I went to the hotel room door and listened. Silence. I undid the lock and slipped out into the corridor. I made for the stairwell and ran down the steps. When I emerged outside I took the same street I’d seen Collie on, my hands painful fists in my pockets.
Collie, please, this cannot be true.
The city at night throbbed in a blur of neon and blinking lights. Up ahead, the closest domes of the Zodiac loomed in my vision. I started to jog, dodging pedestrians. My footsteps chopped through me, until suddenly the domes were right there, across the street.
I stopped, breathing hard, and glanced to my right. Was this the cross-street Collie had taken? It was shadowy, leading to offices that were dark now.
Part of the Zodiac stretched right across a street: a graceful bridge called the Ascendant, enclosed in glass, connecting two domes. Gunnison often gave press statements from there; I’d seen it on the telio. Now the bridge was gently lit…and as two figures appeared within it, my sudden gasp caught in my throat.
Collie. He was walking with Gunnison; I could see them both clearly. They stopped halfway across. Collie had a thick folder under his arm; Gunnison motioned to it and seemed to be asking a question. Collie nodded as he replied, his expression earnest. Then he raised an eyebrow and grinned – the same easy smile I’d seen a thousand times.
Gunnison threw his head back and laughed. He clapped Collie on the shoulder, then turned and retraced his steps into the capitol. He looked as if he were whistling. Collie continued across the bridge, his smile gone now.
The night air prickled coldly as I watched. It felt as if the world had just shifted on its axis and I’d never be warm again.
Up above, Collie vanished from view. I waited, but he didn’t appear at street level. He had to be still inside the complex somewhere. I darted to the side door of the building that the bridge connected to. It opened. I edged inside and shut the door softly after me.
I was in a long ornate corridor lined with windows. A curving staircase with wrought-iron banisters led upwards; another led down. A small light shone over an oil painting of Gunnison that hung on the wall.
Footsteps.
I tensed, then realized they were coming from the downwards staircase, already fading from my hearing. Collie.
I slipped quickly down the stairs: broad grey marble, each worn gently at the centre. At the bottom was another long corridor, this one more utilitarian. Doors. Which one?
I crept down the hallway, listening hard – and then saw a door partly open at the end. As I neared it I saw an orange glow reflected on its surface.
I reached the doorway and looked inside. A furnace room. A rabbit-warren of pipes led upwards from the furnace’s broad iron belly. Its door was open and a fire burned within.
Collie stood beside it, prodding at the flames with a poker. An empty folder lay on the floor.
“No!” The word tore out of me.
He spun round, his face a mask of surprise. With a cry I raced to the furnace, but the papers were already gone: red, fragmented ghosts, wavering with heat. Briefly, I could make out Russ’s datebook, with all its incriminating comments. Then it too collapsed into the flames and melted into nothing.
Collie stood motionless, his expression slack, the poker held limply at his side. The only sound was the crackling of the flames. Their light played on his cheekbones.
“What have you done?” I whispered raggedly. “Who are you?”
His face was grey. “Amity…please, listen…”
I turned and ran, because if I’d stayed I might have killed him. Down the hallway, up the stairs. He caught up with me before I reached the door, grabbing my arm and spinning me towards him.
“Let go of me!” I cried.
“No! You have to listen!” He pulled me into an empty room and clutched my shoulders. “We couldn’t have won anyway!” he said fiercely. “You never got that, you never would get that! This was the only way I could make sure we’d ever have a future—”
“A future?” I jerked away. “What about Hal? What about his future? You threw that Tier One fight, didn’t you?”
Collie’s eyes were wide, startled. He started to speak and stopped.
“Why aren’t you denying it?” I spat. “You can’t, can you? You threw the fight that gave Gunnison extradition rights! You put my brother into hiding!”
He threw his hat onto a table. His voice rose to a whispered shout. “I had to! They’d have shot me like Russ otherwise! But, Amity, I swear to you, I didn’t know what the fight was for.”
“You knew it was a Tier One! You knew its outcome would affect millions of people! Why? Why would you help Gunnison, after—”
“If I hadn’t thrown it, someone else would have,” he broke in tightly.
I stood staring at the man I’d thought I knew better than myself. “All that time you spent stalling me, telling me that Mac was checking on things…nothing was happening, was it?”
His cheeks reddened.
“Was it?” I shouted. “You just didn’t want me to find out what was really going on! People were being taken into custody. Clem was taken. And now you’ve left my brother to rot!”
“Don’t you dare judge me, Amity – Hal’s practically my brother too. Do you think I don’t care? I was trying to protect you!”
My heart was shattered glass. All those thousands of people in hiding, in correction camps. The world’s only chance to get rid of Gunnison, burned away to ash. Just as painful was Collie pretending to help and lying to me all along. He’d thrown a Tier One.
Just like my father.
“I saw you with Gunnison,” I said finally, my voice dead. “You’re more than just a crooked pilot – you’re the high-up who was able to get the documents. Who exactly are you, Collis?”
He slumped against a table and rubbed his forehead. “There’s no time,” he whispered. “Look, let’s…let’s go get the auto and get away from here, and then—”
I gasped out a laugh. “Do you actually still think I’m going to leave with you?”
