The Ward

28


9:00 A.M., SUNDAY


I hit Mad Ave at its worst. The vendors are out with their hotcakes and their black market water. I don’t want to deal with all the foot traffic, not now. But all those crowds make this the safest route to Derek’s, and I can see Lihn’s Take-Out just across the avenue.

I swing left, throwing myself into the thick of it.

Like swimming upstream, I push through a pack of neighborhood Derby boys mobbed together this side of the boardwalk. The future roofrat generation, no doubt. They snigger meanly in their shoddy tweed jackets, tossing punches at one another. Every ten seconds one of ’em jumps down on a loose plank, and five feet off, the boardwalk chucks another unsuspecting victim into the air.

This time, it’s an older woman, her gray hair neat in a bun. She flies forward, then falls to her knees. Her bag spills out onto the walkway, and as she reaches around people’s moving feet to gather her belongings, the area clears without warning.

I move to help her, but—Uh-oh . . .

Stumbling backward, I know full well why a random area of the boardwalk might clear without warning. Bouncers. They’re testing.

I just need to cross the boardwalk, then I’ll be at Lihn’s.

But I can’t. One makes his way closer, the yellow of his jacket near blinding under this sun. Backing away real slow, I try not to look suspicious. As he nears . . . I recognize him. It’s Ro.

I exhale and laugh.

He throws me a smile and a nod, and starts to walk over. As if in warning, though, a buzz runs through my muscles and they harden. Ready for something. Ro lifts his cuffcomm to his mouth, and I watch him close. Every twinge around his eyes, every muscle of his mouth—

She’s here, I read on his lips. Quad Five. He drops his hand. Flashes me another easy smile.

Brack—

Like a powder keg, my legs explode ahead, aimed directly for the crowds. I can’t make it to Derek’s now; I’d be leading them straight to him. I shouldn’t even go to Callum’s, but they have no clue about him, and it’s probably the safest place to be. Assuming I can keep from being followed.

Knocking into the rush, I fold myself between mother and stroller, doctor and cane. Curses follow me, rounds of invisible bullets. I pretend not to notice them. A man drops his bag as I elbow him to the side—planting seeds spill everywhere. Onto the planks and into water . . . it’ll cost him more than if he’d just dropped his change.

He scowls, gives me the finger.

When I look behind me, there’s Ro, mouth at his comm again.

Just a few more blocks to Callum’s. . . .


Hammering my fist against his door, “Let me in—” I whine through gritted teeth, and glance back at Mad Ave. With so many people, Ro can’t have seen me turn onto this block. But right now, one glance to the left and he’d spot me, easy.

The door opens.

I fall in. Straighten myself. Slamming it shut behind me, I lean back to try and catch my breath. “The DI . . .” I manage, panting. “They’re keeping tabs on me. . . . Bouncers, too.”

Callum’s eyes widen. “And you led them here? What were you thinking?”

“No one saw,” I insist, though I’m not 100 percent sure—I don’t tell him that.

Stepping away from the door, I reach for his arm. “You don’t understand, Callum. That cure—I need it. There’s no time. The doctor . . . he gave Aven forty-eight hours.” My voice breaks in odd places as I speak. Crackles at random.

Callum squints in confusion as he checks his cuffcomm. “She should be in surgery now—I cleared payment with the head doctor and everything. . . .”

I don’t know what to say. Back at the hospital, he told me that he might be able to “do something to help,” but I’d had no clue what that meant. No way did I believe he’d actually pay for it.

When he sees my expression, he waves his hand like it was nothing. But it’s not nothing. It’s my sister. “Chief Dunn had it canceled,” I tell him.

“I don’t believe it,” Callum growls, knocking his hand against the table. It shakes, and I hear the clinking of glass though I can’t see much—he’s kept the curtains closed.

I can make out enough. Everywhere, funnels and hoses. Burners and beakers. An entire makeshift laboratory. And from somewhere deep in this obstacle course, an odd noise—

Coo, coo . . .

Cocking my head, I glance around the room. “Is that . . . Is that a bird?”

Callum just nods. Waves for me to continue, like it’s totally normal. Wary, I pull my eyes from the lab and flop cross-legged onto the floor.

“The governor was there, Callum. Waiting for me,” I say, shaky. “He told me about the people who protect the spring. The ‘Tètai,’ he called them. And you were right. I know one. Two, actually. . . .”

He waits for me to go on, but I don’t want to speak the rest. Saying it out loud makes it true, and every square inch of me is hoping that I’m wrong. But I know I’m not.

“Derek. My bookie,” I say, staring at my lifeline. “And this girl he’s friends with.”

The hatched wrinkle cuts deep and dark across my palm. Yesterday—today—Derek’s fingers traced that very skin. Hours ago, I kissed him. And he kissed me back.

But I’ve never known him, not really.

That realization makes me want to curl up and hide from everyone. That I could be so naive, so foolish. Who, exactly, was I so infatuated with?

I have no idea.

I reach for the carved statue inside my belt pocket. “Then Governor Voss gave me this. To give to them.”

Callum takes it from my hand. “A toy?” he asks, and he spins its wheels.

“Don’t know, he didn’t say.” I shrug, watching him fiddle. “A threat, my guess. A message of some sort?”

