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He’s right that we’re out of time.
I unlock the cabinet. Did the Rising know the Plague was once called the Pilot? How were we ever going to succeed against these odds?
The Rising was never going to work.
I don’t know if I can do this, I think.
What can’t you do, Xander, I ask myself.
Can’t keep going.
You’re not even still. You have to keep going.
I do the right thing. I don’t give up. I do it all with a smile on my face. I’ve always believed that I’m a good person.
What if I’m not?
There’s no time to think like that now. I trusted Oker and when it comes down to it, I trust myself to make the right call.
I open the cabinet and pull out a tray of cures. When I unseal the first one and pour it down the sink, I find myself biting down so hard on the inside of my lip that I taste blood.
CHAPTER 42
KY
It’s raining. So I should remember.
Something.
Someone.
The water is gathering inside of me.
Who do I remember?
I don’t know.
I’m drowning.
I remember to breathe.
I remember to breathe.
I remember.
I.
CHAPTER 43
CASSIA
People still mill about in the village circle, talking about the result of the vote, so I hurry around the back of the buildings at the edge of the village to try to get to Xander. It’s dark and dank here, hemmed in by trees and mountain, and as I come up behind the research lab, I almost step on something twisted in the mud. Not something, someone—
Oker is here.
He’s lying on the ground, his face caught in a grimace or a smile; it’s hard to tell with his ski
n stretched tight over his old sharp bones.
“No, no,” I say, and I stop and bend down to touch him. No air comes out of his mouth and when I put my ear to his chest I don’t hear his heart beating, even though he is still warm. “Oker,” I whisper, and I look at his open eyes, and I see that one of his hands is muddy. Why? I wonder, irrationally, and then I see that he made something there in the mud, a shape that seems familiar.
It looks like he pressed his knuckles into the earth three times, making a sort of star.
I sit back on my heels, my knees dirty and my hands shaking. There’s nothing I can do for him. But if anyone can help Oker, it’s Xander.
I stand up and stagger the last few steps to the research lab, pleading, Xander, Xander, please be here.
The door is locked. I pound and pound and call out his name. When I stop to take a breath, I hear the villagers coming up the path on the other side of the building. Have they heard me?
“Xander,” I cry out again, and he opens the back door.
“I need you,” I say. “Oker’s dead. And Hunter disconnected all of the still. ” I’m about to say more, but then Leyna and the others come around the back of the building and stop short.
“What has happened?” Leyna asks, looking down at Oker. Her face doesn’t change at all and I understand why, because this is beyond comprehension. Oker cannot be dead.
“It looks like a heart attack,” says one of the medics, his face ashen. He kneels in the mud next to Oker. They try to bring him back by breathing for him and pushing on his chest to get his heart beating again.
Nothing works. Leyna sits back on her heels, wiping her face with her hand. She’s muddy now. She pulls the bag from Oker’s shoulder and searches inside. The bag is empty, except for a dirty shovel and traces of soil. “What was he doing?” she asks Xander.
“He wanted to go find something,” Xander says. “He didn’t tell me what it was. He wouldn’t let me come with him. ”
For a moment, it is completely silent. Everyone stares down at Oker. “The still in the infirmary,” I say. “They’ve all been unhooked. ”
The medic looks up. “Are any of them dead?” he asks me.
“No,” I say. “But I don’t know how to start their lines again. Please. And you shouldn’t go alone. The medics there were attacked. ”
Colin signals to several of the others, who then leave with the medic. Leyna stays behind, looking at Xander with the same flat expression she’s had since she first saw Oker.
I want to run to be with Ky. But I suddenly have a terrible feeling that Xander is the one in the most danger now, and I can’t leave him alone.
“Everything isn’t lost,” Leyna says. “Oker left us the cure. ” This strikes me as funny, though nothing should in a moment like this. Minutes ago we were voting between Leyna’s plan and Oker’s, and now Leyna has come around to believing that we should do what Oker suggested. His death changed her mind.
I have to sort out what has happened with Xander, and I have to find out what can cure Ky, and why Hunter was letting patients go, and what Oker was trying to tell us with the star he made in the mud that the villagers have now trampled into oblivion and no one but me has seen.
