair wild as ever, though, and the same freckled, dusky skin. Black eyes.

The picture is three years old, taken right before I got netted. Before I offered to work for them and Aven found her way to a sickhouse.

Looking at it feels slimy. Like he’s been watching me. I understand why Callum has this photo—while he was working with the Blues, he must’ve taken it from my file so he’d know who to approach. Far as I know, I’m the only mole in town scouting for fresh. The others, whoever they are, keep tabs on potentially contagious citizens who could be spreading the disease around.

Still. This picture reminds me that Callum’s in this for his own reasons as well.

Looking at it unnerves me, so I tug the picture from its tack and shove it into my boot. He don’t need it anymore, and I want it back.

Where is he? As I look around, it occurs to me that there isn’t even a bed. There must be another room. I can’t find another door though, with every square inch covered in paper. I step backward—my calf hits something. Something heavy. I feel it tip over with a dull thump, and when I spin around, I see a cloth laundry bag open on the floor.

But there aren’t clothes inside.

Articles. Spilling out, everywhere. They’re each enveloped in see-through film, probably for protection. I pick one up, the one that looks the oldest. Through the film I can see the yellowed paper, its edges rippled from water stains. Says it’s from 1940.

MINETTA BROOK GONE FOR GOOD?

No Sign of the Brook in a Decade

The Minetta Brook, which only a decade ago reappeared in lower and mid-Manhattan, seems to have gone underground for good.

The spring, once called “Devil’s Water” by the natives for its poor taste and foul smell, plagued lower Manhattanites in 1930.

It is hard to believe that Dutch settlers would have fought over such filth, with other freshwater sources in the vicinity. Originally, though, the Minetta water seemed pure. It was only found to have a sulfuric odor after flowing to the surface, local surveyor Diederick Hoff noted.

Thankfully, the fountain in the lobby of 33 Washington Square West is no longer plagued, and perhaps we may all say, “good riddance.”

I place the article back in the cloth bag and consider this “Minetta Brook.” Is that what Callum thinks I’ve found? The location is off—that’s not the quadrant he had me survey—but in DI training I did learn there were once whole rivers flowing underground, covering miles. But that was years ago, even before the Wash Out contaminated the reservoirs.

Even if I found the Minetta, it can’t explain what happened to Aven. Or me.

When I touch the gash on my temple, all I feel is the thin raised flesh of a scar—it’s healed entirely.

Aven, meanwhile, is worse.

From a far corner, a door creaks open—that’s gotta be Callum. I need to move, hide, get the hell outta dodge, but all I got time for is stooping behind the worktable.

“I see you!” he shouts, with more force than I would have expected. “I have a gun—show yourself.”

Sure enough, from my vantage under his desk, I see he’s got his finger on the trigger of a semiautomatic and here I am, a sitting pigeon.

I have no choice. Both hands up, I grumble, “Fine,” and back away from his desk. “Hi?” I wave.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he asks, understandably peeved, but he lays the gun on the table.

“Lost in the neighborhood?” I offer. “You did give me this.” I wave the envelope corner like it’s a white flag of surrender. “Remember?”

“You don’t just go . . .” he blusters, looking for the right word, “barging into people’s places of residence. That’s quite insane, you know?”

I step in front of the moonlit windowpane. “Sorry. Just thought you’d want to hear from me sooner rather than later.”

“Yes! Yes, of course,” he says, and his face lights up, not hiding his excitement. “I’ll get the extra. . . .” He fumbles with the lock of a drawer hidden away beneath a small table. From it, he pulls out yet another thick white envelope, which he holds in the air for me to take.

I reach for the envelope. “I found a freshwater spring,” I admit. Soon as I hear Callum laugh his disbelief, though, I stop myself from saying more.

What about the Blues?

Working with Callum changes everything. Working with Callum means working against the Blues. I’m their mole. Means I keep on getting that monthly paycheck—money Aven and I need now more than ever.

If anyone at the DI finds out I’m working against them, I’ll be at their mercy. Not a good place to be, as they have none. Miss Nale’s words echo in my head from years ago, when she told me to keep my immunity a secret.

But . . . there’s another voice in my head. One that, despite everything, hopes against hope. ’Cause that’s what hope is: belief against the odds. If Callum can cure her . . . really, truly cure her? For good?

It’s a risk worth taking.

I pull back my hand, ignoring the envelope for a moment, and make sure Callum’s looking at me. “Aven. You said you could help Aven.”

After a pause, he says, “Yes . . . I believe I can.”

“You also said you needed a sample.”

“Without it, there’s not much I can do, I’m afraid.”

I glance down to the time on my cuffcomm again. “I don’t have it. Chief Dunn paid me an unexpected visit and I told him what I’d found. He’s headed for the site in three hours with a whole team.”

Callum sits down on the floor, bites at his thumbnail. “I was afraid of that happening,” he mumbles.

