The Book of M (27 page)

NAZ WALKED SLOWLY UP TO THE FRONT OF THE IOWA, WHERE
Ory and Malik were standing with the General. Above, the sky was just starting to brighten, not into warm peach, but an oppressive wintery navy streaked with gray. It was hailing lightly.

“Some day for our most important mission.” The General sighed when she reached them, gesturing at the threatening sky. He stuck his foot out, a few inches over the ground. “It's so overcast, we look like a bunch of Reds.”

Naz smiled, despite the grim mood. He was right. The morning had that peculiar kind of stormy light that was bright enough to illuminate the landscape, but so lifeless it sucked the shadows from everything except the deepest, most narrow corners of the world. Everything was there, but two-dimensional.

“You ready?” Ory asked.

“I'm always ready,” the General said automatically, then flinched. He and Ory both smiled, surprised at the sudden memory, but it was bittersweet. It had been Paul's catchphrase, once.

Naz looked down. She hated seeing moments like this. Sad recollections. She'd heard the trademark saying in the stories Paul sometimes told, when they all used to sit around the fire at the Iowa in better times—usually when he had been trying to goad the much more cautious Ory into doing something mischievous with him as kids. Then history repeated itself when Ory met Max. She'd said it when Ory accidentally proposed far too early, when it had just slipped out at a romantic dinner; when they'd gone skydiving; the first time they'd nervously talked about children, maybe, someday. Paul said at that fateful football game, when he heard Max say it to Ory when he
asked her if she wanted to get out of there, and go get dinner somewhere, it was how he knew she was right for him.

Naz thought that if Max had still been here, she probably would have liked her. She seemed a lot like Paul.

“Well, you look it.” Malik finally broke the awkward silence. They all turned to him gratefully. The General was lightly armored, and wearing a leather shoulder bag to carry his tools on the way there—then hopefully Paul's book on his way back. Over all of it, he'd shrugged the cleanest single piece of fabric Naz had seen in two years—a doctor's white lab coat.

“Can you believe I still have it, after all this time?” Imanuel asked. He admired the blindingly clean sleeve.

“Honestly, yes.” Ory smiled. “You have a weapon?”

The General shook his head. “I don't want to aggravate them.” He put a hand on Ory's shoulder. “I'm coming back.” He looked at Malik and her, too. “I'm coming back.”

Naz looked down sharply as her eyes grew hot. He was hugging each of them now, Malik and Ory clapping him roughly on the back and blinking just like she was. Her body moved against her will when it was her turn, arms outstretched, as if a hug would do anything at all.
You don't understand,
she wanted to tell him.
You can't go alone. I made a promise to Paul before he died. I said I would bring Ory and Max back, and I said I'd protect you. I can't fail a second time.
But before she could say it, he started walking toward the front lines.

Leaving. He was leaving. Naz could feel the panic crushing her. He was leaving, and there was nothing she could do. “Malik,” she gasped.

“I know,” Malik said. She felt his arm around her shoulder, holding her up.

The General turned back once and waved, and then he was gone, turned onto another street. Everything was suddenly completely silent.

She turned to Malik at last. He and Ory looked as panicked as
she felt, rooted to the asphalt, eyes wide as they stared into the empty street.

“What do we do?” Ory asked numbly. None of them moved for a few moments, until at last Vienna walked up.

“Dad,” she said softly, “they're all waiting for you.”

Malik finally snapped back to attention and turned to face the troops. “All right!” he cried. “We don't know how much time we have, so let's work fast, soldiers. When the General gets back, the whole Red horde might be right on his ass—so we had better be ready to
move
. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir!” they cried in unison.

“My group, upstairs on packing duty. Double-check everything—we do not leave a
single
book! Ahmadi's group, the basement.” He clapped once. “Let's go!”

NAZ STILL THOUGHT OF THE BASEMENT AS A GARAGE, EVEN
though it wasn't a garage anymore—the luxury cars were all long gone. Parked in their places now was a row of carriages, each from a different era. And along the opposite wall, the soldiers had built low walls out of scrap to transform the parking spots into stalls—stables, to be exact.

