Broken Moon Read online

  Metal clinks softly against stone. My head snaps up sharply, and I peer through out into the permanent twilight to see a guard fifty feet away. She is nearly invisible except for her eyes, which reflect some unseen light, like a cat’s. My pulse quickens, and I feel Pip shift beside me, almost like he wants to get up, and I place a hand carefully on his shoulder. After what seems like an eternity, this guard too walks on.

  My confusion begins to override my fear.

  Beside us, Enoch waits for the guard to move away and then slowly eases the power pack open once more. He stares at the screen for a few moments, then exhales quietly.

  “Naiya,” he says, his lips next to my ear, “they don’t know where we are.”

  “They’re about to,” I exhale in return.

  “No,” he insists. “They aren’t. Look.”

  He passes the screen to me, and I see what I hadn’t noticed before. Where the screen had previously been blank, there are now four guards, prowling slowly, all within a quarter mile of where we are. But that’s it.

  “We’re not there.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Why aren’t we showing up? Signal blip?”

  But he cannot answer. All we can do is wait. An hour passes, then another, before the guards finally leave for good. My nerves are singing with tension and my legs have both lost feeling. Sensation returns slowly, spasms shooting through the muscles.

  Charley horses, Papa called them. These fun little childhood vignettes keep popping up at the oddest times. It’s like I’m short-circuiting.

  “Naiya?” Enoch says softly.

  I shrug. I can’t explain this good fortune, but I’ll take it.

  As soon as we can stand to, we begin walking. We’ve lost valuable time, and now we’ll be on the road until well after nightfall. It doesn’t make a huge difference in our ability to see, but I am tired and hungry. There’s no point in dwelling on that, though. We’ve been amazingly fortunate; I can only hope our luck will hold a little longer, though what I plan to do with the time, I still have no idea. I haven’t thought much past getting to the Cache, which is far from a permanent solution. The Library, of course, is a good bet, as are the Archives, containing every record from the original City Hall and the interim government that held sway before the Party took hold: deeds, licenses, certificates, registries. But searches for names are the hardest; Papa usually gave me a week for those missions. There is no telling where, or if, I’ll find what I’m looking for this time.

  Terminus.

  My mind flits back and forth between the tantalizing word and plastic keycard’s equally bewildering signature: 5HRP217. I know many codes, of course: the Library classification system; old passwords to gates and offices in the Tech District; filing systems in the abandoned courthouse, police stations, the Archives. The City’s grid system could be considered a code, I suppose, demarcated by letters and numbers signifying quadrant, level, neighborhood. But that’s not a secret, not really; it’s just that most people don’t know what it means.

  “Do you think that key opens a door on level 5?” I puzzle aloud. It’s the first word anyone has spoken in over three hours. “That could be what the first number means, right?”

  “Maybe,” Enoch shrugs. “I haven’t seen a location ID like that before. Anyway, what could we do with that even if it were true? Comb all of Level 5? It’s like twenty square miles.”

  “We’d narrow it down,” I say defensively. “Find an old map or … something.”

  “Something,” he repeats dubiously.

  “Well, what do you suggest?”

  “I suggest that there are half a million people living in this City and that we stay away from them all.”

  “Be serious.”

  “I am being serious.”

  “Enoch, come on! What else are we supposed to do?”

  “Naiya, that door isn’t going to be in some ruin on the City floor. It’s new plastic, new technology. Amy – I mean, the person who had it – obviously escaped from somewhere. Recently.”

  “And?”

  “What do you mean, ‘and’? Whatever that key unlocks is going to be guarded.”

  I say nothing.

  “Heavily,” he insists pedantically.

  “All right,” I concede. “I’m just trying to think of ideas.”

  “Think of ideas that won’t get us arrested or disappeared.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s supposed to mean that I want to stay off the grid, as much as we can, anyway. Banging on the front door of every Party-run institution on Level 5 doesn’t seem like the way to do that. Call me crazy.”