“Hey—you’re the one who claimed you were with the DI,” I say.

He just shoots me a look. Thinks for a moment. “We have time though. You could take me there. To the site.”

“Tell me what you can do for Aven—I want to know who you are, and why I should trust you—and then, maybe. Maybe I’ll take you. I’ve got a lot at stake, you know? Been relying on my income from the Blues for quite a while.”

Callum looks down, solemn. “I understand. I do.” He taps his fingers on the table, like he’s weighing options I can only guess at. “But how do I know I can trust you? You work for the DI, after all.”

“I work for whoever can help me help Aven. If that’s you . . .” I shrug.

Callum gestures to a chair. “All right. Take a seat.”

Shaking my head, I lower myself onto the floor instead, and cross my legs. I’m more used to sitting this way. Chairs make me uncomfortable.

“My name—my birth name—is Callum Pace. I was part of the Blues’ Young Scientists Curriculum. . . . You’ve heard of it?”

I shake my head.

“A program headed up by Governor Voss. With the Blight spreading, he needed more doctors, so he created an accelerated program for promising youths. Some of us examined geological surveys, theorizing the locations of underground freshwater. Others though, my group, we were studying the HBNC virus and looking for a cure.”

“Ambitious for a bunch of . . . wait, how old are you?”

“I was seventeen; this was less than a year ago.”

“A little young to have the fate of an entire city’s health resting in your hands, don’t you think?”

It occurs to me that I’m a dragster working for the government, looking for fresh. Not much different. The DI likes hiring them young, I suppose—cheap labor.

Callum waves his hands. “Oh no, we weren’t the only ones working on it. Though I am proud to say that I was doing some of their most promising work,” he says, beaming a bit. “That’s why the higher-ups gave me superior security clearance. I overheard some of the in-house gossip. One scrap was about you—a girl scouting for fresh in the Ward. A couple of times I overheard my boss’s bosses, the chiefs, joking about the governor. How he was hoping that moles like you, who worked for the Blues, would actually find a real, live fountain of youth.” He even says it with a laugh, like he knows how daft it sounds.

I raise one eyebrow even though . . . even though it almost makes sense. Not the youth part, or the part where Aven’s tumor grew back six millimeters in an hour. But my cuts. And earlier in the night, her tumor was almost gone. “And people believed him?”

“Well, no . . . That was the point. The search for freshwater was the perfect cover.”

“But you believed him,” I point out.

“I didn’t. Not until this . . .” He bounces, literally bounces, over to a small wooden writing desk in the corner and opens a drawer, one that’s hidden underneath the tabletop, using a key from his pocket.

He hands me a small glass vial with no more than a drop of greenish liquid in it. “. . . was given to me. By whom, I don’t know. I found it in my DI locker during my time there—my locked locker, mind you—with this article wrapped around it and ‘Q9’ written on the back.”

I take the vial in one hand and the clipping in the other, careful not to press too hard. The paper is so old, just pushing down will crack it. I hold it up to the light.

New York, Saturday, June 2048

Modern-Day Ponce or Modern-Day Ponzi?

To some, medical student Harlan Voss’s “findings” could be the next step in the biomedical frontier. To others, he is the product of a culture desperate for youth above all else. Twenty-seven-year-old Voss claims to have found the Fountain of Youth, but without the benefit of proof on his side, his discovery has been met with equal shares of skepticism and hope.

“One man discovered penicillin, did he not?” Mr. Voss asks disbelievers.

According to the modern Ponce de León, the storm surge that preceded what has come to be known as the “Wash Out” caused tides to run so low, they resurrected the Minetta Spring, which once ran through lower Manhattan.

After March’s meteor collided with the Antarctic’s Pine Island Glacier, and high-temperature gases were released, causing a global rise in sea level, Voss was unable to locate the source of the spring. “I went back with diving gear,” he stated during the interview. “But someone had been there. It wasn’t even a spring anymore—just rubble and mud.”

Now, Voss is looking for the spring. But there’s a catch: he needs your money.

Two things stand out.

One: 2048. About sixty years ago.

And two: “Our governor’s last name is Voss.”

“It could be a relative,” Callum suggests. “Or—and I know this sounds crazy—but what if they’re the same? What if he found the spring and kept enough to keep him alive for a while?”

I look for similarities in their faces, but it’s hard to tell. The governor is older. But both have prickly, cactuslike eyebrows, and faces that would make a baby cry.

“Lemme guess,” I say, examining the liquid. “You’re gonna tell me this stuff is magic in a bottle?”

Or the devil in a bottle, given what it did to Aven.

“Not magic,” he answers. “Science. Under the microscope that stuff looked fairly incredible.”

“Incredible how?”

“There wasn’t enough to run a sufficient number of tests that would yield anything conclusive . . . but it clearly had a regenerative effect on the human cellular structure.”

