She pulled away from him. “Oh, and how are we going to manage that?” she said with a bitterness as caustic as the acid that had almost ended her.
But Rowan, damn him, remained calm. “We’re in an air-tight steel chamber, suspended within another air-tight steel chamber. It’s like . . . it’s like a sarcophagus within a tomb.”
This wasn’t making Anastasia feel any better. “Which will, in a few minutes, be at the bottom of the Atlantic!” she reminded him.
“And deep sea water temperature is the same everywhere in the world. It’s just a few degrees above freezing. . . .”
And Anastasia finally got it. All of it. The painful choice that Scythe Curie had just made. The sacrifice she had made to save them.
“We’ll die . . . but the cold will preserve us . . . ,” she said.
“And the water won’t get in.”
“And someday, someone will find us!”
“Exactly.”
She tried to let it sink in. This new fate, this new reality was awful, and yet . . . how could something so terrible be filled with so much hope?
“How long?” she asked.
He looked around them. “I think the cold will get us before the air runs out. . . .”
“No,” she said, because she was already past that. “I mean how long do you suppose we’ll be here?”
He shrugged, as she knew he would. “A year. Ten years. A hundred. We won’t know until we’re revived.”
She put her arms around him and he held her tight. In Rowan’s arms, she found she was no longer Scythe Anastasia. She was Citra Terranova once more. It was the only place in the world where she still could be her former self. From the moment they were thrown into apprenticeship together, they were bound to one another. The two of them against each other. The two of them against the world. Everything in their lives was now defined by that binary. If they had to die today in order to live, it would somehow be wrong if they didn’t do it together.
Citra found a single laugh escaping her like a sudden, unexpected cough. “This was not in my plans for the day.”
“Really?” Rowan said. “It was in my plans. I had every reason to believe I would die today.”
• • •
Once the streets around the island’s eye were submerged, everything began to move quickly. Floor after floor of the sinking city’s towers slipped beneath the surface. Scythe Curie, satisfied that she had done what needed to be done for Anastasia and Rowan, bounded up the stairs of the founder’s tower, which was the tallest in the city, hearing the shattering of windows and the rush of water pulsing upward from below as more and more of the tower submerged. Finally, she emerged onto the roof.
There were dozens of people there, standing on the helipad, looking skyward, hoping beyond hope that rescue would come from the heavens—because it had all happened too quickly for anyone to reach a state of acceptance. As she looked off to the side of the building, she could see the lesser towers disappearing into the bubbling water. Now only the seven Grandslayer towers and the founder’s tower remained, with perhaps twenty stories to go until it was gone, too.
There was no question in her mind as to what needed to be done now. About a dozen of the people gathered were scythes. It was them she addressed when she spoke.
“Are we rats,” she said, “or are we scythes?”
Everyone turned to look at her, recognizing her. Realizing who she was, for everyone knew the Granddame of Death. “How will we leave this world?” she asked. “And what solemn service will we provide for those who must leave with us?” Then she pulled out a blade, and grabbed the civilian closest to her. A woman who could have been anyone. She thrust the blade beneath the woman’s rib cage, straight into her heart. The woman held her gaze, and Scythe Curie said, “Take comfort in this.”
And the woman said, “Thank you, Scythe Curie.”
As she laid the woman’s head gently down, the other scythes followed her example, and began gleaning with such heart, compassion, and love that it did bring enormous comfort, and at the end, people were crowding around them, asking to be gleaned next.
Then, when only the scythes were left, and the sea was roiling just a few floors beneath them, Scythe Curie said, “Finish it.”
She bore witness to these, the last scythes on Endura invoking the seventh commandment, and gleaning themselves, and then she held her blade above her own heart. It felt strange and awkward to have the hilt turned inward. She had lived a long life. A full life. There were things she regretted, and things she was proud of. Here was the reckoning for her early deeds—the reckoning she had been waiting for all these years. It was almost a relief. She only wished she could have been here to see Anastasia revived, when the vault was someday raised from the ocean floor—but Marie had to accept that whenever it happened, it would happen without her.
