Delirium: The Complete Collection (111 page)

T
he alarms go off just before the priest can pronounce us husband and wife. One moment, everything is quiet and ordered. The music has died down, the crowd is silent, the priest’s voice resonates through the room, rolls out over the audience. In the quiet, I can hear each individual camera shutter: opening and closing, opening and closing, like metal lungs.

The next moment everything is motion and sound, shrieking chaos, sirens. And I know, in that instant, that the Invalids are here. They’ve come for us.

Hands grab me roughly from all sides.

“Move, move, move.” Bodyguards are piloting me toward
the exit. Someone steps on the end of my gown, and I hear it rip. My eyes are stinging; I’m choking on the smell of too much aftershave, too many bodies crowding and pulling.

“Come on, hurry it up. Hurry it up.”

Walkie-talkies explode with static. Urgent voices shout in a coded language I don’t understand. I try to turn around to look for my mother and am nearly carried off my feet by the pressure of the guards moving me forward. I catch a glimpse of Fred surrounded by his security team. He’s white-faced, yelling into a cell phone. I will him to look at me—in that moment I forget about Cassie, I forget about everything. I need him to tell me we’re okay; I need him to explain what’s happening.

But he doesn’t even glance in my direction.

Outside, the glare is blinding. I squeeze my eyes shut. Journalists jostle close to the doors, blocking the way to the car. The long metal barrels of their camera lenses look for a second like guns, all directed straight at me.

They’re going to kill us all.

The bodyguards fight to clear space for me, shouldering apart the rushing stream of people. At last we reach the car. Once again, I look for Fred. Our eyes meet briefly across the crowd. He’s heading for a squad car.

“Take her to my house.” He yells this to Tony, then turns around and ducks into the back of a police car. That’s it. No words at all for me.

Tony puts a hand on top of my head and directs me roughly into the backseat. Two of Fred’s bodyguards slide in next to
me, guns out. I want to ask them to put their weapons away, but my brain doesn’t seem to be working correctly. I can’t remember either of their names.

Tony jerks the car into gear, but the knots of people gathered in the parking lot mean that we’re trapped. Tony leans on the horn. I cover my ears and remind myself to breathe; we’re safe, we’re in the car, it will be okay. The police will take care of everything.

Finally, we begin to move forward, plowing steadily through the dispersing crowd. It takes us nearly twenty minutes to make it out of the long drive leading down to the labs. We turn right onto Commercial Street, which is clotted with more foot traffic, then zip against traffic into a narrow one-way street. In the car, everyone is silent, watching the blur of people in the streets—people running, panicked, undirected. Even though I can see people openmouthed, shouting, only the sound of the alarms penetrates the thick windows. Strangely, this is more frightening than anything—all these people voiceless, screaming silently.

We barrel down an alley so narrow, I’m positive we’ll get stuck between the brick walls on either side of us. Then we turn down another one-way street, this one relatively free of people. We blow straight past the stop signs, and jerk left into another alley. Finally, we’re really moving.

It occurs to me to try and reach my mother on her cell phone, but when I dial her number, the phone system keeps returning an error. The system must be overloaded. I suddenly feel very
small. The system is security; it is everything. In Portland, there is always someone watching.

But now it seems the system has been blinded.

“Turn on the radio,” I tell Tony. He does. The National News Service patches in. The announcer’s voice is reassuring, almost lazy—speaking terrifying words in a tone of total calm.

“…
breach at the wall…everyone urged not to panic…until the police can restore control…lock doors and windows, stay inside…regulators and every government official working hard in tandem
—”

The announcer’s voice cuts off abruptly. For a moment there is nothing but static. Tony spins the dial, but the speakers continue buzzing and popping, letting out nothing but white noise. Then, suddenly, an unfamiliar voice comes in, overloud and urgent:

“
We are taking back the city. We are taking back our rights and our freedom. Join us. Take down the walls. Take down the
—”

Tony punches the radio off. The silence in the car rings out, deafening. I flash back to the morning of the first terrorist attacks, when at ten a.m., in the middle of a peaceful, everyday Tuesday, three blasts went off simultaneously in Portland. I was in a car then, I remember; when my mother and I heard the announcement on the radio, we didn’t believe it at first. We didn’t believe it until we saw the smoke clotting the sky, and saw the people begin to stream past us, running, pale, and the ash began to drift like snow.

Cassandra said that Fred let those attacks happen, to prove
that the Invalids were out there, to show that they were monstrous. But now the monsters are here, inside the walls, in our streets again. I can’t believe that he would let this happen.

I have to believe that he will fix it, even if it means killing them all.

