Reached (29 page)

CHAPTER 40

CASSIA

C
assia,” Anna says, standing in the doorway of the infirmary, “come with us.”

“I can’t,” I say, paging through my notes, looking up the flowers Anna mentioned.
Mariposa lily. Ephedra. Paintbrush.
Anna said she’d bring me pictures of the flowers. Did she forget? I’m about to ask her when she speaks again.

“Not even to see the vote?” The people of the village and the farmers have gathered outside to decide what to do with the cures Oker and Xander and the other assistants have made. There’s some disagreement about what to try first and how to proceed.

“No,” I tell Anna. “I need to keep thinking. There’s something I’ve missed. And I have to do it here. Someone’s been taking the medicine from Ky. I’m not leaving.”

“Is that true?” Anna asks one of the medics.

He shrugs unhappily. “It could be,” he says. “But I don’t see how. We always have medics in attendance. And who in the village would want to harm the patients? We all want to find a cure.”

Neither Anna nor I state the obvious. Perhaps not everyone in the village feels this way.

“I made your stone myself,” Anna says to me. She hands me a tiny stone with my name written on it.
Cassia Reyes.
I glance up at her for the first time and see that she has the blue lines painted all over her face and arms. She notices my glance. “On a voting day, I dress with the ceremonial marks,” she tells me. “It’s a Carving tradition.”

I take the stone from her. “I have a vote?” I ask.

“Yes,” Anna says. “It was decided by the village council that you and Xander could each have one stone, just like everyone else.”

The gesture touches me. The people here have come to trust the two of us. “I don’t like to leave Ky,” I say. “Can someone put my stone in for me?”

“They could,” Anna says, “but I think you should see the vote. It’s something every leader should witness.”

What does Anna mean? I’m not a leader.

“Would you trust Hunter to stay here and keep watch?” Anna asks. “Just for a few moments, so you can cast your vote?”

I look at Hunter. I remember the first time I saw him. He was burying his daughter, and he put that beautiful poem to mark her place. “Yes,” I say. It won’t take long, and this way I can ask Anna about the flowers again.

Hunter hands his stone to Anna. “I vote with Leyna,” he says.

Anna nods. “I’ll put it there for you.”

Anna was right.

What I see is so extraordinary, I almost forget to breathe.

Everyone has come with a choice in hand. Some, like Anna, carry two stones, because they have been asked by someone else to cast a vote by proxy. So much trust must exist for this to work.

Oker and Leyna stand near the troughs, and others, including Colin, watch to make certain no one moves stones from one place to another. There are two choices today: to vote with Oker or to vote with Leyna. Some stand in indecision, but most walk right up and cast their stones into the trough near Oker. They think we should give Oker’s camassia cure to
all
of the eligible patients. The more cautious ones cast their stones with Leyna, who wants to try several different cures.

Oker’s trough is almost full.

The decision is made in the shadow of the large village rock, and as everyone clutches their little named stones, I think of Sisyphus, and of the Pilot story, the one I traded the compass for months ago. Beliefs and myths are tied so closely together that you’re never sure which is tale and which is true.

But perhaps that doesn’t matter. Ky said that once, after he’d told me the Sisyphus story on the Hill.
Even if Sisyphus didn’t live his story, enough of us have lived lives just like it. So it’s true anyway.

Xander makes his way through the crowd to find me. He looks both exhausted and illuminated, and when I reach out with my free hand to hold his, he grips my fingers tight. “Have you voted already?” I ask.

“Not yet,” he says. “I wanted to ask you how certain you are about the list you last sent us.”

We’re close enough to Oker that he can hear what we say, but I answer Xander honestly anyway. “Not certain at all,” I say. “I missed something.” I see a little flash of relief cross Xander’s face; my saying this has made his choice easier. Now it’s not as if he has to choose between Oker and me.

“What do you think you missed?” Xander asks.

“I’m not sure yet,” I say, “but I think it has something to do with the flowers.”

Xander tosses his stone into the trough near Oker. “What will you do?” Xander asks.

I’m not ready to vote yet. I don’t know enough about the choice I’d be making. Maybe for the next vote I’ll be ready, if I’m still here. So I reach into my pocket and take out the paper that my mother gave me and I put the stone inside, next to the microcard. “I’m saving mine.” I’m careful to preserve the shape, to fold along the lines my mother made. When I look back up, my gaze meets Oker’s. His expression is sharp and thoughtful, a little disconcerting. I look away, to Xander.

“Which way do you think Ky would have voted?” Xander asks.

“I don’t know,” I say.

“The plan is to give the cure that wins to Ky,” Xander says gently. “Because he’s the most recently still.”

“No,” I say. “They can try it on the other patients first.” But how will I stop them?

“I think this cure will work,” Xander says. “Oker was so certain. I think—”

“Xander,” Oker says, his voice cutting between us. “Let’s go.”

“Aren’t you staying for the flooding?” Leyna asks Oker, sounding surprised.

“No,” Oker says.

“The farmers will see it as a slight,” she says. “This is their part of the voting ceremony.”

Oker waves a hand in the air, already moving. “No time,” he says. “They’ll understand.”

“You’ll be in the infirmary?” Xander asks me.

“Yes,” I say. I will stay with Ky, protecting him, until I
know
we have a cure that works. But I can’t seem to leave. I have to see the way this plays out.

Colin moves forward and holds up his hand to silence the crowd. “The last stone has been cast,” he says.

It’s clear that Oker’s won. There are far more stones in his trough than in Leyna’s. But Colin doesn’t announce that yet. Instead, he stands back as some of the farmers come forward, holding buckets of water. Their arms are marked in blue. Anna follows them.

“The farmers vote with stones, too,” Eli whispers to me, “but they also use the water. The villagers have added it as part of their voting ceremony now.”

