The Ward (30 page)

1:00 P.M., SUNDAY

A
ll around me, the city is a madhouse.

Little balls of light fizzle in the hands of the neighborhood kids running across suspension bridges.
Sparklers
. The skyline bursts with them. Dozens of stars shooting from roof to roof, then dying out.

It makes me sick, all this prettiness right now.

Would he do it? Would the governor really poison people just for being sick?

If the West Islers are actually rioting ’cause they’re so scared, I think so.

I have to stop him. . . .

My knees can barely hold up the rest of me, amped and shaky as they are. In my veins, blue fire. I tuck the vial—the real cure—into one of my belt pockets and run toward the building’s escape ladder. Now would be the perfect time to get it to Aven; the hospital will be in an uproar, no one paying attention.

After that, Callum’s. Together we can figure out a plan.

As I’m climbing down the ladder, only a few rungs from the bottom, my cuffcomm vibrates. Buzzes once, then again. I pull my palm away from the rail to read the message, expecting to see two from the same sender, but I’m wrong—the first message is from Callum, sent ten minutes ago. I must have missed it in the chaos. I can’t make sense of it, either:

HE

That’s all it says.

HE . . .
then what
?

Confused, I flip to the second comm, and my feet stop working. It’s from Derek’s number. But I’m even more shaken by the message than I am by its sender:

Kitaneh knows about the lab. The doctor isn’t safe.

Gripping the rail, frozen on the ladder, I reread his warning over and over. In the back of my mind, I recognize that it means something, him sending me this. But right now it’s a drop in the ocean. I hardly care.
Callum’s in danger?

I flip back to his message:

HE

HELP

Callum’s not just in danger, he’s in danger
now
.

I jump onto the boardwalk, then stop, tugged in two directions. The vial, miraculous and tiny and waiting, is burning a hole through the fabric of my pants. I don’t even feel it in my pocket anymore. It’s eating straight through to my chest.

But I’m only minutes away from the lab.

I’m too close to do nothing.

Spinning onto the Rough Block narrows, everything in me fires off warning shots. And then I see his door at a distance, already half open, swinging on its hinges in a sudden gust of wind.

Kitaneh’s already here. She might already be gone, too
.

Holding the knob, I push.

It rebounds. Sent on a direct course for my face. I go stumbling onto the narrows, knocked backward.

My stomach drops—I’m too late—and as I’m cupping my nose, groaning, a figure rushes past. Hooded, dressed all in black, strands of dark hair blown to the side. Then an arm is on my shoulder, pushing me. . . .

Within seconds, I’m tottering on the brink of the narrows, heels balanced in the air.

One more blow, aimed just above the kneecap—it does me in. I fall into the gutterway, brack water filling up my nose and mouth.
This can’t be happening
. I don’t even know what
this
is, but instinct does.

I dog-paddle, I spit out the water, and surface, expecting the person to be long gone.

I’m wrong.

Kitaneh pulls down her hood. She wants me to see her face as she stands over me on the narrows. Watches as I grapple with the Hudson. “You . . .” She stops herself. Fists clenched, she looks away from me, letting her hair curtain forward.

When she turns again, there’s no anger. Just a stone sadness to her eyes and a frustration. Like I ain’t never gonna understand. Slowly, she lowers herself to a crouch.

“You all want the same thing,” she says, pointing to the sky. “You desire an all-encompassing cure. But the spring is not a medicine. Even if it mends your cuts and heals your sick, it is not a cure. Not unless humanity is a disease.” Her voice is even. “The spring is sacred; it is so much more than a cure. But used to the wrong end, it is a curse. You must understand.” Kitaneh looks at me as she rises.

“I told you not to come here,” a voice growls. I see Derek running up to her, out of breath, winded, his face lined with fear. He spots me in the canal, and he relaxes some.

I hate that I notice it. I hate how clear it is on his face. I can see the concern, the
caring
there, when I couldn’t before. But I don’t want him to care about me, not now, not when I know what I do. It makes my anger that much harder to hold on to.

Because if he actually does give a damn about me . . . then he’s got it in him to give a damn about everyone else, too.

