Broken Moon Page 3

  Yet the keycard feels sharp and dangerous in my pocket. Part of me wants to pull it out and fling it away.

  Above me, the soft boots of the Home Guard pad quietly across the trestle. Behind me, Enoch makes no sound at all. The night is not by any means quiet, ringing to the shouts of workmen coming from taverns lower down, trains moving by many levels below, and the far-off rumble of the factories droning through the swing shifts. But the preternatural hearing of the Home Guard is well-known, and I’m not convinced the hum of humanity would hide us. Of course, they could already know we’re following; Party officials in front of their omniscient screens might have already told them.

  Finally, we make it across the bridge, and a wave of delayed anxiety hits me, as it always does when I find safe ground once more. Despite my sure footing and years of practice, heights make me weak and dizzy.

  We stand still, waiting for the guards’ next move, but it appears I was correct: This abandoned square is their destination. We crouch down, bunching together in the shadow of one of the huge pillars that holds up the untold tons of the City.

  “Should we turn around?” Enoch mouths, motioning behind us with a finger.

  I hesitate, peering around the pillar to glance at our quarry’s stalled progress. They stand where they stopped, still speaking. One of them puts a finger to the communication device in his ear, nodding shortly. Withdrawing my head, I remain still, torn by indecision.

  The decisive hum of an aircar cuts the night, making the question moot. I crane my head to watch. Navigating the maze of struts and iron walkways to reach the expansive landing pad, the sleek silver vehicle lands vertically on the metal where the Home Guard wait with the body. Two cracks appear along the side of the bullet-shaped car and a door raises upward and out, revealing a spacious but utilitarian interior. I watch transfixed as the young woman who looks so much like Amy is carelessly thrown into the back before the guards climb in beside the driver.

  As the last one steps through beneath the gull-wing door, though, she hesitates, raising her head to sniff the breeze like an animal. Her eyes flash a brief, fierce crimson before she turns to look right toward us.

  Jerking my head back, I motion to an abandoned train tunnel off to our right, sloped steeply down toward the level below it. Enoch ducks into it instantly, his dark form melting into the murk. I follow. Though there’s no way to tell whether that guard actually saw us, I feel eyes on the back of my neck through the tunnel wall.

  THREE

  My only other brush with the Home Guard, younger and smaller and with a wedge of stolen cheese in my hand, ended badly: two weeks hard labor in a sparkly clean white factory in the Lower City, its walls heavily guarded and its intent unknown, at least to me. I never saw what was inside it, merely worked the outskirts, sweeping and mopping and carrying boxes that were, at age eight, punishingly large. I learned later that the white factories are the important ones, full of medical equipment, machines, pills and potions that can cure the ailments most Citizens die of. Only the young, however - those the Party still expects a lifetime of work from in exchange for the food and schooling they’ve already expended - ever receive these miracle drugs. Them, and the few who have money to pay. But at the time, these ideas never crossed my mind; I thought only of how heavy the boxes were, and tried to keep my mind off the bruises I still wore from my encounter with the guards. More specifically, from their batons.

  That was almost eight years ago. Papa, my adopted father and savior, came for me soon after. If I found it strange to be reassigned to a family that already had three healthy children instead of one that had none, I didn’t question it too closely. I was just grateful to be taken in, sent to the same school I’d attended since age five. Given a life that happily included Enoch, whom I’d known for years, and even an older sister.

  A facsimile of whom was descending, even now, into the bowels of the City, headed no doubt to the University or a scientific facility, there to reveal what secrets her lifeless brain had to offer.

  I draw a ragged breath, my feet pounding across a swaying suspension bridge. Its rusty chains and dilapidated crossrails give creaking testament to the inadvisability of using it, but it is the fastest way home. Enoch streaks along behind me, leaping the last three feet across a gap in the floor of the bridge.

  I increase my pace, wanting to see Amy as soon as possible, even though Enoch has already forbidden me to bring this up to her.

