I run. I’m out of the ’wam in a flash, ignoring the sound of my father shouting my name. I make it all the way to the tower before I stop to catch my breath. Tears won’t come—my shock is a tourniquet. Here, in the center of the commune, more people have come to congregate; returning home and learning from their neighbors about what Albatur sent the guards to do. The fear on my face must blend in with the expressions of those around me: no one gives me a second look. I comb the crowd—no Rondo, no Alma. They can’t still be in the Zoo: it’s too late in the day. All of the interns would have been sent home by now. Or maybe they’re holding them there on my father’s orders, demanding to know where I am.
The thought is like the first snap of a spark that starts a fire. The blaze of fear spreads, and I weave in and out of the crowd, jogging when I break free, then sprinting toward Rondo’s ’wam.
I arrive, panting. I’ve never been inside, only passed by, but his ’wam is the only one in its cluster that doesn’t have anything hanging on its door, nothing to decorate it. It’s plain in its white-clay eggness. I approach the door, too nervous to lay my palm against the lockpad. But I do, and I vaguely hear the soft, melodic tone inside the ’wam that alerts its inhabitants to a visitor.
The door slides open almost immediately and I gasp. I expected to stand there waiting for a while, if not forever. I also expected one of Rondo’s parents to answer the door, but instead I find Alma in front of me.
“Alma?”
“Octavia!”
She throws her arms around me, her enormous hair covering my face.
“Alma, what are you doing here? Are Rondo’s parents home?”
She releases me from the hug and pulls me inside.
“No, they’re both in the Zoo. When Rondo and I left for the day, we went straight to your house to see if you were there since we couldn’t find you. But it was just your dad and he was acting really weird. So we left and came here.”
“I was just there.” I nod. “He’s freaking out. My mother . . .”
“Was taken to the Council,” Alma says, biting her lip. “I know. Oh, stars! Do you know what’s going to happen?”
“No.” I shake my head and sit down. “I don’t know what they know. But my dad is mad. Madder than I’ve ever seen him. He knows about the egg—”
Alma’s hand shoots out and covers my mouth.
“Wait, wait,” she says, jerking her head over her shoulder.
With her hand still over my lips, I lean forward and peer down the hallway. Rondo’s bedroom door is open, light spilling out into the corridor.
“Jaquot’s father is here,” she says, lowering her hand.
Jaquot’s sleeping platform has already been dissolved, the pavi extract having done its work. Rondo sits on the remaining bed. At the desk, a man in a white coat stands with an open container, Jaquot’s few belongings inside. I’ve never seen Jaquot’s father, but I recognize the same green eyes, the same sharp cheekbones.
“I’m sorry for your loss, sir,” I say from the doorway.
He doesn’t turn right away, but when he does, I’m surprised by his eyes. When Nana died, my mother’s eyes had turned soft with grief. Jaquot’s father’s are hard; their shine is wet jade.
“Another friend of my son’s,” he says.
“Yes, sir,” I say.
“You were in the jungle that day?”
“Yes, sir.”
He turns away from the desk. “And did you see the beast?” he says. “The beast they say killed my boy?”
“No, sir.” I swallow. “I heard it. But I didn’t see it.”
“Perhaps it was a different beast,” he says. “One we know less about.”
His anger swells to fill the room. I exchange a look with Alma.
“Or perhaps,” he continues, “the beast was sent.”
“Sir,” Alma says. “Surely you don’t mean by the Faloii? There’s no evidence—”
“Evidence,” he interrupts. He opens his hands and stares at them before squeezing them into fists. “Facts are not always facts. The version of the truth we know is what is shown to us.”
“Facts are facts,” Alma says from behind me. “A different version of the truth is a mistruth.”
He turns back to the desk and lifts the nearly empty container. Jaquot hadn’t owned much—none of us do. When he reaches the front of the ’wam, he turns back and pierces us with another hard stare.
“Those things think they can control us,” he says. “They will find that they are wrong.”
He leaves the ’wam, the door sliding shut behind him. As soon as it’s closed, Rondo rises from his bed and kisses me.
It’s like sunlight spreading through my skin, and when he pulls away, the golden energy remains in my fingers and toes, thrumming. My breathlessness embarrasses me and I glance away from him, my eye falling on the izinusa, out of the restraints of its case and leaning against the wall by the bed.
He looks over his shoulder at the instrument and then his eyes return to my face, slanted with a half smile. That squint of his left eye sends music flooding through my body. It forms a bubble around me, protecting me from the storms brewing in N’Terra.
“I can show you how to play,” he says.
“Oh, stars, you two.” Alma rolls her eyes. “We’re kind of in the middle of a crisis.”
“She’s right,” he says, and I nod, tearing my eyes away from the izinusa. It’s a similar feeling to leaving the sun of the Atrium for the cold, artificial hallways of the labs.
“From what Jaquot used to say, his dad has always been an Albatur supporter,” I say. “But blaming the Faloii for Jaquot’s death? That’s intense.”
“It’s like everyone is losing their minds,” Alma says. “Did you see the guards? Your dad came and asked them if they’d found your mother. He was really angry. He’s the one who told them to check the commune and go to the Greenhouse.”
This stops me cold, whatever music was left in me from looking at Rondo draining from my veins. I imagined the Council sending the guards for my mother, my father standing by helplessly, pleading for them to understand. But that wasn’t the case at all: instead he sent them hunting for her, gave the word for her to be tracked down.
“Have you heard from Rasimbukar?” Rondo asks.
I nod. “We have to do it tonight. She’s going to bring the Faloii if we don’t get her father out tonight.”
Alma rushes to the window and peers out.
“But it’s almost sunset!” she cries.
“I know.”
“What about your mom? Dr. Espada?”
I squeeze my eyes shut in a long, hard blink.
“I don’t know. But I think she was trying to tell me something when they took her away. She told me something . . . in . . . in my head.” I grasp for the words where I’d been holding them in my mind. I can still feel them in her voice. “Ambystoma maculatum.”
“That’s all she said?” Rondo says slowly. He’d been expecting something more to go on. “What does that even mean?”
“That’s one of the old languages,” says Alma.
“What?”
“Ambystoma maculatum. That’s a name. It was a kind of salamander a long time ago.”
Rondo and I stare at her blankly.
“Salamander?”
“It’s an amphibian. Kind of like . . .” She thinks. “A morgantan? Probably smaller though.”
“But . . .” My brain feels like it’s crushing boulders in its effort to break down the facts in front of me. The truth is somewhere in the gravel. “Why would my mother tell me the name of an extinct salamander? That makes no sense.”
No one says anything for a moment.
“The Solossius,” Alma says, eyes wide. “The Solossius, remember?”
“What about it?” Rondo says.
“Remember how I said it sounded like something to do with solar power? Well, Ambystoma maculatum, the salamander . . . it was solar powered.”