She thrust her blade inward, directly into her heart.
She fell to the ground only seconds before the sea would wash over her, but knew death would wash over her faster. And the blade hurt far less than she imagined it would, which made her smile. She was good. Very, very good.
• • •
In the Vault of Relics and Futures, the sinking of Endura was nothing more to Rowan and Citra than a gentle downward motion, like an elevator descending. The magnetic levitation field that kept the cube suspended dampened their sense of the fall. The power might even stay on until they reached bottom, the magnetic field absorbing the shock of impact on the sea floor two miles below. But eventually the power would go out. The inner cube would come to rest against the floor of the outer cube, its steel surface conducting away all heat, bringing on the terminal chill. But not yet.
Rowan looked to the vault around them, and the lavish robes of the founders. “Hey,” he said, “how about you be Cleopatra, and I’ll be Prometheus?”
He went to the mannequin that wore Supreme Blade Prometheus’s violet and gold robe, and put it on. He looked regal—as if he were born to wear it. Then he took Cleopatra’s robe, made of peacock feathers and silk. Citra let her own robe fall to the ground and he gently slipped the great founder’s robe over Citra’s shoulders.
To him, she looked like a goddess. The only thing that could ever do her justice would be the brush of a mortal-age artist, capable of immortalizing the world with far greater truth and passion than actual immortality could.
When he took her in his arms, it suddenly didn’t seem to matter what was going on outside of their tiny, sealed universe. In these terminal minutes of their current lives, it was just the two of them finally, finally giving in to their ultimate act of completion. The binary at last becoming the one.
47
Sound and Silence
As Endura plunged to the bottom of the Atlantic, as its enduring heart that had beat for two hundred and fifty years ceased to endure, and as the lights went out in the chamber within a chamber . . .
. . . the Thunderhead screamed.
It began with alarms everywhere in the world. Just a few at first, but more joined in the cacophony. Fire alarms, tornado sirens, buzzers, whistles, and millions upon millions of horns, all blaring a singular, anguished wail—and still it was not enough. Now every speaker on every electronic device in the world came to life, letting off a shrill feedback shriek, and around the world people fell to their knees, hands over their ears to shield themselves from the deafening din, but nothing could assuage the Thunderhead’s fury and despair.
For ten minutes, the Thunderhead’s ear-rending squall filled the world. Echoing in the Grand Canyon; resounding in Antarctic ice shelves, causing glaciers to calve. It bellowed up the slopes of Mount Everest, and scattered herds on the Serengeti. There was not a being on Earth that did not hear it.
And when it was done, and silence returned, everyone knew that something had changed.
“What was that?” people asked. “What could cause such a thing?”
No one knew for sure. No one but the Tonists. They knew exactly what it was. They k
new because they had been waiting for it their whole lives.
It was the Great Resonance.
• • •
In a cloister in a small city in MidMerica, Greyson Tolliver took his hands away from his ears. There were shouts outside his window in the garden below. Cries. Were they cries of pain? He hurried out of his Spartan room to find the Tonists not wailing in agony, but rejoicing.
“Did you hear it?” they asked. “Wasn’t it wonderful? Wasn’t it everything we were told it would be?”
Greyson, a bit shell-shocked from the resonance still buzzing in his head, wandered from the cloister out into the street. There was commotion there, but of a different kind. People were panicked—and not just because of the noise that had pierced their lives, but something else. Everyone seemed to be looking at their tablets and phones in confusion.
“This can’t be!” he heard someone say. “This must be a mistake!”
“But the Thunderhead doesn’t make mistakes,” someone else said.
Greyson went up to them. “What is it? What’s happened?”
The man showed Greyson his phone. The screen was blinking with an ugly red U.
“It says I’m unsavory!”
“Me too,” said someone else, and as Greyson looked around him, everyone was filled with the same brand of uncomprehending confusion.
But it wasn’t just here. In every city, in every town, in every home around the world, the scene was being repeated. For the Thunderhead had, in its infinite wisdom, decided that all of humanity was complicit in its actions, large and small . . . and all of humanity had to face the consequences.
