The Water Wars (18 page)

“But it is, Will. It is.”

He shook his head. The color had returned to his face, and he looked like the Will who once outraced a boy, three years older, on a dare. The medicine Nasri had given him back at the drilling site must have been powerful stuff, because he stood without much effort or visible pain. “You said Kai was our friend and we had to help him. Well, Ulysses is our friend too, and that means we’ve got twice the people to help, and we’ve got to work twice as hard.”

“But what can we do?”

Will looked around the cell. Except for a small air vent in the ceiling, and window grates in the steel door, the walls appeared solid and impenetrable. There was no handle on the door and no way to open it from the inside. His eyes darted back to the air vent.

“I know what you’re thinking,” I said. “But even if we knew where that went, we can’t possibly reach it.”

“Easy,” said Will. “Just like condenser duty.” He approached the wall, and felt its surface for imperfections. Although it appeared smooth, the wall had hundreds of cracks and fissures—the result of trying to build anything without water. The imperfections were small, but not so tiny that Will’s fingers could not grasp them, or his toes without shoes could not find footing.

“Give me a hand,” he said.

I made a step by interlocking my fingers and gave Will a tentative boost up the wall. A sharp pain cut into my shoulder, and I staggered backward, but Will had already dug his toes into an open space. He reached out with one hand and felt for the next toehold, then pulled himself up another ten centimeters. In this way he made steady progress. When he approached the corner where the wall met the ceiling, he extended his arm and just barely grasped the vent.

I scurried beneath him. I didn’t know if I could hold Will, but I would be there if he fell. I waited while he rested and pursed my lips in silent prayer. I didn’t pray about any of the things they taught in school; instead I promised our father that we would return home, no matter what. Will gave one hard yank, and the vent clattered to the floor. Then he pulled himself up and inside. In a moment his face reappeared in the open hole in the ceiling. “There’s a passage,” he said. “Climb to me.” He extended his arm through the hole.

There was no way I could shimmy up the wall as Will had. For one thing, I lacked his strength and agility. For another, my shoulder throbbed badly now, and I knew the effort would rip my arm from its socket. Nevertheless I tried to slip my fingers in the cracks and crawl up the vertical surface. But I had no strength, and the pain was brutal and unrelenting.

“I can’t, Will,” I cried.

Will undid his shirt and knotted it, then extended it through the hole like a rope. His head was stretched through the vent while his arm dangled the shirt. I leaped and grabbed the end of it with my good arm. But when I tried to pull myself up the wall, I couldn’t hold to the crevices. I fell backward and let go, and Will nearly toppled from the ceiling trying to hold on.

I lay on my back on the floor. I did not cry. I was exhausted; we both were. We had traveled nearly two thousand kilometers, crossed several republics and the Empire of Canada, reached the Great Coast, seen hundreds dead, killed several ourselves, starved, thirsted, fought, and were dirtied and bloodied. But we were not dead yet. And neither was Ulysses or Kai.

“You go,” I said. “Find the way out, and come back and get me.”

It was the only option, and Will knew it. He nodded. “I’ll come back. I promise.”

Then he was gone.

I sat for a long time on the floor. I listened to the fading echoes of Will’s feet overhead and the indistinct rattling of activity occurring somewhere outside the prison walls. If I was very still, I could feel the floor swaying slightly, as if it were moving in a breeze. I thought about all that had happened, each event leading inexorably to the next: if I hadn’t seen Kai; if we hadn’t become friends; if I hadn’t gone to his home; if he hadn’t come to mine; if he hadn’t told us about the river, or showed me the secret spring; if we’d never kissed. But I also knew many things had been set into motion years before I was born: if there hadn’t been the Great Panic; if there hadn’t been war; if there had been enough water…Where did it all begin? Our father remembered rivers, but now the rivers were gone. Our mother remembered boat trips and warm baths, but now she was ill. Even Will could remember school before they closed the doors at recess and forbade students from going outside. What did I remember?