“Okay. So the water is . . . unusual. But why all the secrecy? Why go searching for it behind the back of the DI? Why pretend you’re still with them?”

“I thought that you’d be more likely to agree to the search if it came as a direct request from the DI. Had I known about your sister’s condition . . .” Callum’s gaze suddenly turns serious. “And as for the secrecy, what do you think would happen if the government got their hands on something this big?”

Waving my hands, I spout the obvious. “Oh, I dunno, how about use it to cure the virus that’s killing off the Ward’s citizens left and right?”

“You’re naive,” he mutters, replacing the vial and the article in the drawer before taking out a Core, a shiny, rainbowy disk no bigger than my thumbnail.

I want to argue—no way am I naive, not these days—but I get the feeling he’s about to prove me wrong.

He draws the curtains closed, darkening the room. He slips the disk into a slot in his cuffcomm.

“After reading that article, I conducted some of my own research. I figured, if Voss needed money for a search party, he was probably advertising. This is what I found.”

An image projects onto the door behind us. The audio is weak—cuffcomms don’t have the best speakers—but it’s easy enough to see it’s a commercial.

Scratchy background music plays, while three kids hold hands and spin together. As they go round, they age. Slow at first, then faster. Older and older they get; their whirling makes me dizzy. When they’re too old to keep on spinning like that, the image slows. A man’s voice: “For too long, we have accepted one single fact: humans age.”

Graphics-morphing software lifts layers of wrinkles from the women’s faces like old-school time-lapse photography in reverse.

Another voice-over: “What if aging were just another disease? A disease that could be cured? With your money, we can enter a new frontier—one that is ageless. Timeless. Buy eternity today. Sell eternity tomorrow.”

The image dissipates like someone tossing pixilated sand grains into the air.

“They’d sell it,” Callum whispers. “It would go to the highest bidder. Just like Upstate did with their freshwater aquifers—they used to share them with us, back when we were all one state. Especially now, with all the animosity certain West Isle radicals have against the Ward’s sick population. You think they’d want to share something this big?”

“What are you talking about? What animosity?”

Callum looks at me like he wishes he hadn’t said anything. “You don’t know.”

“No,” I answer. “Most people here don’t have electric. West Isle news is hard to come by. We’ve got radios . . . but then we have to trade for the batteries.” I don’t add that we never hear them say much interesting, anyway.

“At its most elemental, it’s prejudice. They’re calling the sick . . .” He pauses, then says the next word like it tastes bad in his mouth. “Subhuman.”

My sister. Subhuman. I want to curse at him, though I know he’s just the messenger. But the more I hear about people on the West Isle, the happier I am that I grew up here. Of all places.

“So as I was saying,” Callum continues, “if something like that were to exist . . .”

“We’d never see a drop.”

“What’s more, the face of this planet would be forever changed. Think of the repercussions. . . . Overpopulation, an even greater strain on the Earth’s resources. We’re already suffering for water as it is.” Callum lowers down onto the floor, sits himself directly across from me. “Immortality is an entirely unsustainable concept.”

I’m quiet. There’s so much to take in. So much that goes against everything I knew to be true.

Callum doesn’t look at me, lost in his own head. After a few moments, “So you see, whatever you found out there, it’s imperative that the wrong people never have access to it.”

But if Governor Voss is one of the “wrong people,” I have to wonder: Who are the right people?

“What, exactly, do you want with it?” I ask.

“I don’t want to cure death, that’s for sure. I’m a scientist, Ren. I believe that something like this—whatever it is—could have huge potential in the medical sphere. I’d like to examine the water, alter base components. Make it stronger. Ideally, I’d like to use it to develop a drug therapy and eradicate the HBNC virus. But I can’t work with nothing.”

The ball’s in my court.

“Like I said, I found freshwater. A hot spring. But I don’t know anything about this fountain of youth you’re talking about.”

“Just tell me what you found. Everything.”

I inhale, and I start with Plan B bunking out on me. I tell him how I had to swim into a building with a big red star, how the place should have been flooded but wasn’t, and how under an abandoned subway tunnel, I fell into a pool of water that didn’t leave me thirsty.

And then I tell him how it tasted.

He laughs, almost in awe. Mumbles, “Unbelievable,” but says nothing more. I get to the part where I gave Aven the water, and for a few hours she was symptom free—better than symptom free—until she collapsed on the floor of the Tank. The grand finale.

The memory physically hurts. Retelling it is reliving it, and the corners of my eyes prickle with salt water. “So if the fresh is responsible for fixing Aven, it’s also responsible for making her sicker. How do you explain that?”

“I only have theories. Nothing’s certain until I have an actual sample.”

“What if I didn’t find your miracle spring?”

He grunts, and I can almost see the thoughts clicking into place, the mechanics of his mind landing on an answer. “There’s only one way of finding out.”

Had a feeling he’d say that.