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CHAPTER 58

XANDER

I
n the past few weeks we’ve had several breakthroughs in administering the cure. First were the fields Cassia’s mother told us about, which allowed us to make more of the cure and get it out to people quickly. Then we figured out how to synthesize the proteins of the sego lily in the laboratory. The best minds left in the Rising and the Society have come together to try to make this work.

So far, it has. People are getting better. And if the mutation comes back, we have a cure. Unless, of course, the virus changes again. But, for now, the data says that the worst has passed. I wouldn’t trust the data except that Cassia’s the one who sorted it.

Now we’re heading toward a different time: once people are well, they will need to choose what kind of world it is that they want to live in. I don’t know that we’re going to come through that as well as we came through the Plague.

“You saved the world,” my father likes to say.

“It was luck,” I tell him. “We’ve always been lucky.”

And we have. Take a look at my family. My brother went back to the Borough from Oria City when the Plague first broke, and they all managed to keep from getting sick until near the end. And even when they did fall ill, Ky arrived just in time to bring them back here so we could heal them.

“We tried to hold the Borough together,” my father says.

To his credit, they did. They rationed and shared the food and looked after each other for as long as they could.

It’s not like they did anything wrong. My family has always believed that if you worked hard and did the right thing, you were likely to have it all work out. And they’re not stupid. They know it doesn’t
always
go that way. They’ve seen terrible things happen and it’s torn them up. But that’s as close as they’ve been to real suffering.

Also, I’m a hypocrite, because nothing bad has really happened to me either. Ky’s family has disappeared entirely. Cassia’s family lost her father. But not us, not the Carrows. We’re all fine. Even my brother, who never did join the Rising. I was wrong about him. I’ve been wrong about a lot of things.

But the cure we made does work.

When it’s time for my break, I leave the medical center and walk out toward the river that goes through the center of the City of Camas. Now that the barricade’s down and the mutation is under control, people have taken again to walking along the river. There’s a set of cement steps cut into the embankment not far from the medical center.

Ky and Cassia go there sometimes, when he’s back from an errand, and once I found him there alone watching the water.

I sat down beside him. “Thank you,” I said. It was the first time I’d seen him since he’d brought my family in for the cure.

Ky nodded. “I couldn’t bring my own family back,” he said. “I hoped I’d find yours.”

“And you did,” I said, trying to keep the bitterness out of my voice. “Exactly where the Society left them.”

Ky raised his eyebrows.

“I’m glad they’re back,” I told him. “I’ll owe you for the rest of my life for bringing them in. Who knows how long it would have taken for them to get the cure otherwise.”

“It was the least I could do,” Ky said. “You and Cassia are the ones who cured me.”

“How did you know you loved her?” I asked Ky. “When you first fell for her, she didn’t really know you. She didn’t know anything about where you’d been.”

Ky didn’t answer right away. He looked out at the water. “I had to put a body in a river once,” he said finally, “before all of this. An Aberration died in camp, earlier than the Society planned, and the Officers made us get rid of the evidence. That’s when I met my friend Vick.”

I nodded. I’d heard them talk about Vick.

“Vick had fallen in love with someone he wasn’t supposed to have,” Ky said. “He ended up dying for it.” Then Ky looked at me. “I wanted to stay alive after my family died,” he said. “But I didn’t feel like I was living again until I met Cassia.”

“But you didn’t feel like she really
knew
you, did you?” I asked again.

“No,” Ky said, “but I felt like she could.”

I start down the wide steps to the water. Ky’s not there this time but I see someone else I know. It’s Lei, with her long black hair.

It’s been days since I’ve seen her, even in passing. After she recovered, she went back to work, and our paths have rarely crossed since. When they have, we’ve both nodded and smiled and said hello. She likely knows that I’m working on the cure but I haven’t had a chance to talk with her.

I hesitate, but she looks up at me and smiles, gesturing for me to come closer. I sit down next to her and I feel like a fool. I don’t know where to begin.

But she does. “Where did you go?” she asks me.

“To the mountains,” I say. “The Pilot took some of us there. That’s where we found the cure.”

“And you were the one to do it,” she says.

“No,” I say. “Cassia figured it out.”

“Your Match,” she says.

“Yes,” I say. “She’s alive, and she’s fine. She’s here.”

“I think I’ve seen her,” Lei says, “talking with you.” Her eyes search mine, trying to learn what I haven’t said.

“She’s in love with someone else,” I say.

Lei puts her hand on mine very gently for a moment. “I’m sorry,” she says.

“What about
your
Match?” I ask. “Have you been able to find him?”

She turns her face away then, and as her hair swishes across her back and neck, I remember when we checked each other for the mark during those days in the medical center. “He died,” she says. “Before the Plague came.”

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“I think I knew before they told me,” Lei says. “I think I could feel him, gone.” I am struck again by the sound of her voice. It’s very beautiful. I would like to hear her sing. “That must sound ridiculous to you,” she says.

“No,” I say, “it doesn’t.”

Something jumps in the river and I start a little.

“A fish,” Lei says, looking back at me.

“One of the ones you told me about?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “That one was silver, not red.”

“Where did
you
go?” I ask Lei.

She knows what I mean:
Where did you go when you were still?

“I was swimming most of the time,” she says. “Like those fish, one of the ones I told you about, and I had a different body. I knew I wasn’t
really
a fish, but it was easier than thinking about what was happening.”

“I wonder why everyone thinks about the water,” I say. Ky did the same. He told us he was on an ocean with that girl who died. Indie.

“I think,” Lei says, “because the sky seems too far. It doesn’t feel like it will hold you the way the water can.”

