The Ward

26


8:00 A.M., SUNDAY


I run for the main stairs, still warm in all the places Derek’s skin touched mine. Like there’s a burner left on, way under my skin, that I can’t turn off. I don’t want to think about him. I don’t want to want to think about him. But my mind replays that moment, can’t let it go, and then it’s too late—

A cold hand grips me from behind. Covers my mouth; I can’t yell. . . . The DI.

Pure adrenaline pumps my legs alive. I try and shimmy myself out from his grasp, but it’s no use. Whoever’s behind me has got too strong of a grip. I try biting at the hand—no one likes that—but he’s immune to the charms of a slimy tongue.

What will Chief do to me?

So he can cuff my hands with his own, he says, “Let’s not make a scene, Dane,” as he frees my mouth.

Now that his hands are off my face, I’m better able to have a look at him, but there are no surprises: cropped hair, blue fatigues, silver five-pointed star pinned to his breast pocket. I’m just glad it ain’t the chief.

Something tells me he wouldn’t be going so easy on me.

The agent hauls me through unfamiliar corridors, all the way up the stairwell. When there are no more stairs to climb—we have to be at the rooftop—he opens one last door. Pushes me into open air.

I’m instantly blinded by the sun bouncing white-hot over the roof’s metal drainage system. Behind me, the agent doesn’t care that I’m tripping on every damn steel pipe up here. My feet stumble, he jolts me back, only to throw me forward. By the time my eyes adjust to the light, we’re dead center of the roof, and he’s opening a door.

A door to a house made of glass.


“It is . . . quite incredible, is it not?” I hear a man say, but see nobody.

I blink, and I blink, and I blink again, and even if I couldn’t see, I would know—my cells are buzzing, they can feel it: there’s magic in this place. Not fairy-tale magic . . . more like the magic of being alive with something built by the world, not by its people.

My eyes don’t know what to do with all the green. They’ve never seen so much of the color in all my sixteen years.

Leaves. Branches and branches of them. Branches attached to trunks, planted in soil, all growing roots. Right here. Right under my feet.

Trees.

I bring my hand to my mouth, gasp out loud, and then realize I’m able to. The agent—gone, already.

“I hope you know how privileged you should feel to be here—the arboretum is for staff use only, naturally.”

Vaguely, like I’ve missed the cue but my body hasn’t, I notice my heart pushing out blood faster than it should. And the hairs on the back of my neck stand higher, even though I hear no threat in the voice.

I turn around to watch him approach—an older man. His feet lazy, unhurried, as he walks the stone path that must wind through the structure. I’m sure I’ve never met him before, but he has a familiar face. When he’s feet away, he motions to the tree at the center of the building with a bench that circles its base.

“Do have a seat,” he says, and I listen. Find myself holding the wooden planks beneath my palms. They have a different feel to them than the boardwalk planks, I don’t know how.

It occurs to me to be scared. But this place . . . how can I be scared in this place?

“Do you know who I am?” the man asks, lowering himself onto the bench next to me.

When I look at him more closely, something about his features brings to mind that night at Derek’s—the autoupdate. I see a hardness, a gaunt line to his cheekbones. This man can’t be him, though. . . .

He can’t be the governor. “Are you . . . ?”

Crossing his legs and extending an arm, “These last nine years, yes. Governor Voss. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Dane.” He takes my hand in his and gives it a firm shake. At his neck, I see the K-dot, white and just applied.

Soon he releases my hand; I’m holding on to the planks again, my life raft.

“All of these trees are different, you know?” the governor says quietly, pointing around the arboretum. “With different names. Properties, too. Medicinal, some of them.”

The way he says that, so pointed . . . It’s like he knows.

“This one,” he says as he tugs down a branch from overhead, “is called a hemlock. Natives who once occupied this territory ate the bark.” Ripping off a few of its leaves—needly, dark things—he then opens my hand and drops them there.

I close my fist around all the greenness. Aven would love to see them. But she’s downstairs, barely living. The needles prick at my palm, so I let them go.

I turn to face the governor. He must know that Chief Dunn canceled the surgery. He must.

“What brings you to Ward Hope Hospital?” he asks me, brushing off his hands. “I already know the girl, Aventine Colatura, is a patient, but that’s not what I am asking.”

Through the dotted green I can see the glass roof, and past that, sky. A twinge at my stomach tells me to be careful what I say. This place is beautiful, but he’s brought me here for a reason. On the day of a riot erupting on the West Isle, the governor crossed the Strait to speak to me.

“What do you mean, sir?” I ask, keeping my voice soft.

Governor Voss waves his hand. “I mean, who is this girl to you?”

I swallow—What’s he getting at?—and give him the only answer I have: the honest-to-goodness truth.

“She’s my sister, though we don’t share blood. My best friend, though the label’s too weak if you ask me. . . .” I pause, realizing it as I say it: “She’s the first person I ever loved.”

The governor nods, and wisps of his steely hair glint as the sun cuts through the glass. “I understand,” he says, and reaches for his cuffcomm. When he pushes a button on its side, an image is projected into the air. It’s not a hologram—the technology is older. Basic light projection. With no surface for the image to land on, I can barely make out what he’s showing me.

As if to catch the light, he raises his other hand. A picture takes shape in his palm. He’s holding it . . . her.

A woman.

Darker than I am, but not by much. Freckled. With fuzzy hair cropped close to her scalp. Not particularly beautiful, but she pulls you in with her grin—it’s on so wide, you can’t help but smile back at her. “Who is she?” I ask, but I think I know, from the press conference.

