The couch groaned as Cardinal lowered himself onto it. He didn’t look at me, and he didn’t say anything, but when he held out his arm, I knew exactly what he wanted.
A few sections of his armor were held together by dirty rags and bits of wire. I cut those first. Once they were gone, I had to cut into the plate itself. It was like sawing through a lobster’s shell. The armor fell away in sections. The arms. The legs. The breastplate. Each time I removed a piece, Cardinal pointed to me and I put it on my own body. It was strange because Cardinal was twice my size, but each section fit me perfectly, the components coming together with a satisfying click. Eventually he was down to his helmet and a torn blue jump suit. The Brotherhood’s insignia—the Aerie tower with a pair of wings unfurled behind it—was sewn onto his left breast pocket in bright yellow thread.
Cardinal lifted the helmet from his shoulders. Beneath it wasn’t Dad or me or you or Greer. It was Cameron Conner. He leaned forward to help me snap the helmet into place. Then I saw the world as he did, a video feed that made everything seem extra sharp, but far away and flat at the same time. I got up from the couch and left the living room. The stairs moaned under the weight of my armor. I made it to the first landing, stopped, rested, and continued on. The curtains on the stairwell windows were open, filling the upstairs with buttery sunlight.
My room was just the way I’d left it. The sheets a blue, rumpled mess. A pile of comic books at the foot of the bed. I went back into the hall. The other rooms sat in an arc in front of me. Mom and Dad’s room. Your room. Dad’s office. I could see the edge of Mom and Dad’s bed through their open door and the corner of your bookshelf through yours.
Dad’s office door was the only one that was closed. The walls shot up over my head, and the next thing I knew, I was sitting at the top of the stairs with my armor-clad legs out in front of me, warning lights in the helmet flashing red. Malfunctions. Fatal errors. I blinked in a proscribed pattern and they all went out. I blinked again and the video turned off too, leaving me in total darkness. The house was quiet, except for the water as it splashed against the sink in the kitchen below. It was incredibly loud, like a scream.
23
THE FRONT DOOR opened and Hannah walked in.
She was carrying a plastic bag in each hand. I was sitting on the couch in the living room. It was morning but I didn’t know how long it’d been since I’d left the high school. One day? Two? The water was still running in the kitchen sink, so she turned it off, then went to the counter, which was covered in garbage I didn’t remember being there before. Hannah cleared the trash away and began unloading the bags, never once looking up at me. It was like I was there but invisible.
I watched her as she worked, making neat stacks of cans and cardboard boxes in the cabinets. Her blue and white dress was gone, traded for jeans and a T-shirt. Her hair was pinned up behind her ears, and when she turned into the light, I could make out a band of brown in the part, pushing against the green. I saw Greer standing in a meadow, his hands cradling the back of her head as he tipped her face into the sun. A light, honey brown. My chest ached. I pushed myself against the arm of the couch and drew my knees up to my chest.
“How’d you find me?”
Hannah glanced up from her work. “Easy,” she said. “Just checked every house in Black River.”
“In one night?”
Hannah stopped emptying the bags.
“It’s been eighteen days since the riot, Card.”
I looked over her shoulder and into the kitchen. The cabinets were open and nearly empty except for what she’d just put in. The trash she’d pushed aside was empty cans of tuna and beans. Boxes of cereal. Eighteen days. I tried to remember any of them, but all I saw was the bridge and the school and then Hannah walking through the door.
“We’re still living at the high school,” she said. “A lot of people are.”
She took one of the bags off the counter and came into the living room. I lifted my hand to my face and suddenly realized I wasn’t wearing my mask or gloves. They were sitting on the coffee table. I grabbed them and quickly put them on.
“There are plenty of empty houses,” she went on. “But I guess people just like being together. They’ve pretty much let Tomiko take over the kitchen. Oh, and Snow Cone showed up the other morning. She must have made it down the mountain before they moved the quarantine fence. No sign of Hershey Bar, though.”