“Follow me,” he says, and he begins again to run, just as he always wanted to do, right out in the open, down the streets of the town. No Official stops him, or the rest of us, as we hurry through the empty streets under a brilliant, careless sun.
To my surprise, Bram takes me to the town’s tiny Museum, not to the medical center. Inside the Museum, the display cases have all been broken into, and the glass swept up. Any artifacts that were stored are now gone; the map of the Society has been drawn on, altered. I would like to look closely to see what is marked there now, but we don’t have time.
There are many of the still, lying on the floor throughout the room. A few people look up when we come in, and their faces relax slightly at the sight of Bram. He belongs here.
“They ran out of space at the medical center,” Bram says, “so I had to bring her here. I was lucky, because I had things to trade. Other people had to do the best they could at their homes. Here, at least they have the nutrient bags some of the time.”
Her. My mother. But what about him? What about my father?
Bram kneels down.
She looks very gone. I try not to panic. Her face is so pale against her scattering of freckles; there is more gray in her hair than I remember, but she looks young with her eyes open like this, young and lost to us.
“I turn her every two hours like they told me,” Bram says, “and her sores have healed. They were bad, though.” He speaks very fast. “But look. She has one of the bags now. That’s good, isn’t it? They’re expensive.”
“Yes,” I say. “It’s very good.” I pull him close again. “How did you manage it?” I ask.
“I traded with the Archivists,” Bram says.
“I thought the Archivists were all gone,” I say.
“A few came back,” Bram says. “The ones that had the red mark started to trade again.” I shouldn’t be surprised. Of course some of the Archivists would not have been able to resist coming back, seeing the void into which they could bring their trades and their trinkets.
I lean closer to Bram so that I can whisper to him. “We’re taking her back with us,” I say.
“Is it safe?” Bram whispers back.
“Yes,” the Rising medic says. “She can be transported. She’s stable, and shows no sign of infection.”
“Bram,” I say softly, “we don’t have very much of the cure yet. The Rising thinks Mama might be able to help them, so they agreed she could be one of the first to have it.” I glance over at my mother, with her staring-ahead eyes. “And I bargained for him, too, since we were coming here. But where is he? Where is Papa?”
Bram doesn’t answer my question. He looks away.
“Bram,” I say again, “where is Papa? Do you know? He can come with us to have the cure—they promised—but we don’t have much time. We have to find him now.”
And then Bram starts to sob, great heaving sighs. “They bring the dead out to the fields,” he says. “Only those of us who are immune can go out to check on them.” He looks up at me with tear-filled eyes. “That’s what I’ve been doing for the Archivists,” he says. “I can go out and look for faces.”
“No,” I say in horror.
“It’s better than selling the tubes,” he says. “That’s the other job that pays well.” His eyes are different—so much older, having seen so much more—and still the same, with that obstinate glint that I know well. “I won’t do that. Selling the tubes is a lie. Telling people whether or not their friends or family are dead is the truth.”
He shudders. “The Archivists let me choose,” he says. “They have people coming all the time wanting information or tubes or to know where the people they love are. So I helped them. I could find the people, if they gave me a picture. And then they paid me with what I needed for me. And for her.”
He did everything he could to take care of our mother, and I’m glad he saved her, but the cost was so high. What has he seen?
“I wasn’t in time for him,” Bram says.
I almost ask Bram if he’s sure; I almost tell him that he might be wrong, but he knows. He saw.
My father is gone. The cure is too late for him.
“We need to leave,” the medic tells me as he helps the Rising officer lift my mother onto a stretcher. “Now.”
“Where are you taking her?” someone asks from across the room, but we don’t answer.
“Did she die?” someone else calls out. I hear their desperation.
We pass through the still and those who tend them, leaving them behind, and my heart aches. We’ll be back, I want to tell them. With enough cures for everyone, next time.
“What do you have?” someone asks, pushing through. An Archivist. “Do you have a different kind of medicine? How much is it worth?”
The officer takes care of him while we hurry through the doors out of the Museum.
On the ship, Bram climbs down into the hold with me and with the medic, who starts a line for my mother. I pull Bram close and he cries, and cries, and cries, and my heart breaks, and I think his tears will never end. And then they do and it is worse, a shivering and shuddering that shakes his whole body, and I do not know how I can feel this much pain and survive, and at the same time know how much I have to live. Please, I think, let Bram feel that second part, somewhere inside his despair, because we are still together, we still have each other.
