Chapter 28

Cira gasps, raising a hand to her mouth. Her eyes are wide and I look away from her.

“I’ve made up my mind,” I tell them. And I have. I’m terrified but this feels right.

Elias stares down the path, tapping his fingers against his hip. “Did you see them? See the Soulers?” he asks. His forehead is furrowed, as if he’s lost in thought.

Catcher nods.

“Who else was there? Were there Recruiters?”

I look back and forth between the two, trying to understand what point Elias is trying to make.

Catcher nods again. “Yeah, I think they were the ones shouting to the Soulers how to put the fences up.”

Elias presses his lips together and then runs a hand over his head, rubbing the hair growing in. “It doesn’t make sense,” he tells Catcher. “The Recruiters wouldn’t care about Daniel. Wouldn’t get involved in what they thought was Vista’s business to handle.” He laces his hands together and pulls on the back of his neck, his shoulders tensing. “And you’re sure you saw the Recruiters involved?”

“I’m pretty sure,” Catcher says, but his voice is hesitant. “I can go back and check, though. Tonight.”

Cira grabs his hand. “It’s too dangerous,” she murmurs to him.

“Gabry can’t go back there,” he says to her under his breath. “They’ll kill her.”

Hearing it put so starkly hits me like the crush of a wave. “Why else would they be after us?” I ask them. My voice barely carries any volume.

“Did anyone see you?” Elias asks Catcher, cutting into our conversation. “When you took the Mudo to the town did anyone see you with them?”

Catcher’s eyes open wide. “I …” He hesitates, thinking. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.” He looks up at the sky as if trying to relive that stretch of time. Everything around us seems to go quiet, the birds ceasing their morning chirps, even the moans receding just a little, as if all the Mudo waver at once. And then Catcher’s face goes pale and he drops his gaze back down to face us.

“There was someone,” he says. “When I got over the Barrier. I didn’t think about it because they ran when they saw the Mudo.”

“But you think they saw you with the Mudo?” Elias asks.

Catcher nods slowly. Cira and I stare at each other, both of us clearly lost about what’s going on.

Elias presses two fingers against the space between his closed eyes. “They’re not after Gabry,” he says. “They’re after Catcher. If they saw him with the Mudo they’ve figured out he’s immune.”

“So what?” Cira asks. “So what if he’s immune? Why would they care enough to risk the Forest?”

I hug my arms around my chest. The relief makes me feel weak, makes it hard to stand. They’re not after me; I don’t have to turn myself in. But these thoughts make me feel traitorous. How can I be relieved when Catcher is now the one who could be in trouble? When we’ve merely switched places?

“You don’t understand,” Elias says. “Immunity is rare—rarer than rare. Practically nonexistent. The Recruiters are desperate for Immunes.”

Cira opens her mouth to protest but he cuts her off. I can see the agitation prickling at Elias’s body as he talks. “An Immune can go anywhere. Do anything.” He begins to pace, tight little circles that make me dizzy to watch.

“Do you know how many towns and cities are out there that are so overrun with Unconsecrated that it’s impossible for any living person to get to them?” he asks. “Everything in the safe areas has been picked over. All the cities that survived—we’ve taken what we can from them. Think about all the places out there where an Immune could go and get supplies. And not just that: an Immune is the perfect weapon. They can walk into the middle of one of the hordes and kill every last Unconsecrated. They can rescue trapped men.” He puts his hands to his head. “The Recruiters, they’d do anything to get their hands on an Immune.”

Cira’s face is as pale as mine feels. I never considered this about Catcher, never thought about what the immunity really meant on a larger scale. All I cared about was that he hadn’t died—wasn’t going to die. That we could still be together. My legs feel shaky and I let myself crumple until I’m sitting on the ground. We’re all silent, considering this new information, each of us figuring out how it changes us and our relationship with Catcher.

“Then I’ll go back,” he says softly.

Cira yelps, “No!” She grabs his arm. “Not when I thought I’d lost you before. Not now—I need you. No, Catcher.”

He places a hand against her cheek but she just shakes her head. “No,” she says again. “No.”

“It’s like Gabry said.” He glances at me, holds my eyes. “It’s the only way to keep us safe. To keep the people I love safe.”

I can’t help but hold my breath when he says this. To feel the sizzle of the words along my skin. The people he loves, I think. “You can’t go,” I tell him softly. “Please.”

In just that second it feels as if we’re alone here. That everything else that’s going on drops away. There’s no Mudo, there’s no infection or path or Recruiters. It’s just us, looking at each other the way we did that night in the amusement park before our first kiss. I want to take this moment and wrap it up tightly and hold on to it forever.

But then Elias clears his throat and I’m snapped away. “That won’t stop them from coming after us,” he says. “That’s the problem. The Recruiters can’t control the Immunes—they just walk away into a horde or something if they want to escape. So the Recruiters capture and keep anyone close to the Immune. That’s the only way to make sure they come back—hold someone they love and the Immune will do their duty and always come back.”

I draw in a sharp gasp, looking at Cira.

“Me?” she says, her eyes wide and frightened.

Elias nods, glancing at me. “All of us,” he says. “We all escaped with him. Therefore they’ll think we all mean something to him. I’ve heard about it happening before.”

Catcher spits on the ground and walks away from us down the path, his hands laced tightly behind his head, knuckles white. I want to go take his arm in mine, soothe him, but the implications of what Elias is saying reverberate in my head. We’re all targets now. None of us can go back.

“We have time,” Cira says to her brother. “You said they weren’t even in the Forest yet. That the Soulers were still connecting the path to the bridge.”

Catcher shakes his head, pacing back to us. “I can’t, Cira,” he says. “I can’t let them use the Soulers like that. If any of them die it’s my fault.”

