The Isle (17 page)

O
nto the floor of the inventory closet, between two used laundry bins, I project the video from Ter's comm. He wheels the barrel right, down a blindingly bright hallway, then stops at an unmarked door. The entry station, according to Sipu's schematics.

To his right, an ID print check.

I hold my breath.

Ter quickly rolls the Mimic around on the scanner, pulling the print. I grab Sipu's hand, and we listen for the necessary double click.

The door opens.

He wheels the barrel into the entry station. Inside, a half dozen employees sit at their desks; they're all watching a
holo in the corner. Only one person turns. Seeing nothing of interest in Ter, he watches the glass screen again.

“What's on the holo?” I ask, squinting.

“Live feed of the gala. We passed a few screens broadcasting it in the causeway. Bet these guys are pretty unhappy right now too, left to staff the place while everyone else is at the event.”

Ter walks between the desks toward a door at the opposite end of the room:
QUARANTINE
. He's about to lay his Print Mimic on the ID scanner, but just short of it, he stops.

Why?

Another employee is saying something. I bring the comm between my and Sipu's ears. We listen, hugged together—

“Someone already did that, buddy.” The man shakes his head, thumbing back at the door.

“I was told something different,” Ter says quickly. “Right from the boss. Extra rations for the prisoners, tonight, courtesy of the governor himself.”

“He's incredible,” I say to Sipu, marveling at the recovery.

“I wasn't notified. Hold on.”

“Go ahead, check the system. It's right there.”

“Don't speak too soon.” She taps the face projected between our feet.

He doesn't look like he buys it. Returning to his desk, he swipes a finger back and forth across a glass screen. He shakes his head. “I'll have to comm the head doctor to check. Sorry. Protocol.”

“That's fine,” we hear Ter answer. “But if he's at the gala,
you think you'll be able to reach him? My ass is kind of on the line here.”

The man types like the wind at his wristcomm. He looks up. “What's your name?”

“Elton Cavanaugh,” Ter says, repeating the name Sipu gave him.

A few seconds of silence pass.

“Man, I'm a brand-new hire too,” Ter complains.
He's really playing it up.
“I'm gonna end up losing my job over this, I just know it. All because someone forgot to send a memo.” He pauses, again waiting for a response. “Look. It's just an extra ration of water, mister. Not even a full ration.” He wiggles the barrel around so the man can hear it sloshing. “Just let me do my job? Please? I'm begging here.”

The employee checks to see if anyone's watching, but no one is. Their eyes are on the holo. Finally, he gives a brief nod. “I better not get slammed for this, though. Then I can promise you'll definitely be out of a job.” Reaching for the comm on his desk, he presses down and says, “Station to Observation Desk, we've got extra rations tonight. Orderly coming through. End.”

“He's gonna make it,” I whisper.

Ter lays the Print Mimic against the ID scanner. He rolls it around and presses down. The door clicks open.

“He's in!” I clap and shimmy against Sipu.

“It's not done yet,” she says, and rests her palm on my shoulder. “Let's hold off on the celebrations until we're all safely back in the Omni.”

She's right.
But still.

As it turns out, Ter's not actually in Quarantine yet, anyway—he's in a sanitation room. Air vents hiss in the corners. The room fills up with gassy white clouds. When the fog settles, we see him reach for a yellow rubber suit hanging from a hook on the door.

Ter puts it on. We don't see that part—he's angled his cuffcomm so it faces away. I giggle, wondering if he's just being modest or if he's embarrassed. My cheeks are hot, and I'm glad we're in a dark room.

He opens the next door,
now
inside Quarantine.

I don't breathe. The loose wires, the yellow bulbs. Mattresses. I'm not even there, I'm just watching through the comm's holo, but I feel the bite of fear in my chest. I swallow.

I'm the knife
, I tell myself. I can't undo the hurt Voss has caused me, but I can make it stop for others.
My own personal rebellion
.

In the observation room, someone's watching us right now. Ter lowers the barrel onto a long, foldable table. “Extra rations tonight!” he calls, yelling over a scratchy radio announcer's voice.

