My heart pounds in my chest. It’s midmorning by the time Neca and I reach the dump.
Neca catches up to me the second I stop inside the workers’ gate. “You’re sure this is the only way?”
“You afraid of a little garbage?” I’m not about to admit the smell would have brought up my breakfast if I had eaten any. “Besides, if Centavo’s plan is half as stupid as I think it is, the dump is the least of our worries.”
“All right, the faster the better,” Neca says.
I stretch my neck for a glimpse of the control tower. I can’t see anyone on the catwalk or behind the glass. Good enough. With a final deep breath through my nose, I dart toward the backside of a mountain of food waste. Even if someone sees us, they might not care. No one is that uptight about garbage security.
The main concern is to avoid piles scheduled for compacting. Masa is in charge of that part, and it’s done with telekinesis. In the blink of an eye, a whole mound of scrap metal can become nothing but a chunk of ore. When Olin and I were little, my parents worked in the yard. My father told me about a coworker who wandered too far during his break. He had misread the compacting schedule, or decided to try to reclaim something of value.
Anyway, it had taken my father and the others eight hours to figure out the general vicinity of his remains. This was the sort of life lesson my father liked to instill in us. The result was to make the dump an instant source of forbidden mystery. Olin and I spent an entire rainy season imagining it as an underwater kingdom forgotten by the annals of time only to be rediscovered by a brother/sister team of renowned explorers.
The garbage piles are an ever-shifting sea, and at one point I loop around the same pile twice. After a few minutes, I locate the fenced-off sinkhole I’ve been looking for.
“This keeps getting better.” Neca has covered his mouth and nose with his collar.
“If you know a better way into the caves—”
“Let’s just do this.”
I’m already hurdling the fence. Three long strides and I’m sliding down a pulpy pile of paper products in varying states of decay. Nothing is dumped here anymore, but plenty of garbage blows into the pit before it’s compacted. Luckily, none of it is too disgusting. Although, there was the one time I landed squarely on the carcass of a decaying vulture. Not my best day.
In a matter of seconds, we’re underground. I lead the way through the system of natural caves to a spot outside the shield dome—the most sacred place in my confined world, my mother’s garden.
Behind me, Neca’s feet fall softly on the smooth floor of the cave. He’s as graceful as he is strong. The fact does nothing to lessen my anger at his presence. There is zero chance I’m leading Centavo’s errand boy to my mother’s garden.
Sure, the trip was originally my idea. That involved me alone making more logwood tea. Now Centavo has me fetching buds from a weed I nearly killed off due to it overgrowing half the garden during the time it took Olin and me to rediscover it.
Centavo had known the plant would be there. He had described it down to its serrated leaflets and sticky resin. He swore he’d never been to the garden, that he didn’t know where it was and didn’t want to. You don’t have to trust me. Hell, I certainly don’t trust you. But you’re taking Neca. Those had been his exact words. When I asked him why, the whole plan got ridiculous.
At least locating a plant in my mother’s garden is something I can work with. Adaptations are inevitable, with plants and with people. So I’ll figure out what to do with Neca along the way.
The hazards of running in the dark force me to slow my pace. I’m intimately familiar with my surroundings, and due to the occasional distant opening, the caves aren’t pitch black. Still, I’m not accustomed to navigating them at high speeds.
Neca sighs in relief.
Calming my urge to punch his chiseled face, I remind myself no real harm has been done. I’ve only shown him an entrance into a maze of caves, an entrance the authorities certainly know of.
Thinking of the authorities circles me back to the one thing that’s bugged me about Centavo since the moment he foiled my attempt to shish kebab his brain. I break the silence. “How is it that Centavo has avoided execution or exile all these years? He’s openly telekinetic, and yet he doesn’t seem to have any security at all.”
“He knows his place. Rule number one of the underground.”
“Oh, really? And what about you? What’s your place, Nightmare Neca?”
He hesitates. “So you’ve seen me fight?”
“No,” I lie. “I’ve seen the posters.”