“Yes! You need me, if you’re going to escape this country.” He gripped my hands; his fingers felt hot, fervent. “Listen to me. No matter what I’ve done, I love you. I can explain everything. We can still—”
I pulled slowly away, staring at him.
I turned and walked from the room.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
January, 1942
After almost five weeks in the Resistance safe house, Ingo and I had become very used to the noises from the bar below. Our time was measured by its opening hours. Mornings were quiet, with no one downstairs except Arvin and Katrina, his wife. It was all right then for us to move around, for Ingo to play his guitar, for us to talk and flush the toilet and not worry about the scrape of furniture on the floor.
At noon, that all stopped. The first customers started arriving, wanting lunch and beer. The bar wasn’t noisy enough then to cover our own noise, so afternoons were our quiet times. Ingo and I played games a lot, for want of anything else to do. He taught me chess and I taught him poker, though it wasn’t any good with only two people.
“You can use it later,” I told him. “Poker is a life skill.”
“Yes, if we ever get out of here and have a life,” Ingo said.
Both of us were restless, sick of waiting. It didn’t help that I was so frustrated with my leg.
Even with the cane, walking sent jolts of weakness and pain through me – two major muscles had been damaged. I was supposed to exercise and did so grimly, promising myself that I’d become fully mobile again.
And soon. I had to be. Vince Griffin would know where the Day of Three Suns was being held from Ingo’s information.
Wherever it was, Madeline would be there.
“You won’t make your leg better by sheer force of will, you know,” said Ingo, playing guitar as I limped up and down the small room, wincing.
“I refuse to believe that,” I said. I wasn’t sure whether I was kidding.
/> “Refuse away,” Ingo said without looking up. “But if you collapse, I’m not carrying you this time.”
“Of course you will. I’m your only friend for ten thousand miles.”
“Don’t push it,” he said.
Ingo was frustrated too. Each night, when the bar was finally in full swing below, he played angry-sounding songs on the guitar, his tension clear with every chord. His music suited my mood. If Gunnison took over the entire continent…
No. We had to reach Vince Griffin in time to bring Gunnison down.
The hope hurt. I swung from thinking that ending the regime would be all that mattered, to needing Madeline’s answers more desperately than ever.
Harmony Five never left me. It’s barbed wire and too-thin inmates haunted my dreams. I knew it must be the same for Ingo, though we rarely discussed it. Somewhere deep down, my pain over Dad – the fact I could never bear to face about his thrown fight – felt even larger, colder than before.
The photos from the bomb factory were seared on my brain.
Madeline taunted me. She’d somehow convinced my father to put that man in power. Occasionally I found myself opening the drawer with the pistol in it, checking that it was still there – that it still had cartridges.
I told myself I had no idea why I wanted to know this.
We’d done it – we’d escaped. Yet a deep bitterness had taken hold of me. I wasn’t sure whether the catalyst was discovering the nuclear weapons, or revisiting what had happened with Collie.
I’d told Ingo everything…including what Collie did when I was arrested.
After I’d finished talking, there’d been silence. We were still sitting against the wall. I’d gazed at the window opposite, not wanting to see whatever was in Ingo’s eyes. There was a birch tree, and a street light. One of the tree’s pale branches had kept brushing gently against the top of the street light, as if trying to catch its attention.
Finally I looked at Ingo, sitting beside me with his long legs stretched out. He seemed shocked, staring out the window.
He glanced over. A rueful smile creased the good half of his face. “Congratulations,” he said. “Your ex sounds even worse than mine.”
I gave a short laugh of surprise. “Why doesn’t winning that particular competition make me feel any better?”
“Sorry. Just a statement of fact. I could try for some reassuring words instead, if you’d prefer.”
“Don’t bother. I don’t think any words exist that could be reassuring enough.”
Ingo dropped his head back against the wall. “I can’t believe he destroyed the evidence.” He murmured something in Germanic, then added, “He never had any intention of releasing it, did he?”
“No.” I gazed out at the birch again. I cleared my throat. “One thing that’s confused me since Harmony Five…Collie had a tattoo.” I touched the Aries glyph on my palm. “Right here. The sign for Leo, just like yours.”
Ingo’s spine straightened. “He was in a camp?”
“I don’t know. I suppose so. He never mentioned it.” Bitterly, I added, “He never mentioned all kinds of things.”
“But if he was in a camp, he was Discordant. How did he—”
“I don’t know,” I repeated. I shook my head tiredly. “I don’t know any of it, Ingo. All I know is what I told you.”
“We should get him and Miri together,” said Ingo finally. “They sound like each other’s type.”
The awful thing was, they did. I made a face. “At least this proves astrology is a crock, if we needed it proved,” I said. “You’re a Leo too. The two of you couldn’t be more different.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“It’s meant as one.”
Ingo picked up the guitar again and started to strum. The tune was soft, contemplative. “Well, it’s just like I said the first time we met.”
“You said a lot of things.”
He gave me a dry look. “In particular, on the subject of your boyfriend and my girlfriend, I suggested that there might be something wrong with us – remember?”
“With us?”