“This?” Ory panted.

“No, the bridles.” Naz gestured impatiently. “The thin brown straps with the metal bit in the middle.”

She saw him pause between dragging heaps of riding tack over to her and Vienna to stare at the row of horses snorting and stamping in their stalls. She knew what he wanted to ask them—where were they getting enough grass, how had he never seen them being exercised, where had they even
found
them
—
but she could also tell he was thinking the same way she did: that would just waste time, and time was something they didn't have much of. There was only one question that really mattered anyway. “Why aren't we using cars?”

She smiled at being proven right.

“Would if we could,” Vienna answered as she slid the reins over one horse's head and hefted a harness after it with a grunt. “Once the Reds figured out that petroleum makes a fire burn even faster, they went after it like—” she considered.

“Like flies after horse shit,” Naz finished for her. She reached for another bridle, and Ory jumped to grab a harness that he guessed should go after. She grunted in approval and started on the next horse in her row, hands moving efficiently, buckling straps and fitting bands across the giant, muscled creatures. He was picking it up quickly.

“You'd be lucky if you could find enough fuel in all of D.C. now to power a motorcycle for two miles,” Vienna added. She was taking the General's decision to walk into the Red's territory alone better than they were—still young enough to believe a person when he promised he would come back no matter what. She trusted almost as quickly as Rojan used to. “Carriages were the best we could do. We stole them from the Smithsonian before the Red King torched them.”

“Concentrate,” Naz finally admonished them, but gently. She and Vienna moved to the next horse in sync. Ory tried to scoot as quickly as he could around the stall to follow, but he accidentally bumped a huge brown bay on the nose with his shoulder. It was some kind of draft breed, with legs as thick as tree trunks. An irritated whinny screeched off the concrete ceiling.

“That's Holmes,” Vienna said when Ory had finished cowering. She tipped her chin at the stall after, where a light gray horse of the same size with silvered hooves stood. “And Watson.”

“Because they're clever stallions?” Ory muttered, still grimacing from the sound.

“They're both female,” Vienna said. “I just named them that because they like to be near each other.”

They worked in silence for a few minutes after that, which is what Naz thought she had wanted. But the longer she tightened bridles and hoisted harnesses, the more agitated she became. She had actually let the General walk in there alone. She had let him talk her out of the
promise she'd made with herself about Rojan, about Paul, about Ory and Max—to protect them at all costs. She had sworn each time, and now she was about to fail
again
.

Naz put down the bridle. Damn the General's orders. She was not going to lose yet another person that she loved.

“Think you can finish the horses up alone?” she asked Vienna. “I need Ory for another job.”

“I still have—” Vienna started, but when she caught the expression on Naz's face, she fell silent and saluted.

Naz nodded gratefully. “Head back upstairs,” she said to Ory, and started jogging. “I need to find Malik, and then I'll meet you there.”

NAZ PEEKED INTO THE QUIET BARRACKS ROOM. ORY WAS
already inside, waiting for her. She ushered Malik in and closed the door behind them.

“I don't say this lightly,” she started, warming up to her argument. “I know the General ordered us all to wait here, but it's wrong. We just can't—”

“Done,” Ory interrupted.

Naz blinked, surprised.

“You don't have to convince me,” he continued. “He did tell me to stay, but he also told me to ‘actually obey Ahmadi this time.' So just order me to do it—as long as it's a direct order, I have no choice, right?”

Naz tried, but she couldn't keep the smile from her lips. Maybe Max and Paul had taught him a thing or two after all.

“Well, okay then,” she finally said, relieved. “Ory, I order you to recon the situation, help the General get Paul's book, and get back here as fast as you can.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Ory saluted.

“Aren't you going to ask me if I'm in?” Malik asked.

“I found you in the stairwell on your way to the stables,” Naz said. “You were already coming to get
me
to say the same thing.”

Malik shrugged and nodded.

