“We heard there was some kind of problem, that’s all.” The statement is sufficiently vague, and a decent assumption. Alex twirls his security badge idly between two fingers. The guard flicks his eyes to it, and I can tell he relaxes. Fortunately, he doesn’t try to look at it more closely. Alex has only Level One security clearance in the labs, which means he barely has the right to visit the janitor’s closet, much less parade around restricted areas, there or anywhere else in Portland, as though he owns them.
“Took you long enough,” the guard says flatly. “Thomas has been out for months. All the better for CID, I guess. It’s not the kind of thing we wanted to publicize.” The CID is the Controlled Information Department (or, if you’re cynical like Hana, the Corrupt Idiots Department or the Censorship Implementation Department), and goose bumps prick up on my arms. Something went very wrong in Ward Six if the CID got involved.
“You know how it is,” Alex says. He has recovered from his temporary slip-up; the confidence and ease return to his voice. “Impossible to get a straight answer from anyone over there.” Another vague statement, but the guard just nods.
“You’re telling me.” Then he jerks his head in my direction. “Who’s she?”
I can feel him staring at the unmarred skin on my neck, noticing that I have no procedural mark. Like many people, he unconsciously recoils—just a few inches, but enough so that the old feeling of humiliation, the feeling of being somehow wrong, creeps over me. I turn my eyes to the ground.
“She’s nobody,” Alex says, and even though I know he has to say it, it makes my chest ache dully. “I’m supposed to be showing her the Crypts, that’s all. A re-educational process, if you know what I mean.”
I hold my breath, certain that at any second he’ll boot us out, almost wishing he would. And yet . . . Just beyond the guard’s stool is a single door made out of a heavy, thick metal, and protected by an electronic keypad. It reminds me of the bank vault at Central Savings downtown. Through it I can just make out distant sounds—human sounds, I think, though it’s hard to tell.
My mother could be beyond that door. She could be in there. Alex was right. I do have to know.
For the first time, I begin to understand, fully, what Alex told me last night: All this time, my mother might have been alive. While I was breathing; she was breathing too. While I was sleeping, she was sleeping elsewhere. When I was awake thinking of her, she might have been thinking of me, too. It’s overwhelming, both miraculous and fiercely painful.
Alex and the guard eye each other for a minute. Alex continues spinning his badge around one finger, winding and unwinding the chain. It seems to put the guard at ease.
“I can’t let you back there,” he says, but this time he sounds apologetic. He lowers his gun and sits down on the stool again. I exhale quickly; I’ve been holding my breath without meaning to.
“You’re just doing your job,” Alex says, keeping his voice neutral. “So you’re Thomas’s replacement?”
“That’s right.” The guard flicks his eyes to me and again I can feel his gaze lingering on my unmarked neck. I have to stop myself from covering my skin with a hand. But he must decide that we aren’t going to be trouble, because he looks back to Alex and says, “Frank Dorset. Got reassigned from Three in February—after the incident.”
Something about the way he says incident sends chills up my spine.
“Tough breaks, huh?” Alex leans up against a wall, the picture of casualness. Only I can detect the edge in his voice. He’s stalling. He doesn’t know what to do from here, or how to get us inside.
Frank shrugs. “Quieter up here, that’s for sure. Nobody in or out. At least, almost nobody.” He smiles again, showing off those awful teeth, but his eyes maintain their strange flatness, as though there’s a curtain drawn over them. I wonder if this, for him, was a side effect of the cure, or whether he was always like that.
He tilts his head back, peering at Alex through narrowed eyes, and his resemblance to a snake grows even stronger. “So how’d you hear about Thomas?”
Alex keeps up the unconcerned act, smiling, twirling the badge. “Rumors floating here and there,” he says, shrugging. “You know how it is.”
“I know how it is,” Frank says. “But the CID wasn’t too happy about it. Had us on lock for a few months. What exactly did you hear, anyway?”
I can tell the question is an important one, some kind of test. Be careful, I think in Alex’s direction, as though he might somehow hear me.
Alex hesitates for only a second before saying, “Heard he might have sympathies on the other side.”
Suddenly, it all makes sense: the fact that Alex said, “I have friends here,” the fact that he has seemingly had access to Ward Six in the past. One of the guards must have been a sympathizer, maybe an active part of the resistance. Alex’s constant refrain plays in my head: There are more of us than you think.
Frank relaxes visibly. Apparently that was the right answer. He seems to decide that Alex is, after all, trustworthy. He strokes the barrel of his gun—which has been resting casually between his knees—as though it is a pet. “That’s right. Came as a total shock to me. ’Course I hardly knew him—saw him sometimes in the break room, once or twice in the shitter, that’s about it. Kept to himself, mostly. I guess it makes sense. Must have been getting chatty with the Invalids.”
This is the first time I’ve heard anyone in an official capacity acknowledge the existence of the people in the Wilds, and I suck in a sharp breath. I know it must be painful for Alex to stand there, talking dismissively about a friend who has been caught for being a sympathizer. The punishment must have been swift and severe, especially since he was on the government payroll. Most likely he was hanged or shot or electrocuted, or thrown into one of the cells to rot—if the courts were merciful and decided against a verdict of death by torture. If he even had a trial.
Amazingly, Alex’s voice doesn’t falter. “What was the tip-off?”
Frank keeps massaging his gun, and something about the motion—gentle, almost, like he’s willing it to life—makes me feel sick. “No tip-off, exactly.” He sweeps his hair off his face, revealing a splotchy red forehead, shiny with sweat. It’s much hotter here than it was in the other wards. The air must get trapped in these walls, rotting and festering like everything else in this place. “It figures he must have known something about the escape. He was in charge of cell inspections. And the tunnel didn’t just sprout up overnight.”
“The escape?” The words fly out of my mouth before I can help it. My heart starts jolting painfully in my chest. Nobody has ever escaped the Crypts, not ever.
For a moment Frank’s hand pauses on the gun, his fingers once again performing a dance on the trigger. “Sure,” he says, keeping his eyes on Alex, as though I’m not even there. “You must have heard about it.”
Alex shrugs. “A little of this, a little of that. Nothing confirmed.”
Frank laughs. It’s a terrible sound. It reminds me of the time I saw two seagulls fighting in midair over a scrap of food, screeching as they tumbled toward the ocean. “Oh, it’s confirmed,” he says. “Happened back in February. We got the alarm from Thomas, as a matter of fact. ’Course if he was in on it, she might have had a lead time of six, seven hours.”