“Should we wait for them?” my mother says, not understanding why we’ve stopped, Alma beside her.
“Something’s wrong,” I say. I grope for the vasana in the tunnel, looking for a connection. I sense their vague presence, a dim consciousness floating in the dark. But there’s no chain connecting us, no glowing string. They feel stripped, hollow.
“Oh no,” I whisper.
“What is this?” Adombukar says, softly at first. Then he’s bellowing, “What is this!”
“We didn’t know,” I start to say, but with the realization starting to spread in my mind, I know we don’t have time. “Adombukar, we have to go. Now.”
He stands like a tree in the hallway. Like a ripple, the animals around me begin to notice that something about the herd of vasana is off. They think that the animals down the hall are sick, and some of them shuffle uncomfortably, moving toward the door where Rondo stands waiting.
“What have you done?” Adombukar turns on me and my mother, his anger and pain surging through the tunnel like a whirlwind.
I run, dragging my mother and Alma. I can’t close the tunnel—I don’t have enough focus to do it, and there’s no time.
Adombukar, I call for him. Please come. Your daughter needs you.
And then there’s a scream. Not a human scream, but an animal sound that tears through the air like lightning, electrifying the hairs on the back of my neck.
The herd of vasana, all twelve of them, are halfway down the hallway, their bodies trembling and writhing, stamping their feet. Even from this distance I make out the whites of their eyeballs, wide and exposed as they roll in their sockets. Their mouths are open, the screams rising from their elegant necks like a dirge. And beyond them, at the end of the hallway, stands Dr. Albatur, leaning against the wall for support. He has something in his hand, something black. It’s too far to see properly, but I don’t need to see it well to know that it’s the control device.
“They will bring me your bones, Faloii!” he bellows, his voice echoing down the hallway.
I turn to run again just as the fangs emerge from the vasana’s mouths, long shining dagger-like teeth sprouting from their jaws like nightmarish spikes. I shove Adombukar, whose heart I can feel breaking in the tunnel, shout for Alma and my mother. Rondo has disappeared, already out in the dome. In my mind, I scream for the other animals to get away, escape. Some of them run in time. Those who are farther behind I can feel being torn apart, my body on fire with their pain. Adombukar runs beside me, silent. I feel nothing from him.
A guard strides into the mouth of the door ahead, buzzgun drawn. Its muzzle is aimed squarely at Adombukar’s chest, and there’s nowhere to hide in the corridor, no place to dodge its blast. Inertia hurtles me forward even as my brain tries to urge retreat. I hear the zip of the gun being fired, my eyes squeezing shut involuntarily. The screech that rips from my throat could be from any one of the animals that stampede behind me.
When I open my eyes, debris is falling from the ceiling, embers and dust from disintegrated clay showering the hallway ahead. I look frantically for Adombukar, expecting to find him lying in a pool of blood beside me, but he’s passed me, crouching by a tangle of two bodies lying there in the doorway.
“Rondo!”
The stampede of animals is no longer in the hallway around and behind me but in my chest. A massive egg of panic hatches deep inside, the creature bursting forth sending me sprinting to the Zoo’s entrance, skidding to my knees and almost falling on top of him, pushing Adombukar away.
“Oh, stars,” I scream. My voice cracks: everything inside me is cracking. “Oh, please, no, please, stars, no.”
I grip the hand I can reach—his other hand holds the branch he used to strike the guard. Around me, the sound of my mother and Alma screaming my name filters in through what feels like a cloud of noise, the shrieking of the vasana echoing louder and louder.
“I see,” Adombukar says. He presses his finger against Rondo’s neck, as if checking his pulse, but the flare of green light in the tunnel tells me something else is happening, even if I don’t know what. “Both are alive.”
“Rondo, Rondo, Rondo,” I repeat, as if saying his name over and over will stir him.
Another guard approaches, aiming his buzzgun. I throw my hand up at him as if the force of my rage and pain alone will stop him. Above my head is a hot blur of energy as the gwabi hurdles over me and Rondo, leaping upon the guard. She doesn’t have to bite him: all five hundred pounds of her landing on him is like a meteor crushing his body.
Then pressure on my hand. My head snaps down to look at Rondo, his beautiful fingers squeezing mine ever so softly.
“Leave,” he groans.
I have no choice, but I can’t make my hand let go. I need his eyes to open. I can’t move until I’m inside his dark eyes.
His eyelids flutter. His pupils adjust to the white hallway. He squeezes my hand, his grip weak. “Octavia, go.”
I don’t recognize the sound that rips from my throat as I force myself to let go. My mother drags me after Adombukar, who makes his way smoothly through the dome like the shadow of a cloud on water. His emotions are so intense it makes it difficult for me to breathe: his rage at the fate of the vasana combined with a breathless exaltation for his freedom. He looks around at the trees and then up at the sky through the transparent roof. It’s night, with only the moon lighting the dome, but his relief at seeing the sky flows like grass blown by wind.
I can smell my mother’s blood like I can smell the blood of the igua, the kunike, whose bodies I can’t see but I feel lying behind us in the hallway, torn by the vasana. All around me, the ogwe give off their terrifying scent, transformed from a warning to its own silent alarm. It fills the animals’ noses and drives them on, away from this place.
Alma makes it to the main door of the dome before the rest of us, slamming her palm against the scanner. The square turns red, refusing to let her out.
“They’ve locked it!” she screams. “Octavia, please do it!”
My mother releases my hand and I sprint to Alma’s slide, slapping my palm on the scanner. They know I have my father’s hands. They know. They’ve changed the prints. But the scanner turns green, the door slides open, and we stumble out into the hot night air of Faloiv.