The Isle (19 page)

I
understand the word. I understand its shape as it leaves Miss Nale's mouth . . . and I don't. I cannot speak or think it. The word is a curse. It sinks like an underwater warhead in my mind. Soon it'll go off, even if I can't see it.

Both guards turn on the stairwell—

I have to hide.

Heart pounding, I pull my eyes from Miss Nale and retreat into the hallway. There, I find the blood tree. It's a weeping tent of dense red leaves, wide as three of me.

I slide behind it.

Spine pressed to the wall, I peer past branches and watch the guard. He holds his shooter in one hand, while I hold my breath. The long, thick barrel aims down the hallway. I imagine a dart being released into my gut, and the net
packed behind it shocking my flesh.

Because I'm shaking, the plant does too.

The guard jerks the barrel toward the tree. I close my eyes. I force my mind clear. I bring myself back to a good day, the day Aven sat with me at lunch after I'd agreed to be her friend—the first offical day. She interrogated me about the race, then gave me her protein slop. Hot mystery “meat” meant to keep us healthy. She said I'd need it if I was gonna be a racer now.

Thinking of us like that calms me . . . the plant too.

From the opposite end of the hall, someone clobbers down the servants' stairs, making too much noise.

Derek
—it has to be. He must have stayed there in the stairwell, waiting for me. Watching along with the rest of them.

The guard repositions his shooter and takes off at a run. I exhale, pressing my hands into my eyes. I hope he heads for the ballroom, where it'll be impossible to find him.
Thank you
.

In the background, the crowd's still jeering.

A foghorn blows—

He's your . . .
I turn her words over and over in my mind, like a penny between a magician's white-gloved fingers. At the same time, I refuse it. The last word she said . . . I didn't need to hear it; I saw the shape of her mouth. The word pumps through my veins, and I wonder, if the guard had shot me, would I be bleeding black right now?

I duck out from behind the tree, hugging the wall, and I backtrack. Instinctively, I find myself stopping in front of Emilce's room—
I can't go back in there.
But my veins give me
no choice. I open the door, then shut it quickly.

Inside, I wither. I slide all the way down the door, landing with my head gathered between my legs.

She's still here
, I realize, glancing at the cot in the back of the room. Her body's been covered with a pale blue blanket. Someone should be coming to take her away soon. Or maybe not. . . . It's total chaos out there. Who's gonna try moving a dead woman through hundreds of rioting prisoners?

I stand up, wipe my eyes. I walk toward her body, steeling myself for what I might find. I circle it like a hawk afraid of its prey, realizing it's caught something else entirely. In one quick motion, I peel the blanket away.

I scrutinize her features the way an artist might do it. Their color, their shape—

Her hair's buzzed short, like mine. And for whatever reason, her deadness doesn't keep me from wanting to reach out and touch it. So I do. My fingers graze the grayed, flat kinks.

Different color, same texture.

Her nose is flattish while mine isn't, but her skin is a pale sort of dark, and covered with a smattering of freckles. I wonder how many she has. I tried counting mine once before. I made it to eighty-three, but only if I included the smallest, most barely visible ones under my eyes.

I see myself in her
, and as soon as I do, I'm back in the ballroom, knife in hand, a crowd of hundreds at my ears. I'm watching the shape of Miss Nale's mouth as she yells a deaf word:
father.

Next, I see the way Emilce looked at me when she said my name . . . how her eyes watered and how fiercely she gripped
at me. I'd put it down to her being old and strange.
Find Miss Nale
, she'd begged. Now I know why.

My whole body convulses, seismic. I can't stop the damned shaking.
I killed . . . I killed the very woman who gave birth to me. Emilce is my mother.
Was
my mother.

And Voss . . .

Voss is
still
my father.

My stomach heaves, and I stagger backward. I curl over myself, nearly fetal, tailbone dragging against the bookshelf. I gag, my body rejecting the truth straight to the core. I bury my head in a corner—I vomit. Over and over I try to push the contents of my body—
my very genes
—out from me. . . .