A line quickly forms, wrapping all the way around the room. Our first taker is a young girl. A small tumor grows from her neck.

“Extra rations,” he says again, back to the observation room. “Care of your friend Aven.”

The girl eyes him, unsure. She holds the cup to her lips letting it rest there. “Aven gave this to you?”

“Yeah, she did. She said she was trying to keep her promise.”

As Ter fiddles with the barrel to buy himself more time, the girl slowly lights up. “Now, pour yourself half a cup
only.
It's not just water. You're getting something different tonight—something that will make you healthy. You'll feel strong afterward. That's normal,” he whispers.

The girl smiles as though Ter's a genie who's just granted her a dozen wishes. I bite into my knuckles again, about to cry. The girl drains her cup and scurries off. As she moves down the line, she passes along Ter's message. In the background, the radio announcer gives a play-by-play of the gala going on only a mile away. It's a different world they live in.

Soon, people begin to catch on. It's like being on a rooftop, a hundred lightning rods all pointed toward a stormy sky. The room quiets—as much as five hundred people can. One by one, the prisoners approach the barrel and pour themselves half a cup.

I watch the way their faces change as the water courses through their body. Their glossy eyes seem clearer. An easy smile lifts the corners of their lips.

It's as if the entire universe, every planet and all the stars, the black nothing and time itself, came together to bring me right here to this very moment.

This has to be why Ren found it—why I was taken. To bring
them
the water
.

I would have given up both my hands if I'd known this moment was a ripple at the end of the pond. I can't believe
in meaninglessness—
not now
. This somehow made the pain worth it.

Ter turns away, leaving Quarantine behind.

He walks through the sanitation room and into the entry station. The man who just gave him a hard time nods as he passes.

Then Ter's back in the inventory closet, and right before our eyes, the door opens.

“It worked—it
actually
worked,” he breathes, as shocked as we are.

Sipu pushes herself up from the floor. “And now,” she says, “we get out. Fast. The observation staff might've already caught on.” She hands me the Print Mimic. “You're going to need this at the next checkpoint, Aven. I'll pull mine off the next scanner. I doubt I'll be that one percent twice.”

Taking the jelly thimble from her, we swing left out the door and into a hallway. We bolt down it, and at the far end, push through a second door leading to the main corridor: the one installed with bright bowl-shaped lights every five feet. Here, at the lab ID checkpoint, a holo screen hangs on the opposite wall, where a DI security guard has turned his chair to face it. Into his cuffcomm: “Special Lab Security to Base: What the hell is going on? Is this a joke? Out.”

He pays no attention to us at all.

This is too easy
, I think, and Sipu walks up to the scanner.
He's not even looking. . . .

On the holo, the governor holds up a vial, speaking into the camera. His voice loses nothing through the audio—he only becomes more threatening. Given a hundred mouths on
a hundred screens, he's larger than life.

Then the video loops from the beginning:
This is a message for the Tètai: Hyper Basilic Neoplasma Contagion—that is what I've named this virus. . . .

We listen to the rest of the message, frozen.

Voss invented the virus?

The guard's wristcomm coughs static, then it clears. A voice crackles through. “Chief Dunn to all officers, Chief Dunn to all officers. About five minutes ago, information was released, potentially implicating Governor Voss in the creation of the HBNC virus. Until I know more, we can expect high-risk situations, civil unrest, riots—the whole nine. At this time, I'm asking that officers prioritize crowd control. That is all. Out.”

The ground beneath our very feet shakes. . . .

I'm not imagining it
.

A dull rumble grows from back the way we came. Next, we hear the crashing of glass from the hall, down by the observation room. With the glass shattered, the earthquake is no longer behind us, but in front of us. The door to the observation room swings open—

Prisoners pour out into the hall, floodwaters rising.

D
erek touches my shoulder. “We have to go, Ren. It'll get ugly pretty fast. We're not safe.” A moment later, we hear footsteps clamoring up the staircase.

“Window,” he says, opening it for me.