“Yes, us, lady. And now I know exactly what it is. We have terrible taste in the opposite sex.”
I snorted; it turned into a grudging laugh. “All right, you have a point.”
“Next time we’ll know better.” Ingo hit a wrong chord, started again. Then he grimaced. “Though if I find someone who doesn’t mind this mug of mine, she’d have to be insane. So it doesn’t bode well right from the start.”
“You’re not so bad,” I said after a pause. “And there’s more to life than looks.”
“Ah, immortal words,” he murmured. “True, there’s always my devastating wit. And my terrible guitar playing.”
“Stop it,” I said softly, and he gave me a surprised look and did.
A silence fell, filled only by his playing. I sat listening, my good leg pulled to my chest. The tree’s branches moved outside as the music wound around us, not perfect, but sad and pretty, suiting my mood.
“I like that,” I said.
His head was down as his fingers moved across the strings. “I thought you would.”
We’d slept pressed together nightly for warmth; we’d supported each other when we could barely walk. Yet I’d never once felt aware of him as a man.
Now, sitting beside him on the floor with at least two feet of space between us, I was suddenly conscious of his closeness. As he coaxed music from the guitar, I gazed at the back of his neck: at his black hair, slightly curling, the way it looked so crisp against his skin.
A wistfulness that I didn’t understand stirred through me. I swallowed hard and had to look away. I felt so empty inside.
At least he’ll be all right, I thought. Once he’s back with his family, he’ll be fine.
I was glad one of us would be.
“All right, we finally have some movement,” Arvin said a week later.
He’d just brought our dinner up to the small apartment. He put a tray on the battered wooden table in the front room. Ingo had been sitting on the sofa plucking softly at the guitar; he scrambled up.
“What does movement mean?” he said at the same time that I rose clumsily from my chair and said, “What are you talking about?”
Arvin sank down onto one of the dining chairs. His face looked different, and I realized he was almost giddy with relief. He motioned to the plates of pork chops and potatoes.
“Come on, eat and I’ll tell you,” he said. Then he smiled. “You know, I think this is the first time that I’ve brought you two food and you haven’t fallen on it like rabid hyenas.”
It was true: we were still both somewhat obsessed with food, even though we hadn’t been hungry in weeks – which in itself felt like a miracle. I’d gained fifteen pounds and just looked skinny now, instead of half-starved. Ingo looked a lot better too: much more like the lean opposition pilot who I’d met that fateful night in The Ivy Room.
We sat down. I winced as I lowered myself into the chair again, keeping my weight on the cane.
“All right, here it is,” said Arvin as we started to eat. “We’ve managed to find Vince Griffin, finally. I just spoke to him. See, our contacts were all captured last year; that’s why it took so long – we had to send someone to try to locate him, without raising any suspicion. We’ve got to get you to a rendezvous point near Topeka. Vince will meet you there.”
I chilled, remembering gazing out at downtown Topeka from the hotel room. The domes of the Zodiac, and seeing Collie in the bridge.
“How do we get there?” Ingo asked.
“Vince has been trying to put links back into place. There aren’t many of us, but enough. I’ll start you on the first leg in a few hours – drive you to Whiteknife, and then someone else will take you from there.”
A few hours. Ingo and I glanced at each other, startled. After all the time we’d spent waiting, it felt unbelievable. I let out a breath. “And then what?”
Arvin shrugged. “Then, I don’t know. Things are bad; Appalachia’s about to fall. But Vince will take care of everything. He always does.”
We spent the next few days travelling south, being taken from one remote Resistance meeting point to another. Shadows and whispers; furtive figures who didn’t give us their names. The mountains of the north gave way to plains and sweeping skies.
Neither Ingo nor I had been outside in over four weeks. It was nearly February now. As we moved from strange auto to safe house to strange auto again I found myself breathing deeply, drinking in a smell of leaves and growing things that made my blood tingle.
“Spring’s coming,” I murmured to Ingo once, and he nodded.
“See?” he said. “The Guns couldn’t stop it.”
Finally, in the middle of the night on the third day of travelling, we neared Topeka. Our Resistance contact, a woman with prematurely white hair piled up in a bun, was driving. She’d told us her name was Greta.
I sat in the back seat with my cane propped between my legs, twisting it back and forth. I could sometimes walk without it now, but only for a few steps before the pain and weakness got to be too much. Even with the cane, I wasn’t very mobile yet.
Ingo sat in the front; occasionally he and Greta spoke in low murmurs. I could hear his anxiety, and knew he was worried about getting home to his family. If Appalachia was about to fall, what would happen to the eastern ports?
We’ll be in time for our information to stop it, I thought. We will.
We headed down a wooded lane. The trees shone in the headlights, ghostly browns and greens.
“What’s the rendezvous point?” I asked, leaning forward.
“The ruins of an old house. It’s just around this next bend.” Greta’s hands on the steering wheel looked tight.
A few moments later, we pulled up beside a falling-down house, its clapboards a weathered grey. When Greta turned the auto off, I could still see it. There was a full moon, coating the world in silver.
We got out. We were the only ones there. Greta glanced at her watch: a quick, tense motion. “We’re a little early.”