My eyes are wet, and then I'm sobbing, trying to claw apart my self from myself. I'm chewing at my nails until I can taste the familiar iron tang, and I know my hands are bloodied.
I need to be free—
I need to drain away the generations of bloodshed from my own blood.

I need to get him out.

K
itaneh sees Sipu. They lock eyes. The room parts to make space for their gaze.
Traitor
, Kitaneh mouths, before disappearing into the throngs. I exhale, while Sipu watches the empty space where Kitaneh just stood.

“You think she'll stick around?” Ter asks.

“She'll find a place to hide so she can assess the fallout. We don't know if Voss told anyone else about the spring. Chief Dunn, for example. Kitaneh doesn't like loose ends.”

Turning, I spot a boy's familiar head of floppy brown hair. He's tall and lanky, but he's pretty cute in his fancy black suit. I squeeze Ter's arm. “Look!” I point toward the kitchen. “Callum!” I yell, but he's deaf to me. There's too much noise.

“I'm going to get him.” I let go of Ter's arm, but he grabs me by the hand. Craning his neck to get a good view of the
crowd, I can tell he doesn't like this idea. When our eyes meet, though, he sees he's not going to win this one.

“Fine . . . but be quick. This place is a madhouse. I don't want to lose you.”

I navigate through everyone the way I imagine a dancer would—stepping forward as they step back, spinning on my heel as someone turns too quickly. When I finally reach Callum, he gives me a quick hug before we huddle into a corner.

“What on earth are you doing here?”

“Long story,” I answer as Callum glances from his cuffcomm to the chaos, then to the balcony.

“It's Derek,” he says. “He wants me to find Ren—second floor, room farthest from the servants' stairs. Says he distracted an officer and now the level's been blocked off, but he believes she's still up there.”

“Where do we think the servants' stairwell is?”

Callum does a 360 and walks up to a girl in a black uniform hiding away from the fray. She's blond and ruddy-cheeked, fiddling with her comm. He asks her a question and she points over his shoulder, back toward the kitchen.

“Through there, left down the hall,” Callum tells me when he returns. “And it is blocked off.”

We follow her directions and sure enough, two DI officers stand in front of the far stairwell. “What now?” Callum asks, hands in his black suit jacket, trying to look casual.

Think like Ren
, I tell myself.

“A distraction?” I offer weakly, when a thought comes to me:
Kitaneh just killed the governor. They'd probably like to find her, right?

I whisper the idea into Callum's ear.

“What was she wearing?” he asks, and I tell him.

A split second later: “That's her!” Callum cries at the top of his lungs, pointing toward a random head in the crowded ballroom with hair dark enough to be Kitaneh's. “That's the one who killed the governor!”

Immediately, both DI stand at attention. “Where? Which?” they ask.

“Black hair, short, in a servant's uniform. Right there!” Callum continues to point, now moving his finger like an imaginary Kitaneh is on the run.

“Officer Morrisen to Chief Dunn: We've got a visual on the shooter. Send coverage to the rear stairwell, ASAP. Over,” he says into his cuffcomm. The two men take off.

Two new officers approach to cover the post. Callum and I don't hesitate—we gallop up to the second floor. The hallway is empty, but the balcony is still covered in DI watching the ballroom. We keep low to the wall. At the last door on the left, I pause and turn the handle slowly, so the metal doesn't squeak.

“Ren?” I whisper as Callum touches the door closed behind us. “Are you here? It's me.”

Off to the right, in the center of the room, the drapes open. Ren steps out, wiping her nose. She grips the glass of a small coffee table in front of her, like she can't stand without it. “Aven? You're not supposed to be here,” she says, choking back tears.

She's crying. . . .

Not
just
crying. She looks like she wants to tear herself to
pieces. I rush over and wrap her up in my arms. She collapses into me—
I've never seen her like this before
. She presses her face into my shoulder, shaking. She stomps her foot and pulls away. She tries to tug her hair, but she doesn't have enough. She presses her hands against her ears like she's trying to shut something out. Something that's inside her.

She crosses her legs and sits on the floor. I can't see her anymore, hidden by the bulky wooden coffee table.