“The only problem is, how am I going to get close enough to actually do this without being noticed?” Ory broke in. “Imanuel's the only non-Red there, so a second one will stick out like a sore thumb.”

Malik crossed his arms. “I had an idea on my way to find Ahmadi,” he said. “You won't like it, but I think it's our best shot.”

DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN YOU AND I WERE UP AT
THAT CABIN
in the Poconos, that long weekend a few years ago, Ory? We were comfortably drunk on mugs of hot buttered rum, and there was a fire in the fireplace. Infomercials rolled by on the television in the corner. We were playing What If. “
What if someone gave you a little box with a button on top, and every time you pressed the button, the box would give you a million dollars, but someone you'd crossed paths with—from the clerk at a convenience store in a town you once drove through to an old high school classmate to your own mother—would instantly die. The box would choose the person completely at random. Would you press the button? Would you press it more than once?
”

We both toasted each other and drank down our mugs, smug at how easily we could give up the imaginary money. What was money compared to a human life? Especially one you couldn't choose. I was so sure I'd never press that button, Ory. Fuck a million dollars. It wasn't worth the cost. But what if you were losing who you were minute by minute? What if chancing something that big was the only thing that would free you from this metal cage? What if it was the only thing that would get you to New Orleans? What if—

Someone's coming. I have to hide the recorder now.

I don't know what it is about this place, Ory. It's hard to hold on. Maybe it's being trapped in such an empty, unchanging room, or the questions. The endless questions.

The ones in white come to us singly or in pairs. Sometimes it's the woman from the first day, sometimes it's another woman, sometimes it's men. The guards deal with our waste bucket at regular intervals,
but it's these others who bring us food, so much food, divided into small pieces so it can fit through the bars. I don't think I've been this well fed since the Forgetting began. Then while we eat to our heart's content, they ask.

“What did it feel like when you lost your shadow?”

“What were you doing at the moment it disappeared?”

“What were your feelings about Hemu Joshi and the first shadowless when the incidences in India first happened?”

It's not an interrogation, it's not like that. No matter what we do—ignore them, scream—they never shout back or hurt us or withhold meals. They just keep asking, with eternal patience. Eventually we decided that only Ursula should answer, so she began to speak for us all—but the answers she gives are always lies. That's the only power we have left.

“Do you remember the exact instant you lost your shadow?”

“I was killing a man,” Ursula said. She hadn't been. She'd been driving when it happened, steering the RV carefully through northern Virginia.

“Who in your group lost their shadow first?”

“I did.” She didn't. She'd told me that she had been the last, just before I'd stumbled onto their camp.

But it doesn't matter. They just ask again, on different days, with different people, as if Ursula had never responded at all.

“Did it hurt?”

“Were you afraid of losing your shadow before it happened?”

“Was there any warning it would happen before the actual moment?”

The questions are so constant that now after a few days, I can't remember what Ursula has answered before for any of them. I can barely remember how it actually happened to me now, so long ago, after all these circles.

“Are they maybe trying to cure us?” Intisaar asked one night as we reclined against the bars. Most of the candles had winked out before midnight, but the questioners wouldn't return until dawn, so
the guards just left the room in semi-darkness, watching us from the dim corners as they patrolled.

“No.” Ursula shook her head.

“With the exception of the bars, they really are—kind,” Dhuuxo admitted. “Most shadowed survivors run or kill us on sight. These people talk to us, feed us, and bring us new clothes and blankets whenever we need them. They
want
us.”

“And their questions do sound similar to what the news reported the scientists were asking Hemu Joshi, once they quarantined him for treatment,” Victor added. The smoke from the cigarette the woman in white had gifted him drifted in front of his eyes, and he looked down, embarrassed.

“We already know the scientists didn't find anything useful, though,” Ursula replied, her voice harsh. Zachary stirred, shivering, and she put her arm around him. She was afraid, I could tell. Afraid that Transcendence's gentle patience might be working on us. “I know they're treating us well,” she said, softer this time. “But we are still in a cage.”

The woman we first met was one of the two who came today. We all sat silently, watching the pair of them or staring off into the empty hall as Ursula invented random lies.

