I work my hands in their restraints, trying to leverage that extra centimeter of space. The cord cuts deeply into my skin, and I have to bite my lip to keep from crying out in the dark. No matter how I pull and tug and twist, the cord refuses to relax any further, but still I keep trying, until sweat is dripping down along my hairline and I’m worried that if I thrash any harder it will attract someone into the room. Something wet trickles down along my forearm, and when I crane my head backward I see a thick, dark line of blood streaking my skin, like an awful black snake: All my struggling has caused my skin to chafe away.
Outside, the streets are as quiet as they’ve ever been, and in that moment I know that it’s hopeless: I won’t be able to escape on my own. Tomorrow I’ll wake up and my aunt and Rachel and the regulators will escort me downtown, and the only chance of escape I’ll have will be into the ocean, or off the roof of the laboratories.
I think of Alex’s molten honey eyes and the softness of his touch and sleeping under a canopy of stars, stretched out above our heads like they were placed there just for us. Now, after so many years, I understand what the Coldness was and where it came from—this sense that everything is lost, and worthless, and meaningless. Finally, the cold and the despair turn merciful, dropping down on my mind like a dark veil, and miracle of miracles, I sleep.
I wake sometime later in ink purple darkness with the sensation of someone in the room, some loosening of the restraints on my wrists. For a second my heart soars and I think, Alex, but then I look up and see Gracie, perched at the head of my bed, working at the cords binding me to the headboard. She is pulling and untwisting and bending forward, occasionally, to chew at the nylon with her teeth, giving the impression of a quiet and industrious animal gnawing its way through a fence.
Just like that, the cord snaps and I’m free. The pain in my shoulders is agonizing; my arms are full of a thousand pinpricks. But still, in that moment of release, I could shout and jump for joy. This is how my mother must have felt when she saw the first shaft of sunlight penetrate the fissure in her stone prison walls.
I sit up, rubbing my wrists. Gracie crouches against the headboard, watching me, and I lean forward and wrap her up in a big hug. She smells like apple soap and a little like sweat. Her skin is hot, and I can’t think of how nervous she must have been, sneaking up to my room. I’m surprised by how thin and fragile she feels, trembling ever so slightly in my arms.
But she’s not fragile—not by a long shot. Gracie is strong, I realize, perhaps stronger than any of us. It occurs to me that for a long time she has been doing her own version of resisting, and the fact that she is a born resister makes me smile into her hair. She’ll be okay. She’ll be more than okay.
I pull away just a little bit so I can whisper in her ear. “Is Uncle William still out there?”
Gracie nods, then places both hands under the side of her head, indicating that William is sleeping.
I lean forward again. “Are there regulators in the house?”
Gracie nods again, holding up two fingers, and my stomach sinks. Not just one regulator—two of them.
I stand up, testing my legs, which are cramping from being immobilized for almost two full days. I tiptoe to the window and open the blinds as quietly as possible, conscious of Uncle William slumbering only ten feet away from me. The sky outside is a rich, dark purple, the color of eggplant, and the street is draped with shadows as though it has been covered over with velvet. Everything is totally still, totally silent, but at the horizon is just the faintest blush, a gradual lightening: Dawn isn’t far off.
I ease open the window carefully, feeling a sudden desire to smell the ocean. There it is: the smell of salt spray and mist, a smell mixed, in my mind, with the idea of constant revolution, an eternal tide. I feel overwhelmingly sad then. I know there’s no way to find Alex in the middle of this enormous sprawling, sleeping city, and no way for me to reach the border on my own. My best bet is to try and make it down to the cliffs, to the ocean, to walk into the water until it closes over my head. I wonder if it will hurt. I wonder if Alex will be thinking of me.
Somewhere deeper in the city a motor is running, a distant, earthy growl, like an animal panting. In a few hours the bright blush of morning will push through all that darkness, and shapes will reassert themselves, and people will wake up and yawn and brew coffee and get ready for work, everything the same as usual. Life will go on. Something aches at the very core of me, something ancient and deep and stronger than words: the filament that joins each of us to the root of existence, that ancient thing unfurling and resisting and grappling, desperately, for a foothold, a way to stay here, breathe, keep going. But I will it away; I will it to curl up again, to let go.
I’d rather die my way than live yours.