After the End

58 JUNEAU

LANDING IS TEN TIMES SCARIER THAN TAKEOFF. The ground grows closer and closer and we are going so fast, I am sure as soon as we touch ground the impact will rip off the bottom of the plane. Instead, with a sort of pulling tension, we land smoothly and taxi around large loops of runway as we slow. Finally we stop near a long black car that looks like it could easily fit twenty people inside.

Baldy slaps the handcuffs back on me, and I am shuffled quickly from the recycled air of the plane through the stifling hot oven of the runway and into the pine-scented frigid air inside the car. Although I spent most of the plane trip coming up with escape plans, my curiosity has gotten the best of me. Somehow, Miles’s dad knows something about my clan that I don’t. Or at least he thinks he does. And I’m determined to find out what he knows.

So I don’t give the men any trouble this time and climb willingly into the car. We spend most of the next hour sitting stationary on the road, with hundreds of other cars, inching forward from time to time. Again, I think of Dennis and his mournful tone when he talked about pollution.

At last we reach a downtown area, which has the same forest of glass buildings as the other cities, all perched next to the sea. The car stops outside the tallest of these mirrored buildings. Baldy acts like he is helping me out of the car but actually uses the gesture to get a firm grip on my upper arm as he leads me over the simmering-hot sidewalk through the front doors.

I have seen these skyscrapers from the outside but, besides the Salt Lake City Library, which was small in comparison, have never been in one. I wasn’t even tempted to in Seattle. The giant glass plinths look more like tombstones than a space where people would work and live.

We walk through an immense cavern of an entryway into the tiny mirrored space of an elevator. I feel my stomach drop to my toes as we shoot to the highest levels of the building, moving as quickly upward as we would be if we were free-falling downward.

Lights flicker on a wall panel until the very last button, 73, lights up. A bell rings, and the doors open. My head swims, and although a man stands directly in front of us, waiting for us with hands clasped behind his back, all I can focus on is the window behind him. We are so high that the world is a tiny toyscape laid out in miniature as far as the eye can see. My legs refuse to hold me any longer. I sink down to the ground, my hands still cuffed behind me, and use every remaining bit of willpower not to throw up.

“What have you done to her?” the man says, and strong arms lift me and carry me through a door into an office. “She tried to run,” Baldy says as he deposits me onto a white leather couch and unlocks the handcuffs. Necktie runs to a shelf lined with bottles and pours one into a glass. I lift it to my mouth. Water. Just water. But it tastes so good, and is the only natural thing in the room besides a large treelike plant near the window. Oh gods, the window, I think, and my stomach churns.

“Leave us,” the man says, and Baldy and Necktie make a quick exit, pulling the door softly behind them like it’s made of spun sugar. The man scoots a chair close to the couch, and when our eyes meet, I see Miles in thirty years: still-thick but graying hair cut short and carefully combed, aquiline nose, and dark-green eyes.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“Why did you bring me here?” My throat is clenched so tightly, my words come out in a croak.

“I brought you here because you have some information that I need,” he says simply. His expression is solicitous. He doesn’t look like what I expected—I thought I’d find a tyrant. Someone willing to use torture to get what he wants. But this is just a middle-aged man in a business suit.

I glance around the room and see, to my horror, that there are no actual walls: We are surrounded by windows. The granite floor is strewn with intricately woven rugs, and tasteful furniture is positioned around the room to make it appear more like a living space than a place of business.

“I can’t… I can’t be this high up,” I say, clutching my stomach.

“Let me close the blinds,” he responds, and walking to a desk, picks up a little black box and clicks a few buttons on it. The windows automatically begin darkening, while the lights of the room become brighter until we are in an enclosed space and I can no longer see the frightening view outside.

I close my eyes and try to slow my breathing. After a moment, I open them and see that he’s sat back down in the chair in front of me. “My name is Murray Blackwell,” he says, leaning forward, his hands clasped together. He stares at my starburst. A muscle under his eye twitches, and his jaw clenches and unclenches. “And your name is…,” he prods.

“I’m Juneau,” I say, and take another sip of the water. I have to decide how much I’m going to talk. His movements are graceful. But the more I watch him, the more I notice something in his eyes—something cold—that doesn’t match his body’s lithe gestures. He’s like a snake, smooth but poisonous.

He is dangerous, I think. I can’t trust him, but I’ll tell him as much as I need to find out what he’s after.

“Juneau…,” he says like a question, and waits.

“Yes?” I ask. My brows knit in confusion. I don’t recognize his body language. He could be speaking Swahili for all I understand.

“Juneau what?” he asks.

I stare at him.

“Your last name,” he says finally.

I exhale. “Oh! Newhaven,” I respond. Everyone in the clan knows one another’s last names, but we never use them except in ceremonies, and I’ve never actually had someone ask mine.

“Juneau Newhaven, you are from…,” he asks, and this time I respond automatically.

“Denali, Alaska.”

He nods, acknowledging the fact that I’m playing along with his Q&A.

