Slowly, she starts toward him, her steps a little uneven as she crosses the center of the large cage. The man backs away from her, his blood leaving a thin glistening red trail across the concrete. Of course she follows.
He bangs at the fences, screaming in terror. His fingers rip at the metal, not caring when the flesh tears from his palms or his pinky snaps. He races around and around, trying to keep clear of the Unconsecrated woman as he begs for help or mercy—for anything.
There’s no way for him to escape. He’s trapped. My body becomes nothing more than a thumping pulse, my heart pounding as I watch her pursue him slowly around the little cage. She’s dead, she’s uncoordinated, so he can easily out-maneuver her, and he jumps from her reach and dodges around her, always a step ahead.
At first it looks easy the way he stays away from her—he’s faster and way more agile than she could ever be. But as the urgent minutes drag and multiply he begins to look worn out. Sweat causes his shirt to stick to his back even though cold winter air whistles into the auditorium from a broken skylight.
I realize just how sunken his cheeks are, and I wonder when he last ate or drank. How long he can fight before his body buckles in on itself.
And of course the woman keeps going. The man could run for days and she’d never stop. Eventually he’ll collapse from exhaustion or starvation or dehydration—things that will never bother the Unconsecrated woman.
It’s impossible to know how long she’s been dead—days? Weeks? Months? The tunic she wears marks her as a Souler—a member of the cult that worships the Unconsecrated as the ultimate resurrection. The cult Elias infiltrated rather than coming home. Elias said the Recruiters had been rounding them up, and I remember how they’d been after the girl—Amalia—and the boy in the street the other day.
My stomach turns with disgust as I think about Elias being somehow a part of what’s going on below. If he’s somehow responsible for this Souler woman being here. For her being dead.
Soon the crowd gets antsy and begins to boo. They start chatting with one another, their attention waning, and I hunch under the windows, afraid one of them will glance my way. I want to crawl back down the hallway. I want to race out into the night and climb into the cable car and let it carry me away from this awful island and these horrible people.
Except that escape isn’t an option, and even if it were I can’t move. I’m stuck in place, unable to abandon this man’s final brutal moments. I can only crouch here, listening to the moans and screams of the man as he begs for help.
Every time he pleads for mercy I shudder, bile burning the back of my throat. I can’t believe the cruelty of what’s going on. I can’t believe anyone would consider this entertainment.
The timbre of the crowd below shifts, falls into chants and cheers. When I glance back over the ledge I watch as Conall motions to a man by the far wall, who ducks through a narrow door. Just as it’s falling closed I catch a glimpse of what’s beyond and it makes my body go numb. Lashed to the wall are more Unconsecrated—dozens of them straining and pulling against chains, their jaws tied shut with strips of cloth.
The Recruiter walks down the hall, strolling between the gathered dead as if he’s a commander inspecting his troops, and then he stops and points and two other ashen-faced Recruiters scramble to pull an Unconsecrated from its restraints and wrangle it into the auditorium.
It’s disgusting and horrifying and stupidly dangerous, but the rest of the men cheer at the sight of the new Unconsecrated, their voices reverberating off the walls as Conall grins maliciously and the plague rat is stuffed into the cage. It’s two dead against one living.
Now it’s harder for the man to get away. His movements become frantic and I dig my fingers into my thighs as I watch him try to dodge their stumbling attacks.
Slowly, inevitably, the two Unconsecrated pin the man against the fence. His desperate whimpers fill my head but there’s absolutely nothing I can do to help him, which makes me feel complicit in this horrid spectacle.
He fights against them. Lashes out. He makes it around the edge of the cage a few times until he stumbles and the first Unconsecrated Souler falls on him. Her bite’s not deep and for a collective moment everyone stares at the man’s arm as he climbs to his feet and pushes away from her.
Like everyone else I hold my breath, waiting to see if he’s actually been bitten. A flash of hope spreads over the man’s face, searing through me as well. Then a tiny prick of red wells from his flesh and then another. The bite broke the skin. He throws his head back and wails as the Recruiters around the arena pound on the ground with their feet and clap their hands, drowning out the moans and the crying and even the sound of my own heartbeat.