Or because your lungs are filling with fluid that you can’t always clear. But neither of us gives the medical explanation, though we both know it.

I don’t know what to say. When I look at Lei I think she might be the kind of person who could do what she said the water could: hold someone up. I imagine pulling her close and kissing her and I can picture letting go, going under, with her.

Her face changes. She must be able to see what I’m thinking.

I stand up, disgusted with myself. I’m not in any condition to love someone, and she’s just lost her Match and come back from the mutation. We’re both alone.

“I have to go,” I say.

CHAPTER 59

CASSIA

I
hesitate for a moment at the top of the steps, hidden behind one of the trees along the embankment, waiting for Xander to pass by. He doesn’t notice me.

Before I can lose my courage, I go down, toward the water and the girl. I sit down next to her and she turns to look at me. “I’m Cassia,” I say. “I think we both know Xander.”

“Yes,” she says. “I’m Lei. Nea Lei.”

I study her face while trying not to seem like I’m doing it. She’s not much older than us, but something about her seems wise. She speaks very clearly; but her words are clean, not clipped. She is lovely, in a way that is all her own; very dark hair, very deep eyes.

“We both know Xander,” she says, “but you’re in love with someone else.”

“Yes,” I say.

“Xander told me a little about you,” she says. “When we worked together. He always talked about his Match, and I talked about mine.”

“Is your Match—” I don’t dare finish.

“My Match is gone,” she says. Tears slip down her cheeks and she brushes them away with the heels of her hands. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’ve suspected it for months. But now that I know, I can’t seem to stop crying whenever I talk about him. Especially here. He loved the water.”

“Is there someone I can help you find?” I ask. “Any family—”

“No,” she says. “I don’t have any family. They’re gone. I’m an Anomaly.”

“You are?” I ask, stunned. “How did you hide from the Society?”

“Right in front of their eyes,” she says. “Data can be forged, if you know the right person, and my parents did. My family used to believe in the Pilot, but after they saw how many Anomalies he let die, they decided I would be safest in the Society after all. They gave everything they had to buy me a perfect set of falsified data. I came into the Society and became an Official shortly after.” She smiles a little. “The Society might be surprised to know that they made an Anomaly an Official so quickly.” She stands up. “If you see Xander, will you tell him good-bye for me?”

“You should tell him in person,” I say, but she keeps going.

“Wait,”
I say. She stops. There’s something I don’t understand. “If you weren’t a citizen until recently, you wouldn’t have had a Match Banquet. So how did you—”

“I never needed the Society,” she says, “to Match me.”

She looks down at the water. And in that moment, I think I know exactly who she is.

“Your name,” I say. “Was it the same, or did you change it when you came into the Society?”

“I didn’t change it entirely,” she says. “I only reversed it.”

I run back to the medical center to find Xander. He’s working in the lab, and I pound on the window to get his attention.

Xander’s father, who also works in the lab, sees me first. He smiles at me but on his face I also see wariness. He doesn’t want me to hurt his son.

And he knows that Xander
is
hurt.

I didn’t do it all,
I want to tell Mr. Carrow.
But Xander has changed. He’s been through so much—the loss of his faith in the Rising, those dark days working in the medical center, the time out in the mountains.

“Your friend,” I tell Xander as soon as he opens the door. “Lei. She’s going somewhere else. She told me to tell you good-bye.”

And you have to find her. Because she’s already lost too much, and so have you.
It all came together when she stood there by the river, when she spoke about not needing the Society to Match her. She told me that she didn’t even need to change her name, just reverse it. Nea Lei. Lei Nea. When you say it out, it sounds like Laney. Ky had never seen it spelled when he carved the name of the girl Vick loved. Neither, perhaps, had Vick.

Xander takes a step forward. “Did she say where she was going?” The expression on his face tells me everything I need to know.

And what I was going to say doesn’t matter the way I thought it would. Because her story, with Vick, is not mine to tell. It’s hers—Lei’s. And it may or may not become part of her story with Xander, but that is not for me to decide.

“No,” I say. “But, Xander, you can catch up with her. You can find out.”

For a second, I think he will. Then he sits down at his workstation. He leans forward, his back perfectly straight, his expression a mask of confidence and determination.

How is it that he’s so good at reading others but he’s not paying attention to himself?

Because he doesn’t want to be hurt again.

“There’s more,” I tell him, leaning closer so that the others won’t hear. “The Pilot has decided that it’s time to take the villagers to the Otherlands.”

“Why now?” he asks.

“It’s coming time for the people to vote,” I say. “He won’t be able to spare the ships then. He’ll need them to keep order. There are rumors that people from the Society are going to try to take control.”

“He can’t spare the ships
now
,” Xander says. “We need them to transport the cure.”

“He’s not going to send many out,” I say. “A few of the cargo transports, not the fighters. They’re going to Endstone and they’ll take the villagers as far as they can. Ky and I are going to the village, to talk to Anna and bring her back here to Camas with us, if she’ll come. I wanted to tell you.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t want you to worry,” I say.
I didn’t want you to feel like we’d left you behind again.

“Will the Pilot let other people go on to the Otherlands in addition to the villagers?” he asks.

“If there’s room, I think he would,” I say.

“The villagers might let me go with them,” he says, and then he grins and I see a little bit of the old Xander, and I miss him so much. “They might trust me now that they know I was right about the cure.”

“No,” I say, stunned. “Xander,
you
can’t go to the Otherlands. We need you.”

“I’m sorry,” Xander says, “but I can’t let that keep me here anymore.”