Our mother at the kitchen table, laughing at something our father had said. Both our parents, hand in hand, watching the news on the wireless. Climbing into our parents’ bed with Will in the morning—the warm blankets and the clean smell of newly sanitized sheets. Will and I running for the bus, screaming madly as we raced to be first. All those memories—once vibrant, now faded. Earth itself changed.

Somewhere in my recollections, I nodded off, and then the memories mixed with dreams and became tangled in half-truths and impossibilities. My mother was lifting me in the air as the clouds spiraled and the sun broke through in curtains of yellow light.
Again,
I cried.
Again!
We twirled and spun beneath the luminous rays. Her head tilted back, my mouth tilted open, spinning, breathing, whirling, alive.

There was a thump and then a bang, and suddenly the outer door swung open.

“Will!”

He turned the handle on the door. “It’s not even locked,” he muttered with what sounded like disgust. With no knob to open the door from the inside, there was no need to lock it from the outside. But now that it was ajar, I wasted no time joining him.

The hallway was dingy and grimy. No sign of life. The walls were covered in chipped white paint and orange rust. We passed open doors and empty cells. If the prison had held other captives, they were long gone. We moved stealthily toward a pair of double doors at the end of the short hallway. Will put a finger to his lips, although that was unnecessary. My feet glided over the floor without weight or friction. It felt as if my body had escaped gravity, floating just a few centimeters above the surface. Despite the pain in my shoulder and our desperate situation, we had escaped.

Now we were on a steel island, policed by a private army.

We moved like ghosts. Nearby there was water: moisture in the air, on the crease of my neck, in the folds of my elbows and knees. The crinkly, crunchy dryness that was usually my skin felt elastic here, plumped with a thousand invisible molecules. I plucked at the back of my hand, just to make certain, and it sprang back into place without a wrinkle.

When we reached the double doors, they were unlocked. We pushed through into a hallway as clean and white as a medical ward. Even the air had a different smell: freshly filtered and oxidized. Electronic sensors dotted the walls, and there were tiny cameras positioned in the corners. I pointed to one, and Will nodded—he had already seen them. If there were cameras, there were screens somewhere with people watching. But no alarms rang, and no one rushed from the shadows to stop us.

Will hugged the wall, and I followed. The creaking sound was more evident here, and the floors were definitely swaying—it wasn’t just my imagination. There was another sound too, like a wireless broadcast. Voices rising and falling, but without the soothing music found in the water conservation programs in the mornings. We moved toward the sound along the wall as it curved, then widened into a common area. The voices became more pronounced: stern, scolding, lecturing, like teachers at school—except no one seemed in charge. They spoke over each other, interrupting and arguing, and no voice took the lead for more than a few moments. I had the feeling it would not end well for the losing side. Will held up one hand, and I stopped, trying not to breathe. My heart thumped as loud as a drum in my chest. From the other side of the hallway, two men emerged into the common area. They wore a dark blue—nearly black—uniform, and their muscles rippled through their shirts. Both had communicators in their ears, security shields dangling from their necks, and heavy firearms on their belts. I squeezed against the wall, trying to press myself into two dimensions. The men were nearly upon us, and I was certain we would be caught and returned to our cells—or worse.

Then there was an electronic squawk, and one of the guards began talking into the air. He signaled to the other guard, and they reversed direction, walking in a heavy-booted fashion back the way they had come. In a moment all was clear.

I relaxed and slid down the wall. Will made certain the guards had withdrawn, and then we eased forward carefully until we reached the common area. There were several couches gathered around a blue glass table and two wireless screens on the wall broadcasting a news feed. The doors were now directly in front of us, and a second set of doors to our right—that’s where the voices were. I stayed close to Will, my hand on his elbow. He pushed gently at the release latch, but the doors were locked. There was a small window above eye level, about as high as Will could reach on his tiptoes. He leaned against me for support and stretched.

His slow intake of breath was like the sound as all the air exits a balloon.