“What's wrong?” I ask, glancing at Callum. He's hanging back by the door, on guard duty.

“We're safe here,” he says to me quietly. “For the time being, at least. No one saw us slip past.”

“He's my father, Aven—
Voss
.”

What?
I feel her hurt like it's my own—I'm stabbed from the inside.
How can
he
be her father?
“Are you sure?” I lower down beside her, and now we're both hidden behind the coffee table. “How do you know?” I ask.

But the look on her face . . . she just knows.

Ren glances past my shoulder, like she's about to tell me something. I turn around and see a cot covered by a blue blanket. Under it, I can make out the shape of a person, her black dress draped off the edge. “His wife,” she says blankly. “My mother.”

I rock Ren back and forth in my arms, wanting to say something to make it go away. That's not how pain works, though. “Renny . . . ,” I start, not knowing how to say the thing I want to say. “You're my person. My favorite person. On this planet and every other planet . . . including ones that haven't been discovered yet. Even though I think you're nutty sometimes.
And even though we're as different as different gets, you're my sister. Am I your sister too?”

She looks up at me, eyes bloodshot from crying. “You know you are.”

“But we're not blood, right?”

She shakes her head and coughs out a laugh, drying the corners of her eyes with her sleeve.

“Blood is just science. Family isn't science. If Governor Voss really is your father—it just means you share similar science. That's all.” I kiss her wet cheek and continue hugging her.

“But, Aven . . . ,” she says, and I can feel her words fighting a lump in her throat. “That's
exactly
what scares me.”

Hearing us, Callum gives up on guard duty—he walks over and kneels in front us. The look Ren gives him could cause a second Wash Out, if that were possible. He's about to say something, when the door swings open. Two officers stride in.

Ren grabs me and Callum, hiding us behind the drapes. She opens up a window that leads to a small balcony. “Shh,” she whispers into her index finger as we step out into the night. Pointing down to the ground floor, we see a patio that leads to the ballroom. It's a ten-foot drop—she wants us to jump. Ren closes the window behind Callum, and she begins to climb over the edge.

She hangs from the railing with her feet dangling free. Her hands let go, she drops, and she lands in a crouch on the red-tiled patio below.

Callum and I look at each other, both wearing the same
expression:
Ten feet isn't so bad
. . .
right?
We straddle the banister, lowering ourselves down until we're both dangling there. Inhaling, I let go—

My body falls through the air. Just like Ren, I land low. Ren shakes my shoulder with a grin, as we wait for Callum to fall next.

Beyond the double doors to our right, Dunn gives some sort of speech from the balcony pulpit. His mic'd voice drones through the glass. “We have all been betrayed,” I hear him saying. “And I am deeply regretful of the orders I carried out in former Governor Voss's name. As chief of the Division Interial, I humbly step forward to offer leadership. I ask you to remember this: I am not Governor Voss—I was acting as a servant of the UMI. Now, as legally sanctioned acting governor, I serve
you
. It is my belief—”

A dart
. . .

It sings past my head, sinking its fangs into the red tile. The net follows, attached to its tail. Its electric, twinkling blue lights blanket through the air, until I can't see anything else. A hundred shocking stars bite my skin. They confuse my nerves, making it impossible to move—until Ren throws me aside.

I'm paralyzed.

C
oming to, my muscles feel like raw meat. Both eyelids twitch open.

“Ren?” Callum shakes me back into the world, but everywhere his hands touch, my skin stings in response. I'm dotted with red marks from the net, and my head throbs. Groaning, I lift myself—only to be yanked back by the metal leg of a table bolted to the floor.

We're cuffed.

Panicky, I glance around. Metal cabinets line the walls, overflowing with wires and monitors, or other DI devices.
She's not here—

“You pushed her aside in time. I don't think she was seen,” Callum says. He cranes his neck sideways, eyeing the partially open door. “Where do you think we are?”

Inside the attached room, a team of doctors has wheeled in a surgical table and a stretcher. Behind them—wall-to-wall glass screens, and the circular door to the causeway. Tools from the surgical table are picked up and replaced, clinking with each round.

