“But that’s so wrong,” Coin says, obsessively pushing his hair behind his ear. He’s taken to wearing his Crapper King garlic wreath all the time now, and he stinks. At least it’s put a temporary hold on him sucking face with Malia, who refuses to go near him until he takes it off.
I nod. “I believe it is. That’s why I’m here. I don’t recognize their authority over me, or their right to inject me with permanently altering drugs. Which classifies me as a rebel and a threat.”
“What about us? Is that what we are?”
“Fuck yeah!” Lawrence grins and a few of the others cheer.
I look at Georgie, who doesn’t share their excitement. “You are whatever you choose to be. You’re not here against your will. You don’t have to be involved in any of our actions. You have every right to return to the city above and rejoin their society.”
“And be cured.”
“That’s the choice. I wish I could offer you a life less dangerous, less criminal. I wish I could offer you what you deserve. But this is the only alternative I have for now. It’s yours if you want it.”
She nods and turns thoughtful. I hope she never discovers the lie I’ve just told her: there’s no going back, not for any of them.
“Why’d they do it?” Henrietta asks and the rest of them fall silent at the pained tone of her voice. Her eyes are bordered in black kohl and peer out from beneath her jagged blond fringe. She is effortlessly stylish, even down here in the dirty pit of the world. “Why did they do this to us? To our parents?”
My chest feels heavy. She seems much younger than she usually does, trying tirelessly to seduce Luke. Now she just seems vulnerable and I have a fierce urge to protect her. All of them.
“Power and opportunity make cruel creatures of even the best of us,” I say. “When the plague wiped out most of the world there was a power gap. The ministers saw it and filled it. I can’t imagine they were cruel people to begin with. But the more power you have the more you want. They built a wall to protect us but it became a cage and made us unruly. We wanted out.”
I see a few of their gazes dart up to the pieces of sky they can glimpse; I see the longing in every minute detail of them.
“The Ministers discovered a simple way to calm everyone down, and it must have seemed like such a good idea. Just keep them all calm. It’s better for them, for us, for everyone. But forcing someone to be calm is the ruination of them. Calm is a choice – real calm means peace, not emptiness. By taking parts of us they made us into the kinds of creatures we have never been, not even in the very beginning of humanity when we were wild things evolving to possess logic and reason and inference capabilities. Even before all of that we had feeling: it was vital to our survival because without it we couldn’t have evolved.”
I look around at each of their faces and realize they are listening more intently than they ever have.
“But isn’t it true that by removing emotion we have higher mental capabilities?” Alo asks.
I shake my head. “In the era of the Romantics it was believed that in reason versus emotion, the wise chose to be ruled by their hearts. It was all the rage to be swept away by feeling. But scientists began to study the relationship between the two and it was understood that a healthier way to live was to find a harmonious balance: the mind and the heart should work together. This is when you’re most intelligent, functional, the most able to seek and achieve fulfillment. They called it having ‘emotional intelligence’. Psychologists understood that thinking about emotion didn’t mean you had to forego feeling deeply – the twentieth century was an age of understanding things. It led to more intense exploration, until it was discovered not too long ago that it was possible for certain signals in the brain to be redirected or blocked altogether, potentially cutting off one entire facet of feeling – the ones that caused unhappiness and violence.”
“It seems like a good idea until you do it,” Lawrence mutters.
“So they went from one end of the spectrum to the other,” little Georgie says, one of her many questions only not framed as one.
“Yep.”
“But what about real medical conditions?” Alo asks. “What about people who actually need to feel less?”
“Who do you mean?”
“Well, Coin, for one.”
“Hey!” Coin protests.
“Seriously, man,” Alo says kindly. “Last night you were so anxious you got in and out of bed thirteen times. So is he meant to just put up with that because it’s part of feeling?”
I shake my head. “Mental illness is not normal feeling. It’s illness. There’s a very big difference between treating an illness and shutting off an entire line of healthy emotion. Coin, I want to talk to you after class, okay?”
Coin nods glumly, flashing Alo a glare, who shrugs apologetically.
“Can we go back?” Henrietta asks. “Can we turn them back, I mean? The cured?”
I rest my elbows on my knees and lace my fingers together, biding time before I have to answer. I’m not sure what to tell her. The truth, I remind myself. “I don’t know.”
I see a shadow of yearning pass her pretty face. She’s thinking about her parents. I see the same thing in Will’s eyes as he gazes at her, or something similar, at least.
“Have you ever killed anyone?” Lawrence asks, startling me.
“What?”
“You and Luke are always off on missions with like forty guns each and sometimes you come back all wounded and sometimes you come back without as many people. What are you doing up there? Do you kill people?”
Christ, I’m starting to regret this whole venture. I rub my eyes. “We go above to get supplies. It takes a lot to run this place. And we have to steal ninety percent of it. We also go above to run resistance missions, like the one that freed you from the holding facility.”
“And you fight the Bloods?” He sounds impressed.
I nod.
“Have you killed any?”
I nod again.
“No way.”
They all start asking questions at the same time: How did you do it? How many? Are they scary? Aren’t they meant to be impossible to fight?
