Josiah stares at me for a second and his eyes are wide with fear and concern. Why is he so worried about this?
I realize the answer a moment before the whistle stops and a siren’s voice—not Maire’s—comes over the loudspeaker.
“This,” the siren says, her voice pleasant and urgent, “is not a drill. Please follow instructions exactly. If you haven’t done so already, go to your designated gathering location and then remain where you are, with your mask on, breathing regularly and normally. The situation will be remedied as soon as possible.”
And now everyone in the room stares at me.
“Perhaps she could share one. . . .” Elinor begins, making a move to take off her mask.
“No,” Josiah says. “That compromises the survival of both. It’s against the rules.”
His voice sounds flat, but his eyes look sorry.
Everyone is still watching.
What do they think I’ll do? Run? Cry? Scream? The first option doesn’t make any sense, because I don’t know where Atlantia is leaking. For all I know, I could run right into the breach. And crying and screaming are going to use up what air I do have. If it’s a breach in the air system, the oxygen in the room will be gone soon enough.
My heart pounds so hard that I swear I can feel it in my palms as well as in my chest. It strikes me that I’m providing a good diversion for the others—the smaller drama of Will Rio die? is, for now, overshadowing the larger issue of Are we all going to die?
Should I risk everything and command them to let me leave? Then I can go hunt for a mask.
But the voices in the walls of Atlantia start up again, and this time they are screaming at me. Telling me to stay. Stay.
Who are they? The sirens? Maire heard them speak to her from the walls of the city. Am I hearing them, too? But that can’t be right. Maire said they were gone.
Elinor moves to put her hand on my arm, but I’m crawling inside and outside with all these voices and I edge away.
It’s growing dark in our workroom, though it isn’t the dimming time, and that feels ominous. Why lower the lights? Has the breach affected the power in some way?
I have no memory of this ever happening before.
And what about True? Where is he? Is he safe?
It’s cold.
I do not want to die like this—drowned or suffocated in the Below without ever having seen the Above. For a moment I’m tempted to ask doors to open and mines to move, to get out right now.
But I’ll die for certain that way. Wait a little longer, I tell myself. If the water starts coming in, you can do that. You can die out in the ocean instead of trapped in here. And if you survive, then don’t wait any longer to leave. Get the air tank. Get out. Don’t wait until there’s a body you can trade places with in the morgue. Go to the floodgates and go up.
Eventually the sirens’ screams die down. People are no longer talking, and I feel weak. Most of us shiver.
There isn’t much air left in the room.
We all wait to see if the water will come rushing in or the air out or both.
Just when you think you don’t have anything else to lose.
You die.
I don’t cry at all while we watch the minutes pass on the clock and I breathe in and hope it won’t be for the last time.
I don’t cry when some of the people start looking at me less and some more. I can tell they think I’m going to die soon, that the air is almost gone. Some would rather not see it happen. Some want to watch. They want to see what it’s like.
We hope to observe, not inhabit, the moment of our own deaths.
My mother wrote that. Nevio didn’t intend for me to read those words, but I remember every one of them.
I don’t cry when the siren comes over the loudspeaker to tell us all that the breach has been sealed off, that we are not in danger anymore, that we can take off our masks now. I feel the air rushing back into the room, and I draw it into my lungs.
I don’t cry when the siren tells us that we will soon be able to return to our homes, to be patient for a little longer.
When my mother died, there were times when I wept like Bay did, like I would never stop. But of course I stopped eventually. You have to stop crying if you plan to survive.
“Where was the breach?” someone asks.
“We don’t know yet,” Josiah says.
“How bad was it?”
“We don’t know that, either,” Josiah says. “They’ll tell us when they can.”
“You were so brave,” someone says to me. Now everyone smiles at me, seems pleased with how well I handled myself.
“It turned out all right,” I say.
“You didn’t know that would be the case,” Elinor says. “We should have shared with you. Even though it’s against the rules.” She looks ashen, shocked at herself. “But we didn’t.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “I would have done the same.” I wouldn’t have shared my air with any of these people. Not even with Elinor. Bay and my mother and True—they are the people I’d risk my life to save. “There’s no need to apologize.”
“I never knew I was so coldhearted,” Elinor says.
“Rio’s not surprised,” Bien says. “She knows what people are capable of.”
Right then the siren speaks from the walls. “We regret to say that the breach was in the deepmarket,” she says. “We have had to seal it off to preserve the safety of the rest of the city.”
What does that mean? I want to ask, but I know and I am so cold.
“They sealed it off,” a man says, sounding stunned. “That means there will be no survivors.”
The people of the deepmarket, gone. Aldo. The bettors. Cara and the man who worked with her.
I will never swim in the deepmarket again.
And True.
Did he go back there today? To sell the fish in his cart?
Maire is safe, locked away in the holding cells up closer to the surface.
But True.
Elinor sinks to her knees. Bien has forgotten me. There is a look of terror in her eyes.
Everyone whispers and cries out their questions. What kind of a breach was it? Too much water or not enough air? Did they drown or suffocate? Which would have been worse?
“The gondolas are not working,” the siren says, “but you may walk back to your homes. None of the neighborhoods were destroyed. We will give you more information as soon as we can.”