“Her name is Emilce Weathers,” he says, his voice going hard and detached all of a sudden. “She is HBNC positive, still contagious, and according to doctors, she has only weeks to live.” He pauses, then adds, “She is . . . my wife.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, weak, knowing from experience how useless it sounds.

Looking at her image, he smiles, but his eyes stay sad. “You know, she laughed at me when I first asked her out? Not unkindly, though . . . no. In a way that made it seem like she had life all figured out, and I must’ve missed the memo. I asked her why she refused, and she said, so simply, that it was because I was wearing a tie. She could not date someone who ‘chose to wear a noose.’ So I took it off in front of her, and never wore another one after that day.”

He drops his hand. All that’s left of Emilce Weathers’s image are the glowing light particles where her teeth would be. “She is the only person I would die for,” he says, and clicks off his cuffcomm.

I watch his face as he says that because I understand, and because I want to see what the words look like on someone else. At times I feel like I’m the only one who’d say that sort of thing, and mean it.

“And,” he adds, not looking at me, “she is the only person I would kill for.”

My stomach twists, recoils like a punch has been thrown—Is that a threat? There’s such edge to his voice. Layers of it. Brutal honesty, but also desperation. Powerlessness. If it is a threat, it’s the worst kind. Not direct, not even indirect. Volatile. As he sees fit, when he sees fit.

It makes me wonder about myself. If I would kill for Aven.

I don’t know, but I’m afraid of the answer.

Governor Voss stands and faces me, still on the bench. Looking down, he says, “So you see. I understand why you are here. Truly, I do. And you, in turn, must understand why I too am here.”

The spring . . .

I knot my brows and begin to shake my head, readying myself to lie, but the governor dismisses me outright.

“Please do me the courtesy of being forthright, Miss Dane. I saw the sample you gave to Chief Dunn. We both know that spring is more than just a freshwater source. I have done my homework. Miss Colatura was sick before she showed up at the Tank—the chief confirmed it. You gave her the water, not knowing what it was. She then experienced a brief recovery and, for reasons unknown to yourself, is now at death’s door.”

Slowly, I rise to my feet—looking up so high makes me feel small, and I can’t afford to feel small right now. “Reasons unknown to myself?” I say.

The governor reaches inside his jacket, into the breast pocket. Pulls out what looks to be a flip pocketknife, and something else I can’t see—it’s too small. “Are you surprised? Do you know so much about the water?”

“I know nothing about the water, sir,” I answer. It’s the truth, and I don’t see any amount of bluffing working for me now.

He nods. “No. I thought not. Miss Dane, let me tell you. It is . . . so, so much more than a cure, though that is, of course, a primary concern. My wife’s life, your friend’s, and hundreds of others depend upon it. It is the answer. Not just to the Blight—to all the UMI’s problems. All of humanity’s problems. From cancer to the flu and everything in between. Even when drunk by a healthy individual, the results are nothing short of miraculous. For those suffering from disease, with daily, repeated ingestion, the results are life-altering. Within weeks, they’d receive a clean bill of health.”

Hope, fizzy and full, rises up my chest when I hear him say that. “So the water can really cure Aven?” I whisper. Callum said he could do it and I believed him—but hearing it twice doesn’t hurt.

“Like I said, over enough time. And in the correct dosage. It is a natural antiviral, not much different from ginger root or echinacea. Except far more powerful. In Aven’s case, not enough was consumed. Since the virus was not eradicated, she relapsed once the water left her system. But if she’d had more . . .” The governor’s voice trails off. “Quite good incentive to find me another source, is it not?”

I nod fiercely. “Yes, sir.”

Now I’m even more anxious to get to Callum.

“Don’t think I’m the best choice for the job, though.”

Governor Voss laughs. As he does, he tosses the object in his hand up into the air, catching it easily. It looks to be some kind of a statue.

“To be fair, I didn’t choose you,” he tells me. “Not that I believe as the natives do, but you found the spring. It chose you.”

I almost laugh. The spring didn’t choose me, it didn’t pull out its megaphone and announce itself. My feet just . . . sorta walked there. As they tend to do when they’re going places.

Thinking he’s done, I open my mouth to object. He cuts me off.

“That, and you know at least one Tètai.”

I shake my head and answer, “I don’t know anybody by that name. Sorry, sir. . . .”

He can’t make me do this, I don’t have time to hunt for him.

“Not a name.” He wags his finger. With one hand on my shoulder, he sits me back down on the bench. “A guild, of sorts. The Tètai were established by the early natives with one purpose: protecting that water. And someone you know, though you may not be aware, is one of the last four members still”—he pauses, as if finding the right words—“in existence.”

“That’s who messed with the spring,” I murmur.

He nods, points his pocketknife at me. “Bingo. A friend who knows what you found.”

“But only you, Aven, and the chief know.”

“We are the only ones you have told, yes. We are not the only ones who know.” Governor Voss unlatches his cuffcomm, flips it open to find whatever he’s looking for, and passes it to me. “I’d like you to read something.”

I have to project the image onto my forearm where the skin isn’t as dark. As I begin to make it out, I hear a scraping noise and look up—he’s using the pocketknife to whittle the object in his other hand. Sand-colored bits flake off while he chips away at the statue.

It must be wood. . . . It looks like wood. But why carve it like that? Why not use it for something useful?

“It is a translation from the Dutch,” the governor says, as though that’s what I was wondering about—not the strange thing he’s carving in front of me.

Turning my attention back to my forearm, I shake my head, and I start reading.