  “But what if we’re not on the grid anymore? Those guards – ”

  “No one’s off the grid,” he interrupts. “Not really.”

  “Look, this is the job Papa gave us, okay?”

  “No, it’s the job he gave you,” he says testily. “My job is keeping you safe. You and Pip.”

  We make the rest of our trek in silence. At one point Enoch produces apples, but no one is interested. My stomach feels as though it’s been lined with lead, heavy and poisonous, and the next few hours pass even more slowly than those we spent hiding from the guards. Finally, we break out from under the cover of Deck 2, climbing a service ladder up onto it and backtracking slightly, moving beneath the sheltering City once more. Relief floods through me at the sight of the junky building that shoulders right up close to Deck 3’s underbelly, its fading grey paint a deep violet in the light of a single, weak stadium bulb perched unsteadily over its double-doored entrance.

  “Finally,” Enoch mutters, pushing open the doors. We make our way up to the fourth floor, memory guiding us through the unlit hallways. The final leg of tonight’s journey feels like a dream: right-hand corridor, second to last door on the left, disarm the system, jiggle the handle in just the right way … and then we pile through, exhausted.

  I want to cry when confronted by the familiar scene, the ragged yellow sofa, small viewscreen and coat hook by the door. The storage shelves, groaning with our less interesting finds: moldy paperback books, computers, speakers, spare parts. Things we hadn’t found a market for yet, and that no one would mind us keeping until we did. Back then, anyway. Back when life made sense. It’s hard to think about the hours I spent here, with Papa, with Enoch, even a time or two with Amy, before she decided Collecting wasn’t for her.

  “Are we allowed to be here?” Pip asks ingenuously. I smile slightly; it does seem too good to be true.

  “We’re not allowed to be anywhere, remember?” I tease, then immediately regret it. He just looks sad. “Yes, of course,” I amend. “This is our place.”

  He wanders around, exploring, while I click on the viewscreen and flip to the Party news channel. Within five minutes I am rewarded by the sight of our mug shots, mine and Enoch’s and Pip’s, glaring out at me. Though I’m not surprised, my stomach does a little flip. Of course they’ll have put the alert out; now the whole City can help them catch us. Still, I feel a sense of savage pleasure at having evaded the guards for a whole two days. That must be some sort of record.

  “Finished?” Enoch says tightly, having known all along what I would find. “Let Pip watch cartoons.”

  Pip flops onto the ratty sofa while Enoch and I take stock of supplies. Spare canteens, bottled water, dehydrated meals, an extra leather coat. Some gloves, hats, blankets, another power pack. Bedrolls, which will come in handy with the colder weather coming. It’s hard to say how long we’ll be sleeping outside. It could be days or months.

  We can’t last months, something inside me whispers. I busy myself with the gear, waiting until the voice fades away. Working quickly, we pack up food, water and the extra power pack. After only a moment’s hesitation, I even throw in a picture book for Pip. How can it possibly hurt now? Contraband is the least of our problems. It’s hard to believe that a week ago this was all just extra stuff; now it could save our lives. We never suspected how it important
it was.

  But maybe Papa did.

  I make us spaghetti and meatballs from a foil packet and we share a stale-tasting bottle of water. It isn’t apples, and that makes it wonderful. Soon enough I join Pip on the couch, letting my mind go blank. Within moments of me sitting down, he’s asleep. Though the recollection of what he did to Enoch is never far these days, his small form looks so peaceful: Right now I can’t imagine him hurting me, or anyone. Yet sometimes these children go too far, have to be taken away. It happened to a kid at my old school, the only other person I know who’s been Marked. I reflexively pull Pip closer, willing this possibility away.

  “Tired?” Encoh asks, coming up and sitting on the arm of the couch. He picks absently at some fluff sprouting from a hole in the yellow upholstery.

  “Yeah.”

  “You should get some sleep.”

  “Are you going to sleep tonight?”

  “Yes.” He smiles, and I wonder if he’s secretly pleased to be caught, that I know about his sacrifice the night before. Probably not. He doesn’t seem to care about praise the way the rest of us do.