“Are you all right?” he asks. Kneeling down, he reaches for my hand, and in one easy swing he lifts me out of the water and onto the narrows. My anger is too slow. It doesn’t even have a chance to make it to my face, at least not in time for him to see it. Quickly, he positions himself between me and Kitaneh.

I wonder if maybe I wasn’t safer where I was. Back in the water.

“You knew what the doctor was doing,” she barks. “All along. And you were going to let him do it. I, however, refuse to take any chances. Especially not now, after
that
,” she says, pointing in the direction of the announcement. “This girl has no idea what she’s dealing with. See that she leaves it, Derek. Or I’ll have no choice.”

Kitaneh eyes me one last time and shakes her head. Tucking her hair under her hood, her hands in her pockets, she turns on her heel. And then she’s gone, walking briskly down the narrows.

Soon as she’s out of sight, Derek—with just a look—nudges me toward Callum’s apartment. I hold on to the words I want to say to him, because through the crack, I can see just how well Kitaneh did her job.

“Callum . . .” I whisper, afraid to open the door.

“Check on him . . . ,” he says, something black in his voice.

Now I’m more afraid not to.
What if he’s hurt?

That does it—I push it in but stop, unable to go farther.

Papers torn from nails. The faint smell of smoke. When I look down, ashes snake across his floor. Glass triangles litter every surface; all the beakers lay in pieces. Sharpness everywhere.

And his desk . . .

The samples, destroyed. His research, destroyed.

I’m soaking, dripping water onto the floor, spinning around in circles. Disbelieving. Just as bad as Ro’s fist to my gut, I’m out of air again. Derek walks into the room behind me. I hear his breath catch too.

“Callum, you here?” I call out, glass crunching beneath my sodden Hessians. There’s no sign of him up here, so I begin toward the staircase that leads downstairs.

I open the bathroom door.

Covering my mouth, I look away. I can’t help but gag.

Callum
.

In the dark room, a red pool gathers around the shower drain. It spreads over the tiles—he’s lost so much. I can make out his body, curled up, limbs bowed out at unnatural angles. I need more light—I can’t see him enough to help him. On the sink, I spot a match, which I strike, then bring to the candle on the counter.

The smoky smell eases some of the nausea I’m feeling. I drop down beside Callum, blood painting my leggings a color not much darker than my leather jumpsuit, but I don’t retch. I look for the wound. It ain’t hard to find—his shirt’s soaked through.

On the right side of his stomach, a gash the size of my hand. Gaping flesh sliced straight through to muscle. “No . . .
no, no, no
. Callum,” I say, his name hard as nails in my mouth. Pressing my palm to the spot, I try to slow the blood. “Look at me. You’ve got to look at me.”

He doesn’t. And the way his head lolls to the side—I don’t like it. There’s no movement in his chest, neither. I grip his jaw, one hand on the wound, and gently shake him. His skin is cold and clammy against mine. “Wake up. Wake. Up.”

Is he . . . ?

My hand pressed to his flank does nothing. The warmth of his blood sticks to the spaces between my fingers.

I can sense Derek standing there, in the doorway. Eyes can touch, too. My back may be turned, but every one of my vertebrae understands. Cringes.
I just want him out
.

“He’s dead.” Derek’s words are sure. Certain.

Callum’s not moving, and the color’s mostly gone from his face. His skin is a waxy, sallow white.

You hardly knew him
.

Even as I think the words though, they feel irrelevant. The boy on the floor was somebody’s son. Somebody’s brother, maybe. I’ll never know. One day, he might’ve been somebody’s husband. Then somebody’s father.

Somebody’s doctor. So many people’s doctor. The lives he would have saved.

Who’ll help me stop the governor?

Derek steps closer and kneels just behind me. Once more he says it, repeats the ugly words like I missed them the first time: “Ren, he’s
gone
.”

So easily. So quickly. I feel all of my hurt at once. Wild. No cage.

“
Stop
saying that!” I snarl, cheeks burning, eyes hot in their sockets. On the counter, the candlewick sizzles. I watch its light draw orbs around the room. I won’t let my hand up. “Life may mean nothing to you, Derek. But I’m not you.”

