The Ward (27 page)

“I don’t believe it,” Callum growls, knocking his hand against the table. It shakes, and I hear the clinking of glass though I can’t see much—he’s kept the curtains closed.

I can make out enough. Everywhere, funnels and hoses. Burners and beakers. An entire makeshift laboratory. And from somewhere deep in this obstacle course, an odd noise—

Coo, coo . . .

Cocking my head, I glance around the room. “Is that . . . Is that a bird?”

Callum just nods. Waves for me to continue, like it’s totally normal. Wary, I pull my eyes from the lab and flop cross-legged onto the floor.

“The governor was there, Callum. Waiting for me,” I say, shaky. “He told me about the people who protect the spring. The ‘Tètai,’ he called them. And you were right. I know one. Two, actually. . . .”

He waits for me to go on, but I don’t want to speak the rest. Saying it out loud makes it true, and every square inch of me is hoping that I’m wrong. But I know I’m not.

“Derek. My bookie,” I say, staring at my lifeline. “And this girl he’s friends with.”

The hatched wrinkle cuts deep and dark across my palm. Yesterday
—today
—Derek’s fingers traced that very skin. Hours ago, I kissed him. And he kissed me back.

But I’ve never known him, not really
.

That realization makes me want to curl up and hide from everyone. That I could be so naive, so foolish. Who, exactly, was I so infatuated with?

I have no idea
.

I reach for the carved statue inside my belt pocket. “Then Governor Voss gave me this. To give to them.”

Callum takes it from my hand. “A toy?” he asks, and he spins its wheels.

“Don’t know, he didn’t say.” I shrug, watching him fiddle. “A threat, my guess. A message of some sort?”

He finds the belly compartment, flips it open, and lets it swing shut. “I’ve seen this before,” he murmurs. “Haven’t you?”

“Never. But he must think it’ll scare them bad enough that they’ll tell me everything. I don’t know what he’s planning, Callum, but he’s desperate. He showed me a picture of his wife. . . . He wants to save her. He gave me four hours.”

Callum returns the statue—I flip it in my hand. Open the compartment, close the compartment. Open, close.

What happens if I don’t get it to Derek?

I hang my head between my knees, as the unknown weight of this thing the governor’s asked me to do settles in.

Callum looks at me hard. “You can’t do it. Ask Derek to give up the spring’s location, I mean. I’m sure Governor Voss wants to save his wife. But don’t for one second believe that’s his only intention. You saw the Core.”

I nod and toss the horse up in the air lightly before catching it and setting it on the table. The crawling, spindly legged feeling of fear I get worries me, but the statue and Derek aren’t what’s important right now. “It can wait. Until after you’ve made the cure.”

At his desk, Callum looks away. Sighs. The sound fills up the room, speaks a language of its own, and I don’t like it. It feels too much like padding. Like he’s readying me for bad news.

I hawk-eye him. “What’s the matter . . . ?”

“Come,” he says, waving me over to where a brass microscope sits in front of him. He lays a glass slide under its lens and nudges me in front. “Look.”

I peer down, adjusting the focus by spinning the knob on the right. We had one of these things at the orphanage.

Bubble-colored grids and particles of something that looks kind of like a desert wasteland come into view. But I also see other shapes—confetti and extra-long hot dogs, floating around the slide.

“Whoa . . . it’s a whole party down there.” I keep my eye socket hugged to the rubber. “What is all that?”

Callum laughs, almost. “There’s so much, I don’t know where to begin. Much of it is useless. Decaying plant matter, a few harmless microbes. The most interesting thing, though, are the chemical compounds I found. They’re called ‘phytonutrients.’”

“Which ones are they?” I ask, trying to figure out where one shape ends and all the others begin.

“The pattern-like particles,” he clarifies, and I nod. Sand dunes. Rainbowy grid. “They’re found in all plants. In one apple, for example, there are more than three hundred phytonutrients. And they all do different things for the body. Good things.”

I lift my head from the ’scope, because after what the governor said before about plants with beneficial properties, I think I know where Callum’s going with this. “Like fighting viruses?” I offer.

His brows rise up, he’s that impressed. “Yes,” he says. “And reducing the size of tumors. And healing wounds. I’ve already identified close to two hundred phytonutrients in that sample alone. There are hundreds more, no doubt, not including those that I was unable to match in the database.”