We’ve finally shaken off the chaos and the crowds. We’re near Cumberland now, where Lena used to live, in the quietly run-down residential portion of the city. In the distance, the foghorn in the old watchtower on Munjoy Hill begins blowing, sending mournful notes beneath and beyond the alarms. I wish we were heading home instead of to Fred’s house. I want to curl up in my bed and sleep; I want to wake up and find that today was all just a nightmare that has pushed through the cracks, past the cure.

But my home is no longer my home. Even if the priest did not get to finish his pronouncement, I am now officially married to Fred Hargrove. Nothing will ever be the same.

Left onto Sherman; then right into yet another alley, which will dump us onto Park. Just as we reach the end of the alley, someone runs out in front of the car, a gray blur.

Tony shouts and slams on the brakes, but it’s too late. I have time to register the tattered clothing, the long, matted hair—
Invalid
—before the impact carries her off her feet. She spins across the hood—fans for a second against the windshield—and drops out of sight again.

Anger crests inside me, sudden and startling, a stabbing peak of it that breaks through the fear. I lean forward, shouting,
“It’s one of them, it’s one of them!
Don’t
let her get away!”

Tony and the other guards don’t need to be asked twice. In an instant, they’re rocketing into the street, guns drawn, leaving the doors of the car hanging open. My hands are shaking. I squeeze them into fists and lean back, taking deep breaths, trying to calm down. With the doors open, I can hear the alarms more clearly, and distant sounds of shouting, too, like the echo-roar of the ocean.

This is Portland, my Portland. In that moment, nothing else matters—not the lies or the mistakes, and the promises we’ve failed to keep. This is my city, and my city is under attack. The anger tightens.

Tony is hauling the girl to her feet. She is fighting, although she is outnumbered and completely outmatched. Her hair is hanging in her face, and she’s kicking and scratching like an animal.

Maybe I’ll kill this one myself.

B
y the time I make it onto Forest Avenue, the sound of the fighting has faded, swallowed by the shrill cries of the alarms. Every so often I see a hand twitching at a curtain, a fishbowl-eye peering down at me and then vanishing just as quickly. Everyone is staying locked up and locked in.

I keep my head down, moving as quickly as I can despite the throbbing in my ankle where I landed on it wrong, listening for sounds of squads and patrols. There’s no way I’ll be mistaken for anything but an Invalid: I’m filthy, wearing old, mud-splattered clothes, and my ear is still streaked with blood. Amazingly, there’s no one on the streets. Security
forces must have been diverted elsewhere. This is, after all, the poorer part of town; no doubt the city doesn’t feel these people need protection.

A path and a road for everyone…and for some, a path straight into the ground.

I make it to Cumberland without problems. As soon as I step onto my old block, I feel for a moment as though I’m caught in a still life from the past. It seems forever ago that I used to turn down this block on my way home from school; that I used to stretch here after my runs, placing one leg on top of the bus-stop bench; that I would watch Jenny and the other kids playing kick the can, and open up the fire hydrants for them when it got hot in the summer.

It
was
a lifetime ago. I’m a different Lena now.

The street, too, looks different—saggier, as though an invisible black hole is spiraling the whole block slowly down into itself. Even before I reach the gate in front of number 237, I know that the house will be empty. The certainty is lodged like a hard weight between my lungs. But I still stand stupidly in the middle of the sidewalk, staring up at the now-abandoned building—
my home, my old house, the little bedroom on the top floor, the smells of soap and laundry and cooked tomato
—taking in the peeling paint and the rotting porch steps, the boarded-up windows, the faded red
X
spray-painted on the door, marking the house as condemned.

I feel as if I’ve been punched in the stomach. Aunt Carol was always so proud of the house. She wouldn’t let a single
season go by without repainting, cleaning out the gutters, scrubbing the porch.

Then the grief is replaced by panic. Where did they go?

What happened to Grace?

In the distance, the foghorn bellows, sounding like a funeral song. I start, and recall suddenly where I am: in a foreign, hostile city. It is no longer my place; I am not welcome here. The foghorn blows a second, and then a third time. The signal means that all three bombs have been successfully dropped; that gives us an hour until they blow and all hell breaks loose.

That gives me only an hour to find her—and I have no idea where to begin.

A window bangs shut behind me. I turn just in time to see a white-moon worried face—looks like Mrs. Hendrickson—disappear from view. One thing is obvious: I need to move.

I duck my head and continue hurriedly down the road, turning as soon as I see a narrow alley between buildings. I’m moving blindly now, hoping that my feet will carry me in the right direction.
Grace, Grace, Grace
. I pray that she might somehow hear me.

Blindly: across Mellen, toward yet another alley, a black gaping mouth, a place of sideways shadows to conceal me.
Grace, where are you?
In my head, I’m screaming it—screaming so loudly it swallows up everything else and whites out the sound of the approaching car.