  “She’s got enough on her plate,” he said protectively as we fled the aircar. “She doesn’t need to be reminded of that.”

  Although I haven’t argued, I think Enoch knows I’m going to do it anyway. Amy never told us what happened during those months she was gone; we never pressed. But where there wasn’t reason before, there is now. More than that, though, I’m desperate to get home and find out if we’ve compromised ourselves, if anyone knows what we saw, if Papa has received a message or been paid a visit.

  “Should we take the train?” I ask. Although we’re on the opposite side of the City from home, we could get there in only half an hour or so; the decks are much narrower high in the Upper City than lower down, limiting travel time. But a train ride, if timed right, would be just a few minutes. “Is it worth it?”

  He seems to consider this, his expression as thoughtful as it can be while scrambling down a network of archaic pipes on the outside of one of the Upper City’s abandoned factories. Our hands come away black with old soot. “We’ll have to wait a few minutes at this time of night.”

  “It’s still faster,” I say. “The real problem is that someone might see us.”

  He shrugs, paused for the moment on the edge of a rooftop. “Let’s do it.” If they’ve seen us, his voice says, they’ve seen us. We’re already far enough away from the pad where the aircar landed that it shouldn’t matter much.

  I nod. We jump from the roof to the ground below.

  A few minutes later we arrive breathlessly at a small side entrance to the train station on Deck 22. It’s now a little after eleven, and the factories are shifting over. Plenty of women are milling around the station, either done with work for the day or just heading in. The factories clang on endlessly, producing the goods that our City trades to keep itself afloat, and these unfortunates have left their beds to staff them. Aside from a few conductors, however, there are almost no male workers: their long hours in the fields outside the walls are over until dawn tomorrow. Snaking past a few closed kiosks and a scummy public bathroom, we merge into the smelly, defeated crowd, keeping beneath an overhang, our heads low. Reaching back, I wrench out the elastic band, allowing my hair to cover my face.

  “Who was she, Naiya?” Turning, I see Enoch worrying a lock of hair with one long-fingered hand. Ever tidy, he’s wiped the soot off on his pants. I hastily do the same, thinking that he must be spooked, to start a conversation like this. Grudging participation is the most I can normally expect from him.

  “I don’t know.” I’ve read a little bit about cloning in some old textbooks down in the Tech District, a little more at the Library. But it wasn’t a very advanced technology even before the wars; certainly no one ever succeeded with actual people. I can’t imagine that now, with such diminished resources, someone’s figured it out. Done it to someone we know, to boot. “It’s impossible.”

  “Unlikely,” Enoch grunts. “But not impossible. Maybe that’s what happened to her while she was gone.”

  My chest clenches. “But if they really did something so awful to her, why did they ever let her go again? People vanish all the time; there was no need to send her back.”

  “No need that we’re aware of.”

  I’m silent for a moment, watching the tall boy beside me as he watches the station. “Enoch,” I say, struck by something. “How did that … girl … how did she know we were up there?”

  “Maybe she didn’t.”

  “But she must have. It was almost like she was expecting us.”

  “Expecting?” His eyebrows c
urve skeptically, he crosses his arms. “She barely knew our names. It wasn’t her, Naiya. What makes you think this was planned?”

  “Of all the places in the City we were likely to be found, isn’t the Top of the World the best bet?” I brush a strand of hair from my forehead impatiently, slicking it back with my own sweat. “Amy knows we go there all the time, especially at night.”

  “Home would have been a better bet.”

  “Yes, but that’s five decks down.” I take a deep breath, trying not to let my frustration show; Enoch hates a fight. “There are so many more people. It seems like she didn’t want to be seen.”

  He considers this. “I guess so. But it seems an awfully long way to go to decide you didn’t want to talk about it after all.” I can sense his irritation, that we’re in this and don’t even know why.

  “But she did want to talk,” I counter. “She told us what she could. Maybe it was all she knew, or all she could say.” I remember the childish way she spoke, her pained words. As though she had just enough left to find us and give us the warning, but not enough to do anything about it. “Besides, you can’t be suggesting that we ran into some bizarre lookalike by accident.”