  “Promise me.”

  He says nothing.

  “Enoch. You’ve already had two sleepless nights in a row. It’s a miracle you’re still conscious.” When he remains silent, I realize there’s only one way to make sure he gets some rest. “Look, I’ll take watch until morning. Then I can sleep for a few hours, okay?”

  He thinks about this. “Early morning,” he finally concedes.

  “Good night, then.”

  “Good night.”

  I watch as he folds his long frame into a bedroll on the floor, shifting to find a comfortable position. He’s out almost instantly, but I watch him for a long, long time after.

  * * * * *

  I haven’t had enough sleep, but my body seems to know we don’t have time to spare. I stretch stiffly, working the cricks out of my neck. While better than the floor, the couch is no great shakes. Looking down at the blanket that served as my pillow, I see that I’ve drooled and blush, wiping it away.

  “Good morning.” Enoch walks over, some cereal bars in his hand. The white plastic sheathing each bar is printed with a simple label, indicating the flavor and the expiration date. Despite the uninspiring presentation, my stomach growls.

  “Morning,” I mumble, pulling my grubby hair back into a ponytail.

  Pip comes and sits next to me on the sofa where I’ve snatched maybe five hours. The corners of my eyes feel glued shut.

  “When you’re ready, we should get going,” Enoch says tersely. I’m a little startled by his abrupt tone, if not by his words: He doesn’t mean just for the day. He’s saying we have to leave, and that we can’t come back.

  “What if we just … ”

  “No. We’re not taking any chances. I think one night is more than enough.”

  “They’re just as likely to find us somewhere else!” I protest.

  “Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t,” he says infuriatingly. “Either way, I’m not going to make it easier for them.” There is a forced quality to the iron in his voice, and I realize suddenly how much he wants to stay too, that he’s equally anxious about severing this last link with Papa, but will do it for our sake. It makes me feel terrible for arguing.

  “Naiya – ”

  “All right,” I say quickly. “I’m sorry, we’ll go. But can we have breakfast first?” Pip glances up at him appealingly, adding his wide green eyes to my plea. Enoch looks suspicious, as though there is a trick hidden somewhere in all this, but he doesn’t seem to find it. Instead he sits down and passes out the cereal bars, finishing his quickly and rising once more to pack up the bedrolls and strap them to the tops of our knapsacks.

  Pip and I remain seated in front of the viewscreen. He has been watching cartoons again, cheap ones from before the wars, ones we’ve seen a million times. Dogs, birds, cats, mice. A burly white rooster. A stuttering pig. Although I’d rather flood my brain with meaninglessness, I click to the Party station instead.

  Again, nothing. I sit with little interest through a few announcements about factory refits, some shift changes for field workers to accommodate the fading daylight, other bureaucratic minutiae. Our faces once again flick by, accompanied by a message: REWARD FOR ANY INFORMATION. NO QUESTIONS ASKED.

  Ha. As if there are ever no questions asked.

  “Can we watch cartoons again?” Pip breaks into my thoughts. I reach for the remote, clicking it back. Our reprieve is short-lived, however; after less than a minute, the show flickers off. The screen turns dark for a moment, then glows once more.

  With a sense of almost primordial dread, I face the little square of glass, its grainy images growing sharper by the second until it flares brightly, bluely, into the quiet room. All over the City, I know the same thing is happening. In every home, in every public square, in every factory whose night-shift workers are even now preparing to go home, activity is ceasing as people turn automatically toward their viewscreens. Every show has switched over; every set that was off has turned on of its own accord. I can almost feel the collective intake of breath as the entire population waits for the bad news. We could pretend otherwise, as I used to try to, but what is the point? The chances of these announcements being anything but horrible is slim to none.

  “Citizens,” intones the Mayor gravely from his platform in Execution Square, the Upper City’s macabre nickname for the open pavilion in front of Deck 3’s City Hall. He looks terrible, with tousled hair and huge purple circles under his eyes, as though he has not slept at all. But my gaze is drawn to the four figures who kneel next to him in the plaza, an armed guard behind each. “It is my sad burden to share this terrible news with you.”