Anna stands in front of the crowd and speaks to us. “Like the floods that came through our canyon home,” she says, “we acknowledge the power of our choice, and we follow the water.”

The farmers pour the water into both troughs at the same time.

The water rushes down, floods flashing through. Some of it slips through the rocks at the end. Even Oker’s trough lets some out. But it has the most stones; it holds the most water.

“The votes have been cast,” Colin says. “We’ll try Oker’s cure first.”

I slip through the crowd as fast as the water through the rocks, racing for the infirmary to protect Ky from the cure.

When I push open the door to the building, I don’t understand what’s happening. It’s raining,
inside
. I hear a sound like water hitting the floorboards.

The bags are all unhooked, and they drip onto the floor.

All
of them, not only Ky’s. I go straight to Ky. He takes a shallow, watery breath.

The line has been pulled out and then looped neatly over the pole next to his bed. It drips out onto the floor.
Drip. Drip. Drip.

And it’s happening to everyone else. For a moment, I don’t know what to do. Where are all the medics? Did they leave for the vote? I don’t know how to hook Ky’s line back up.

I hear a movement at the other end of the room and I turn. It’s Hunter, down near the patients who the Pilot first brought to the village. Hunter stands there, a dark shadow at the back, and he doesn’t move. “Hunter,” I say, walking toward him slowly, “what happened?”

I hear someone at the door behind me and I turn to see who it is.

Anna.

Her face is stricken. She stops a few feet away from me and stares at Hunter. He doesn’t look away, and his eyes are full of pain.

Then I notice the crumpled bodies of the medics near him. Are they dead?

“You tried to kill everyone,” I say to Hunter, but as soon as the words are out of my mouth, I know I’m wrong. If he wanted to kill them, it would have been easy while we were all gone.

“No,” Hunter says. “I wanted to make it fair.”

I don’t understand what he means. I thought I could trust him, and I was wrong. Hunter sits down and puts his head in his hands, and I hear the sounds of Anna crying and the bags dripping onto the floor.

“Keep him away from Ky,” I say to Anna, my voice harsh. She nods. Hunter is much stronger than she is, but he looks broken now. I don’t know how long that will last, though, and I need to find people to help the still. I need Xander.

He and Ky are the only people here that I can trust. How could I forget?

CHAPTER 41

XANDER

O
ker locks the doors behind us in the lab. “I need you to do something for me,” he says, picking up the bag he used when we dug camassia bulbs and sliding it over his shoulder.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

Oker peers out the window. “I have to leave now. They’re all still distracted.”

“Wait,” I say. “Won’t you need me to help you?” He can’t dig on his own. Is that what he has in mind?

“I want you to stay here,” Oker says. He reaches into his pockets and takes out the metal ring with the keys to the cabinets where he’s locked the camassia cure. “Destroy all of the cures. I’ll be back with something else we can use.”

“But you won the vote,” I say.

“This cure won’t work,” Oker says. “But now I know what will.”

“We don’t have to destroy everything,” I say.

“Yes, we do,” Oker says. “The people voted on this cure. They’re not going to take a substitute. Do it. Dump it all down the sink. Get rid of the cures Leyna had me make, too. They’re
all
useless.”

I don’t move because I can’t believe what he’s saying. “You were so sure about the camassia. We can still try it on some of them.”

“It won’t work,” Oker spits. “We’ll waste time. We’ll waste lives. They’re already dying. Do what I tell you.”

I don’t know if I can. We worked so hard on the cure, and he was so sure.

“You think I’m the Pilot, don’t you,” Oker says, watching me. “Do you want to know what the
real
Pilot is?”

I’m not sure that I do anymore.

“We used to laugh at the Pilot stories back when I worked in the Society,” Oker says. “How could people think that someone was going to come from the sky to save them? Or from the water? Stupid stories. Crazy. Only weak-minded people would need to believe in something like that.” He drops the keys to the cabinet into my hand. “I told you the Society named the viruses.”

I nod.

“When we found out that we’d be dropping it from the sky and sending it on the water, we thought it would be funny to name the Plague after the people’s stories. So we called the Plague the ‘Pilot.’”

The
Plague
is the Pilot.

Oker didn’t only help engineer the cure. First, he helped create the Plague. The Plague that is now mutated and turning everyone still.

“You see,” Oker says, “I
have
to find a cure.”

I do see. It’s the only thing that can redeem him. “I’ll destroy the camassia cure,” I say. “But before you go, tell me: What plant is it you’re going to find?”

Oker doesn’t answer. He walks over to the door and glances over at me. I realize he can’t let go of being the only pilot for the cure. “I’ll be back,” he says. “Lock the door behind me.”

And then he’s gone.

Oker believes I’ll do what he told me to do. He trusts me. Do I trust him? Is this the wrong cure? Would it set us too far back to try it out?

He’s right that we’re out of time.

I unlock the cabinet. Did the Rising know the Plague was once called the Pilot? How were we
ever
going to succeed against these odds?

The Rising was never going to work.

I don’t know if I can do this,
I think.

What can’t you do, Xander,
I ask myself.

Can’t keep going.

You’re not even still. You have to keep going.

I do the right thing. I don’t give up. I do it all with a smile on my face. I’ve always believed that I’m a good person.

What if I’m not?

There’s no time to think like that now. I trusted Oker and when it comes down to it, I trust myself to make the right call.

I open the cabinet and pull out a tray of cures. When I unseal the first one and pour it down the sink, I find myself biting down so hard on the inside of my lip that I taste blood.

CHAPTER 42

KY

I
t’s raining. So I should remember.

Something.

Someone.

The water is gathering inside of me.

Who do I remember?

I don’t know.

I’m drowning.

I remember to breathe.

I remember to breathe.

I remember.

I.