  He is silent.

  “There are no coincidences.” It is one of Papa’s favorite lines. “And she killed herself, Enoch. Whatever that means, we have to find out.”

  Shaking his head slowly, Enoch continues to stare at the platform as though he can will the train into existence. “It doesn’t mean it had anything to do with us. Or with Amy.”

  “It has everything to do with us! And with Amy! She knew our names,” I insist in a fierce hiss. “She knew the things Amy would know.”

  “Or the things someone told her.” Enoch’s lower lip begins to jut, a habit from boyhood.

  “She obviously wanted to find us. She gave us this.” I pat my pocket, resisting the urge to take the keycard out and wave it in his face. “Don’t you want to know what it does? What it opens?”

  “What are you saying?” he finally asks, looking right at me. The question is almost a dare.

  “I’m saying that we need to talk to her. To Amy. Now that we can’t talk to … whoever that was.”

  He looks at me for a long, long time. I can’t tell what the look means, if he loves me or hates me in this moment.

  “Papa will know what to do,” is all he says.

  My cue for silence. Last time he ever starts a conversation with me, I think gloomily. Taking a deep breath, I force my body to still, donning calm like a cloak. I see myself on the training floor, the small, well-used space off of our living room. Where Papa ever got wood for the floors or mirrors for the walls is a mystery. Closing my eyes, I imagine I’m there now.

  With a swish of air and clatter of metal, the light rail speeds into the station, disturbing my thoughts. Enoch and I shrink back into the shadows, preparing. People stream onto the trains, but still we linger. It is only when the doors close and the track brakes wheezily disengage that we dash from our spots at the dim back of the station.

  We don’t have tokens, of course; we can never afford them. Instead, just as it is pulling out of its berth, we jump and swing ourselves onto the back of the departing train. A station employee catches sight of us as we chunter off, hooking our legs and arms into the ladder on the dingy caboose. Normally I wouldn’t mind; Papa’s status means officials tend to look the other way when faced with our minor infractions, our unregistered weapons, probably preferring to ignore us than to pay us better. But tonight it gives me a chill, the way he squints carefully and touches the glinting piece in his ear as we roar around the bend.

  I wonder what he saw, if anything. Then again, our clothes aren’t exactly incognito: most people in the Upper City don’t wear leather jackets. Tonight our one luxury may get us in trouble. That, and my insistence that we follow those guards, I remind myself. It seems stupider than it did before.

  Unable to do anything about it, I merely cling to the rungs, once again aware of my clammy hands. I take comfort in the warmth of Enoch’s arm so close to mine; even in the dust churned up by the tracks, I can smell his particular mix of sweat and cheap soap.

  The train angles alarmingly, bending downward toward the level below. My stomach churns as I hang on. Usually the sensation would thrill me; at the moment it simply makes me sick. The rush of air creates a slipstream that gathers at the back and pummels Enoch and I, forcing us to hang on even tighter. The train is picking up speed now, dipping steeply. Once in a while, to avoid an aircar lane or a factory or simply because it is the easiest route, it shoots vertically down its narrow track, winding around like an electrified slug. Lifting my head, I see it spread out in front of us, moving with sinewy, circuitous grace. There is nothing between the track we’re on and the level below but yawning space.

  Despite the fact that the ride only lasts a few minutes, by the time we pull into the station my limbs feel as though they’ve been locked in this awkward position forever. Nevertheless, we hastily unbundle ourselves and make our departure before the train even stops, leaping to the platform and slipping down another side entrance, out into the darkened streets. By this time almost everyone is in bed, and houses that briefly lit up at sunset are now dark once more.

  Enoch swears softly.

  “What is it?” I ask, still moving. Though I feel more solicitous now we are close to our apartment, the urge to see Amy has grown almost overpowering. Still, we must go home first.