I step onto the windowsill. Wind sucks into the radio tower, blowing up my servant dress. When I look down, there's no place to stop. The tower's roof ends right below our feet, then goes completely vertical.
Unless.
“Below the window, there's a drainpipe,” I say. “It wraps around the tower, but over there, it's climbable. We could follow it down, then jump onto the mansion's flat roof?”

Derek gives me the thumbs-up, and I step backward out of the window. Holding on to the bottom sill, I walk along the drainpipe to cross the tower. Here, I monkey myself down
the horizontal pipe until I can grab the vertical one. Derek's close behind. Gray, gritty shingles slide under the pipe, jettisoned over the edge.

Don't look down.

Being in a mobile flying off roofs is one thing. Dangling off a roof from both arms . . . different thing.

I'm glad I went first
, I think, clutching the pipe with both hands. Derek would be getting quite the view right now. We slide together, and in the distance, a heli's props rattle the air.

The news is spreading.

The drain ends. It's only a two-foot drop from here. I hop onto the roof, and to my left I see a tall, arched window. I reach for it, thinking I can get it open—

A troop of officers passes in front. I duck to the side, hugged against Derek's warmth.

“Maybe we should just try to get off the island instead,” he says, now standing next to me on the roof. He steps closer to the edge to survey the property. “Dammit.”

I lean over the edge too, and spot a team of big guys in blue jackets. They stream out of a back exit I didn't even know existed. When I check the front entrance, I find more DI. Assuming there are other exits I don't know about and the DI are exiting out all of them, getting off the island ain't gonna happen.

“Not anymore,” I answer. “The whole property is swarmed.”

Derek's inhale is so loud, I can hear it over the wind humming through the drainpipe. “Ren, I'm out of options. I think we're in the safest spot we're going to find at present.”

“So . . . we just wait?”

“Yep.” He lowers himself onto the roof. “We just . . . wait.”

I sink down too, hugging my knees. We watch the Blues comb the forest and the number of helis growing in the distance. We sit in silence a few moments before he gently pokes my shoulder. “You know, I'd be dead if it weren't for you,” he tells me.

Derek gives me a second, and then it dawns on me—

“You mean the water?”

“That was smart thinking,” he says, “leaving it in the toilet tank.” Derek pauses, and I can feel him watching me. Up here, there's a soft wind. It tousles the leaves, but I feel nothing. Not with those eyes on me. “Thank you, Ren. For remembering.” He sounds so plainly surprised.

East of us, the moon rises over the islet. It catches a fistful of his hair, turning it bright copper. “Well, I couldn't have you dying on me, Derek. Not
now
. You're one of the good guys,” I tell him, with a goofy, playful grin on my face.

On a day like today, he's still makin' me smile. . . .

Derek laughs quietly, then looks at his shoes. “And here I always thought girls
liked
bad boys. All along, I've been doing it wrong.” He glances at me, then away, then back again, suddenly a bashful little boy.

I shoulder-check him, 'cause apparently, I think roughhousing sends the same message as flirting.

“Oww,” Derek says, rubbing his side, though we all know he's faking. “That wasn't very nice. I happen to like good girls, you know. Now that I'm a good guy, it only makes sense.”

Getting up in his face, I say, “Then you, sir, are barking up the wrong tree,” and I poke his abs this time—any excuse to go for the abs, really. “I never said I was a
good girl
.”

Then, like magic, he's wrapped his hand behind my neck. “Whatever you are,” he answers, pulling me closer, “I like it.” And then . . . he just holds me there like that, waiting. His breath is warm on my lips, and he's looking at me, at every bit of my face—
what is he waiting for?

He's waiting for me
.

Now I'm the one who does the magic. I bring my mouth to his, my body pressed close, and like two sides of the same coin, our lips meet. There's no fear this time, no hesitancy. He nips at my lower lip, and I take his upper one—it's as though we're made from the same mold.

They say the only way time can warp is by messing with speed and gravity. Well, here we are—it's a damn high roof, the world around us is spinning fast into entropy, and we are perfectly still. Time slows. It warps and bends with the push and graze of our lips, until it stops completely.