I follow Alex down a series of serpentine hallways. The sensation of stillness and peace I had in the courtyard is replaced almost immediately by fear so sharp it is like a blade going straight into the core of me, driving down and deep, until I can hardly breathe or keep going. At points the wailing grows louder, almost to a fever pitch, and I have to cover my ears; then it ebbs away again.
Once we pass a man wearing a long white lab coat, stained with what looks like blood; he is leading a patient on a leash. Neither one looks at us as we pass.
We make so many twists and turns I’m beginning to wonder if Alex is lost, especially as the hallways grow dirtier, and the lights above us become fewer in number, so that eventually we are walking through murk and obscurity, with a single functioning bulb to light up twenty feet of blackened stone corridor. At intervals various glowing neon signs appear in the darkness, as though they are rising out of the air itself: WARD ONE, WARD TWO, WARD THREE, WARD FOUR. Alex keeps going, though, and when we pass the hallway that leads to Ward Five I call out to him, convinced he has gotten confused or lost his way.
“Alex,” I say, but even as I say the word it strangles me, because just then we come up to a heavy set of double doors marked with a small sign, barely illuminated, so faint I can hardly read it. And yet it seems to burn as brightly as a thousand suns.
Alex turns around, and to my surprise his face isn’t composed at all. His jaw is working and his eyes are full of pain, and I can tell he hates himself for being there, for being the one to say it, for being the one to show me.
“I’m sorry, Lena,” he says. Above him the sign smolders in the darkness: WARD SIX.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Humans, unregulated, are cruel and capricious; violent and selfish; miserable and quarrelsome. It is only after their instincts and basic emotions have been controlled that they can be happy, generous, and good.”
— The Book of Shhh
I have a sudden dread of going any farther. That thing in the pit of my stomach squeezes up like a fist, making it hard to breathe. I can’t go on. I don’t want to know.
“Maybe we shouldn’t,” I say. “He said—he said we weren’t allowed.”
Alex reaches out for me like he’s thinking of touching me, then remembers where we are and forces his arms to his sides. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I have friends here.”
“It’s probably not even her.” My voice is rising a little, and I’m worried I might have a meltdown. I lick my lips, trying to keep it together. “It was probably just a big mistake. We shouldn’t have come in the first place. I want to go home.” I know I must sound like a toddler throwing a tantrum, but I can’t help it. Walking through those double doors seems absolutely impossible.
“Lena, come on. You have to trust me.” Then he does reach out, for just a second, skating one finger across my forearm. “Okay? Trust me.”
“I do trust you, it’s just . . .” The air, the stench, the darkness and the sensation of rot all around me: It makes me want to run. “If she isn’t here . . . Well, that’s bad. But if she is . . . I think—I think it might be even worse.”
Alex watches me closely for a second. “You have to know, Lena,” he says finally, firmly, and he’s right. I nod. He gives me the barest flicker of a smile, then reaches forward and heaves open the doors to Ward Six.
We step into a vestibule that looks exactly like what I imagine a cell in the Crypts might be like: The walls and floor are concrete, and whatever color they might once have been painted has now faded to a dingy, mossy gray. A single bulb is set high in the ceiling, and barely delivers enough light to illuminate the tiny space. There is a stool in the corner, occupied by a guard. This guard is actually normal-sized—skinny, even, with acne pockmarks and hair that reminds me of overcooked spaghetti. As soon as Alex and I step through the door, the guard makes a small, reflexive adjustment to his gun, drawing it closer toward his body and swiveling the barrel ever so slightly in our direction.
Alex stiffens beside me. All of a sudden, I feel very alert.
“Can’t be in here,” the guard says. “Restricted area.”
For the first time since entering the Crypts, Alex appears uncomfortable. He fiddles nervously with his badge. “I—I thought Thomas would be here.”
The guard gets to his feet. Amazingly, he’s not much taller than I am—he’s certainly shorter than Alex—but of all the guards I’ve seen today, he frightens me the most. There’s something strange about his eyes, a flatness and hardness that reminds me of a snake. I’ve never had a gun pointed at me before, and staring into the long black tunnel of its barrel makes me feel like I’m going to faint.
“Oh, he’s here, all right. He’s always here, nowadays.”
The guard smiles humorlessly, and his fingers dance against the trigger. When he speaks his lips curl upward, revealing a mouth full of crooked yellow teeth.
“What do you know about Thomas?”
The room takes on the stillness and charge of the air outside, and reminds me of waiting for thunder to crack.
Alex allows himself one small indication of nervousness:
He curls and flexes his fingers against his thighs. I can almost see him thinking, trying to figure out what to say next. He must know that mentioning Thomas was a bad decision—even I heard the contempt and suspicion in the guard’s voice as he pronounced the name.
After what seems like a terribly long time—but is probably only a few seconds—the blank, official look sweeps down over his face again.
“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.”