When Bram falls asleep, I take my mother’s hand. Instead of singing her the names of flowers, as I had planned, I say her name, because that is what my father would have done. “Molly,” I say. “We’re here.” I press the paper flower into her palm and her fingers twitch a little. Did she know this lily would cure us? That it was important somehow? Was she simply finding a way to send me something beautiful?
Whatever the case, it worked.
But not soon enough for my father.
CHAPTER 55
XANDER
This all comes naturally to you,” Lei said once before. “Doesn’t it?” I wonder if the medics watching me inject the cure into the line think the same thing. The patient getting the cure went still within the same time frame that Ky did—that’s a requirement for this first trial of the cure.
“That’s all you’ve got to do,” I tell the medics. “Inject the solution and wait for it to work.”
The medics nod. They’ve done this before. I’ve done this before, back during the original Plague when I first gave cures and speeches at the medical center. There aren’t many of us left now. “These hundred patients are the only ones we have on this trial,” I tell the medics. “We’re trying to find more of the plant, but it won’t be in flower much longer. We know the structure of the parent compound, so we’ve got people working around the clock to find the synthetic pathway so we can make it in the lab. But all you have to worry about is taking care of the patients.
“You’ll need to give new doses every two hours.” I gesture to where the supplies are stored, in a locked cabinet guarded by several armed officers. I don’t know their allegiance, except that it’s to the Pilot. “You might see some improvement by the time of the second dose. If their rate of recovery is as quick as our initial subject’s was, they’ll start speaking and talking again after only a few hours, and walking within two days. But I don’t anticipate that rate of recovery here. Be sure not to waste any of the cure.”
As if they need the warning. What we need are more flowers, and Cassia’s mother to come back. She was still for weeks, a lot longer than Ky was, and it’s taking her more time than it did him. The Rising has not yet been able to find her report on the rogue crops in the Society’s database, so we need her help desperately.
Meanwhile, the Pilot has teams scouring the fields and meadows near the city of Camas, with instructions not to pull up everything so that the flowers can grow back in case we need them again.
I wonder if they’ll be able to resist. It’s not exactly easy to save things for the future when the present is so uncertain.
“You sound like you’re sure this will work,” one of the medics says. Their uniforms are dirty and they all look exhausted. I remember some of them from when I was here before. It feels like years have passed instead of weeks.
“I don’t know how much longer I could have done this,” one of the medics says. “Now there’s a reason to keep going.”
I wish I could stay and help, but I’m due back at the lab to oversee the Rising pharmics who are making more of the cure. “I’ll be back to check on the patients later,” I say.
The medics start down the rows with the cures. I’m finished here for now, and I think I have just enough time to visit my old wing.
Lei’s eyes are very glassy and she smells of infection. But she’s been turned recently, and her long sweep of black hair has been braided back out of the way. And the paintings still hang above each patient. The medics here have been doing their best.
It doesn’t always come naturally to me, I want to tell her as I inject the cure into her line. Not right now. Please come back. If you were here, it would help.
This is one of the cures I made in the village. I didn’t turn them all over to the research team trying to synthesize the ingredients in the lab. I saved some for her. She didn’t go down that much earlier than Ky, so there’s a chance. Of course, she didn’t have Oker’s medicine in the bags.
I hear footsteps behind me and I turn to look. It’s one of the medics who worked here back when I did. “I didn’t know we were getting any of the new cure up here,” he says.
“You’re not,” I say. “The group they’re using had to fall still within a certain time frame. She was just outside of it.” I finish emptying the syringe and turn to look at him. “But I had a few extra.” I hold several of the vials. “I might not be able to come here for a little while. I’m supposed to get back to work on making more of this.”
The medic slips the vials into the pocket of his uniform. “I’ll give them to her,” he says.
“Every two hours,” I say. I can’t seem to leave her alone like this. I know how Cassia felt in the infirmary. Can I trust the medic? I’m sure there’s someone else he’d like to cure if he could.
“I’m not going to try to sneak it to someone else,” he says. “I want to see if it works first.”
“Thank you,” I tell him.
“Does it work?”
“On one hundred percent of the first trial group,” I say. I leave out the fact that the trial group only included a single person.
“I have to ask,” he says. “Are you the Pilot?”
“No,” I say. I stop at the door for a second and look back at Lei. You’re not supposed to do what we’ve done with this cure and Ky and let one patient take on so much significance. It’s just one person. Of course, one person can be the world.