Since turning, her enhanced olfactory senses never ceased to amaze her; but she was about to be marveled all the more. Because this scent—it now ruptured a distant memory. She had smelled this odor long ago, when she was only a child, when she was a heper, when she wasn’t even conscious of smelling it, much less storing it in her memory. The scent had burrowed into the irretrievable depths of her brain and only now, with her empowered sense of smell, did she recall it.
This almost-Gene smell was the smell of the doctor.
The one who had performed that awful surgery on her a decade ago. Her body tensed at the memory.
She moved away from the workbenches and ambled toward the back of the laboratory. In the farthest corner, the almost-Gene odor dropped off and she was about to turn around when she sniffed something curious. Actually, it wasn’t the smell itself that was unusual—it was the same almost-Gene smell—so much as its placement. It was coming from the floor. She sniffed. No, it was coming from under the floor.
She cocked her head, stared down.
A second later, she was ramming her arm through the floorboards. Her fingers touched the metal top of a small trunk. She tore out a few more floorboards and lifted the trunk out.
She ripped open the lid. There were stacks of paper inside. Ancient papers, musty, yellowed, and frayed at the edges, they harkened back to an era not decades but centuries ago.
It was not the content of these papers that immediately drew her attention—the ancient typeface was utterly indecipherable. Instead, her eyes lit on the insignia of the crescent moon in the top corner of each sheet:
There were other papers, as well, modern and crisp with relative newness, covered in the almost-Gene scent. She flipped through them, glancing at the handwritten notes. These were apparent transcriptions of the ancient documents. She read hurriedly at first, thinking there would be little to hold her interest. But soon she was taking in every sentence, swallowing every word. Blinking at the truth they revealed. A half hour later, she had read enough. To understand. Everything.
She took out a sheet of paper, a crumpled letter, from her pocket. She’d been carrying it for many nights since finding it in the Pit, and she now placed it next to the handwritten notes. It was the same handwriting.
She felt nothing but a deep pity for Gene.
She gazed through the opened doorway to the outside. The black of night was shading gray now as it had done millions of times before. But it felt as if the world, the universe, had irretrievably changed.
Sunrise caught everyone by surprise. Dawn light radiated into the streets, breaching the walls like a flood of acid. Many never woke at all—their inebriated bodies melted without so much as a twitch and their liquefied flesh dribbled between the stones of the fortress wall and into the dewed grass of the meadows. Others awoke screaming and scrambled into nearby cottages, seeking a refuge that was to be—like the remainder of their lives—short-lived. Within minutes, the strengthening sunlight slipped into the interior of the cottages through windows, smashed doors, breaks in the walls. It was a slow, agonizing disintegration for those inside, and some soon preferred the quicker death of full-on sunlight exposure. They ran outside into the onslaught of sun rays, dashing along streets and racing down meadows, as far and as fast as their disintegrating legs could take them. Those who had not melted away by the time they reached the ledge of the cliff threw themselves dramatically into the ravine and were seen no more.
Only Ashley June, ensconced safely in the darkness of the laboratory, survived. When dusk finally arrived, she opened the tightly sealed laboratory door and walked out. She found the village empty, its streets polka-dotted with yellow crusty stains, like vomit baked into the ground. She did not stop to genuflect or to mourn, nor did she even step around the crusty puddles. She walked right through them, the soles of her feet stepping on the sticky, slightly crunchy texture of what was once teeth and eyes and skin and bones.
She was crossing the bridge when she stopped. The train tracks would indubitably be the straightest path to Gene’s destination, but they were also the riskiest. The mountain foliage would initially offer her partial reprieve from the sun, but once the terrain leveled out and the tracks fell across the spare barren desert of the Vast she’d be fully, and fatally, exposed.
No, she would use a different route. For she’d already figured out the train’s destination. It had to be the Ruler’s Palace. Rumor had long circulated of a secret stash of hepers kept in underground pens, a rumor now corroborated by what she’d read in the laboratory. She would head to the Palace via a circuitous but safer route: return to the caves beneath the mountain, then backtrack along the Nede River the way she’d come. Several of the sun-proofed dome boats were docked at various points along the river with mechanical issues, and if she timed it right she could run at night and find shelter in these boats during the daytime. And in so doing, skipping like a rock across the surface of a river, she would make it back to the metropolis. And from there, to the Palace.
To Gene.
Wherever he was, she would journey there. No matter how far, how many miles and suns and days stood in her way, she would find him. And if she could not go to him, she would somehow lure him to her. For she had something to tell him: a truth that was both a curse and a miracle, the truth of the crimson moons.