“Good, good,” he says. And then leaning farther forward, so his elbows are on his knees, he asks softly, “That means, I suppose, that you know a man by the name of Whittier Graves?”

I gasp, not even trying to hide my surprise.

“Yes, you do know him,” he says with a jolly smile, like we’re sharing a joke. “Well, I’m glad to hear it. I’ve been wanting to talk to him for the last few weeks, but it seems like he has disappeared. Along with the rest of your—what did he call it?—your clan.”

Facts start pinballing around in my head. This man knows of Whit. He knows about our clan, and where we live. He knows enough about me to have me followed.

Instead of launching my own questions, I wait quietly to hear what other details this man will give away.

“Mr. Graves approached me about a drug he and some colleagues developed some time ago. He called it Amrit. Does that sound familiar to you?”

I shake my head no.

“I expressed interest in purchasing the formula for Amrit. Even offered to come to Alaska to visit your clan and see how his field study had gone. Mr. Graves refused, insisting on personally bringing me the data. We made an appointment to meet here a month ago. Mr. Graves did not show. As you can imagine, that had me worried.”

Mr. Blackwell leans back in his chair and crosses his arms across his chest with a pained expression, like it’s difficult for him to tell me this story. But from my study of human facial expressions and body language, I see anger behind his careful words.

And he is watching me as carefully as I watch him: studying my face for any change of expression. Seeking any clues he can gather from my reactions. I relax my facial muscles and, leaning back in the armchair, do the same with the rest of my body. I already gave away the fact that I know Whit. I don’t want to accidentally give him anything else.

“I sent some men to Alaska to try to find him. We had a clue of where he was. Traced the calls he made by GPS to a cave near Denali, where they found residue from a recent fire.”

I can’t help it—my eyes widen, and I suck my breath in. This man tracked us down to our territory. He knew where we were.

Mr. Blackwell raises an eyebrow—he’s curious. In my surprise at hearing him describe Whit’s cave, I gave something away. The edges of his lips move upward just a millimeter, but he readjusts his poker face and continues.

“A tracker I hired followed a path from the cave to an abandoned village some miles away. Twenty or so yurts. Lots of dead dogs killed by gunshot. A few farm animals, chickens, goats, and pigs, wandering wild in the ruined encampment and the woods nearby.”

He comes to a stop and waits for me to say something. I formulate my question carefully.

“Why would you come after me—one of the clan children—if Whit… Mr. Graves is the one with the information you need?”

“I was told by a reliable source that you are Mr. Graves’s understudy—that he is your mentor. I was told that if I couldn’t find him, you may be able to give me the same information. I don’t know if Mr. Graves went directly to one of my competitors, but I certainly won’t lose both of you to another drug company.”

“How did you know I wasn’t with the rest of my clan?”

“A tip from the same credible source,” he says, and then sits silently again, waiting.

“Exactly what information are you trying to get?” I ask.

“As I mentioned before—the chemical makeup of the drug Amrit,” he says. “The formula for the drug.”

“See, that is what confuses me—what I haven’t understood since I overheard Miles talking to you. My clan doesn’t make drugs! We don’t use any kind of medicine besides first aid!” I say, trying to steady the anger in my voice. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, but I think you do,” Mr. Blackwell shoots back. “Tell me something. Are there others in your clan with the same iris deformation you have?”

Through all the rage and frustration and betrayal, I am beginning to feel something new. A genuine interest as to what the hell is going on.

“All the children have the starburst,” I respond, raising my chin to show him that he can’t bully me into telling him anything I don’t want.

He nods, considering what I’ve said. “A drug as strong as Amrit is capable of producing this severe of a genetic abnormality… maybe ‘mutation’ is a nicer way to say it—in the offspring of those who take it. Mr. Graves was very vague with the details, but did mention the necessity to develop the drug further in order to avoid severe aftereffects. I see now what he means.”

“Our starbursts are from being close to—” I stop myself before I tell him anything about the Yara.

“Being close to what?” he prods. “A nuclear testing site? A water source containing biohazardous materials? There are other things capable of causing a genetic mutation like yours, but I don’t believe it for a second. I think your parents and their friends took Amrit as a part of a test, and now their children bear its mark.”

As I listen to him, something tugs deep inside me. I suddenly think of Tallie and of how she urged me to think of what I learned from my past and weigh it against what I feel is true. And though I don’t want to believe a word this man is telling me, something about his theory rings true.

And then everything falls together and then falls apart and I can’t think, can’t talk, can’t move, can’t breathe, as the fictional pieces of my past begin flashing before my eyes and re-form themselves into facts.

A loud buzzing rings in my ears, and my vision is gradually reduced until the blackness around me is as dark as a cave. I can’t move. I’m no longer here.

I hear Mr. Blackwell’s voice, as if from a long ways away. “Ms. Newhaven? Are you okay? Ms. Newhaven?” Someone is patting me—lightly slapping my face. I hear a voice say, “Quickly. Send a doctor to my suite. I have a visitor who is having some sort of attack. A teenage girl. Make it fast.”