He finds the belly compartment, flips it open, and lets it swing shut. “I’ve seen this before,” he murmurs. “Haven’t you?”

“Never. But he must think it’ll scare them bad enough that they’ll tell me everything. I don’t know what he’s planning, Callum, but he’s desperate. He showed me a picture of his wife. . . . He wants to save her. He gave me four hours.”

Callum returns the statue—I flip it in my hand. Open the compartment, close the compartment. Open, close.

What happens if I don’t get it to Derek?

I hang my head between my knees, as the unknown weight of this thing the governor’s asked me to do settles in.

Callum looks at me hard. “You can’t do it. Ask Derek to give up the spring’s location, I mean. I’m sure Governor Voss wants to save his wife. But don’t for one second believe that’s his only intention. You saw the Core.”

I nod and toss the horse up in the air lightly before catching it and setting it on the table. The crawling, spindly legged feeling of fear I get worries me, but the statue and Derek aren’t what’s important right now. “It can wait. Until after you’ve made the cure.”

At his desk, Callum looks away. Sighs. The sound fills up the room, speaks a language of its own, and I don’t like it. It feels too much like padding. Like he’s readying me for bad news.

I hawk-eye him. “What’s the matter . . . ?”

“Come,” he says, waving me over to where a brass microscope sits in front of him. He lays a glass slide under its lens and nudges me in front. “Look.”

I peer down, adjusting the focus by spinning the knob on the right. We had one of these things at the orphanage.

Bubble-colored grids and particles of something that looks kind of like a desert wasteland come into view. But I also see other shapes—confetti and extra-long hot dogs, floating around the slide.

“Whoa . . . it’s a whole party down there.” I keep my eye socket hugged to the rubber. “What is all that?”

Callum laughs, almost. “There’s so much, I don’t know where to begin. Much of it is useless. Decaying plant matter, a few harmless microbes. The most interesting thing, though, are the chemical compounds I found. They’re called ‘phytonutrients.’”

“Which ones are they?” I ask, trying to figure out where one shape ends and all the others begin.

“The pattern-like particles,” he clarifies, and I nod. Sand dunes. Rainbowy grid. “They’re found in all plants. In one apple, for example, there are more than three hundred phytonutrients. And they all do different things for the body. Good things.”

I lift my head from the ’scope, because after what the governor said before about plants with beneficial properties, I think I know where Callum’s going with this. “Like fighting viruses?” I offer.

His brows rise up, he’s that impressed. “Yes,” he says. “And reducing the size of tumors. And healing wounds. I’ve already identified close to two hundred phytonutrients in that sample alone. There are hundreds more, no doubt, not including those that I was unable to match in the database.”

“So what’s wrong? What am I missing?” I ask.

Callum rubs his temples and folds himself into his chair. “It’s not what you’re missing. It’s what the water is missing.”

“I don’t get it. You just said—?”

He moves to the window, pulls aside a corner of the drapes. A sliver of light falls in the room, just enough so that we can see each other.

“Phytonutrients come from plants. But there’s no plant to be found in that sample. On its own, the water is useless. And it’s even more useless because . . .” Callum stops, wears a face like he’s ready to throw himself to the sharks. He inhales and turns to watch the springwater being sieved from the remaining mud into a beaker. “By filtering the mud . . . I also filtered out most of the nutrients. A sample that was weak to start—not even strong enough to help Aven long-term—became weaker.”

My stomach drops. “Wait,” I whisper. “What are you saying? We’ve got nothing?” I’m wire taut with the tension that comes from trying really, really hard to keep from bugging out.

“Not nothing,” Callum answers. “Not enough, either. Many of the compounds responsible for healing passed through, as did the antitumorals. But the antivirals . . .” He shakes his head.

I don’t believe it. . . . I don’t believe him. My stomach churns, empty, acidic, and in the background, the dripping slows. Those intervals between one drop and the next stretch longer and longer, as the muddy springwater filters through the sieve.

Soon, the dripping stops entirely.

Callum moves to replace the mud, but not before lifting the large glass beaker and swirling its contents. “Do you see the dilemma?” he asks, emptying one jar into the sieve.

Quickly, I scan the table. Spotting two more, full and waiting, “But you’ve got—” I start to say.

“It won’t be enough.” His answer comes quick, in a voice so dark it could swallow gravity itself.

“We could give it to her anyway. That would fix the tumors, right?” I ask, grasping for any possibility.

Callum finds my eyes, serious. “Not unless you want Aven dead by nightfall. HBNC-related growths sometimes return even faster. I told you that back at the hospital. Which is exactly what happened to her the first time. The mass disappeared, but the virus was still in her body. And she relapsed tenfold.”

But he said he could do it. . . .

“Ren . . . I’m sorry.”

No, no, no, no, no—the cure, it’s right here. It’s sitting in front of my eyes. And it’ll fix her tumors . . . but it won’t cure her? I can’t parse it; it makes no sense . . . none at all. Suddenly, I’m heaving—my body feels like a natural disaster.

I’m earthquake shaken.

Only, natural disasters have nothing on me. I’m avalanche flung, pumping volcano blood. Behind my eyes: Wash Out—the sequel.

And natural disasters, they don’t give up. They end when they’re good and ready to.

I’m not ready.