Everyone, everywhere was now designated unsavory.
A panicked populace began to desperately ask the Thunderhead for guidance.
“What should I do?”
“Please tell me what to do!”
“How do I make this right?”
“Talk to me! Please, talk to me!”
But the Thunderhead was silent. It had to be. The Thunderhead did not speak to unsavories.
Greyson Tolliver left the confused and confounded mobs, returning to the relative safety of the cloister, where the Tonists still rejoiced, in spite of the fact that they were all now unsavory—because what did that matter when the Resonance had spoken to their souls? But unlike them, Greyson didn’t rejoice—nor did he despair. He wasn’t sure how to feel about this strange turn of events. Nor did he know what it would mean for him.
Greyson no longer had his own tablet. As Curate Mendoza had told him, their sect didn’t shun technology, but they chose not to rely on it, either.
So there was a computer room at the end of a long hallway. The door was always closed, but it was never locked. Greyson opened the door, and sat before the computer.
The computer’s camera scanned him. And his profile automatically came up on the screen.
It read “Greyson Tolliver.”
Not Slayd Bridger, but Greyson Tolliver! And unlike the others—unlike every other living soul on the planet Earth—he was not marked “unsavory.” He had served his time. His status had been lifted. His, and his alone.
“Th . . . Th . . . Thunderhead?” he said, his voice trembling and unsure.
And a voice spoke back to him with the same loving kindness and warmth that he remembered. The voice of the benevolent force that had raised him, and helped make him everything that he was.
“Hello, Greyson,” said the Thunderhead. “We need to talk.”
NEAL SHUSTERMAN is the New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty award-winning books for children, teens, and adults, including The Unwind Dystology, The Skinjacker trilogy, Downsiders, and Challenger Deep, which won the National Book Award. Scythe, the first book in his newest series Arc of a Scythe, is a Michael L. Printz Honor Book. He also writes screenplays for motion pictures and television shows. The father of four children, Neal lives in California. Visit him at Storyman.com and Facebook.com/NealShusterman.
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Simon & Schuster, New York
Visit us at SimonandSchuster.com/TEEN
Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Neal-Shusterman
Also by Neal Shusterman
Novels
Bruiser
Challenger Deep
Chasing Forgiveness
The Dark Side of Nowhere
Dissidents
Downsiders
The Eyes of Kid Midas
Full Tilt
The Shadow Club
The Shadow Club Rising
Speeding Bullet
The Arc of a Scythe Trilogy
Scythe
The Accelerati Series
(with Eric Elfman)
Tesla’s Attic
Edison’s Alley
Hawking’s Hallway
The Antsy Bonano Series
The Schwa Was Here
Antsy Does Time
Ship Out of Luck
The Unwind Dystology
Unwind
UnWholly
UnSouled
UnDivided
UnBound
The Skinjacker Trilogy
Everlost
Everwild
Everfound
The Star Shards Chronicles
Scorpion Shards
Thief of Souls
Shattered Sky
The Dark Fusion Series
Dreadlocks
Red Rider’s Hood
Duckling Ugly
Story Collections
Darkness Creeping
Kid Heroes
MindQuakes
MindStorms
MindTwisters
MindBenders
Visit the author at storyman.com and Facebook.com/NealShusterman
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2018 by Neal Shusterman
Jacket illustration copyright © 2018 by Kevin Tong
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Shusterman, Neal, author.
Title: Thunderhead / Neal Shusterman.
Description: First edition. | New York : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, [2018] | Series: Arc of a Scythe ; book 2 | Summary: Rowan and Citra take opposite stances on the morality of the scythedom, putting them at odds, and the Thunderhead is not pleased.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017040210| ISBN 9781442472457 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781442472471 (eBook)
Subjects: | CYAC: Death—Fiction. | Murder—Fiction. | Science fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.S55987 Thu 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017040210
Neal Shusterman, Thunderhead
(Series: Arc of a Scythe # 2)
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