I start to widen the tunnel to listen for Adombukar when we hear voices.
“Damn, damn, damn!” Alma whispers. Far at the other end of the hall, a group of three whitecoats has emerged from the Atrium. They look at one another, absorbed in conversation. They haven’t seen us yet.
“In!” I breathe, shoving Alma toward the nearest door. I fumble to align my palm with the scanner, my eyes darting from it to the three whitecoats down the hall. The door whispers open, and Alma and I tumble through the doorway. When it closes, we’re sealed inside the stillness of a small examination room. We stand frozen in the corner until the silence convinces me that the whitecoats haven’t seen us.
“What are they even doing in here?” Alma says. “It’s way past evening meal.”
“My dad would be here all night sometimes.”
Alma shakes her head. She glances back over her shoulder fearfully, as if she’s still in the hallway and is checking for observers. But her eyes fasten on something; rather than moving back to the door, she turns around fully to look. Watching her, I follow suit, my mind already buzzing.
“What is it?” I say, afraid to see.
I haven’t seen the animal on the table before. Pale violet in color, it has a slender snout nearly a foot long. Its whole body is slender, actually, though it’s hard to tell when it’s lying flat, restraints around its shoulders and its six limbs. Wait . . . six?
“Six legs?”
“A rahilla,” Alma breathes, taking a step toward the table. She stops herself, even though the animal appears to be tranquilized.
“I don’t remember that one,” I say. Even now I want to pass some nonexistent test.
“Mammal. Insectivore. Only one of a few species whose body seems to have adapted to resemble the bodies of its prey.”
“You’d think I’d remember that.”
She shoots me a look and a half smile.
“You were probably messaging with Rondo.” Then she turns her eyes back to the rahilla. “It looks so peaceful.”
I open the tunnel just a tiny bit wider. The rahilla’s consciousness materializes slowly on my mind’s horizon, a smudged illumination. It’s dim. It shouldn’t be dim.
“I—I think he’s dying,” I say, the realization installing a sudden lump in my throat. The rahilla’s light is fading as his life flickers out. I can’t believe he’s being forced to die here on this table alone, tied down and helpless. I approach the table, ignoring Alma’s hiss of warning, and bury my fingers in the rahilla’s long lavender fur.
The feeling is like an electric shock, traveling up my veins and into my head. I see the rahilla as it once was: his fur more vibrant, a deep, rich purple. He’s lost weight as well: his legs used to be thick with muscle. I sense that he’s lonely: only two of his species in the Zoo. He acknowledges my presence in his mind, but he’s too weak to close himself off. If he was in the jungle, this inability to guard his mind might make him prey to a dirixi or a gwabi. My hands tingle on his body: they feel hot and almost wet. I have to pull them away to examine them, the feeling is so convincing. But my hands are just my hands, and the rahilla lies where he is, his slender body rising and falling with his slow, shallow breaths.
“Octavia, we need to go,” Alma says.
I nod. But leaving him here feels wrong. I look around the room. On another platform against the wall is a variety of equipment, including the blue wand that Dr. Depp had used to wake the kunike from tranquilized slumber. I consider getting it, waking the rahilla. But that seems even crueler. There is no right thing to do here. Nothing is good enough. I carefully remove the straps that bind his body to the platform. He’s not going anywhere except to death, so he might as well be comfortable. Then I walk to the other platform, take the blue wand, and put it in my pocket. I look at Alma and nod.
We peek out in the hallway to ensure no other whitecoats are making their way from the Atrium to the main dome. We don’t hear any voices, but that could change, so we slip out of the room and walk as quickly as we can without jogging down the hallway. The tunnel is open slightly: rather than things entering and finding their way to my mind, I keep the crack just wide enough to register other consciousnesses on my radar. We pass room after seemingly empty room; many of them hide animals behind their illusory doors, but none of the presences are Adombukar. We pass what I know is the containment room, not because I remember its blank door but because I feel the many life-forces held prisoner there glowing in my mind. Almost all of them are tranquilized. Their energy pricks dully in my direction as I pass. I gently block them out, feeling like a coward.
“This is the hallway we took when we saw Dr. Albatur and Vasana 11,” Alma says in the same hushed tone. “Do you hear anything?”
“I hear a lot,” I say, frustrated. “But not Adombukar.”
“What if he’s . . .” She pauses, looking for a word other than dead. “Not listening?”
I imagine Adombukar laid out on a table like the rahilla, his light fading into nothing. Would Rasimbukar know if her father died? Would she feel it? Would she bring the Faloii thundering out of the jungle to rid Faloiv of humans? I wouldn’t even blame her at this point.
The wall to our right opens—not the door, but the wall: another hidden entrance—and the whitecoat that comes out of it walks straight into us, his head bent to his slate. The edge of the slate runs straight into my face, jutting hard against the corner of my lip, enough to draw the faint metallic taste of blood.
“Oh!” I cry as much out of pain as surprise, slapping my hand to my mouth. Alma too gives a small shriek of shock, and the sound echoes down the long empty hallway. One moment it was just us, the only noise being the muted sound of our feet on the hard floor. Now a new sound joins us: Dr. Albatur.
“What are you two doing back here?” he says, more surprised than angry.
“We . . . uh . . .”
“English?” he says. His skin is pale, but up close I see the flush under the surface: a faint spiderweb of skin cells reddened by whatever condition he has that makes his body reject Faloiv. His bushy white eyebrows crush toward each other like a fat caterpillar cut suddenly in half. “Does your father know you’re back here?”
“No, sir,” I say before I can come up with a lie.
His hand, its thick pink fingers extended, reaches for me. It settles on my shoulder faster than my reflexes can allow me to jerk away.
“With your mother in the predicament she’s in, I would think you would be more careful about toeing the line,” he says.
“Meaning?” I say, pulling back.
He narrows his eyes at me and glances down the hall, as if he’s angry that I’m keeping him from getting somewhere. The hand tightens on my shoulder.