I listen to the tap of my shoes against each step of black rock, the Torrens gushing through its channel behind the platform, the painted history of my people stretching upward before my eyes. They’re waiting for me up there, and I think somewhere behind me in the silence is Beckett Rodriguez. I can feel his eyes. I look back once, but below me is a still sea of color. The rest is in shadow.
I’ll have to move fast, before Beckett does, and I don’t Know how it will end. Maybe not well. Maybe well enough for him to get away without killing us all. Maybe not well enough for me to get away without being killed. I watch Thorne’s serious face rise above the edge of the platform, Marcus and Craddock behind him, and then I am standing on the platform, too. We look at each other, and Thorne opens his mouth to speak.
And then I kick over the table of syringes, and both tables go down in a scatter of rolling needles. While Marcus and Craddock are reacting to that, I step behind Thorne, stab the back of his knee with my sharp heel, and when he stumbles, I grab his long hair and jerk it downward. His knees hit the stone, and the knife that was against my thigh is now at his throat. Thorne goes still, his bearded chin up, hands half lifted in the air.
I think someone screamed. I can hear the last of the echo fading in the returning silence. Reddix has run halfway up the steps, and I see a smile lurking in the corner of his mouth, full of despair. My mother is just behind him, face hard and cold, but when I find my father, standing far down at the base of the platform among the startled Council, he gives me the tiniest of nods.
“Tell them to open the gates,” I say to Thorne. And then I yell it. “Open the gates!”
He shuts his mouth tight, and I feel him go calm in my grip. Caching. I look to the rest of the NWSE, but they are not going to move or try to save him. I turn Thorne to face the crowd, the knife tight against his skin.
“People of the Underneath,” I shout, “you have a choice. Starting right now. If there is one of you who has had a family member condemned, a child end their life, one of you who would prefer not to live with your memories anymore, then go and open the gates of our city and let the Outside in. You do not have to live as one of the—”
“Stop!”
The voice cuts through the Forum, cuts across my words, and it’s only then that I see Craddock pause in his move toward me. He has a syringe in his hand, and I’m not sure whether it’s the kind that kills me or puts me to sleep or makes me well. We both look down from the platform. The people are parting, making an open circle around a shirt of undyed cloth. He’s leaner than when I saw him last, harder, his black hair longer, and in this complete mess we’re both standing in, he smiles at me once, and that smile is his gift. He holds out his hand, and there’s a bottle in it.
“This city,” Beckett says, his words sharp and clipped, “belongs to the Outside.”
She’s standing up there with a knife to Thorne’s throat, looking at me like I’m the only thing in the world. I want to grab her and run. But it’s not time. Not yet. I need the Outsiders in here first. If Nathan got the gate open.
“Stay back,” I say, holding out the bottle to the Knowing around me, and then a thrum goes through the rock beneath my feet, a ripple of motion that comes and is gone. I see the flinch in the crowd, a murmur and turning of heads. I don’t know what that was, and there’s no time to think about it.
“This is Forgetting … ” I let my voice echo. “If I drop this bottle, then all of you, everyone in this room, will Forget everything you’ve ever Known.”
“Don’t!” Sam yells. “Beck, do not drop that bottle … ” At the same time, Reddix says, “Do it! Now!”
I can tell which ones belong to their little sect by their reactions. Craddock and the other man on the platform stare hard at Reddix, like they’re trying to understand what he’s up to, and there’s another group huddled at the bottom of the steps, eyes narrowed at the bottle in my hand. But the rest of the Knowing are just confused, and Sam is a little tight with that knife. There’s a drop of blood running down Thorne’s neck.
“The city belongs to the Outside,” I say again, loud enough for all of them to hear, and I really hope it’s true and that the Outsiders are coming in through the hall. I need them. Now. “Your gates are already open”—please let this be true—“and the Outsiders will discuss the peaceful transition to a government chosen by both—”
“No.” The woman who I think is Lian Archiva, Sam’s mother, steps forward.
“Beckett!” Sam shouts. “You were right, they don’t have to be—”
“No,” Lian says again. And another ripple of movement shakes the rock, this time with the lowest rumble. And then there are voices calling in the entrance hall. Finally.
Lian takes another step. “This city was built by the Knowing, and to the Knowing it belongs. This is not your fight, Earthling.”
Okay, so we’re out in the open with that. I smile at her. “And you,” I say, “are not in a position to dictate the rules any … ”
Or maybe she is. Because that’s a twenty-fifth-century katana laser she’s got in her palm. From the Centauri II.
And a lot of things happen at once. I duck beneath the beam of light and run forward, and there’s screaming, probably because Lian has just sliced someone to pieces behind me. Those things were outlawed for a reason. I knock straight into her, the Forgetting bottle tight in my hand, and the laser stops, the katana rolling out of her grip, the foot of a man with long gray ropes of hair kicking it out of her reach. The stone beneath us thrums, and thrums again, setting up a rhythm. And then I realize that some of the screaming is Samara.
I’ve started up the stairs before I even know what’s happening to her. Thorne is on his knees, hand to his throat, and Sam’s had to let him go because Craddock is after her again with that needle. Reddix gets there before me, though, knocking the syringe from Craddock’s hand while Sam holds off the other NWSE member with the knife. Then Reddix sees me, and his expression changes. And not only is there no calm face of Canaan, he is furious. Insanely mad. Sam yells my name, and then he’s coming for me.
But it’s not really me he wants. He wants what’s in my hand, and he’s not fussy about how he gets it. I land hard on my back, where I can feel the new rhythm in the stone, and we are grappling over the bottle in my fingers. Reddix digs an elbow into my arm, trying to get me to open my hand, and then Sam’s knife appears at the base of his throat. He goes still.
“Don’t move, Marcus!” she shouts at the other man. Both he and Craddock go still.
Reddix looks straight down at me and I can see the crazy in his eyes. He pushes with his elbow, even though it’s making the blade dig into his neck like Thorne, and Sam is begging, “No! Please, Reddix! No!”
My hand opens like a flower. Reddix grabs the bottle and smashes it onto the platform beneath his palm, a puff of white dust rising between his fingers. Sam screams.
I have a sense of chaos, not just in my own sphere, but all around me, echoing across the cavern. Fighting. Yelling. The Outsiders are here. The floor is thrumming, and someone is saying “Earth.”