I crawl to my feet and sprint down the hallway away from it all, their chants echoing as I careen around corners and slam into walls, trying to find my way out of the building. My vision is a blur but it doesn’t matter in the darkness. I trip along the uneven floor and right when the door to the outside looms into view I fall against it, flinging myself out into the frigid night.
The sharp frozen air slaps me, blasting through my clothes, and my teeth instantly begin chattering. What little light exists is magnified by all the snow and I notice that footprints mar the thin layer of white, scuffling between the main building and the cable-car platform.
I follow them, my mind reeling over what I just saw. They were killing people for sport. For fun. I’d known the Recruiters had become vicious following the Rebellion but I didn’t realize they were monsters. I didn’t realize men could be this ruthless.
I fall to my knees, my stomach cramping, the tiny bit of food I’d eaten earlier fighting its way up. I heave and I heave, the sound of the man’s terror screaming in my ears. The cheers of the Recruiters watching. The useless brutality of it all.
I wonder how much, if anything, Elias knows about this. If he knows what he’s gotten all of us into. I try to figure out a way he could be a Recruiter but not know what every other Recruiter seems to be aware of. I don’t want to believe he’d be okay with what they’re doing in that cage, that he wouldn’t try somehow to intervene.
The icy ground seeps through my pants and I use snow to wipe my mouth clean. I’m still reeling from everything I just saw and I don’t hear the footsteps behind me until someone’s fingers curl over my shoulder.
I scream, strike out with my arms, knuckles slamming into flesh. I push the body into a clump of snow-crusted bushes but he grabs me as he falls, pulling me on top of him, and it isn’t until I feel the heat that I realize it’s Catcher.
Words tumble from my mouth about the Recruiters and the cages and the Unconsecrated Soulers and the bodies, and Catcher holds me tight, whispering into my ears that I’m safe, that he has me, that I’m okay.
“You don’t understand,” I tell him, jumping to my feet. “The Recruiters are sacrificing people. They’re throwing them into cages with Unconsecrated. We can’t stay here. We’re not safe—we can’t be. We have to leave. We have to get Elias and my sister and find a way off this island.”
He just sits there in the snow staring at me, a red welt rising along his jaw where I struck him. I don’t know why he isn’t moving. Why he doesn’t understand the urgency. I spin away, so frustrated I can’t even look at him anymore.
I hear him stand slowly, feel the brush of his fingers against my arm. “We can’t, Annah,” he says.I jerk from his touch. “You didn’t see it, Catcher. You didn’t see how much fun they were having—the sick pleasure they took in what they were doing. How bored they were that the poor guy wasn’t dying fast enough. They’re horrible human beings who don’t deserve to live.” I’m shaking uncontrollably from the memories and the frozen night air.
His grip on my arm is strong, his fingers biting into me. “We can’t go back because it’s too late,” he tells me. “There’s barely anything left in the City. Pockets of people fighting. But no place as safe as this.”
He looks almost like a ghost when he adds, “There’s nowhere else to go, and even if there were, we’re trapped. No way off the island.”
In the distance I see lanterns burning on top of the wall ringing the Sanctuary. Watch the shadows of Recruiters as they stand guard, ready to shoot at anyone who attempts to land. I don’t want to believe what he’s saying. The City’s always survived—it’s been so permanent in my life that I’d never imagined it could disappear just like that.
“We can’t stay here,” I whisper.
He tugs on my shoulder until I’m facing him, my frosty hair hanging across my cheek. He tucks his finger around a lock, slipping it behind my ear. As he does so, the heat of his skin trails over my busted cheek and I wince.
“Annah, what …?” His touch hovers over the throbbing pain. “What happened?”
I turn so that he can’t see the welt. My breath comes out in puffs of crystalline clouds. The feeling of helplessness wells inside me, spills from my eyes.
