I’m closest to the door and think I’ll be the first one through, but the gwabi who had the kawa in her belly leaps over my head, landing with her full weight on the first two guards. Two igua, eager to escape the containment room, bull past me to my left, heads lowered and tusks aimed. Blood splashes. I look away. My heart feels as if it’s inside every warm body around me, pulsing a hundred times too hard. Adombukar stands over the body of a guard. I can’t tell if he’s dead. I don’t know what Adombukar did to him until I see him do it again. He dodges a blast from a buzzgun, grabs the owner of the gun with both of his strong paw-hands, then puts a gentle finger to the guard’s forehead. And just like that, the guard is out.
“Come on!” Alma screams. There’s a hole in the wall; the world is filled with noise. Not just in my head but all around me: the sounds of animal rage and human terror. Even the kunike, small as they are, do what they must to make way: two of them attack a guard’s ankles. He shoots one of them with a buzzgun and my whole body lurches.
“No,” I moan, my limbs going weak. I can sense the kunike’s death filling my mind, his energy leaked away into nothing.
Then I feel Adombukar, his presence pushing images through the tunnel and into my head: the kunike’s light returning to Faloiv, his energy filtering through the ground and into the trees.
Is that true? I say.
Yes. Death has a place on every planet. But the violence must stop.
“We have to go!” I scream. I find that I am able to speak while also sending the animals an image of what we need to do. The long hallway leading to the main dome: we need to make it there.
Alma leads the way, the animals streaming after us like a river of bodies. The gwabi stays close to me, a comforting light coming from her. She means to watch over me.
More guards. The gwabi leaps on them. Her curved fangs gnash into the flesh of someone’s throat, a bright arc of blood. I think of what Rasimbukar has said about war having grave consequences for Faloiv. Has the war already begun? We make it to the hallway, Adombukar catching a lone guard in his hands, shaking the gun from her grip, and then putting her gently to sleep. He lays her on the floor, then looks at me for direction.
“Down here!” I shout, motioning with my arm. We’re in the long corridor that will take us to the main dome. We could make it. We’re almost out. I sprint down the hall, the gwabi’s breath loud and hot beside me.
One moment the hallway ahead is empty, and the next moment two struggling bodies tumble out from an open door—one of the deceptively empty exam rooms. One wears white, the other is a guard in gray; between them, the glint of a buzzgun’s metal, which the two fight for. The guard throws the person in white against the wall.
“Alma, that’s Rondo!”
I put on an extra burst of speed to reach them as Rondo throws himself at the guard again. The gray-suited man uses the buzzgun as a club and the dull sound of it striking Rondo’s face jerks through my body. He staggers, then cocks back his arm and delivers a punch that sends the guard spinning. Adombukar overtakes me, reaches the guard as he’s beginning to rise; and with one touch of Adombukar’s finger, the man is sinking back to the ground, unconscious.
“What are you doing in here?” I cry, reaching Rondo and holding him by the arms. His lip is split, a trickle of red trailing down his chin.
He points over my shoulder, swiping at his blood with the back of his hand.
“Your mom!” He pants. “I found your mom.”
I whirl. The window shows the room to be empty, but through the open door I see one end of an exam platform. Someone is stretched out on its surface, but all I can see are the shoes.
I shove past Adombukar, leaping over and around the animals that mill in the hallway. I shoulder past the door and enter the room to find my mother strapped to a tall platform, the arm of her skinsuit red with blood. Her eyes are closed. I rush to her side, too alarmed to cry.
“Mom!” I grab her, shaking her. “Mom!”
She doesn’t move, her body deeply asleep with tranquilizer. I fumble for the blue wand as Alma appears beside me, tearing at the straps holding my mother to the platform. I reach out for my mother in my mind. I’m coming, I tell her, and her energy flares in response. I yank the wand out of my skinsuit and immediately press it to her neck, the tip glowing blue.
Her eyes flutter open, taking in the room in a series of blinks before they settle on my face.
“Afua,” she says, a slow smile spreading across her face. “You found me. I’ve been calling.”
I tug her into a sitting position, Alma unfastening the last of the straps around her feet.
“Where is Dr. Espada?” I cry.
She bites her lip, holding her injured arm.
“Octavia . . . he’s gone, baby,” she says, her eyes filling with tears. “He’s gone.”
Her words sink in to me too slowly. Gone? Dead? I just saw him. How could he be dead when I just saw him?
My mother pulls herself to the edge of the platform and then jerks in surprise. Adombukar fills the doorway with his body, and around him crowd the animals we freed from the containment room, all looking in on her with various shapes and colors of eyes. She can’t hear them, but they’re all buzzing about her, sensing that she is like me, if in a slightly different way.
“Adombukar,” she says, and then looks at me. “You found the kawa I left for you.”
My mind is still processing the fact that Dr. Espada is dead. It takes me a moment to hear what she says.
“You . . . ?”
She pulls herself off the platform, standing beside it and swaying just a little.
“Yes. I had to. I put it inside the gwabi while she was sleeping, I hope she doesn’t mind.”
The gwabi is nearby and blinks. I wonder if she understood.
“I knew your father would put things together,” my mother continues. “He and I . . . we’re at odds.”
“Dad sent the Council for you . . .”
“Yes.”
“Octavia,” Alma warns. She’s standing by the door now.
“We have to go, Mom,” I plead.
I grasp her hand and pull her toward the door, and she follows. Outside in the hallway again, I notice that the alarm has stopped blaring.
“We have to move,” Rondo calls. He’s dragged the unconscious guard to the side of the hallway so he won’t be trampled by animals.
“Yes,” Adombukar says, and moves quickly down the hall after Rondo. I run after them, my mother in tow. The gwabi is at my side again, and together we dash in the direction of the doorway.
Something is happening in my mind: a flash of energy, a rippling in my consciousness that is as intense as it is abrupt. Adombukar feels it too: he pricks his mind toward it in the tunnel, curious. Another flare. And then another. As the intensity grows, I know something isn’t right. The stirring in my mind is like the tumble of dead leaves. Ahead, Adombukar slowly comes to a stop midstride. My mind has filled with this new, wrong something. Adombukar turns to gaze down the hallway, and I look too.
At first, I think they’re vasana that we left behind in the containment room, just now catching up. They mill about at the end of the hall, a herd of them. I don’t recall seeing them in the cages—perhaps Adombukar had set them free? But I feel his confusion, a gray cloud of worry entering the tunnel, cautioning me, cautioning us all. The vasana move toward us slowly, their steps long and graceful, but their path puzzled and aimless.