And then, out of nowhere, it’s there: the engine ticking and panting, the window reflecting light in my eyes, blinding me,
the squealing wheels as the driver tries to stop. Then pain, and a sensation of tumbling—I think I’m going to die; I see the sky revolving above me, I see Alex’s face, smiling—and then I feel the hard bite of pavement underneath me. The air gets knocked out of me and I roll over onto my back, my lungs stuttering, fighting for air.

For a confused moment, watching the blue sky above me, strung taut and high between the roofs of the buildings, I forget where I am. I feel like I’m floating, drifting across a surface of blue water. All I know is I’m not dead. My body is still mine: I twitch my hands and flex my feet just to be sure. Miraculously, I managed to avoid hitting my head.

Doors slam. Voices are shouting. I remember that I need to move—I need to get to my feet.
Grace
. But before I can do anything, hands grab me roughly by the arms, haul me to my feet. Everything is coming to me in flashes. Dark black suits. Guns. Mean faces.

Very bad.

Instinct takes over, and I begin twisting and kicking. I bite down on the hand of the guard who is gripping me, but he doesn’t release me, and another guard steps forward and slaps me in the face. The blow stings and sends a fiery explosion across my vision. I spit blindly at him. Another guard—there are three of them—aims his gun at my head. His eyes are as black and cold as cut stone, full of not hatred—
cureds don’t hate, cureds don’t hate and they don’t care, either
—but disgust, as though I am a particularly disgusting brand of insect, and I know then that I will die.

I’m sorry, Alex. And Julian, too. I’m sorry
.

I’m sorry, Grace
.

I close my eyes.

“Wait!”

I open my eyes. A girl is emerging from the backseat.

She is dressed in the white muslin of a new bride. Her hair is elaborately knotted and curled around her head, and her procedural scar has been highlighted with makeup, so it looks like a little colored star just beneath her left ear. She is beautiful; she looks just like the paintings of angels we used to see in church.

Then her eyes land on me, and my stomach wrenches. The ground opens underneath me. I can hardly trust myself to stand.

“Lena,” she says calmly. It is more of an announcement than a greeting.

I can’t bring myself to speak. I can’t say her name, even though it screams, echoing, through my head.

Hana
.

“Where are we going?”

Hana turns toward me. These are the first words I have managed to say to her. For a second she registers surprise, and something else, too. Pleasure? It’s hard to tell. Her expressions are different, and I can’t read her face anymore.

“My house,” she says after a brief pause.

I could laugh out loud. She’s so ridiculously calm; she could be inviting me over to surf LAMM for music, or curl up on her couch and watch a movie.

“You’re not going to turn me in?” My voice is sarcastic. I know she’s going to turn me in; I knew it the moment I saw the scar, saw the flatness behind her eyes, like a pool that has lost all its depth.

Either she doesn’t detect the challenge or she chooses to ignore it. “I will,” she says simply. “But not yet.” An expression flickers across her face—a momentary uncertainty—and she seems about to say something else. Instead she turns back to the window, chewing her lower lip.

That bothers me, the lip-chewing. It is a break in her surface of calm, a ripple I didn’t expect. It’s the old Hana peeking out of this shiny new version, and it makes my stomach cramp again. I’m overwhelmed by the momentary urge to throw my arms around her, to inhale her smell—
two dabs of vanilla at the elbows, and jasmine on her neck
—to tell her how much I’ve missed her.

Just in time, she catches me staring at her and presses her mouth firmly into a line. And I remind myself that the old Hana is gone. She probably doesn’t even smell the same. She hasn’t asked me a single question about what has happened to me, where I’ve been, how I came to be in Portland, streaked with blood and wearing dirt-encrusted clothing. She has barely looked at me at all, and when she does, it is with a vague, detached curiosity, as though I’m a strange animal species in a zoo.

I’m expecting us to turn toward West End, but instead we head off-peninsula. Hana must have moved. The houses here are even larger and statelier than in her old neighborhood.
I don’t know why I’m surprised. That is one thing I have learned during my time with the resistance. The cure is about control. It’s about structure. And the rich get richer and richer, while the poor get squeezed into narrow alleys and cramped apartments, and told they are being protected, and promised they will be rewarded in heaven for obedience. Servitude is called safety.

We turn onto a street lined with ancient-looking maple trees, whose branches embrace overhead to form a canopy. A street sign flashes by: Essex Street. My stomach gives another violent twist. 88 Essex Street is where Pippa has planted the bomb. How long has it been since the foghorn blew? Ten minutes? Fifteen?