“Then you know my place. It’s there in the cage. I’m a psych-fighter.”
“You don’t stay in the cage. You don’t live there.”
“Oh, but I do.” His words drip with swagger.
I feel the claws spring out, and I say the words despite not meaning them. “That sounds pretty pathetic.” He’s quiet for several seconds. I hear nothing except our footfalls and breathing. Should I feel guilty? Who else will deflate his super-sized ego?
“What about you, Calli Bluehair? What’s your place?”
I know the answer instantly. “I don’t have one.”
“Well then, maybe we’re both pathetic.”
I don’t agree with Neca’s assessment for one second. To have a place is to act according to the world’s expectations, to fit inside someone else’s definition of who you should and shouldn’t be. That’ll never be me. “You know what I think?”
“No, but I’m sure you’re gonna tell me.”
“I think Centavo doesn’t have to hide because he’s in charge.”
“Of course he’s in charge. He’s been virtually synonymous with the underground for—”
“He’s an immortal, for gods’ sake.” I shout the words, rousing some bats in the distance. “He doesn’t have to hide from them, because he’s one of them.”
We’ve stopped moving, and Neca leans close as if he has the guts to pound the revelation out of me. “That’s ridiculous. You shouldn’t talk of things you know nothing about.”
I shove him out of my face even though it’s too dark for me to see anything except the whites of his eyes. “Really? How is it he’s a master of telekinesis, at least sixty years old, and not dead from the twitch? There’s not another soul in town who’s lived with the active infection past twenty-five, and you know it. Never.”
“He’s in exceptional health.”
“He lives off of steak and neuhtli by the looks of it.”
“Mexcalli,” Neca sighs. “He drinks mostly mexcalli, not neuhtli. Look, you don’t know him. He’s not some monster preying on helpless chadzitzin.”
For the first time since I’ve known him, Neca seems genuinely rattled. “I’m not saying he is.” I start walking briskly, aware we don’t have the luxury of standing still. “I’m saying he’s an immortal governing the underground from the inside.”
“Fine, maybe he’s an immortal. I don’t know. Even if he is, that doesn’t mean he isn’t one of us.”
“Neca.” I turn and grab him by the shoulders, almost sorry for him. “Think about it. Why would an immortal want to be one of us, unless it was to control us?”
“What do you know about it? You’re the one who’s so desperate to become an ometeotl.” There is real venom in his words. “You’d just as well be one of them.”
I start moving again, this time at a slow jog. “If by ‘one of them’ you mean in charge of my fate, yes. If you mean refusing to give up and die, yes, I choose to be one of them.”
“Now it all makes sense.”
“What?” I do my best to slap Neca with the word.
“The way you look at me. The way you talk about chadzitzin. You think we’re all quitters.”
Well, of course I do. Doesn’t Neca? How else could anyone possibly see them? Lazy, undisciplined, thrill-seeking quitters who would rather live a short, selfish life and die from the twitch than put in the hard work to ensure a future society and the possibility of a future for themselves. I don’t say any of this out loud. Instead, I resume my defensive posture. “What?”
“Nothing, just an observation. Besides, aren’t we getting close to this garden yet?”
We’ve still a ways to go, but the question reminds me of my earlier train of thought. “About that,” I reach into my pocket and clutch the smooth, elongated rock I’ve been carrying since the sinkhole. It’s small enough for me to curl my fingers around yet heavy enough to compensate for my girl-like upper-body strength. “I’ll be right back, I promise.”
“What?”
In one swift movement, I spin and punch him in the side of the jaw. Never once knocked out in the cage, Nightmare Neca turns out to be human after all. Catching him under the arms, I ease him to the cave floor and prop him up as comfortably as I can. There’s no way I’m taking him to my mother’s garden, but I need him for what comes next.
I shiver just thinking about it. Ridiculous. Impossible. When Centavo looked me in the eyes and told me we’d have to sneak into Immortal City, I knew without a shadow of a doubt he was one of them. What I can’t figure is his interest in me and my brother.
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