  A strange rushing sound drowns out the rest of his words.

  He is talking, of course, saying what he always says. Mistrust, disobedience, ingratitude. Target words he uses to prime his audience for terrible sights, spectacles that can never be unseen. His speeches are short, his smile grim, the deaths quick or long, depending. Usually I’m most distressed to see the gallows; the hangings are the worst, especially if the victim’s neck does not break right away. Today, though, even the firing squad – quick, painless – does nothing to calm me.

  Because for the first time ever, I recognize someone.

  “No,” Enoch moans brokenly. His stifled sob is almost worse than the image on the screen. We glance at each other wildly, once, sharing the thought: We can’t help. We’re too far away. In an aircar it would take us 20 minutes. On our feet? No chance. Nothing we can do. Nothing.

  Nothing but watch.

  … Nothing.

  I wait for Pip to react, to hit or scratch or bite or worse. But he doesn’t, merely curls up into a little ball mashed against me with eyes squeezed shut and his hands over his ears. He must know this isn’t something he wants to see, must have been clued in by more than my look or Enoch’s voice.

  Three of the prisoners wear the white lab coats of scientists, now crumpled and dirty, failing to warm their owners on this cold fall morning. But I barely see them, my eyes roped to the fourth.

  Papa.

  Terrible bruises darken both eyes, and his nose is strangely crooked. There is a cut on the side of his temple, gashed straight through his coarse, short hair. One of his legs looks funny. But he holds his head proudly, like the two other men and the one woman. He stares straight ahead, and his eyes say clearly what his voice cannot: that he refuses to be ashamed. Although it’s impossible, it almost feels like he’s looking at me.

  You’re ready.

  No. I’ve never been less ready, and I want to tell him so. That I’d give anything to have him back, give up any destiny, no matter how great. That I at least need a little help if I’m supposed to go on without him. But his words merely mock me.

  I was afraid, and now we don’t have time.

  No time at all, then. I realize belatedly that I’d never really believed it could come to this, and grieve f
or the hope I hadn’t known I’d felt until now.

  Time seems to slow down as the Mayor’s mouth moves and the prisoners kneel stoically, almost defiantly on the grimy metal platform. For reasons I can’t explain, it seems significant that these are not average criminals, a vast departure from the usual assortment of drunk, disorderly and violent, the troublemakers and escapists. I wonder numbly what the others did, though rarely do crimes actually get explained; disobedience is an all-purpose label. Still, the Party is taking pains here to advertise the importance of these unfortunates. They could just as easily have stripped off their coats, anonymized them. Perhaps they want us to know that even the upper echelons aren’t above reproof. Only Papa is unmarked by status, beaten practically faceless; unlike the others, his presence is a message intended for only two people.

  Enoch. And me.

  I’m so sorry, I think. Papa …

  The thoughts wash through me as the seconds tick by, each one a century long.

  “But laws are laws,” the Mayor is saying, and launches into the monotonous explanation of why they exist for the hundredth time in my life. I watch, catatonic, while somewhere deep inside me a hideous beast tries to claw its way free. On the outside I stand unmoving, waiting for the speech to wind down and four lives to end.

  Finally, they do, the bodies crumpling to the ground and the shots still ringing through our small, warm hideaway.

  Someone screams, long and piercing. Perhaps it is me.

  EIGHT

  When I was younger, medical encyclopedias used to fascinate me. I read them endlessly at the Library, poring over incomprehensible names of diseases and their bizarre symptoms, spending days on a single letter: progeria, a disease caused by a small tweak in a child’s genetic code and resulting in rapid aging, killing most by the time they’re thirteen years old; pica, which instills in people an insatiable urge to eat things like paper, dirt, clay; petit mal seizures, more vacancy than convulsion, people simply disappearing into their jumbled brains and losing stretches of time, seconds or minutes they never get back.