The Dark and Hollow Places (3 page)

The door to the next airlock slides open and a man steps in front of me as I start walking through. He knocks me back and just as I catch myself from falling, palms flat against the steel wall, I see her through the metal dividing fence, walking toward the island.

Or rather, I see me.

The crowd grumbles as I hesitate in the entrance, trying to catch another glimpse of the girl. Eventually someone shoves me hard in the back, but I refuse to budge, bracing my hands against the door. My eyes skim every face, wondering if I was mistaken, but then I see her again just on the other side of the fence, entering the space I’m leaving. Her hair’s long and blond, almost burned white by the sun.

She walks with her chin tilted up as if she’s never had to worry about anything. As if she has no sense of the danger her clean, healthy looks invite. No one shoves or trips her, she just glides along as if expecting the world to make room.

Her eyes slide over the crowd, skipping right over me as if I don’t exist.

Of course, that’s why I keep my face hidden in my hair. It’s why I hunch my shoulders and wear drab colors. I’m supposed to be invisible. It’s who I am.

But not to her. Never to her. She should be able to find me in the deepest darkness. She should feel me there in the crowd the same way I feel her.

She’s my sister. Her face as familiar to me as my own because it
is
my own. My chest tightens and I have a hard time
gulping enough air. I’m dizzy, gripping the doorframe to steady myself, and the person behind me uses the opportunity to force me through.

I turn against the crowd, trying to wrestle my way back, but they’re insistent and overwhelming. They push forward, flowing through the door in an unending stream as I struggle.

Nothing feels right about this moment. I fight for another look at the girl, knowing I must be mistaken. Even so, a prickle of hope starts to swell inside.

I want to scream—to draw attention to myself—but the warning bell rings and the crowd surges forward and then the doors groan shut and the girl I saw is gone.

I stand frozen, trying to understand what just happened. Trying to breathe. Trying to put the pieces together in my head. Even from such a quick glimpse I could tell that she had my face. My nose. My green eyes. She even had my wrists and chin and ears and neck and hair, if I spent time outside in the sun.

She had everything but my scars.

None of this makes sense—can’t make sense—but I don’t care because I desperately want it. For years I’ve replayed the moment Elias and I left Abigail, my twin sister, behind in the Forest of Hands and Teeth. I see her trip, see the blood trickling down her leg, catching in the downy hairs of her five-year-old shin. I remember the hesitation I felt, the intense desire to keep exploring mingled with rage that my sister was crying and fear that she wouldn’t go on any more.

I remember walking away from her. We thought we’d just go a little farther, just around the corner.

We never saw her again. We got lost, couldn’t find our way back and ended up here.

Over the years I’ve dreamed of her a dozen different ways but I’ve only known one truth: that I left my sister crying and terrified in the middle of a path in the Forest because I was being selfish.

I left my sister once and I can’t do it again. I can’t give up this chance that she’s real and safe and within my grasp.

I fight my way back to the door, start banging against it, but a Recruiter grabs my hands and twists my wrists painfully, his fingers digging into my skin. “Wrong way,” he says, pushing me back to the crowd waiting at the other end of the holding area, waiting for the bell to sound and the door to open so they can move forward on their journey across the bridge to the mainland.

“I have to go back,” I tell him, trying to rip my arms free.

“Not the rules.” He narrows his eyes, causing wrinkles to spread around his cheeks. His shirt’s dirty and reeks of smoke and overly ripe perfume. “Unless you have something to trade for it.” He tugs me a little closer until I have to look up at him, my hair falling back from my face.

He takes in my scars, his lips pressing thin. He drops my wrists.

I hear the bells ring down the bridge, hear the doors sliding open and know that she’s getting farther away from me. “You have to let me go,” I shout at him.

“Get to the end and then you can come back. This side is one way only—off the island,” he says. He can’t help but stare at my scars, a look of disgust in his eyes. “Either way, keep moving forward. That’s the rule.”

I see the door begin to grind open behind him, the creak of old gears and rusty metal separating me from my sister. He pushes me away from it, away from her. Away from
the Neverlands and farther out over the river toward the mainland.

People flood in around me and press tight, making it hard to breathe. They crowd against me, just wanting to get to the other side, and I’m causing trouble and getting in the way.

I’m drawing attention and attention isn’t good. But I refuse to give up. Already she’s out of my sight. Already I may never find her again. The Recruiter must see the resolve in my eyes the moment before I move, because his muscles tense, ready for me. I’m just about to lunge at him, just about to fight my way through the door, when we both hear the fierce growling and barking of dogs and then the explosion of the alarm blaring over the bridge.

Every door rolls shut, the heavy metal pinning one poor woman’s fingers against the jamb, causing her to howl in pain. The Recruiter forgets about me and leaps for a rope ladder, climbing to one of the lookout posts at the top of each wall.

All around me people press against the side of the bridge, trying to see what caused the commotion, shouting at each other in confusion. I elbow my way through them, keeping low until I can shove my head through the gaps in the railing. The sound of dogs barking, their growls deep and ferocious, underscores the wailing siren piercing my ears.

It’s almost impossible to figure out what’s going on, but there’s clearly chaos at the checkpoint on the island end of the bridge. A few Recruiters gesture wildly and I watch as they push a young man to his knees against the metal wall circling the shore of the island. Dogs lurch at him, their backs spiked with rage.

He pulls something from his pocket—some sort of disk that looks like one of the old Recruiter IDs—and holds it out
to them. One of the men snatches it and frowns, disappearing into the guardhouse as the young man kneels, his hands held up as if trying to entreat the guards who pull knives from their belts. The dogs smell the infection—they won’t allow him onto the island. He’s too dangerous.