It was the other one talking this time, a man wrapped in white layers. The woman was simply listening, smiling beatifically at us the entire time, as if we were her children. Ursula decided to ignore a question, just to break the pattern.

“Were you afraid when it first happened?” the man asked after the pause, continuing without frustration.

“You'd have to be stupid not to be afraid,” Ursula finally said.

The man nodded noncommittally. Not agreeing or disagreeing;
simply hearing. “Did you feel the pull as soon as your shadow disappeared?”

“No,” Ursula said.

The man nodded again. Then the woman did—but a few moments later than he had. I looked more closely at her eyes. She wasn't watching Ursula.

“What did it feel like when your shadow disappeared?”

Dhuuxo and Intisaar were pointedly ignoring the ones in white. Zachary stared blankly at his palms. I studied the woman as surreptitiously as I could. She was looking into the cage, but just past Ursula's shoulder. Slowly, so that no one would notice, I shifted my eyes. Lucius, Victor, Wes, and Ysabelle were leaning on the bars at the back of the cage. They were all half-dozing from boredom as Ursula answered—except Lucius.

“Did you feel it when your shadow separated from you?”

“Not even a little,” Ursula drawled, lying.

But Lucius nodded. Ever so slightly.

My eyes flicked back. I saw the woman tip her head again. So minutely it was almost impossible to notice beneath all the layers.

It all made sense now. They weren't interested in what Ursula said. They knew she would lie every time. They were interested in how long she would continue to do it. How long we would all let her before one of us would start to wonder if maybe there was another way out of the cage. How long until one of us would start to answer with the truth.

I wish you were here, Ory. I need to tell Ursula, but I don't know how. The cage is big enough that I can sit in a corner and whisper to you without Lucius hearing—they all know I talk to you and ignore me anyway—but if I was to go over and say something in Ursula's ear,
he'd see for sure, and know something was wrong. I've been waiting for a time when I'm sure he's asleep, but we all lay around so much, it's hard to tell. Or what if he isn't cheating the rest of us, but just trying to help in his own way, because Ursula is no closer to getting us out than the first day? Trying to win their trust so he can turn on them at the right moment? You would know what to do. You'd at least have a guess, and then we could figure it out together.

Ursula has started pacing, checking the bars again. Lucius is lying down on the other side of the cage, but his eyes just opened when she passed him, awake. No good now. Not yet.

We all woke up to Ysabelle crying this morning. “I forgot,” she was saying, over and over. “I forgot what they looked like.”

“Ys.” Victor scooted closer. “What is it?”

“My parents,” she said, and covered her face.

I felt a chill. It's getting worse, Ory. The stress, the fear. We're going to lose bigger and bigger things now, the more desperate we get. This whole time, we've had the memory of New Orleans holding us together, one thing to cling to. But now that we're trapped here, unable to keep moving toward it—we can't let ourselves unravel.

“I didn't mean to, but I tried to remember them and then I . . .” Ysabelle sobbed, voice muffled by her hands. Victor held her. He was trying as hard as he could—trying to do his job as husband to comfort a woman whom he didn't remember he loved. “But I had them, I know I did. I
know.
A mother and a father. But now I don't know what they look like. I forgot their names.”

“What if we fake an emergency?” Victor asked, smoothing her pale hair. His voice was angrier than I've ever heard it. Angry that we were trapped, angry that his wife was panicking and that there was nothing he could do about it—angry that the only reason he knew
she was his wife in the first place was because Ursula had reminded him. “Would they open the cage if one of us might be dying?”

“They always have the rest of us if someone does,” Lucius said.

“We have to get out of here. We have to get away. We're going to run out of time,” Ysabelle said.

Ursula paced along the cage, tiger-like. The guards were at attention, ready to try to stop something impossible from happening. I touched the bar beside my head tentatively as I watched them track her movement, considering. But no. It felt more solid than it had ever felt. I still remembered too well that bars do not bend. And these especially. They seemed even more impossible to escape than simply steel.