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More than once, a group of them stopped Mission and asked where he was going, where his rifle was. He told them that he had been a part of the fighting below and was reporting back. It was something he’d heard another claim. Many of them seemed to know as little as he did, and so they would let him pass. As ever, the color you wore said everything. People could know you at a glance.
The activity grew thicker near IT. A group of new recruits passed, and Mission watched over the railing as they kicked in the doors to the level below and stormed inside. People screamed. There was a sharp bang like a heavy steel rod falling to the steel decking. A dozen of these bangs, and then less screaming. Fear was in everyone’s eyes, no less those in white who seemed to know as little of what they were doing as Mission. Just chaos like a switch had been thrown. A steady pulse of light one day, and now the faltering of a dying flame.
He passed IT, the doors closed, and thought for a moment about barging in and trying to talk his way past the guards. But not alone. Tomorrow, with his friends.
His legs were sore, a stitch in his side, as he approached the farms. He caught sight of Winters and a few others out on the landing with shovels and rakes. Someone yelled something as he passed. Mission quickened his pace, thinking of his father and brother, seeing the wisdom for once in his old man’s unwillingness to leave that patch of dirt.
A bag of berries on the stairwell looked at first like a blood stain. They had been stepped on and crushed, but Mission picked up the bag anyway. He scooped the mush out with his fingers as he hurried on, grateful for the find. He left the empty bag on the next landing, remembering days when such plastic was filled with paint and dropped on others. Those no longer seemed like the good times.
After a lifetime of racing up with the smoke as his company, of rising with the drifting ash, he reached the quiet of the Nest. The little chicks were gone. Most people were probably holed up in their apartments, families cowering together, hoping this madness would pass like others had. Inside, several lockers stood open. A child’s backpack lay in the middle of the hall. Mission staggered forward on numb legs toward the sound of a familiar singing voice and the screech of something awful.
At the end of the hall, her door stood as welcome and open as always. The singing was from the Crow, whose voice seemed stronger than usual. Mission saw that he wasn’t the first to arrive, that his wire had gone out. Frankie and Allie were there, both in the green and white of farm security. They were arranging desks while Mrs. Crowe sang. The sheets had been thrown off the stacks of desks kept in storage along one wall. Those desks now filled the classroom the way Mission remembered from his youth. It was as though the Crow was expecting them to be filled at any time.
Allie noticed him first. She rushed over, her coveralls bunched up around her boots, the straps knotted to make them shorter. They must’ve been Frankie’s coveralls. As she threw herself into his arms, he wondered what the two of them had risked to meet him there.
“Mission, my boy. ” Mrs. Crowe stopped her singing, smiled, and waved him over. After a moment, Allie reluctantly loosened her grip.
Mission shook Frankie’s hand and thanked him for coming. It took a moment to realize something was different, that his hair had been cut short as well. They both rubbed their scalps and laughed. Humor came easy in humorless times.
“What is this I hear about my Rodny?” the Crow asked him. Her chair twitched back and forth, her hand working the controls, her Thursday dress tucked under her narrow bones. Mission drew a deep breath, smoke lingering in his lungs, and he began to tell them all he had seen on the stairwell, about the bombs and the fires and what he had heard of Mechanical, the Security forces with their barking rifles like the dogs of Supply—but the Crow dispelled his frenzied chatter with a wave of her frail arms.
“Not the fighting,” she said. “The fighting I’ve seen. I could paint a picture of the fighting and hang it from my walls. What of Rodny? What of our boy? Has he got them?” She made a small fist and held it aloft.
“No,” Mission said. “He needs our help. ”
The Crow laughed, which took him aback. He tried to explain. “I gave him your note, and he passed me one in return. It begged for help. They have him locked up behind these great steel doors—”
“Not locked up,” the Crow said.
“—like he’d done something wrong—”
“Something right,” she said, correcting him.
Mission fell silent. He could see knowledge shining behind her old eyes, a sunrise on the day after a cleaning.
