Atlantia

“Finding out why she left won’t be good enough?”

“No,” I say, and I’m sorry to have to tell him this, but it’s true and it’s time. “It will never be good enough. I have to see her again.”

“Why?” True asks. He heard my meaning the day Bay left, when I said that single word in the temple, and I hear his now. He cares about me. He might even love me. So why can’t I stay?

I have to tell him so that he understands when he finds me gone.

“I miss her,” I say, “so much that it feels like I’m alone in an ocean that covers all the world. I miss her so much that I think I’m not really a person anymore, only pain. And then sometimes I think it’s the opposite. I do have a body. It’s a mess of organs and muscle and bones lying on a shore, and the salty seawater comes over me in waves that never end and it hurts. All the time.”

“This is how you feel without her,” True says.

“Yes,” I say.

The moment I spoke in the temple, True knew that I was a siren. And, knowing who my mother was and who my aunt is, he must have realized that I had another siren in my family. That I am not just a siren but a strange one at that. But he didn’t say anything to anyone. He’s been keeping secrets for me all along.

What would it be like to stay here in the gondola, the fog around us, the sound of the bats winging their way across the skies, Atlantia breathing, lulling us to sleep?

True’s lips brush against mine and I kiss him back. We hold each other tight. Earlier, under the trees, we were hungry and relieved to touch each other.

We are still hungry.

The gondola stops. We need to get out and get home before the peacekeepers find us.

“I’ll walk with you to the temple,” True says.

As we come closer to the temple, the fog lifts. It is lighter here. And so we can see that the trees have lost their leaves, all of them, in silver drifts on the ground. The gods are naked in the branches, their broken arms and shining teeth there for all to see, and as I watch a temple bat drifts down to land on Efram’s shoulder.

I have never seen Atlantia like this, unleaved, unloosed. The breach, the fog, the trees undone.

The city is decaying before our eyes, and I realize that it has always been this way. It is such work to keep Atlantia alive, to keep any of us alive. But the work is what draws us in, what gives us purpose. This city is our ship, sealed tight to keep us safe, and it is breaking.

“How could this happen so fast?” True asks. “We haven’t been gone for long. The trees were fine an hour ago.”

“Maire was right,” I say. “We need to go home.”

“We will,” True says, and I wonder how his voice is so deep and so clear. How his hands can be both strong and gentle. How he can know what I am and still be unafraid to kiss me like this.

I can’t see True again after tonight.

My mother was right. She told me that one word could undo the work of years; could be overheard by many.

First Justus, then Maire, now True. Who is the most dangerous of the three?

I know the answer to that. I’ve known for some time.

CHAPTER 18

During a special broadcast the next day, Nevio tells us that the breach was a terrible accident. That the water that came in was too powerful, too fast, that there was nothing to be done but seal off the deepmarket to prevent the water from reaching the neighborhoods.

Hundreds of people died. There’s no way to give everyone an individual burial with a death toll so high, no time for family members to prepare the bodies. The priests are working all day and late into the night to bless and shroud the dead, and the bodies will have to go up through the floodgates in groups. There is not enough time to bury them one by one. Nevio tells us that the first group will be released tomorrow morning.

We lost more people in the deepmarket breach than we have ever lost in a single day in Atlantia. This is a terrible tragedy.

And I am a terrible person, because in the tragedy I see an opportunity.

This is my chance to go through the floodgates.

And it’s even better than I could have hoped.

The mass burials are the perfect cover for my attempt to get Above.

Instead of just one body, there will be dozens going up at the same time. I’ll wear Bay’s wetsuit, the one I didn’t cut up for a costume, and find a robe to shroud myself in and conceal my air tank.

This time I will be the one who leaves.

I wait until it’s late at night, until the hours when even the priests have to steal a little sleep, and I slip into the morgue, find a shroud in a pile, and put it on over my wetsuit and air tank. The dead rest in their rows, and I lie down and pull the shroud over my face, making sure that the air tank is adjusted and strapped on tight.

I lie on the cold floor and wait. Wondering whether I’ve timed everything right, wondering if this will work.

And then people come inside. They move body after body. When it’s my turn, I hold very still. I pretend not to breathe.

The workers bring me from the morgue out to the floodgate chamber. They carry me on a stretcher, so they don’t touch the air tank, which is a mercy, and they settle me on the chamber floor. I know where I am by the echoes in the room and the smell of cold stone and salt water. I hear the workers placing other bodies around me. The floor feels very hard through my shroud.

A chill of foreboding shivers down the back of my neck. What if it all ends here? What if I drown before I even get out of the chamber?

Think about something else. Think about True.

I wonder if he is watching the burial. He won’t know that I’m here with the other bodies, but soon enough he’ll know that I’m gone, that I left Atlantia somehow. I wanted to leave a message for True, but I realized it was complicated—who could I trust to give it to him?—and, in the end, unnecessary.

I told him everything last night in the gondola. I didn’t tell him when I was going, but he knows I’ve always wanted to go Above, and he knows how much I miss my sister.

In the end True will think that I loved Bay more than I love him, which is true in some ways.

I have loved her longer.

The priests begin to say the prayers over us. They speak as one, and I can’t make out Justus’s voice.

I hold so very, very still. The priests are everywhere, walking among the rows. I wonder if any of them think they see a flutter of breath when they come past my body. My mask is in place, the tank still undiscovered, the control to the airflow in my hand. It will take a tiny movement to switch it on, one that I hope no one sees. And then I’ll have to hope that the air is good and the ascent slow enough that my lungs don’t burst.