Breathe (18 page)

Inger is dragged from the building and made to kneel in front of the general, who kicks him in the chest. Inger shouts and falls backward. A soldier pulls him up again, and this time the general kicks him in the back of the head. I look away.

“That’s me being kind,” the general tells Inger. “If you want to know what I can do when I’m angry, you should lie to me. If you want to live, tell me where the other one is.”

“What other one?” There is blood running down Inger’s face and neck.

“I want to know who you were with and where he went. Does your family live in the pod? How about your friends? What have you been doing out here? Planting? Cultivating the earth?” The general laughs. “You people don’t seem to realize that what you’re doing is pointless. Do you know how long it would take to re-oxygenate the planet? A millennium. And by that time you’ll be long dead.”

“Then why are you chasing us?” Inger shouts. The general grabs a clump of Inger’s hair in his hand and pulls his face toward him. That’s when I spot the Breathe insignia on the general’s jacket.

“Tell us where the Resistance is located or I will rip off your head, you sniveling little bastard.” His voice is ice, and I have no doubt he means to do as he says.

“This war is on. We have Premiums on our side. And you’re finished,” Inger says. He spits into the general’s face. The general releases Inger and knees him hard in the throat. Inger rolls and groans. The general climbs a pile of rubble and holds a loudspeaker to his face. “We have your friend. If you come out, we won’t hurt him,” he announces, though he’s already beaten him to a pulp. “I repeat. We have your friend.” I definitely recognize that voice, especially through the loudspeaker.

“Forget it,” Inger says, “he’s long gone by now.”

“Captain, get the juice,” the general demands. The captain scurries to a tank nearby and comes back with a monster weapon that he points at a scrub of vegetation covered in snow. Black foam bursts from the nozzle, and the feeble grassy area is a withered mess by the time the captain has finished. “Even if you manage to grow anything,” the general says, “well, I think the captain has illustrated what would happen.”

“So it’s true. Herbicide. What’s the next formula you’re working on? Toxic water?”

“Don’t be dramatic, son,” the general says, and laughs.

And that’s when I know. There’s no mistaking it. All my limbs twitch. It can’t be. But it is. I wait for him to say something else, anything else to prove I’m wrong. Instead, he takes his helmet off and pulls a facemask and some tubing from his uniform, and when he turns around I go cold because the general is my father.

For a moment I can’t breathe. I look at my tank and though the oxygen level is fatally low, it’s not completely drained. I stare at my father and then press my fists into my eye sockets, taking shallow, even breaths. I stand up, about to run outside and save Inger, when a hand pulls me back down.

It’s Silas. “What the hell are you doing? They’ll kill you.”

“That’s my father,” I croak. Silas doesn’t understand.

“Shut up and stay down.”

“That’s my father,” I say again. Silas stares at me.
That’s my father
, I think. The man out there in charge. That’s my father. I thought he pushed paper around a desk. I thought he did something useful but boring.

“What about Inger?” I whisper. Silas hunkers down next to me and he’s so close I think I can feel him shaking. We peer over the lip of an old filing cabinet. Outside my father is pacing back and forth. This is what he does when he deliberates; I see it all the time. He stops and scratches his head, looking at Inger as if his prisoner might tell him what to do. Usually I’m frightened of my father when he has this look because it means bad news for me. Now I am terrified because I know it must mean terrible news for Inger.

“The Pod Minister made his instructions very clear,” my father says in a low voice. “I can’t save you. I doubt I could help you even if you were my own son.” Silas looks at me in horror.

My father turns and climbs onto the turret of the tank. “Captain,” he says, clicking his fingers, “take care of him.” Then he vanishes.

The captain nods at the soldiers next to Inger, who pull him to his feet, remove his airtank, and throw it aside. Inger doesn’t struggle. Even when his tank has been removed he stands rigid.

“Your last moments are free ones,” the captain tells Inger, and the soldiers step aside so he can walk away, or run, or do whatever he pleases. Inger takes a few breathless steps and I expect him to run toward the building we are in, where he knows there is a solar respirator, but instead he turns and hobbles into the building they dragged him from not long ago.