“What—?” he starts, but I cut him off.

“You and that girl. You kill. Don’t sugarcoat it,” I say. “Death toll thanks to you two is probably higher than anyone else’s, come to think of it. Ever. In the history of the world. Because you get to add the lives that water would’ve saved, too. Not least of all my own
sister’s
.”

Derek’s face twists, as if I’ve said something horrible.

I don’t see how it ain’t true.

“And you thought you could
kiss
me?” My voice shakes, all the sounds colliding together. I’m speaking too fast, and I’m not even close to finished. “I could never want you, Derek. What’s there to want?
You care about no one
. A person who cares about no one is no person at all.”

Soon as the words are out, I’m left shivering.

I hear him inhale. Feel him shudder and pull back, and I’m glad I can’t see his face. I wouldn’t be able to say the rest if I could see any hurt there.

“The ‘cure,’ Derek. I know it’s a poison,” I say, Callum’s blood still in my hand.

Derek shakes his head but doesn’t try to deny it. “How do you—?”

“Could the water work against it? Could it stop the poison somehow?” I ask, realizing how little Callum and I actually know it. “It might not be too late. You could still stop Governor Voss.”

Prove to me that I know you, Derek. Please . . .

“The water can, Ren, but—”

“All the poisons, Derek. You know this?”

“Yes. The water protects the body from any number of things while it’s in the bloodstream. But
I
can’t do anything. You know I can’t.”

In my lungs, a beast wants to howl at him. And then that beast in my lungs
does
howl at him.

“
No, I don’t know!
Why not?” I cry. “How could you keep living after this?”

He can’t do nothing.

Derek rises to his feet. Yells, “People die—it’s what makes you alive!” His breath hits the candlewick. The flame flickers, bounces light around the room, and I realize something—

“People die. And people are
murdered
. It is not the same thing!” I shout back. I almost stand up, forgetting that I’m the only thing holding Callum’s blood in his body.

I don’t, though.

“Ren . . . you would have me give up the spring to a man who’d exterminate hundreds just to find it? The death would never end there—what would happen after that? How many wars, do you think, would be fought by others so that they could get to the spring? People like the governor are
exactly
the reason why the spring must stay a secret.”

The death would never end
.

Derek is right . . . it wouldn’t. All we wanted was more water, back when New York City launched the Appeal, and so many people died.

“Your friend is gone,” he says again, weary. He walks to the door, knees drenched in red. “Let the spring go with him.”

My next words roll out, thunderclouds thick in my mouth—“I want you to leave, now.”

I don’t remember thinking them, but looking up, I know it’s true.

Callum can’t be dead. . . .
I won’t believe it.

The room falls quiet. Shadows cover everything. My clothes are soaked, though I no longer feel it.

For a moment I think Derek’s left. My head feels so heavy, I have to close my eyes. But his footsteps come up behind me—

“I’m sorry,” I think I hear him whisper, and then he kneels again, inches of electric space between his kneecap and my spine. Electric miles separating him from the vial tucked in my back pocket. He leans forward. Tells me, “Not
no one
,” and when he does, I swear I taste ashes on my tongue.

34

1:30 P.M., SUNDAY

I
’m left alone with Callum’s head resting on my lap and a pool of blood beside us. When I tell myself to breathe, I can hear my insides as they rattle apart. Slowly, I rise to my knees.

I haven’t forgotten what’s in my back pocket. . . .

But what do I do?

I reach around, keeping my legs bent just enough so Callum’s head doesn’t slide.

Then, I take out the vial.

My hands shake—
Don’t drop it
—but that just makes me tremble more. So I force another breath of air in and out, and wait until I’m steady. My fingers hug the tube, red-stained, but I try to ignore that. Inside, the water looks inconsequential.

But the water would fix him.

What do I do?

On the floor in front of me: Callum Pace. Someone I hardly know.

I lower back onto my heels, find myself wishing I knew him better, this boy whose head is sitting in my lap. I brush a few shaggy, brown strands out of his eyes, and end up smearing his forehead with blood.