“It’s not glamorous. Or something to be proud of. We only kill Bloods if they’re trying to kill us. And we never kill the cured.”
Liar. You’re a disgusting liar.
“What’s the difference?” Henrietta asks. “Why’s it okay to kill a Blood and not a cured person?”
I crack my knuckles. “It’s not. It’s just that the Bloods are the soldiers.”
“So now it’s a war?” Alo asks. “They never killed us. They just cured us. They kept us from getting sick. And now you go up there and make things dangerous. You’re the ones who brought killing into it.”
Everyone’s getting impassioned but it’s their right to. It’s their right to be angry and to have an opinion.
I let Alo’s words sit a moment and I make sure my voice is even when I respond. “Sixty-one. The number of people murdered during the scientific trials for the sadness cure. All children. All without families or homes, taken because they wouldn’t be missed and then erased from records. Seventy-eight. The number dead from the trials of the anger cure. Not one of them reported or publicized.” I lean forward. “They think nobody misses them but I do. I do. I have each of their names burned into my memory and sometimes I say them aloud.”
“Okay, sorry—”
“Ten thousand: roughly the number of suicides since the cures were first administered twelve years ago in 2055. Ten thousand people who felt so inhuman, so lost, so wrong inside their own bodies that they had to get free of their skin. They had to get out and they couldn’t come down here and hide from the cure. They could only die.”
His face has gone very pale. None of them are moving anymore.
“You think they haven’t killed because they don’t tell you they’ve killed,” I say softly. “But they have. They’ve killed thousands of innocent bodies, and they’ve killed millions o
f spirits.”
Alo drops his eyes.
I close mine and take a breath. My hands are trembling with fury. I am a flame of it. Flashes of memory flicker through my mind, cold labs and needles and other children crying and my voice getting lost.
“You okay?” Will asks and I open my eyes to see that he’s beside me.
I nod and look at the kids. “I’m angry. Sometimes I get so angry I can’t breathe and sometimes I get just as sad.”
Alo clears his throat and can’t look at me. “Why is that such a good thing?”
“Because it’s who I am. I also get really, really happy.”
There’s a silence. Some of them are watching me while others are lost in thought.
“I should make something clear. Killing is never the right response to killing. Just because they’ve used a method that causes casualties doesn’t mean we should. But shit happens up there. Things are hard to predict. People are violent when they get in each other’s way.” I shake my head. “It comes down to how far you’re willing to go to do what you think is right, and how you can justify the death to yourself. We all have to decide how much violence we can live with committing.”
“How much can you live with?” Lawrence asks.
“Why do you wanna know about me so much?” I ask, exasperated.
“Because you’re our leader.”
“I’m one of them.” By default.
“Everyone knows it’s you, Josi.”
I frown, unsure why this bothers me.
“So maybe stop hammering her with personal questions,” Malia mutters. Lawrence rolls over and pins her down, smothering her cheeks with kisses. She grumbles and shoves him off, smoothing her red hair off her face. Instead of rising to the bait, Coin simply rolls his eyes. Thankfully the goofing has broken the tight spell we’re under and I feel everyone relax a little.
“Come on, Josi, how much?”
I shoot Will a plea for help but he just shrugs. “Answer your disciples, oh wise leader.”
I spread my hands. “I can live with a lot, I guess.”
“Why?”
“Because I used to run, and hide, but I started to hate myself so now I fight.” I shrug. “Besides, I think you only know where the line is when you cross it.”
“And by then it’s too late, right?” Alo asks flatly. I need to have a proper chat with him when I get back. The kid is usually pretty angsty but this is more than usual. “Where’s your line? How’d you know you crossed it?”
They’re not about to let me out of it. The desperate need to quantify the unquantifiable. They plead with me to make the inexplicable understandable. And I swore to myself that I would try to be honest with them, even if it’s scary. You grow up fast in the tunnels with the sounds of the Furies to haunt your sleep.
Where’s your line, Josephine Luquet?
“I’m not sure I have one,” I admit.
*
After class I pull Coin off to the side. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.” He touches his hair.
“If you need help, I’ll take you up there and find you treatment.” I don’t know how I’ll do this, but I’ll be damned if I let him suffer.
“I’m okay,” he promises, except there goes the hair tuck. “I just get stuck sometimes. Have to do something until it’s right. But everyone helps get me out of it. Malia especially.” He glances over his shoulder to see his girlfriend waiting for him, strumming her guitar very badly and winking at him.
“If it gets worse, or you just don’t want to deal with it anymore, promise you’ll ask me for help, okay? Promise, Coin.”
“I promise! Chill!” He grins, gives me a quick peck on the cheek and then dashes off to wrestle the guitar free of Malia’s hands.
“Get away from me, King Crapper,” I hear her telling him as she pushes his garlic-wreathed face away from her.
Will and I walk to the tech room together. We’re quiet until we pass by one of his paintings. The colors of this one are deep reds and burnt oranges and it always, always makes me stop to look. There are five figures instead of two. I’d never dare ask who they are, but I secretly hope they’re us. Will, Hal, Pace, Luke and me. Lost in the land on fire. Our lamps throw flickering light and shadows over it, bringing it to life.