“So what’s wrong? What am I missing?” I ask.

Callum rubs his temples and folds himself into his chair. “It’s not what you’re missing. It’s what the water is missing.”

“I don’t get it. You just said—?”

He moves to the window, pulls aside a corner of the drapes. A sliver of light falls in the room, just enough so that we can see each other.

“Phytonutrients come from plants. But there’s no plant to be found in that sample. On its own, the water is useless. And it’s even more useless because . . .” Callum stops, wears a face like he’s ready to throw himself to the sharks. He inhales and turns to watch the springwater being sieved from the remaining mud into a beaker. “By filtering the mud . . . I also filtered out most of the nutrients. A sample that was weak to start—not even strong enough to help Aven long-term—became weaker.”

My stomach drops. “Wait,” I whisper. “What are you saying? We’ve got nothing?” I’m wire taut with the tension that comes from trying really, really hard to keep from bugging out.

“Not nothing,” Callum answers. “Not enough, either. Many of the compounds responsible for healing passed through, as did the antitumorals. But the antivirals . . .” He shakes his head.

I don’t believe it. . . .
I don’t believe him. My stomach churns, empty, acidic, and in the background, the dripping slows. Those intervals between one drop and the next stretch longer and longer, as the muddy springwater filters through the sieve.

Soon, the dripping stops entirely.

Callum moves to replace the mud, but not before lifting the large glass beaker and swirling its contents. “Do you see the dilemma?” he asks, emptying one jar into the sieve.

Quickly, I scan the table. Spotting two more, full and waiting, “But you’ve got—” I start to say.

“It won’t be enough.” His answer comes quick, in a voice so dark it could swallow gravity itself.

“We could give it to her anyway. That would fix the tumors, right?” I ask, grasping for any possibility.

Callum finds my eyes, serious. “Not unless you want Aven dead by nightfall. HBNC-related growths sometimes return even faster. I told you that back at the hospital. Which is exactly what happened to her the first time. The mass disappeared, but the virus was still in her body. And she relapsed tenfold.”

But he said he could do it. . . .

“Ren . . . I’m sorry.”

No, no, no, no, no—
the cure, it’s right here. It’s sitting in front of my eyes. And it’ll fix her tumors . . . but it won’t cure her? I can’t parse it; it makes no sense . . . none at all. Suddenly, I’m heaving—my body feels like a natural disaster.

I’m earthquake shaken.

Only, natural disasters have nothing on me. I’m avalanche flung, pumping volcano blood. Behind my eyes: Wash Out—the sequel.

And natural disasters, they don’t give up. They end when they’re good and ready to.

I’m not ready
.

29

10:00 A.M., SUNDAY

Emergency. Rooftop, 39 Rough Block. ASAP.

Send
.

Then, realizing Derek won’t recognize Callum’s unlisted comm ID number, I type: “—Ren” and hit SEND again.

“What are you doing?” Callum asks.

“You know what I’m doing,” I answer, because he’s smarter than that question.

His expression seesaws into warning. “Ren, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Meeting one of the Tètai so close to the lab . . . You could be inviting trouble in by the front door.”

“Look. I’ll get there before him, and then I’ll watch him leave. Make sure he doesn’t stick around. Plus, I’ll be up on a different rooftop, and out of sight—Bouncers never check there. Besides,” I say softly, thinking back to the sanctuary. The kisses. If he does care about me, if that’s what that meant . . . “I don’t think he’d hurt me.”

I might want to hurt him, but that’s an entirely different story.

I reach into one of my cargo pockets for the horse, but I don’t feel it. “Would you pass me the statue?” I ask, gesturing to table. “I can give it to him when I see him.”

Callum nods, about to hand it to me, then stops. Examines it. “You’ve never seen this before?”

I say no for the second time, and he reaches for his datapad. Enters something into it, and waits.

“I should go, if I want to get up there first—”

Holding up his hand, “Just a moment. I think I know what . . .” Then, “
Aha
, look—see?” he says, passing me the screen, pointing to an image.

Front and center, our horse statue. Only it wasn’t just a statue.