I’m about to tell him that if they die from being infected it’s probably what they’d want but Elias speaks up first.

“They’re not forcing the Soulers to do the work,” he says. “They’re doing it voluntarily. That’s the thing. To the Recruiters you’re a tool. But to the Soulers you’re like a prophet—you’ve survived the infection. They’ll do anything to get to you, just as much as the Recruiters will.”

Catcher drops his face into his hands. I just stand there staring at everyone. A part of me wants to release the pressure and fear inside me, to laugh at how everything’s changed so quickly again. At how crazy this world can be. Last week Catcher was just a normal guy with a normal future ahead of him. And now he’s gone from facing his own death to facing a cult that wants to worship him and an army that wants to use him.

“What do we do?” I voice the words I’m sure everyone else is thinking.

“We keep going,” Elias says simply.

We sit in silence, everyone lost in their own thoughts, trying to make sense of what’s happening. And then Catcher sighs and offers a hand to Cira and then one to me. His skin is still hot when I grasp him but it’s now a familiar heat and I wonder if I’ll ever think of Catcher again as he was before.

I stare down the path as we start moving again. Somewhere ahead of us is my mother. All I can hope is that if we can only find her everything will be okay. The way it was when I was a child and I’d scrape my knees and elbows and she’d kiss them to make them better. All my life she’s been able to make it all right. It’s the hope that I hold on to as we walk and walk and walk on this endless path.

Because Cira is still weak and slower and Catcher and Elias have stayed back to walk with her I’m the first to come to the branch in the path and I drop my pack to the ground.

The fences on either side of the path seem different here, more fragile. The metal twisted and fatigued. I bend my fingers around it and tug, wondering if it can hold off the Mudo. When I pull my hand back my palm is coated in black like ash and I wipe it against my shirt.

The Forest here is thick and lush, but still fairly young growth. In the distance I can see a large tree with old burns and I close my eyes, trying to think back. Do I remember a fire? Do I remember the blackened tree trunks?

I kick at the fence in frustration and I hear the clank of something shifting. I bend down to look and that’s when I find a bar identical to the one on the gate, this one crusted with ash and dirt. Surprised, I smudge away the grime until I see the letters: VI.

This is the second number I’ve found, the second marker on the paths. I sink back on my heels, realizing what it means: The Forest has a code. Whispers of something skirt around the edges of my mind, tugging and then dancing away. Nothing I can grasp or examine.

“It looks like the paths are marked,” I tell the others when they catch up. I point to the bar. “This one is number six and the other is eight. The last one at the gate was four.”

“We must be getting deeper into the Forest,” Catcher says. “Maybe they’re like depth markers or something. A way to tell the distance.”

I scrunch my face. “Maybe,” I say, but I’m not convinced. I glance at Elias but he’s silent as he helps Cira to the ground, where she drapes her bandaged arms over her legs and takes deep breaths.

We should rest here. We shouldn’t push her as hard. And yet every time we try to make her take a break she refuses. We’re all aware of the Recruiters at our backs.

“Which way?” I ask.

Catcher considers the two paths. “We could scout,” he says, but Cira’s already shaking her head.

“We need to keep going,” she says. “It looks like that one goes back to where we came from.” She points a finger toward the path that branches out to the right. “I say we take the other one so we make sure not to double back.”

Her eyes are still bruised and sunken but her skin looks healthier. I haven’t talked to her about what happened, about what she did to herself. I resist the urge to reach up and clutch the superhero I still wear around my neck. I wonder for a moment if she would have cut herself if I hadn’t taken it from her. If I hadn’t left her alone or if I’d been able to give her some sort of hope.

I want to tell her I’m sorry, but I’m too scared to talk to her. I let Catcher be the one to walk with her, Elias the one to check in on her. Even now I start to walk ahead down the path, hoping to avoid her, but she calls out my name and I stop, my nerves bristling.

She doesn’t say anything more and I slowly turn toward her. She holds out a hand to me and I help her up. Catcher and Elias go forward and when I try to join them Cira pulls me back, tucks her arm in mine. I don’t miss the grimace as her bandaged forearm brushes against me.

“You’ll have to stop avoiding me at some point,” she says. I try to smile, try to brush off her words, but she just pulls me tighter to her side as we start following the others, winding through the moans drifting in the humid afternoon.

I struggle to think of something to say, something to talk about that isn’t Catcher and immunity and death and the path and her arms. But the more I search for a safe topic, the more my mind screams at me to ask her why, why, why.

“Just ask,” she says, and I have to laugh, remembering how it is we’ve always been best friends. Even now, with everything else around us falling apart, we can still be the same.

I squeeze my eyes shut. I think of the blood dripping from her fingers. “Why?” I whisper.

She watches our feet as we walk, the blur of step after step after step and for a moment I think she’s not going to answer. “Do you ever wonder about the Mudo?” she asks.

I shake my head but I’m lying. I’d never thought anything of them before I met Elias. Before I learned about the Soulers. Before Catcher became infected.

She laughs a little, just a puff of air against the side of my neck. “Me neither. They were just these things out there beyond the Barrier. They were what kept me from trying to go to the Dark City, what kept us all locked in and isolated. I never really cared about how they came to be. Who they once were. And then that night with Mellie and Catcher and everything at the coaster. When that girl came at her like that. I don’t know ….”

I hear her draw a deep breath, as if to steady herself. “I fell apart,” she says. “That Breaker came running at us and I panicked. If I’d been able to do something … anything but just sit there and scream … maybe none of this would have happened. I didn’t want to have to go to the Recruiters and face the Mudo again. I didn’t want to fail again.”

I stop and turn her to face me. “You didn’t fail, Cira,” I tell her, shocked to hear her saying the same words I’ve felt. “We were all afraid. I still am. You can’t blame yourself for what happened.”