California(94)

Passing beneath these makeshift monsters, Cal understood that he was now part of Micah’s scheme. He would be man enough to admit it. Frida was wrong; he didn’t think this was Plank, the sequel. This was a brutal wilderness where people did what they had to in order to survive. By taking back his gun and ascending the Tower and studying the maps, Cal had tacitly accepted whatever was going on behind closed doors on the Land. That’s what Frida would say. She was right about that, but maybe that wasn’t a terrible thing. Cal had rejected the Group back in L.A., but out here, where there were Pirates to fight, and people to protect, it was easier to accept. It made sense. There had to be a part of Frida who agreed with that.

The past didn’t matter if it was the future they had to worry about. It would all be okay; he’d have to convince Frida of that. At least for now, alone in the dark save for the glow of the moon, it seemed okay to him.

Cal soon found that he wasn’t lost, that he could recall the maps Sailor had unrolled on the tower floor and see the maze’s tricks before him. He did have that kind of mind. He walked carefully but with confidence. He put a hand out to the closest Form, gentle enough that the edge didn’t cut him. They were just objects. Made by people to fight people, and to protect them, too.

Maybe all along he had wanted Micah to find the revolutionary in him. He’d wanted someone to seek out that place in him that could be powerful.





17



It was darker than dark, and far too early to meet Anika downstairs, but Frida couldn’t stay in bed any longer. Cal wasn’t back from security yet, and thank goodness, because he was the whole reason she couldn’t sleep. Imagining him out there, patrolling the Forms, or watching from the Tower for any suspicious movement, made her sick.

She crept out of bed and put on her shoes and coat in the dark. She lit a candle, and followed its light out of the bedroom and down the hallway. The stairs creaked with each step, but she kept going, one hand dusting the banister as she went.

Once Frida was outside in the cold, she followed the flame’s flickering light down the path. If Cal was up in a Tower, he’d see her. Was that what she wanted? She couldn’t shake the thought that he might blow his whistle instead of climbing down to talk. Stop being so dramatic, she reminded herself. She’d asked him to find out everything, and that’s what he was doing by watching the borders until sunrise. He’d learn this place for the both of them.

Frida let the candlelight dance across the dirt. She kept her eyes on the flame but didn’t move. She had no plan, nowhere to go. Every time she thought of her fight with Cal, and about Anika’s story, about the Pirates attacking this place, about the kids who used to live here, about her brother beheading another man, and about Cal being blind to what had happened here, she wanted to scream. She stared into the flame. It was so feeble against the blackness.

She always took off when they argued, as if it might kill her to stay another second with Cal when she was angry. She should have stayed, shouldn’t have been so gutless, so afraid to hear him out. He wanted to make things better, no matter what it took, and she couldn’t stand that.

The Land didn’t get as quiet as the wilderness did. Even in the middle of the night, Frida could hear two people talking nearby, and in another house, someone was humming. There was the occasional sleep-snort, too, and the creak of a bed as someone rolled over. There was so much life here.

Frida shielded the candle with a cupped hand and stepped forward, one foot in front of the other, as if walking on a balance beam.

Before she’d left the Bath, she had asked Cal to find out everything. He’d asked the same of her, but she’d nearly forgotten that part. It was her job, too, to discover the Land’s history. Cal said Micah didn’t care about the past, but that had to be false. Everyone cared about the past.

Frida had never been inside Micah’s house, but it had been pointed out to her a few times, even by her brother himself.

“If you ever need anything,” he’d said. “That’s where I sleep most nights.”

“‘Most nights’?” she’d asked, an eyebrow raised.

“Not like that,” he said. “I don’t have a girlfriend if that’s what you’re getting at.”

It was a one-story structure made of wood that had darkened and gone brittle over the years. Its roof sloped, and its two front picture windows were boarded up.

Across the doorway hung a curtain made of thick material and torn at the side. It was probably as cold in there as it was out here, Frida thought, and dark. As she stepped up to its entrance, she practiced what she would say: Tell me exactly what went on here. What have you done in the name of containment, and where does it stop? She would ask him what happened to the children. Anika shouldn’t have to be the one to retell such horrors.

“Hello?” she said as she reached the doorway. She pulled the curtain aside, prepared to walk into the house, when her hand hit something solid. Frida saw that behind the curtain was a wooden door, sturdy as the Hotel’s, sturdier than Anika’s, and a metal knob. Of course her brother had a door, it was just hidden.

Frida struck her knuckles against the wood, hard, and then once more. When there was no answer, she turned the knob. With a click, the door opened.

She found herself inside one large room. Two windows across from the door would let in the first of the morning’s light; they had not been boarded up, Frida realized, because their glass was intact.