Because of the Forgetting, I think.
“When one Forgetting tree was chopped down, four more would spring up to take its place. But her memories guided our path, and we became the Knowing, and built a new and more perfect city, just as the First Warden had conceived. And the judge was reinstated, removing what did not serve the whole, and now we are becoming what we were meant to be. The best of the best of the best … ”
Which puts herself at the pinnacle of worthiness. I tilt my cheek to her paint.
“… and now, very soon, we will be better still.”
“And what are you going to do about Earth?”
“Oh, I won’t have to do anything about Earth, darling. Earth will soon be weak, while I have ensured that the Knowing will always be at a place of strength.”
“They want to take us back with them, Mother.”
“They will not take us. We will take them. We will use their technology to fly back to our home, to fulfill our ultimate directive. And then will come the time for which the NWSE has waited nearly four hundred years. To build and rule the Superior Earth.”
I only just keep from shaking my head. Mother and her little band of NWSE are not going to rule Earth. I wonder if Mother thinks Earth is a city, like New Canaan. Not a planet of billions.
I study the serenity of her face while she attends to the perfection of mine. I can’t see anything inside her. Maybe this is what happens when you cache emotions for too long. Do they become hard to access? Get lost inside your mind? Maybe it’s something like Forgetting after all.
I agree with Reddix. This has to be stopped. But not by killing us all. I think the Knowing need a choice. I have to keep Beckett from dropping that bottle. And my mother from having me killed before I can.
Mother steps back and looks at me with more approval than she ever has. “Come, darling,” she says. “It is time.”
I had to use the glasses and burn through the door lock. The beam is small and it took awhile, but my choices were limited. And I was sure to check all the metallic content this time, and not blow up the Underneath. I don’t know where my charge went. The glasses are low, out of nowhere—just under 12 percent. I have to tear them off my face and run. There’s no time to avoid anyone. Nathan has to get through that door so he can open the gates, and I have to get back into the Forum before Sam.
I sprint full-out down the corridor—the straight way, not the crazy route Reddix took me on—careening past a surprised mother with a baby strapped on her back, but there’s no one else out. They’re in the Forum. For Judgment. I don’t slow when I hit the kitchen stairs.
Up, and up again, and now the lamps aren’t lit. I have to use the glasses, and my breath is coming hard, a pain in my side. I burst through the door into the kitchens, through to the empty storage room. Only this storage room isn’t empty. Crates and sacks are stacked high against the walls. I stand there, panting, stunned, swearing at full voice. I’ve missed the level. I don’t know where I am. And I’m scared. That Nathan gave up and crawled back up the shaft, that I’m down here alone. That they’re bringing Sam onto that platform.
I grab two handfuls of my hair, thinking, run up one more level, and this is the right kitchen, and this is the empty storage room, and my charge is 11 percent. What is draining the glasses? I knock the pin out of the latch and throw open the door. Nathan crawls out, sweating and not pleased.
“Took you long enough. What—”
“Go!” I yell.
He follows me as fast as he can in the dark, back down the steps, and I am counting the levels more carefully this time. I’m at 10 percent on the glasses. As soon as we hit the lamps, I jerk them off my face.
“There,” I tell Nathan in the corridor, pointing left. “The way I told you. The main entrance to the Forum is opposite the gates, down the sloping hall. Do you understand?”
Nathan nods. He’s already running. I look over my shoulder, at the way I came. I don’t think I have time to get back to that empty flat and the safety of the terrace. I’m going to have to go right in among them.
I run down the hall, take the stairs on the left, the same way Sam took me the first time I came Underneath. There’s a short tunnel at the bottom, and on the other side of it, rows of columns and braids and backs in shining cloth. I slow, panting, sliding down the wall until I can see the platform, high above the crowd, almost in front of me and a little to the left. And the people are silent, hushed over the rush of the river water. Waiting.
I put on the glasses and zoom them. The Head of Council, Thorne, with his long braids tied back and clipped beard, waits at the top of the steps, along with Craddock, who I watched flog a woodworker three days ago, and the other man who chased Sam in the ruined city. Thorne has called a name, an Administrator, and a teenage boy is now climbing the steps.
There are two tables on the platform, one with a tray stacked with syringes. Wellness injections. I watch rather than hear the boy’s hiss when his goes in. On the other table, there is only one tray, one needle sitting in its center. I think I know what that one does. And it’s for her. But I can’t see her. I can’t find her.
I shut the glasses again and wait, and it feels like my breathing should be echoing in the Forum. I watch feet shift as the next Administrator goes up. And then the next. Thirteen of them. We’re doing this in alphabetical order. And then Thorne calls out, “Archiva, Samara.”
She’s in shimmering red, her hair half up and half down and all over her head. I slide on the glasses and zoom. A woman I think must be Sam’s mother hands her up the first three steps, tall, with white braids piled high and an expression that is … nothing. And then Samara goes on alone. She looks back once over her shoulder, scanning the crowd, and I know she can’t see me, but it’s like her eyes gaze right into mine, and I feel it, hard inside my chest.
She is so beautiful, but I know that look. She’s decided. Fearless. I don’t think she’s going down without a fight. And the thought of what they are minutes away from doing to her takes my fear away, too. I’m not even nervous. I’m just mad.
I drop the glasses back down my shirt and take the vial of white powder out of the pouch. One deep breath, and with the bottle in my fist, I step out of the tunnel and into the Knowing.