“That
was
the security room,” I say. “Now it's an operating room. We must be in some sort of storage unit.”

Someone shuts the door the rest of the way. Vaguely, I wonder what's going on in there, but I can't quite muster up the energy to care.

The table leg's hard edge digs into my spine. Aven's words still echo in my head:
It means you share similar science.

I wonder what other similarities Voss and I share.

Callum shifts from his awkward, hunched position under the table, deep in thought. “It makes perfect sense, really,” he says after a few minutes, and rubs his jaw.

“What does?”

He can't be referring to what I think he is.
Nothing
makes sense
.

“You . . . your blood, I mean,” he answers. “After the DI left, I looked at it again under the microscope—I just couldn't understand why that dropper would have had such a destructive effect on the ecosystem.”

“The dropper with my blood?”

“Yes, that one,” Callum says. “I'd accidentally used it in the mini tank, right before everything died off.”

I wait for him tell me what it all means. Instead, he pauses. “Backtrack just a moment,” he says, waving his hands like he's erasing the air. “Assume that the governor and his wife
were drinking daily doses of the water when you were conceived. What if the mushroom's genetic material, combined with the governor's and Emilce's, altered your own code in the womb? Under the 'scope, I saw that your blood contains a protein . . . the same protein that, in high concentrations, kills the algae.”

I scratch my head, only to be jerked backward by the cuff. “So you think the water changed me?” I ask, swapping hands.

“Have you
ever
been sick?”

Never
—but the possibility is too much for me to wrap my head around. “I scrape and bruise just like the next person, though.”

“Your recovery time could be shorter,” Callum suggests. “Really, it's impossible to say which portions of the mushroom's code you might've inherited. Some links could be weaker than others. Some might not have been passed down at all. Genetics are unpredictable that way.”

“So, what you're saying is . . .” I pause, because the delivery has to be just right. “I'm part
mushroom
. Did I get that right?”

Callum sighs. I'm glad Aven's not trapped here with us . . . but if she were, she'd have laughed at that.

Comm static fills the other room—I lower myself onto the floor, cheek to the concrete, so I can listen under the door.

“Chief Dunn,” a muffled voice says. “We removed the dart. . . . No, sir, there wasn't time to get him to the lab. . . . Security Room B. . . . The guard's outside, yes. . . . Sir, you should come here. Governor Voss's body has undergone . . .
rapid
cellular turnover—he appears to be aging. We doubt he'll last the hour.”

The doctor pauses.

I turn to face Callum, confused—“How . . . ?”

His free hand covers his mouth as he listens. “He was shot in the ballroom,” he whispers.

“Chief, Governor is asking if you've found his . . . tonic?” By the way the doctor relays the message, he has no clue what the governor's really asking for.

A dizzying fog rolls in.
That's really Voss in there—about to die.
“This is a good thing,” I say, but the moment is no longer simple. A day ago, it would have been. Voss was the Tètai's worst nightmare, I remind myself. The very reason they kept the spring hidden. He would have hunted it forever, killing anyone who stood in his way.

Through the closed door, a heart monitor beeps and we hear a deep, guttural whimper. I shiver. Back home, the meaner roof-rat kiddies sometimes played hacky-sack using sick, nearly dead birds. They'd lob the bodies back and forth. The sound Voss makes now ain't much different.

I almost want to pity him.
Almost
.

“I'll administer the Dilameth,” someone says, and we hear more shuffling.

“That's not necessary, nurse. This dosage is perfectly sufficient.”

Callum stiffens, his face ghostly pale. “They're withholding his pain meds on purpose,” he tells me.

Under the door, there are moving feet and wheels. Doctors begin to exit through the causeway, pushing their cart of
bloodied tools. The room is silent until we hear comm static.

“Chief, you've got someone watching screens in Security A. Can I just post up outside? Babysitting a dying politician wasn't exactly in the job description, y'know?”

A moment later, the door closes.

I bite my fist.
I wanted revenge, right? Well, here it is.
The governor's pathetic moans as he dies alone, right next door.

He won't last the hour. My
father
won't last the hour.