  “Just my finger,” he says. He holds it out a touch unsteadily, cradling his wrist in the palm of his opposite hand. The pinkie is sticking out at an odd, 45-degree angle, and already looks terribly swollen. The late hour and his dark skin make it impossible to tell if there is bruising, but it’s probably broken.

  “Oh, no! What happened?”

  He shrugs. “Busted it on the train.”

  I pat the hand awkwardly. “I’m sorry. Papa will fix you up,” I say, trying to muster some encouragement, make up for our argument. We slip through an alley, across a square over which a large clock tower stands guard, and through a tunnel into our neighborhood. A few gas lamps are burning, casting a ghostly light over the metal world. “How’d it happen?”

  He shrugs again, his characteristic gesture. “Train.”

  I nod sympathetically. “We’re almost there.”

  Rounding a corner, I see with relief our small, cozy street. At its end is a waist-high steel fence, guarding unwary children against the sickening drop to the level below. We turn into the small alcove that houses our dark blue, steel front door with its brass knob. I knock sharply.

  After a moment the door swings open, and there stands my adoptive father. His eyes, like those of his sons, are strikingly green. His hair is cut close, peppered with gray, his beard a slight stubble molded to his jaw. Seeing us, his mouth quirks upward, then falls abruptly as he realizes something is terribly wrong. No one has come yet, then; there has been no message.

  Standing back, he ushers us into the small hall, smashing his firm, six-foot frame against the coat rack to give us space. Our mug shots, black and white and laminated, hang mutely on the unpainted metal wall next to the door, silent announcements that our lives are not our own.

  From the enclosed entryway I can just see Pip sitting in a corner of the living room, playing quietly with a wind-up car that Enoch found in the Middle City. Normally he’d be asleep, but on nights when we get home from a mission he’s allowed to wait up. On the back of his right hand I see the scarred slash of an ancient Anglo-Saxon rune burned into his skin. The symbol of the Home Guard, it means “thorn,” a tall vertical line with a triangle extending outward from its right side. To most people, though, it signifies nothing more than savagery. A physical reminder, even if you manage to forget the tantrums and the sometimes bone-cracking force of once-soft child fists, that Marking is not only in name.

  Papa closes the door after us, leading us into the cramped living area. Our sleeping pallets take up half the space;
the other half is devoted to the long workbench, above which hang dozens of clocks in various styles and states of repair. The hobby of a man who has earned some peace, and isn’t going to get it.

  “What’s happened?” he says, his voice a soft breath. I look helplessly at Enoch, who is still nursing his broken pinkie. Papa’s eyes flick down to it, then up at his son. “Enoch, your hand.”

  “We jumped a train,” Enoch says shortly. “I can’t tell if it’s broken.”

  Papa nods, heading to the workbench where he keeps his medical supplies. “What happened?” he says again, in the voice of someone who is not as calm as they’d like to sound.

  “Amy,” I manage to gasp, shedding my leather coat and pulling my sticky tee shirt away from my skin. “We saw her, only … ”

  “Only what?”

  To my surprise, it is Enoch who answers. “Only it wasn’t Amy,” he supplies. We exchange glances, neither of us knowing how to launch into the real story. Maybe Enoch feels the same fear of Papa’s disapproval as I do, but mostly it’s just impossible to explain. He merely shrugs once more, like an automaton caught in a loop. “It was her … but it wasn’t. I don’t know how else to say it.”

  Whatever I expect from Papa, it isn’t this. He freezes, holding a roll of gauze. Instead of looking shocked or confused or even frightened, his face simply registers dread. Dread, and recognition.

  “She gave us something,” I say, remembering and reaching for my pocket.

  And then there comes a knock at the door.

  Papa holds up a hand, forestalling further conversation, a question in his eyes: Could they have seen you? I nod slowly.

  He shakes his head in warning, throwing the gauze back into the drawer and closing it. “Don’t say anything,” he mouths. Then, pointing at Enoch’s injured finger, “Hide that.” He grabs a copy of The City Salute, the Party-run newspaper, and heads for the door.