“Rodny is in no danger,” she said.
Allie squeezed Mission’s arm. “She’s been trying to tell us,” she whispered. “Everything’s going to be okay. Come, help with the desks. ”
“But the note,” Mission said, wishing he hadn’t turned it to confetti.
“The note you gave him was to give him strength. To let him know it was time to begin. ” There was a wildness in the Crow’s eyes, excitement and joy becoming something more combustible than either.
“No,” Mission said. “Rodny was afraid. I know my friend, and he was afraid of something. ”
The Crow’s face hardened. She relaxed her fist and smoothed the front of her faded dress. “If that be the case,” she said, her voice trembling. “Then I judged him most wrongly. ”
•33•
The dim-time approached while they arranged desks and the Crow resumed her singing. Allie told him a curfew had been announced, and so Mission lost hope that the others would show up that night. They pulled out mats from the cubbies to rest, plan, and give the others until daybreak. There was much Mission wanted to ask the Crow, but she seemed distracted, her thoughts elsewhere, a joyousness that made her giddy.
Frankie felt certain he could get them through security and deeper into IT if only he could reach his father. Mission told them how well he’d been able to move about with the whites on. Maybe he could reach Frankie’s dad in a pinch. Allie produced fresh fruits harvested from her plot and passed them around. The Crow drank one of her dark green concoctions. Mission grew restless.
He wandered out to the landing, torn between waiting for the others and his anxiety to get going. For all he knew, Rodny was being marched up to his death already. Cleanings tended to settle people down, to come after bouts of unrest, but this was unlike any of the spates of violence he had seen before. This was the burning his father spoke of, the embers of distrust and crumbling trade that jumped up all at once. He had seen this coming, but it had approached with the swiftness of a knife plummeting from the Up Top.
Out on the landing, he heard the sounds of a mob echoing from far below. Holding the landing rail, he could feel the hum of many marching boots. He returned to the others and said nothing of it. There was no reason to suspect those boots were marching for them.
Allie looked as though she’d been crying when he got back. Her eyes were moist, her cheeks flushed. The Crow was telling them an Old Time story, her hands painting a scene in the air. Mission asked Allie if everything was all right.
She shook her head like she’d rather not say.
“What is it?” he asked. He held her hand, heard the Crow speaking of Atlantis, another tale of the crumbling and lost city of magic beyond the hills, a bygone day when those ruins shone like a wet dime.
“Tell me,” he said. He wondered if maybe those stories were affecting her the way they sometimes did him, making her sad and not knowing why.
“I didn’t want to say anything until after,” she cried, fresh tears welling up. She wiped them away, and the Crow fell silent, her hands falling to her lap. Frankie sat quietly. Whatever it was, the two of them knew as well.
“Father,” Mission said. It had to do with his father. Allie was close to his father in a way that Mission had never been. And suddenly, he felt a powerful regret for ever having left home. While she wiped her eyes, the words unable to form
on her trembling lips, Mission imagined himself on his hands and knees, in the dirt, digging for forgiveness. He thought of growing corn rather than hauling it. Of making something rather than being paid a chit for rumors that ought to be free.
Allie bawled, and the Crow hummed a tune of aboveground days. Mission thought of his father, gone, all he longed to say, and wanted nothing more than to hurl himself at the posters on the walls, to tear them down and rip to shreds their urgings to go and be free.
“It’s Riley,” Allie finally said. “Mish, I’m so sorry. ”
The Crow ceased her humming. All three of them watched him.
“No,” Mission whispered.
“You shouldn’t have told him—” Frankie began.
“He ought to know!” Allie demanded. “He’s an only son, now. His father would want him to know. ”
Mission gazed at a poster of green hills and blue skies. That world blurred with tears as surely as it might with dust. “What happened?” he whispered.
She told him that there’d been an attack on the farms. Riley had begged to go and help fight, had been told no, and then disappeared. He’d been found with a knife from the kitchen still clutched in his hands.