It's as if we're in a tunnel, and we're the only people alive.

I yank at my handcuff. Once, and then a dozen times more. Hard, then harder. “Do you know who I am?” I hiss at Voss, sure that he doesn't—Emilce sent me away. Kept me a secret. The governor may be as good as dead, but he's not there yet.

He will know.

Would it change him? Would he have some remorse?
I want him to regret his entire life—every action that led him here, to this moment.

I try to squeeze my wrist through the aluminum, but my hand is too big. The base of my thumb purples as metal peels away skin.

I don't care—
I've never broken a bone
. Leaning back, I throw my weight away from the cuff. My hand crunches as I pull. Lava-blood pounds into my fingers. They're
red
red now, plump and stinging.

In my bones, I feel the thousand microfissures, marrow rips marrow, then mends. I howl. Gravity does the rest, breaking and unbreaking. Reeling backward, the cuff tears from my wrist, and I fall to the concrete.

I hurt, but nothing's mangled. Nothing's broken, just as
Callum guessed. I cradle my arm as I stand, watching the purple disappear. The door to the next room is locked, but through the window, I see him.

He's laid out on the stretcher, back comfortably lifted. Can't have him suffocating on a bloody lung, of course. He has the face of misshapen, molten steel.

I pound the window with my good hand. I slam it until the glass cracks, splintering into my palm. My blood smears, shards fracture and fall. “How could you do it to me!”

Through the broken window, the only answer I hear is a staggered, bubbling wheeze. He doesn't know who I am. He doesn't know what I'm talking about.

With the force of a dozen streaks of lightning hitting one lonely metal antenna, my entire life—every decision, every emotion—it becomes clear.
I've had Voss in me all along
—

The beast made of teeth. The infernal hook in my heart that wouldn't let go until I found a way to destroy the governor.

The moment I almost let Callum die.

Even my love for Aven,
tainted
. I'd never let her die if I could find a way to stop it . . . for her sake, but also for mine. I
am
selfish. I don't want to be around if she's not: She's my one link to goodness. Without her, what would I become?

I am my father's daughter.

“I was yours!” I scream, desperately forcing my voice through his drug haze. “Do you hear me? I am your daughter!”

The machine that tracks his heart rate beeps faster now.

I keep going. “That's right! You hear me, don't you! My own mother gave me up! The water you both drank? It's in me—it's in my blood! I'm different because of it. And I think she
was afraid . . . of
you
. I think she was terrified of what you'd do to me if you found out. Do you understand, monster?”

The words are hot, blackened volcanic vomit out of my mouth. In them are all the years I spent alone, fending for myself. Once in a while I'd wonder what it would be like, having parents who cared. Little did I know how lucky I was to grow up without them.

The hook is back, deeper this time. I no longer want revenge for what he did to Aven, or anyone else he ever wronged.

I want it for myself.

The beeping is faster now, so I know I'm getting through. He makes a sound. He has no voice, can speak only in whispers.

“You . . .”

That one word drags on, like he can't quite stop it. The vowel mixes with whatever air he's got in his one good lung. I'm in his breath.

“Me! Yes, me!”

He's watching now from under two weak eye slits. I don't see remorse. A flash of something, maybe.
Hope?
He lifts a finger, tries to raise the rest of his hand. It wavers in the air for just a moment before it falls.

“Help me,” I hear him say. “You could help me. Your blood.”

I'm sick again, hurling freshwater and now bile, because there's nothing left in my stomach to set free.

“You could be the way.” Air hisses between his teeth. “You could save us all.”

I scream one final time, spitting the last of my retching gut onto the floor. Footsteps echo outside the underground room.
If I wanted to see remorse, I didn't get it.
Even after
everything he's put me through, Voss is who he is—he'd use me to the end if he could.

Through gritted teeth and clenched jaw, I tell him, “Die,” and he does.

The beeping flatlines. Becomes one solid shrieking horizon that doesn't end. It extends forever in my head, and even when I press my hands up to my ears, desperate to drown it out, I can still hear. I'll never stop hearing the noise, I realize.

It's in my very bones.