She widens her eyes, waits for me to say something.
“I didn’t understand half of that,” I say. “There’s a cure?”
She shakes her head but not to say no. “Boy, you really aren’t from around here, are you?”
I set down the glass of water, leaning forward and lowering my voice to a whisper. “Maddy, is there a communications hub near here?”
She looks at me like I just asked her if she’d like to move with me to one of the moons. “So I can contact the ships,” I say. “It might be a big, curved dish? Or a tower, maybe?”
She looks thoughtful. “There’s an old metal tower up in the hills,” she says, also whispering, “but I’m not even sure it is a communications tower. It’s been abandoned for ages. Besides, you won’t be able to get to it. There’s a whole army out there, Vi.”
“How big?”
“Big enough.” We’re both still whispering. “People are saying they’re separating out the last of the women tonight.”
“To do what?”
Maddy shrugs. “Corinne said a woman in the crowd told her they rounded up the Spackle, too.”
I sit up, pressing against the bandages. “Spackle?”
“They’re the native species here.”
“I know who they are.” I sit up even more, straining against the bandage. “Todd told me things, told me what happened before. Maddy, if the Mayor’s separating out women and Spackle, then we’re in danger. We’re in the worst kind of danger.”
I push back my sheets to get up but a sudden bolt of lightning rips through my stomach. I call out and fall back.
“Pulled a stitch,” Maddy tuts, standing right up.
“Please.” I grit my teeth against the pain. “We have to get out of here. We have to run.”
“You’re in no position to run anywhere,” she says, reaching for my bandage.
Which is when the Mayor walks in the door.
{VIOLA}
Mistress Coyle leads him in. Her face is sterner than ever, her forehead creased, her jaw set. Even having only met her once I can tell she’s not happy.
He stands behind her. Tall, thin but broad-shouldered, all in white with a hat he hasn’t taken off.
I’ve never properly seen him. I was bleeding, dying when he approached us in the town square.
But it’s him.
It can only be him.
“Good evening, Viola,” he says. “I’ve been wanting to meet you for a very long time.”
Mistress Coyle sees me struggling with the sheet, sees Maddy reaching for me. “Is there a problem, Madeleine?”
“Nightmare,” Maddy says, catching my eye. “I think she pulled a stitch.”
“We’ll deal with that later,” Mistress Coyle says and the calm and serious way she says it gets Maddy’s full attention. “Get her 400 units of Jeffers root in the meantime.”
“400?” Maddy says, sounding surprised, but seeing the look on Mistress Coyle’s face, all she says is, “Yes, Mistress.” She gives my hand a last squeeze and leaves the room.
They both watch me for a long moment, then the Mayor says, “That’ll be all, Mistress.”
Mistress Coyle gives me a silent look as she leaves, maybe to reassure me, maybe to ask me something or tell me something, but I’m too frightened to figure it out before she backs out of the room, closing the door behind her.
And then I’m alone with him.
He lets the silence build until it’s clear I’m meant to say something. I’m gripping the sheet to my chest with a fist, still feeling the lightning pain fire up my side if I move.
“You’re Mayor Prentiss,” I say. My voice shakes when I say it but I say it.
“President Prentiss,” he says, “but you would know me as Mayor, of course.”
“Where’s Todd?” I look into his eyes. I do not blink. “What have you done with him?”
He smiles again. “Smart in your first sentence, courageous in your second. We may be friends yet.”
“Is he hurt?” I swallow away the burn rising in my chest. “Is he alive?”
For a second, it looks like he’s not going to tell me, not even going to acknowledge that I asked, but then he says, “Todd is well. Todd is alive and well and asking about you every chance he gets.”
I realize I’ve held my breath for his answer. “Is that true?”
“Of course it’s true.”
“I want to see him.”
“And he wants to see you,” says Mayor Prentiss. “But all things in their proper order.”
He keeps his smile. It’s almost friendly.
Here is the man we spent all those weeks running from, here he is, standing in my very own room, where I can barely move from the pain.
And he’s smiling.
And it’s almost friendly.
If he’s hurt Todd, if he’s laid a finger on him–
“Mayor Prentiss–”
“President Prentiss,” he says again, then his voice brightens. “But you may call me David.”
I don’t say anything, just press down harder onto my bandage against the pain.
There’s something about him. Something I can’t quite place–
“That is,” he says, “if I may call you Viola.”
There’s a knock on the door. Maddy opens it, a phial in her hand. “Jeffers,” she says, keeping her eyes firmly on the floor. “For her pain.”
“Yes, of course,” the Mayor says, moving away from my bed, hands behind his back. “Proceed.”
Maddy pours me a glass of water and watches me swallow four yellow gel caps, two more than I’ve taken before. She takes the glass from me and, with her back to the Mayor, gives me a firm look, a solid one, no smile but all kinds of bravery, and it makes me feel a little bit good, a little bit stronger.
“She’ll grow tired very quickly,” Maddy says to the Mayor, still not looking at him.
“I understand,” the Mayor says. Maddy leaves, closing the door behind her. My stomach immediately starts to grow warm but it’ll take a minute just yet to make the pain start to go or take away the quivering running all through me.
“So,” the Mayor says. “May I?”
“May you what?”