“What is it?” I whispered.

But he just shook his head and slowly sank back down on his heels. “You look,” he said. He laced his fingers together, and I hesitated, then tentatively placed one foot in his hands. I braced myself with my good arm against the wall, and pushed myself as high as I could climb. Will lifted me until my eyes just cleared the window, and I could make out the mahogany-paneled room with its vases of real fresh flowers and two small trees.

I was not good with politics or government. I wasn’t interested in deal-making or brinksmanship, and I couldn’t distinguish an undersecretary from an overseer. But there was no mistaking the perfectly coiffed hair of the Canadian prime minister or the sun-baked face of the president of Minnesota. There were also several WABs I recognized from the wireless, and the chief administrator of Arch. His beard was neatly trimmed, and the skin on his face was unnaturally tight, as if it had been screwed onto his skull. At the front of the table was Torq, his smooth head like an egg, hands steepled beneath his hairless chin.

What were they doing here, together in the same room? Sworn enemies, gathered around the table, not fighting but debating, arguing like old friends?

“Hey, you!” a guard’s voice bellowed. “Halt!”

W
e dashed back down the hallway, veering away from the prison wing and heading for a single blue door at the far end that promised Emergency Exit. The guard’s communicator squawked loudly, and his boots thumped as he ran after us. Will was limping, and my shoulder ached, and there was no way we could outrun a muscular man even if we weren’t both injured.

Will flung the door open. Steel stairs stretched up and down, with no platform in sight. Whichever way we went was a gamble, playing cards we hadn’t been dealt. Will went down. I followed. The door clanged shut behind us. We took two steps at a time, our feet skidding on metal. I kept one hand on the railing and the other reaching for Will. My balance precarious, my grip slipping, I fought hard to stay upright.

Despite the sign and the emergency, there appeared to be no exit. The stairs corkscrewed down as far as I could see. Overhead, men shouted, and we heard the heavy clanking of their heels on the stairs. I focused on Will’s back, locked on the one thing I could trust. The world compressed into a single point of his spine.

“Here, Vera, quick!” Will commanded.

He stopped so suddenly that we nearly collided. He was kneeling before an open hatch. It was about thirty centimeters in diameter—no bigger than a mine shaft and just wide enough for a skinny teen.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Water gutter,” said Will.

“We don’t know where it goes!”

“It goes down!” said Will. That was enough for him. “Come on!”

The men were getting closer. Their squawkings were unmistakable. It was capture or the unknown. I dove. Will followed. Down we plunged. It felt like a nightmare—one of those dreams where you are falling and yet never seem to reach the ground. Arms and legs beyond your control. Eyes unable to focus. I tumbled and banged against the slippery sides, yet nothing slowed my fall.

Then I was suddenly plunged into something cold and liquid, brackish and wet. Water! We were in the ocean! But I had no time to be amazed. I was still falling, and now there was water over my head. I knew I shouldn’t breathe, but the urge to take a breath was powerful. I had no idea how to swim, although I knew that’s what people used to do. Once there were even giant pools of fresh water for no purpose other than swimming—not even drinking—and athletes played games to see who could swim fastest.

But now I was drowning. Strange: at the time I didn’t even know the word. My lungs ached, and my brain felt as if it were burning. I flailed wildly in the water, kicking hard. Seawater went up my nose and stung my eyes. My mouth filled.

I might have died. I should have died. But my flailing propelled me back to the surface, where my head broke through at the last possible moment before I lost consciousness. I gulped in great breaths, bobbing on the surface. The water’s abnormal salt content kept me afloat, even though I had no idea how to swim or tread water. I was also sheltered by giant steel piers. From below the enormous structure looked like a hovering spacecraft in bad need of a paint job. The gutter through which we had plunged was just one of an intricate series of pipes, conduits, cylinders, and ducts that sucked in seawater, processed and transformed it, then dispatched it to giant holding tanks while dumping the poisonous residue back into the ocean.