Sweat is pooling under my arms. I scan the mailboxes as we pass. One of these homes—one of these glorious white houses, crowned like cakes with latticework and cupolas, ringed with wide white porches and set back from the street on vivid green lawns—is going to blow in less than an hour.

The car slows to a stop in front of ornate iron gates. The driver leans out his window to punch a code into a keypad, and the gates whir smoothly open. It reminds me of Julian’s old house in New York City, and amazes me still: all this power, all this energy flowing and pumping to a handful of people.

Hana is still staring impassively out the window, and I have the sudden urge to reach out and drive my fist through her image as it is reflected there. She has no idea what the rest of the world is like. She has never seen hardship or been without food, without heat or comfort. I’m amazed that she
could ever have been my best friend. We were always living in two separate worlds; I was just stupid enough to believe it didn’t matter.

Towering hedges surround the car on both sides, flanking a short drive that leads to another monstrous house. It is larger than any we have seen thus far. An iron number is nailed above the front door.

88.

For an instant, my vision goes black. I blink. But the number is still there.

88 Essex Street. The bomb is here. Sweat tickles my lower back. It doesn’t make any sense; the other bombs are planted downtown, in municipal buildings, like they were last year.

“You live here?” I say to Hana. She is getting out of the car, still with that same infuriating calm, as though we’re on a social visit.

Once again, she hesitates. “It’s Fred’s house,” she says. “I guess we share it now.” When I stare at her, she amends, “Fred Hargrove. He’s mayor.”

I had completely forgotten that Hana was paired with Fred Hargrove. We’d heard rumors through the resistance that Hargrove senior had been killed during the Incidents. Fred must have taken his father’s place. Now it begins to make sense that a bomb was planted in his home; nothing is more symbolic than striking the leader directly. But we’ve miscalculated—it isn’t Fred who will be at home. It’s Hana.

My mouth feels dry and itchy. One of her goons tries to grab me and force me out of the car, and I wrench away from him.

“I’m not going to run,” I practically spit, and slide out of the car on my own. I know I wouldn’t get more than three feet before they opened fire. I’ll have to watch carefully, and think, and look for an opportunity to escape. No way am I going to be within three blocks of this place when it blows.

Hana has preceded us up the porch steps. She waits, her back to me, until one of the guards steps forward and opens the door. I feel a rush of hatred for this brittle, spoiled girl, with her spotless white linens and her vast rooms.

Inside, it’s surprisingly dark, full of lots of polished, dark oak and leather. Most of the windows are half-obscured by elaborate drapery and velvet curtains. Hana starts to lead me into the living room, and then thinks better of it. She continues down the hall without bothering to switch on the light, turning back only once to look at me with an expression I can’t decipher, and finally leads me through two swinging doors and into the kitchen.

This room, in contrast with the rest of the house, is very bright. Large windows face out over an enormous backyard. The wood here is shaved pine or ash, soft and nearly white, and the counters are spotless white marble.

The guards follow us into the room. Hana turns to them.

“Leave us,” she says. Illuminated by the slanted sunlight, which makes it appear as if she is glowing slightly, she once again looks like an angel. I’m struck by her stillness, and by the quietness of the house, its cleanliness and beauty.

And somewhere in its underbelly, buried deep, a tumor is growing, ticking toward its eventual explosion.

The guard who was driving—the one who had me in a headlock earlier—makes noises of protest, but Hana silences him quickly.

“I said, leave us.” For a second, the old Hana resurges; I see the defiance in her eyes, the imperial tilt of her chin. “And close the doors behind you.”

The guards file out reluctantly. I can feel the weight of their stares, and I know that if Hana were not here, I would already be dead. But I refuse to feel grateful to her. I won’t.

When they are gone, Hana stares at me for a minute in silence. Her expression is unreadable. Finally she says, “You’re too skinny.”

I could almost laugh. “Yeah, well. The restaurants in the Wilds are mostly closed. They’re mostly bombed, actually.” I don’t bother keeping the edge out of my voice.

She doesn’t react. She just keeps watching me. Another beat of silence passes. Then she gestures to the table. “Sit down.”

“I’d rather stand, thanks.”

Hana frowns. “You can treat that as an order.”

I don’t really think that she’ll call the guards back if I refuse to sit, but there’s no point in risking it. I slide into a chair, glaring at her the whole time. But I can’t get comfortable. It has been twenty minutes at least since the foghorn blew. That means I have less than forty minutes to get out of here.

As soon as I sit, Hana whirls around and disappears into the back of the kitchen, where a dark gap beyond the refrigerator indicates a pantry. Before I can think of escape, she reemerges,
carrying a loaf of bread wrapped in a tea towel. She stands at the counter and slices off thick hunks, slathering them in butter and piling them high onto a plate. Then she moves to the sink and wets the tea towel.