“Attention!” the captain cries, and every soldier salutes before taking his place in line. Within a few minutes every tank and soldier is out of sight.

Silas jumps up and hurtles across the street. On his way he grabs Inger’s tank. I’ve never seen a person run so fast and without thinking, I bolt after him.

We find Inger lying across the foyer. He is completely still. Silas pushes the mask into his face and opens the valve wide so Inger gets a high dose of oxygen. Inger doesn’t move. Silas tries blowing air into his mouth. Then he shakes him. “Inger. Inger, you’re safe now,” he says. “Wake up.” Inger is so still and looks so peaceful there can be no mistaking it: he is dead.

Silas hangs his head and presses his hands into Inger’s chest. He sniffs and I look away. When I turn around again, Silas wipes the blood from Inger’s face with the cuff of his sleeve. Then he buttons up Inger’s coat and rearranges his limbs so that Inger is lying as straight as he would in a coffin. “Was that really your dad?” he asks.

I nod. I’m too numb to do anything else.

“What are you going to do?”

I shrug. I don’t know what to do. I don’t even know what my options are.

“I’m sorry,” he says. We both look at Inger, and I don’t have a desire to fill the silence with noise. Not even remotely. Maybe I’ll never want to say anything pointless ever again. I just want to walk, to get out of here. Silas hands me Inger’s airtank. “He doesn’t need it. And I think you’ll only be safe if you come with me. Did you leave anything on the roof?”

I shake my head. We both take one long, last look at Inger before venturing out into the dusk. I have no idea where we’re heading, and I no longer care.

When I come around, I am breathing normally and being dragged along the ground. Maude is looking down at me, grinning. Alina is there, too.

“She’s alive,” a young man says, bolting the steel door. I try to sit up, but a lightheadedness rocks me back again. “Don’t let her up for a minute,” the young man continues. “Her brain’s all out of whack. This’ll be the worst hangover she’s ever had.” He crouches down and peers at me with stone-gray eyes. I smile. He pulls a few strands of hair from my mask. “There’s plenty of air in that new cylinder I gave you. Are you feeling all right?” I nod and glance around; although we are inside, the cold is still piercing and I can hear the wind.

“Thank God you came to the door when you did, Dorian,” Alina says. He turns to Alina and they embrace. “I wasn’t sure if my technique was working. I thought she was dead,” she says.

“What technique?” I manage.

“One breath for you, one breath for me,” she says, pointing to her own tank. She reaches into an open metal locker and takes two tanks from it. After Alina and Maude have been fitted with a fresh air supply, Dorian pulls me to my feet and helps me move along a wide walkway with them.

“I knew they wouldn’t send out the zips for no reason. They had to be looking for someone,” he says.

“Didn’t Petra try to stop you?” Alina asks.

“Of course she did. Everyone else is in the bunker. She’s locked up the entire stadium and threatened to slice my throat if I left the bunker.”

“Thank you,” Alina says.

“Oh, I can’t wait to meet Petra. I think she’s gonna just love me,” Maude says.

“You haven’t met Petra?” Dorian asks us. I shake my head. Dorian stops and turns to Alina. “Does she even know about them? Are they Resistance? I assume they’re pod division. Alina?”

“They’re civilians,” Alina says.

“You brought civilians without authorization? And
I
let them in? Someone might be getting his throat cut after all.” He rubs his forehead.

“She can be trusted,” Alina says pointing at me. “She saved my life.”

“And the other one?”

Alina studies Maude carefully, trying to decide whether or not to offer her up as a sacrifice.

“The old woman, Alina. Can we trust her?”

“Yes,” Alina says slowly. “I suppose we can.”

Dorian lets out a long whistle. “We should go down into the bunker. The zips might still be swarming,” he says.