Mission stood and paced the room, tears splashing from his cheeks. He shouldn’t have gone. Ever. He should’ve been there. He wasn’t there for Cam, either. Death preceded him in all the places he couldn’t be. He had done the same to his mother. And now the end was coming for them all.
There was someone in the hallway. Mission wiped his cheeks. He had given up on any of the others coming and thought it might be Security with their guns, instead. They would ask him where his own gun was before realizing he was an impostor, before shooting them all. He thought about Jenine, had the sickening feeling that his call to arms had placed others in danger. More deathdays.
He pushed the door shut, saw that the Crow had no lock on the thing, and wedged a desk under the handle. Frankie grabbed another desk. Mission didn’t see that they would do any good. He hurried toward Allie, told her to get behind the Crow’s desk. He grabbed the back of the old teacher’s wheelchair—the overhead wire swinging dangerously—but she insisted she could manage herself, that there was nothing to be afraid of.
Mission knew better. This was Security coming for them—Security or some other mob. He’d traveled the stairwell, knew what was out there. This was something bad coming, not his friends. There was no part of him that thought it might be both.
There was a knock on the door. The handle jiggled. The boots outside quieted as they gathered around. Frankie pressed his finger to his lips, his eyes wide. The wire overhead creaked as it swung back and forth.
The door budged. Mission hoped for a moment that they would go away, that they were just making their rounds. He thought about hiding under the sheets used to cover the unneeded desks, but the thought came too late. The door was shoved open, a desk crying as it skittered across the floor, and the first person through was Rodny.
His sudden appearance was as jarring as a bomb. He wore white coveralls, the creases still in them like a great letter H across his stomach and down his chest. His hair had been cut short, his face newly shaved, a nick on his chin.
Mission felt as though he were staring into a mirror, the two of them in costume, the same costume. More men in white crowded behind Rodny in the hallway, rifles in hand. Rodny ordered them back and stepped into the room where all those tiny desks lay neatly arranged and empty.
Allie was the first to respond. She gasped with surprise and hurried forward, arms wide as if for an embrace. Rodny held up a palm and told her to stop. His other hand held a small gun like the deputies wore. His eyes were not on his friends but on the Old Crow.
“Rodny—” Mission began. His brain attempted to grasp his friend’s presence. They were there to go rescue him, but he looked in little need of it.
“The door,” Rodny said over his shoulder.
A man twice Rodny’s age hesitated before doing as he was asked and pulling the door shut. This was not the demeanor of a prisoner. It was one who held captive the attention of others. Frankie lurched forward before the door shut all the way, calling “Father,” as he caught a glimpse of his old man in the hall with the others.
“We were coming for you,” Mission said. He wanted to approach his friend, but there was something dangerous in Rodny’s eyes. “Your note—”
Rodny finally looked away from the Crow.
“We were coming to help—” Mission said.
“Yesterday, I needed it,” Rodny said. He circled around the desks, the gun at his side, his eyes flicking from face to face. Mission backed up and joined Allie in standing close to the Crow, whether to protect her or feel protected, he couldn’t say.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Mrs. Crowe said with a lecturing tone. “This is not where your fight is. ”
The gun rose a little.
“What’re you doing?” Allie asked of her old friend.
Rodny pointed at the Crow. “Tell them,” he said. “Tell them what you’ve done. What you do. ”
“What’ve they done to you?” Mission asked. His friend was different beyond the garb.
“They showed me—” Rodny swept his gun at the posters on the wall. “That these stories are true. ” He laughed and turned to the Crow. “And I was angry, just like you said. Angry at what they did to the world. ”
“So hurt them,” the Crow insisted, her voice creaking like a door about to slam.
“But now I know. They told me. We got a call. And now I know what you’ve been doing here—”
“What’s this about?” Frankie asked, still in the middle of the room. He moved toward the door. “Why is my father—?”