“Who did this to you?” he whispers, and I can hear the rage in his voice that someone would hurt me.
I press my lips tightly together. He’s right that the Sanctuary is our best hope of surviving. That the City is gone. I think of the map and all the black pins. “One of the Recruiters,” I finally tell him. “It’s not safe here,” I add. “They’re monsters.”
Catcher trails a finger down my cheek, burning the path of one of my tears. His face is a war of emotions. “I’m going to keep you safe, Annah,” he says. “I promise you.”
I let him pull me to his chest, let him wrap his arms around me. I swallow back the words that choke me: that I’m not sure he can. Not after what I just saw.
Chapter XXI
Catcher leads me toward the north end of the Sanctuary. Most of the Recruiters live in the warren of shorter boxlike structures scattered around the headquarters—the main rambling building that contains the map room and the auditorium with the caged Unconsecrated.
Because almost everywhere else was deserted after the Rebellion, Ox allowed Elias to pick a place for all of us to live. He chose a middle floor in the tallest building, hoping that the effort of the climb would discourage most Recruiters from bothering us.
The rooms are small and dirty, long hallways connecting them. Catcher stands now in the doorway of the bedroom my sister chose for me on the corner of the building—a room with huge windows that open to a view of the fire-strewn Dark City and the curve of the black river.
It’s a cozy room, sparsely furnished with a bed, table and chair likely left behind by the family of some high-ranking Protectorate official who fled when the Rebellion broke out. I press a hand against the glass—a rare luxury in this world.
My reflection stares back at me: scars on one side, a raised red ridge on the other. I let my hair fall over my face as I turn toward Catcher. “I’m going to find a way off this island,” I tell him, raising my chin in defiance.
His expression is steady, unreadable. He takes a long breath. “Please don’t do anything that will get you in trouble, Annah. Not right now, when things are so volatile. We’re safe—just let things settle down a bit.”
“I’ll be careful.” His gaze darts to my bruising cheek and then away.
We stand there for a moment. It feels awkward again, as if we don’t know how to communicate except in the face of trauma: running from Unconsecrated or Recruiters. We don’t know how to just be around each other. How to talk about normal things.
We both fidget as this gulf of what might pass as normalcy widens between us.
“They’re sending me back to the Dark City,” he finally says. “Tonight. Now.”
I nod. “Be careful,” I tell him and this makes him smile. He pauses in the doorway like that, grin breaking over his face and hair flopped over his forehead, and something inside me jerks awake, a heat coursing through my blood. I feel my neck start to flush, feel it climbing over the tips of my ears, and I wonder if he notices.
His eyes widen just for a moment as if he feels the same thing I do. Then his grin falters and he slips into the hallway, leaving me pressing my hands against my stomach to keep the want from spreading too far.
I wake up the next morning to my sister’s voice fluttering around my cracked door. I roll onto my side, gently prodding at my cheek with my fingers as I listen to her and Elias’s conversation drifting down the hallway.
“I wanted to build something, Elias,” I hear her say. “That’s what we were supposed to be doing. Together. We were supposed to stop barricading ourselves off.” There’s such loss and pain in her voice that I wince. It never occurred to me that my sister had dreams like this—the same kind of dreams I once had. I realize then just how little I know about her.
I’ve spent all this time comparing myself to her that I haven’t taken the time to try to see who she is as a person.
I hear a rustle of movement and imagine Elias walking over to her, wrapping her in his arms. “I know, Gabry,” he says softly, his words full of understanding and love.
There’s a pause before she continues. “Maybe we weren’t ever supposed to survive this long in the first place. Maybe we should just be content with what we’ve accomplished since the Return,” she says. But I can tell she’s just testing the words. She doesn’t really believe them. I smile a little—I know that tone well.
“Do you really believe that?” He sounds a little muffled, and I picture his lips pressed against her hair as he holds her tighter. I think about the way Catcher held me last night after I ran from the headquarters, how nice it was to sink into him and believe that his strength and promises could keep me safe.