“They went right over and kept going,” Alina says. “Let’s show them around first.” She seems proud of this place. Dorian shrugs and we follow Alina down the wide concrete walkway, lined with kiosks.

Nothing could have prepared me for what I see when we turn and enter the stadium. I am expecting a gaping snow-filled pit. We are standing on a shallow set of steps next to rows and rows and rows of seats. There must be thousands of seats in this stadium. Tens of thousands of red plastic seats and on them, hundreds and hundreds of mismatched oblong boxes with makeshift lids.

“It can’t be,” I say, looking beyond the boxes to the soccer field. Dorian smiles. I stagger forward and he catches me. In place of the players and goalposts, in place even of a carefully cropped lawn, the entire area is covered with sparkling, snow-laden trees.

More trees than I have ever seen in my life, and they are towering over us, climbing toward the sky.

There must be hundreds, all different shapes and sizes, some bare and spiky, others fully clothed in coats of leaves.

“Trees,” I murmur. I blink to make sure I am not hallucinating. When I open my eyes the trees are still there and Maude is running down the steps toward them.

“Holy Mackerel!” she hollers. Alina and Dorian share a smile. I’ve never seen anything as splendid in my life. The trees are so strong and alive, even those without leaves, and they are driving their way up toward the sealed, slated roof of the stadium; I begin to run too, but my knees buckle and I fall.

“Oh my …” I sigh. Many of them almost reach the roof of the stadium. “How? And when? I mean … How?” I don’t know where to begin. Alina pulls me off the floor. I lean against a seat to keep my balance. “Trees,” I whisper. I have never prayed. I do not know how. But if I did, I would say a prayer now, in homage to the trees and to the Resistance for creating this place.

“She’s obviously one of us,” Dorian says, and that’s when I become fully aware of the second wonder. We are in the open air and Dorian is without a facemask. Instinctively, and a little irrationally, I reach up and touch his chest to see whether or not he has a heart. He doesn’t pull away and we stay there for a minute as I feel the rise and fall of his chest. “You can’t be human,” I whisper, getting to my feet.

“He is,” Alina says, putting an arm around my waist.

“I don’t understand. How do you live?”

“Slowly,” he says. “And if you stick around long enough, we’ll show you how to do it, too.”

Dorian keeps shooting me looks as we head toward the bunker. I shake my head because I’m afraid that if I speak, Dorian will hear the tangle in my voice. Coming alone wouldn’t have been a problem—I had no choice but to flee the pod. But there is little excuse for bringing two unknowns with me, especially when one of them is ex-Breathe. Petra has strict rules. How else could she maintain security here? How else could she protect the trees? “What happened?” Dorian asks finally, pointing at my blood-stained bandage. I’d almost forgotten. I can’t tell Dorian or anyone here what really happened, or Maude will be in for it.

“Long story,” I say.

“So you fled,” Dorian says. This is a question.

“Abel’s dead,” I tell him simply. I won’t betray myself, won’t reveal that there’s more to Abel’s death than a comrade falling. Resistance members die all the time and there’s a protocol for grief. We gather, we remember, we raise our arms in defiance of the Ministry, and we move on. Keep planting. This is a place of action: there is no time to mourn.

“Abel? I don’t know him. Was he new? How did he die?” Dorian asks.

“He was a terrorist. Killed as he tried to destroy the pod. Apparently.”

“How original. Poor guy.”

“I don’t know what to tell Petra,” I say.

“Just tell her the truth,” he says.

“I will, but listen—let me go in first and you hang back with these two while I talk to her. I’ll soften her up a bit before I tell her I’ve compromised her life’s work.” I give Dorian a pleading look. We both know that if he agrees to hide them, even for a few minutes, he’ll be complicit. He looks back at Maude and Bea.

They are still giddy. I don’t blame them. When I first saw the trees I was in a state of euphoria for days. I don’t usually go around grinning, but I couldn’t help myself. After spending my entire life being told that any existence outside the pod was impossible, the idea that there could be something else was mind-blowing. That my parents had died for something was comforting, too.