The Waking Moon

Chapter Thirty-Six

The door led to a dreary stairwell with an orange dome light that was clogged with the carcasses of dead bugs. I stood listening for signs of life, but all I could hear was the drone of a ventilation fan coming from somewhere above. Every sound echoed off the walls and steps. I padded silently up the stairs on the toes of my Converse. There was another black door marked “1,” but my instincts told me to go higher.

With the muzzle of the gun leading the way, I opened the second floor door and peeked inside. It was very quiet, and there was no one in sight. I slipped through the door and closed it carefully. The hall had thick carpet with elegant floral patterns. The terra cotta colored walls were lined with pretty gold sconces. It looked like a hotel, with rooms running up and down both sides. Each one was beautifully, and identically, furnished with a bed, a dresser, a desk and TV. Everything looked brand new, and the smell of paint and carpet glue lingered in the air. There were absolutely no signs of life to be found. It was as if they were still awaiting the arrival of their occupants.

About halfway down the hall, across from the elevators, was a long glass window that looked into an empty conference room. The door was propped open, and I stepped inside. Mounted on one wall were two blown up photographs. In one, a beautiful, snowy town twinkled alongside a placid bay at night. Above it, the entire sky dazzled with florescent streaks of green and red, which I recognized as the Northern Lights. Underneath the photograph was a card reading: Hammerfest, Norway. The other was also of a seaside town cradling a bay. This one shimmered in a faint red-orange light that glowed from behind a cordillera of snowcapped mountains. The card read: Ushuaia, Argentina.

Another wall was covered with printouts of computer-simulated architectural plans. There were brightly lit pedestrian malls, beautifully designed parks, outdoor cafes encircled with heat lamps. All of the pictures seemed to be of places designed to be occupied at night.

Hammerfest, Norway. My mind raced back to the geography class I’d taken at the Academy, where we’d once spent an entire afternoon talking about the planet’s strangest places. There were parts of Norway that spent months at a time with the sun never breaching the horizon. Ushuaia must be the southern equivalent. What was Juliana up to, I wondered.

I went up to the third floor and stepped carefully through the door. This hall was different. It was very stark, lit with harsh florescent lights. The floors were carpeted in a sedate blue berber, and the walls were painted a crisp white. Immediately, my stomach lurched at the antiseptic scent in the air. It smelled just like a hospital. It sounded like a hospital, too, the hushed silence punctuated with the beeping of monitoring devices and the compressing air of life support machines.

 I stepped into a room, and then shuddered in horror. There were three beds, each occupied by an unconscious patient on life support. One was a young man with half his hair shaved off and a fresh scar arcing the length of his skull. The other was a woman who looked to be in her thirties, with short black stubble for hair. The third was a man about my dad’s age, with wispy blond hair that was starting to thin out in front. Each one had tubes threaded up their noses and down their throats. And each one was hooked up to life support.

I noticed a simple tag taped to the foot of every bed. It was hard to read in the dingy light of the room. I leaned in close, expecting information on blood type or pertinent medical history. But it listed only the name, age, and profession of each patient.

Bret Allison, 26, Botanist.

Mei Hsing, 33, cellular biology specialist.

Alvin Carr, 46, architect.            

It reminded me of a cryogenics holding station, where dead bodes were kept frozen to be revived in the future, when medical advances could save them. But these patients were still alive. They were vegetables, but the machines were keeping their bodies going. I left the room and went into the next one. It was exactly the same, housing three comatose patients on life support.

Samira Abboud, 22, computer programmer.

Virginia Ellis, 32, pastry chef.

Bobby Moffat, 28, construction worker.

I slipped into room after room, each one the same as the last. And in each I studied the I.D. taped to the end of the bed.

Pauline Santibanez, 46, Records Management.

Kenneth Loop, 33, Plumber.

Otilia Wilson, 37, Restauranteur.

Gerald Hernandez, 24, builder.

Robert Conway, 43, contractor.

As I walked through the rooms reading the cards, an astonishing realization came to me. Juliana was using Grounder’s money to establish actual Noir settlements. She’d been working in cancer wards, seeking out the sickest patients as new recruits, tempting them with the promise of a kind of resurrection. She was keeping them alive until the next Waking Moon. I couldn’t help but think of my sister. What would we have done if presented the opportunity to bring her back, healthy and strong? Mom would not have hesitated.

I thought of the photographs again. The serene, twinkling lights of the town. The magical display of Aurora Borealis like a laser show in the sky. Noir settlements filled with Noir shopkeepers, restaurateurs, architects. Everything would be designed according to their specific needs. And although it may have been a monstrous notion—populating the earth with immortal beings who suck the breath from the living—all I could feel at that moment was hope. Hope for Jack.

Then I heard the sound of a woman humming. I hurried to the farthest corner of the room and ducked down behind the bed. The humming drew nearer. I aimed the rifle at the door and waited. The only light in the room was coming through the door to the hall and the soft glow of the machines, and I hoped it would conceal me. A woman in nurses’ scrubs entered the room. She was short and middle aged, with a wiry frame and graying hair pulled into a bun. Sweat beaded along my upper lip and slid in drips from my armpits. Humming tunelessly, the woman did a cursory inspection of the machines, jotted a few notes onto the clipboard in her hands, and left.

I crept to the door and peered around. The hall was clear. Holding the rifle like a soldier, with the muzzle pointed straight ahead, I heel-toed it in the opposite direction to another concrete stairwell at the end of the hall. There was only one floor left, and Rhodes had to be there somewhere.