The siren eats away at the air, cutting off everything except the sound of the woman still screaming as they try to pry her fingers from the steel door. Everyone around me jostles, all of us straining to see what will happen next.

A large man, his Recruiter uniform crisp and clean with a red sash across his chest, storms out of the guardhouse, towering over the young man. The Recruiter’s mouth moves but none of us can hear what he says and the young man keeps shaking his head, his hands raised palms-out.

Just then a blur bolts from the crowd at the edge of the bridge. It’s my sister. She’s running at the large Recruiter, tangling her arms around his neck. He twists, batting her away, but in the split second of distraction the young man lunges to his feet and throws himself against the metal wall, feet scrabbling as he clambers to the top and slides down the other side along the river.

Chaos erupts, Recruiters running to climb after the young man as others on the bridge take aim with their crossbows. Around me people scream and lunge out of the way but I stay kneeling, watching the young man scrabble along the shore while bolts pepper the ground around him.

“Got him!” one of the Recruiters shouts. The young man stumbles, a bright red streak of blood along his arm where a bolt clipped him. He loses his balance and starts to slip toward the river running under the bridge. And with a splash, he’s gone.

Everyone around me holds a collective breath as they wait for his body to break back up to the surface. Except me. I’m staring at the girl—at my sister—the one who is me. Abigail. She’s crouching where the young man knelt just before he ran. Thin lines of blood well along her arm where her sleeve was torn in the scuffle, and she holds her fists to her temples. One of the dogs thrusts his nose against her elbow and she leans on him as if she has no idea what to do next.

Two of the Recruiters slap hands as they walk past her and she raises her head. They must tell her what happened as they haul her to her feet, because she opens her mouth, and even with the havoc flaring around me I can hear her screaming in rage. It reverberates inside my head as if it were my voice and my throat and my pain.

I will her to look at me. To turn her head and glance my way. I beg her with my mind to see me. To know I’m here. But she doesn’t move. Her gaze never wavers from the towering metal wall where the young man just stood.

Below me the ripples on the river die out to a calm smooth glass. The man never comes to the surface.

T
he siren eventually cuts out and the Recruiters order everyone to line up so they can search us. They go from section to section with the dogs, trying to determine if any of the rest of us might be infected like the young man.

By the time I’m released everything’s in disarray and I’m able to double back toward the Neverlands, but when I finally make it off the bridge I can’t find my sister anywhere. I race to the wall where I last saw her and press my hand against the cold rust-pocked metal, trying to feel her.

Not too far away a group of Recruiters huddle in a circle around a low fire, laughing and passing around a clay jug. I square my shoulders and as I approach, one with a thick white mustache breaks away, stopping me before I get too close. I’m acutely aware of the way they all stare.

“What are you looking for, hon?” he asks, his voice a mixture of warning and stern amicability.

“What happened to the girl?” I keep my chin up, my hair
tucked behind my ears. I feel wide open and vulnerable but I have to know if he sees what I saw: if he notices the resemblance or if I’m just believing what I want to. That my sister is still alive. That I didn’t leave her to die in the Forest after all.

But like everyone else, his gaze fixes on my scars and then bounces away again, to the water and the bridge and the wall and the ground. Everywhere but at my face. He’s an older man and a look of kindness still hovers around the tilt of his mouth.

“She was a friend,” I prod.

He reaches down and tugs on one of the ears of his dog, which leans against his leg, tail twitching lazily. “I wouldn’t worry about her.” I can tell this isn’t what he means; he’s telling me I should forget about her. He shrugs and still refuses to look at me directly. “They might let her go, but …”

I don’t want to think about the “but.” I can’t. “Please,” I beg, hating the taste of the word but knowing I’ll do what it takes to find my sister. I even let my eyes water, hoping tears will help my cause.

“They’ll take her to the headquarters on the Sanctuary,” he says eventually. “That’s my guess. I’d also guess you won’t be seeing her again.” He pauses before adding, in a lower tone that doesn’t carry far, “Don’t go looking for trouble.”

It’s clear he’s trying to tell me that hanging around the group of Recruiters any longer will be inviting trouble. With a nod I turn back to the crowd, allowing myself to fade into forgotten people whose shoulders slump and gazes dull as I try to figure out what to do now. How to find my sister, if that really was her.

I was so close to leaving. So close to saying good-bye to all the pain and misery this place has caused me. A tension pulls
along my neck as I realize everything’s changed again. I can’t go—not yet. Not when my other half might be here.

There’s no point in searching for my old village in the Forest if my sister’s here on the island.

Letting my hair fall back in my face, I thread through the crowd as it thins, people wandering different directions. Most of them will stay in the Neverlands, the broad swath of crumbling neighborhoods that comprise the north end of the island.

I make my way south toward the Palisades—the thick layer of walls and defenses that separates the Neverlands from the Dark City. It used to be that the Dark City was the safest place to live other than the Sanctuary, where the Protectorate was housed before the Rebellion. But now the City’s just as barren and worn down as the rest of the island. Without the Protectorate there’s no authority to control the Recruiters, to manage the formerly vast array of patrols that secured the Dark City’s borders and kept the streets clear of infection. Now there’s no check on the Recruiter power.

Those with connections fled in the wake of the Rebellion. Others seeped into the sprawling underground network of black markets in the Neverlands. The rest of us remained out of some sort of desperate hope that maybe one day things would right themselves and we could go back to living life the way it was before.