Big as a building, wooden, wheeled, and with a secret hideout in the belly—it was a war tactic. “The Trojan horse,” I say aloud, reading the caption next to the image. “Used by the Greeks for a surprise attack. They put an army in the belly chamber and called the horse a gift. . . . When the other guys accepted it, the Greeks jumped out and they battled them to bits.”

Callum exchanges the horse for his datapad. “That’s the story. I knew the statue looked familiar. Basically, any strategy where the target unknowingly invites its enemy into its territory.”

I hold the horse in my palm, and walk to the front door. “What does it mean, do you think?” I ask Callum, unable to piece it together.

He shakes his head. “No idea.”

I’m about to leave—one hand on the knob—when Callum calls me back. I turn to face him.

“Be careful,” he says. “During my research, the guardians . . . the Tètai, they’re not known to leave people alive who’ve found the spring. If Derek is one of them, he won’t be happy to hear you asking for the very thing he’s sworn to keep hidden. The fact that you’re still standing at all might be testament to how much he cares for you. Don’t be surprised if he refuses you.”

The double-edged blade of Callum’s words is not lost on me—that Derek might care enough to let me live, but not enough to want to help my sister. Not enough to want to help
me
.

I wait on the rooftop, my eyes toward Mad Ave so I can spot Derek before he comes. Up here, pigeons bob across the filtration system, gray, pecking for food or seeds that might’ve spilled from a recent airdrop.

Watching them warble in the sun as they claw the bridge’s rope, I squint to see a figure approaching. But ain’t him—no coppery hair, no tall, broad shoulders.

It’s a
she
. Short. Dark-haired.

I don’t need to know more than that. . . .
But what the hell is she doing here? How did she know?

She must’ve seen the comm somehow. Derek might not even know I contacted him. Adrenaline surges, angry, all the way to my head—I need Derek right now, not Kitaneh. Kitaneh didn’t kiss me, Kitaneh doesn’t care about me. I have absolutely no leverage at all.

Trying to seem unfazed, I rise from my perch at the building’s edge. She knows I’ve seen her . . . but she’s not slowing.

Kitaneh moves, brisk, across the suspension bridge. Balanced. Poised. Arrow eyed, watching me. The birds scatter. And the closer she gets, the louder the warning bells sound in my head.

“Where’s Derek?” I ask, shielding my eyes from the sun, but my voice wavers.
She’s moving too fast. . . .

Something drops down from her sleeve. Falls into her palm. It catches the morning glare, as sharp as any metal. “I know what you want to ask him,” she says, five feet away. “He left his cuffcomm on the table while he was in the shower. I did him a favor, deleting your message.”

Four—
I stick with an utterly ambiguous reply.
Three—
”Okay . . .” I say, stepping back until there’s no place to go.
Two—
My heels bump up against the edge of the roof.
One—

Zero
. A blade, tight against my jugular.

I stretch my neck away . . . but she’s got me cornered—a fifty-foot drop behind, a slice to my artery in front. My blood rushes everywhere too fast; I can hear it howling against my eardrums.

“And I cannot risk his answer. Derek . . .” Kitaneh pauses, and I think I see her flinch. Hurt somehow. It passes. Granite hardness takes its place. “He cares for you,” she says, finally, and pushes the metal farther into my skin. I can see how much she didn’t want to say that.

“Stop, please . . .” I whisper, not even breathing, not wanting to move my throat muscles even a millimeter.

A sharp wind whips against us both—Kitaneh’s hair sweeps across her face, blood-colored from a shock of sun.

I see it. . . .
Only inches from my face, the tattoo. The same faded black circle, just below her earlobe.

“Forget what you found. You have not yet lived long enough for me to want this blade to single you out. But it will. If it must.”

She pulls back on the blade. I swallow air by the mouthful, gulping it down before dropping onto the ledge below. The rooftop spins in front of me, and I watch Kitaneh’s feet move farther and farther away, like watching a TV hologram that’s accidentally projecting its image sideways.

“Wait—” I croak, just as she’s about to step onto the planked bridge. At my hip, the horse statue digs into bone, a blunt-edged reminder. But she doesn’t hear me. Louder this time, I call her name. “Kitaneh!”

She stops. Tilts her head my way, barely. “What is it?”

“This.”