Chapter Twenty #2
On Tuesday, it rains. I take shelter in the fine arts building’s black box theater, cocooned in dark warmth as water roars from the sky. On Wednesday, I spread a towel on the damp tennis courts and read belly-down with my feet kicking air. Why not.
On Thursday, Thanksgiving proper, I walk to the edge of campus, wet mashed leaves sticking to my tennis shoes, and call my family. I’m half hoping the forest will block my cell-phone signal. Oops, you’re breaking up! Can’t hear you! Bye!
But no.
So I put on my brave face, my game face. When Jo asks me how it’s going so meaningfully that I know (a) she wants to hear about the Archive and (b) Mom’s in earshot, I tell her, “Don’t worry. My plan’s in motion.”
She tells me about life at Saint Cat’s and then passes me to Dad.
Dad quizzes me about my college applications with a hoarse, cracked voice.
I can’t help but wonder: How bad are his dreams now?
Did he mess up his throat screaming himself awake?
I don’t ask, though. I fake a cocky attitude, betting him every college will accept me, trying to make him laugh.
And he does laugh—which starts him coughing, hacking wetly.
Phlegm? Blood?
The moist tearing noises fade into the background. Someone’s grabbed the phone.
“Norah,” Mom says.
Before I know what’s happening, I start to sob.
I can’t see. I can’t talk.
Dimly, as if down a long tunnel, Mom speaks, pauses, speaks. Faking a normal conversation so Dad and Jo don’t realize I’ve lost it. I don’t know whether she’s doing it for them or me. Either way, I’m grateful. She hates lying, and this comes close. She’s bending her own rules to protect us.
When my sobs peter out, she asks, falsely casual, “Can you say hi to Kev and Irene, or do you need to work now?”
I swallow till I’m sure my voice won’t shake. “I’ve got it. I can talk to them. Thanks.”
“Yeah.” She sighs. She sounds so old, so tired. “Happy Thanksgiving, Norah.”
***
Sunday after dinner, I text Vik. I’ve been holding off. I wanted to find something useful that would justify me bothering him. But I found nothing solid.
Two tentative conclusions, I write.
1. We already know the U.S. government funded Highwall’s research during the Cold War.
Before Miura died, he and Highwall were trying to build a machine to amplify nav.
The goal was to prevent beast manifestations on a large-scale—to protect U.S.
territories in case the USSR figured out how to control beasts.
All the prototypes failed. After Miura died, Highwall stopped trying.
2. When the U.S. government got paranoid about the USSR controlling beasts, they were telling on themselves.
Based on the papers Highwall coauthored with Lucasson, every Cold War administration from Nixon to Reagan had them trying to control where beasts manifested, to weaponize swarms. After the Trinity test, people assumed the nuclear bomb itself, the atom splitting, allowed beasts to manifest for the first time.
But after Hiroshima, beasts didn’t only manifest near the detonation.
They ALSO manifested over the USS Augusta, where President Truman, who had ultimate responsibility for the choice to drop the bomb, was sailing home from the Potsdam Conference.
He barely escaped the swarm. Experts eventually concluded that beasts are attracted not just to nuclear fission—otherwise they’d swarm power plants, right?
—but to choice AND the violent destruction of choice (i.e.
mass death). Cold War presidents liked the idea of beasts chasing bombs, a shock-and-awe follow-up to the original destruction.
They did NOT like the idea of risking beast-bites themselves if they decided to order a nuclear strike.
So: Highwall and Lucasson were tasked with keeping beasts away from presidents, generals, etc.
, and concentrating swarms around detonations.
(Miura was never involved in this research.
Not sure whether he noped out hard or the G-men demanded Highwall exclude him.
During WWII, he and his whole Japanese-American family were put in internment camps, so the G-men might have worried he’d hold a grudge against Uncle Sam for flagrantly violating his civil rights.) As far as I can tell, Highwall and Lucasson never figured out how to protect bomb-droppers.
(Maybe on purpose? Hard to say.) A lot of later papers are about REDUCING beast-risk for “major decision-makers,” NOT eliminating risk entirely.
After this novel-length text, there’s a third one I want to send. I’ve thought about you every day. I think about you all the time. It’s so quiet on campus that sometimes I talk to myself out loud, but when I do that, it’s really you I’m talking to.
Of course I don’t send that. I don’t type it out.
I don’t even wait for Vik to respond to my texts about Highwall.
I put my phone on Do Not Disturb and go to bed.
I don’t want to stay up, listening through the wall to Candace and Bree arriving back on campus, wishing I could talk to them but too scared to try.
***
On Monday, I creep out of Lucasson before Candace or Bree wakes up. I slink from class to class like a rat avoiding traps, turning sharply away when I see blond curls or shiny oxfords in my peripheral vision.
After nav clinic, where I stare at my lap to avoid accidental eye contact with literally anyone, I check my phone. Vik’s texted: Basketball courts 7 p.m.
That evening, the quad smells of cold air and decaying forest litter. Dead leaves crunch under my shoes like giant flakes of rust. At the basketball courts, Vik leans against a pole of a far basket. When I walk up, his eyes flick down my legs—and sideways to the asphalt, nowhere near me.
Sick longing spikes my heart. If we can cure the bite, if I’m not a danger to him any longer… But when I want something, I always suspect I won’t get it.
“Hey,” I say quietly.
He takes a deep breath. “Bad news.”
My stomach drops. “Did Dr. Langmore figure out you—”
“No, no. But—the thing is, I don’t have access to the whole Archive.”
My hands spasm at my sides, like I’m grabbing for a glass I let slip. “What?”
“Mr. Davis—he helps teach senior nav, but he’s an archivist by training.
After Highwall died and willed her stuff to the Academy, Dr. Langmore hired him to do the initial itemization of Highwall’s papers.
And he found out that a sizeable chunk of the papers aren’t Highwall’s.
They belong to Miura or Lucasson. Dr. Langmore assigned me to work on digitizing the Miura collection.
Mirabel’s working on Lucasson’s stuff, and Griffin has Highwall’s. ”
“But, but,” I splutter desperately. “Couldn’t you wander by Griffin’s workstation and—”
“Highwall’s papers, Miura’s, and Lucasson’s are in different sections of the Archive. Accessible by different key cards.” He meets my eyes dead-on. “It’s clear what we have to do.”
It is? Not to me. My mind’s a zero, hollow and despairing.
I force myself to think. We need access to Highwall’s papers. No one will give us access to Highwall’s papers.
But if we let that stop us, Dad and I are dead.
“Oh,” I say. “We’re breaking into the Archive.”