Will laughs a little. “How you do indulge me.”
“I’m not! I stop here even when I’m not with you.”
“Come on, dual-eyes.” He grabs my hand and swings it like I’m a two-year-old. “That was a really good class.”
“They didn’t learn anything about history.”
“They learned a lot about life.”
As I ponder this he adds, “You know I’m coming above with you, right?”
I smile at him. “Thank Christ for that.”
*
“Check it!” Luke grins as we enter. The tech room is narrow and dark. We don’t light it because of the danger of open flames, and because there’s enough light emitted from the multiple flashing screens. The stolen tech in this room could run a 747. This is where most of our generator’s power is used – here, the infirmary and the kitchen. I have no idea how anything in this room works. I do know we have surveillance on a bunch of places above, and use wirelessly connected networks to open doors we’re not supposed to and read information that isn’t ours. Luke’s pretty good with the tech and Will has always been great, but the real genius among us is fourteen-year-old Teddy.
What Luke is imploring me to check are contact lenses. I’m impressed even before he makes me put them in my eyes – contact lenses were ruled illegal years ago so I have no idea where they got these. The real excitement happens when I blink them into place. What I’m looking at – Luke’s grin – flashes up onto a large holo screen before us.
“Woah.”
I move my eyes to Teddy and there’s two of him in the room.
“For starters,” Teddy explains, “they give you normal looking eyes. But the fun bit is that we’re able to see everything you see. Plus they’re programmed to deliver information to the scanners, so if you get scanned they won’t know who you are.”
Teddy hands me a tablet with the information of my false identity. As I look down at it, it flashes onto the screen in my peripherals and makes me dizzy.
“Ugh, this is disorienting. Can I take them out?”
Once they’re safely back in their case Teddy shows me what else he’s managed to create and program: fake fingerprints.
“You’re the gadget man from a Bond movie!” I laugh.
“What’s a Bond movie?” Luke asks.
“Oh, boy. You’re in for a treat when we get home.”
“The prints,” Teddy prompts. “We only have one for each of your thumbs so don’t let any of your other fingers get scanned.”
“And two for Luke?”
“Nope. Just two.”
I look at Luke. Things just got scarier. “So where am I going that needs fake prints and irises?”
“A party.”
“Come again?”
Luke changes the feed and suddenly we’re looking at a large map projected onto the wall. “This is the Gates. A walled community designed for the ministers and their families—”
“I know what the Gates is. Everyone does.”
Luke clears his throat. “It’s more professional if I do a general summary of the mission, so if you could not interrupt me in the middle that would really help, thanks.”
I hide a smile. “Sorry.”
“As I was saying. Most of the members of the Gates don’t ever leave. There are at least fifty Bloods on guard at all times, security is very tight and almost impossible to penetrate. Sometimes high-profile prisoners are kept within a facility there – this is where a lot of scientific experimentation is also carried out. As we know, Falon Shay hated Shadow for personal reasons, so it seems plausible that he’d have him detained in a place he could come and go from without fear of the resistance.”
“Well done. What’s the pla
n?”
“On Saturday night the ministers are holding an annual event. We’re going to place you inside, under the cover of that event, Josi.”
“Okay, to do what?”
“To access Shay’s personal security information, which we’ll need to locate Shadow. Once you’ve relayed it to us we can infiltrate and get him out.”
I frown, peering at the map. “So … wait, the event is at his house? That seems risky of him.”
“To him discretion is more important than the risk.”
“Why? What’s the party for?”
“It’s for him and the other ministers to act like a bunch of assholes.”
“Huh?”
“They bring in a bunch of cured women to entertain them.”
“Ew.”
“Yep.”
“How do you know this?”
“I went to one, after I was made a gray.”
My face crinkles in revulsion. It hits me belatedly. The obvious reason I’m the only one going in. “You want me to be one of those women?”
Luke nods. “I know it’s gross, but it’s a prime opportunity. Our team will be there, surrounding the perimeter. I’ll be in your ear the whole time and we’ll see what you see. I can’t go with you because a lot of those guys would recognize me.”
“Won’t I be recognized too?” Shay knows exactly what I look like.
“We’re working on that,” Teddy assures me.
Luke points to a section of the map. “I’ll be close the whole time, in these underwater tunnels, waiting to give you a way out.”
“So I find Shadow and take him to meet you there?”
Luke shakes his head. “We can’t get him out on Saturday – we’re just getting his location. Then we regroup and work out how to extract him another day.”
“But I’ll be inside. We won’t have that opportunity again.”
Luke’s eyes narrow. “How are you meant to locate and retrieve him on your own, Josi?”
“I’ll figure that out while I’m in there.”
“No way. Poorly planned, improvised missions go down in flames and get everyone killed. Just be patient. We’ll get there eventually.”
I sigh. “Okay, so I go in posing as an emotionless whore for a bunch of creepy lechers and sneak around until I stumble upon top secret information, and then I have to – what, avoid them for the rest of the night until I get dismissed? This is sounding a bit ridiculous, gang.”