Ten
FEAR SPILLS OUT of each enclave, collectively clotting the catacomb corridors. Matthew told us somebody is always taken after the sirens, and I can feel the hundreds of bodies on edge. A terrified pause, as if everyone is holding their breath in their hot and dark enclaves. How long before one of us is taken? Minutes? Hours?
Time passes unseen, unfelt, unknown. It feels like hours, but it might be mere minutes. It might be whole days.
A light suddenly shines. From across the corridor. It is bright, spilling into, then fracturing my blackened space.
It is coming from Sissy’s enclave. From only her enclave.
Too bright. I see only a firestorm of brilliant white light, a dark shape swimming in it. Sissy, trapped within. She swings around, her arms cutting through the shafts of light.
Her enclave starts to vibrate ever so minutely. Now my eyes are adjusting to the brightness. Her limbs, pressed against the walls, are racked with fear and tension. Panic ripples across her face. On her back, she spins around, then pistons her legs out, pounding her feet against the glass, slamming it harder and harder. But she makes not a dent, not a crack, not even a sound.
She shouts, but her muffled voice is swallowed up by harsh, metallic clanks. And then her enclave starts to shift and move. She slides over to the glass wall, her hands splayed against it, eyes swinging wildly, trying to see.
She’s trying to locate me, needing to see me. Our eyes meet for just a second.
And then the wall behind her opens up, and her whole enclave starts to retract into the wall. Into the dark void behind.
I scream out her name. Throw myself against the glass. I won’t let her go. I can’t let her go. I’m done with desertion. I will never do to another what I did to Ashley June. As long as there is breath left in me, I will never abandon Sissy. Ever.
She starts hitting the glass over and over, but the impact is silent and useless. She is pulled farther into the darkness behind the wall, getting smaller and smaller, until she is recessed so far back, I can see tracks now exposed under her diminishing enclave. One last time our eyes meet, and I try to stare comfort into her eyes. And then the back wall slides down into place and she is gone as if swallowed whole. Only a gutted recess exists where her enclave had been only moments ago. The faint vibrations in the walls come to an end, the metal clanking ceases, and all I can hear is her name being shouted over and over, and only after a minute do I realize it is me who is shouting, the syllables of her name cutting and grating against my throat.
Eleven
HOURS LATER, IT’S my turn. The enclave is suddenly seared with blinding white light. The metal-plated walls about me grow warm as the enclave starts to vibrate gently. As if coming to life. None of this comes as a surprise. I lie still, eyes closed and heart racing, not resisting or attempting to escape. Trying to stay calm.
In fact, this is what I want. What I have been hoping for since Sissy was taken away. I only wish it could have happened hours ago, that wherever they took Sissy I could have joined her sooner. Even if it is in the Palace kitchen.
Something latches into place under the enclave, and then the whole coffin-like structure starts to shake, rattling slightly as if on a conveyor belt. My breathing grows faster despite my resolve to stay calm. I flick my eyes open. I’m being pulled into the wall, am now past it, swallowed into a wide-open void of darkness. I draw a sharp breath as my stomach knots.
Fear, until now tamped down, starts to boil over. I lash against the sides of the enclave, but the walls remain sturdy as ever. The gap in the wall through which I’ve just been pulled narrows into a slit. It closes, sealing me in a completely different universe.
The enclave lurches over rises and dips, and for a few harrowing seconds I’m actually upside down. Then I’m tossed to the bottom of the enclave, spun dizzyingly around as the enclave careens through the darkness. And as I’m pummeled from side to side, disoriented in the darkness, I now know fully what I’ve been trying to deny. I’m no longer in control. I’m at their mercy. A scream rips out of my throat.
Twelve
THE ENCLAVE TRUNDLES to a stop. For several minutes, nothing happens. Then a crack forms in the darkness above, a razor-thin slice of gray light. Not bright, but my eyes—too long in the darkness—blink in surprise. Then I’m suddenly being lifted up toward the widening crack of light.
Silver light bathes me and I force my eyelids open despite the sharp jab of pain. Dark silhouettes of thin, long-limbed figures hover over me. Their ovoid heads almost touch as they peer down at me. They don’t speak, only stare. I catch my own reflection in the pairs of shades they have donned on their faces. I look so small. So frightened. Their shadows glide over me like dark clouds erasing my reflected image.
A hiss. Then the glass wall begins to pull away. Fresh air pours into the enclave, and it is a sweet clarity that fills my lungs, clears my head. I shudder in the relief of it.