Deliberately he moves back around the broad table to the other side, as if giving me my space—calming the wild animal that he’s caged—then taps a finger on the wood surface again. He’s unnaturally calm, in his movements and each word he speaks, but I wonder if there is a storm beneath the surface, a torment withinhis own mind, struggling to keep control. To seem as if he has all things within his grasp, no point losing his temper, better to portray a sense of calculated steadiness. He stares pensively down at his hands, thinking, and I can just make out the brand on his forearm beneath his rolled-up shirt—the starburst. “Throughout history—” he starts, as if he’s about to share something that’s only just occurred to him. “—there have always been easy ways of doing things, and harder ways.” His one sharp blue eye clicks to mine, while his dead eye quivers strangely, out of sync with the other. “Let me assure you, the harder ways always amount to more pain. But I have no interest in harming you, in torturing you, however—” He lifts his hand from the desk, again touching his hair, sliding it across his forehead. “I’m also well practiced at it. Artful, you might say. You will tell me the truth… one way or another, and it will either be between painful, unnecessary screams, or seated comfortably, as if we are old friends. And I’d like to think we can both behave like old friends, wouldn’t you agree?” His voice is cool and menacing. A perfect, sinister balance of both. And I hate it.
I clench my teeth—seeing how this will go, hearing it in the practiced calm of his voice: He is a man who gets what he wants, who won’t stop until he does. He’s come this far, killed countless people, and he’ll push this to the very edge, until I talk, or until I’m dead. And maybe either is fine with him.
So I nod. I give him something he wants. A hint of compliance. Obedience. And it tastes like bile on my tongue.
“Good,” he answers, nodding. “That’s good.” He walks to one of the windows, flattening his oiled hair against his temple. “Now,” he begins again, as if it were a fresh start. “Are you the last Astronomer?”
I swallow, fear scraping at my windpipe—telling me not to give him the truth—but I have to give him something. And this one thing feels so small. “Yes.”
His head swivels to face me, startled by the sound of my voice for the first time, the word carried up to the pitched ceiling. “Which means your mother must be dead?”
I breathe, feeling the cold wall behind me. “Yes.”
He nods, like he senses I’m telling the truth. And he likes the rhythm of it, the back and forth, victim and tormentor, question and answer. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he says, and his genuine tone makes me feel sick. I don’t want his sympathy—I want to lunge forward and press my fingers into his eyes, one blue, one gray—I want to cause him pain. And when he drops to the floor, I will run, break down the door, and escape. But instead I stay quiet, obedient.For now.“Do you know what your tattoo means?” he asks.
I feel my rapid pulse at my throat, my hands curving into fists at my side. “It’s the mark of the Astronomer,” I say, because he already knows who I am.
One corner of his mouth lifts, an eerie half smirk. “But that’s not all, is it?”
I keep my eyes on him, tracking every movement, afraid he’ll come closer again, that he’ll want to see the rest of the tattoo. “If you think I have a cure to the consumption,” I say, “I don’t.”
He steps to the side of the table, circling me like a coyote hunting a rabbit. I want to shove past him, try to escape, but I’m certain he has a knife tucked somewhere in his belt, or at his ankle. He wouldn’t come in here completely unarmed. “I know you don’t have a cure,” he answers, one eyebrow raised, a curious twist at theedge of his mouth. As if he knows something he’s not saying.
Confused, I feel my mouth tuck down. “But you’re a Theorist…,” I say. The man I saw at the market in Mill City, ringing the bell, shouted thatthe cure is near!And August told me that the men hunting me believed I had a cure. It’s always been about a cure.
Holt’s shoulders settle. “I’ve always loved that name—Theorist.” He smirks, a cruel turn of his lips. “It could mean anything, couldn’t it? Someone who theorizes, ponders the yet unknown.” He shakes his head now, lips falling flat. “Some might believe the Astronomer is a cure, thatyouare a cure. But that’s not exactly right, is it?”
I narrow my gaze at him, keeping my teeth clamped shut.
“You’re something else.” He pushes out his lower jaw, and I think he’s going to reach out for me, grab my neck, but his hands only tremble at his sides—resisting. “If we’re lucky, you just might be our salvation.” He bites against the words, breathing, and tilts his head to one side like he’s cracking his neck. “But we both know it comes with risks…. We both know you might fail.”
The room teeters softly, a flare of light catching through the window slats and glinting across my eyes. I press my palms to the wall behind me, using it to hold myself up.He’s lying,I think.He doesn’t know the truth.
“This surprises you,” he says with a sliver of satisfaction. “You thought I was mindlessly chasing you, in search of a cure—” He lets out a sharp laugh, then snaps his mouth closed. “I know the stories too. As well as you.”
How?I wonder, but don’t dare ask. Don’t dare utter a word. Instead I keep my eyes steady on his, refusing to let him see how scared I am.
“We are not so different from each other,” he says. “We’ve both lost people to the sickness.” His teeth tapping again, his head craned to one side. “We both want the same thing.”
“We’re not the same,” I spit, unable to keep it in, the blood roaring in my ears.
And he smiles, revealing a full row of teeth, some broken—shattered from the relentless grinding. But then his mouth cuts into a hard, cruel line, eyes hooded, and when he says the next words, they are bitten through clenched teeth. “We can choose a different ending,” he says now. “You and I. We might not be able to save everyone else, but we can save ourselves.” He flashes me a look, eyebrows raised, like he thinks I’ll see that he’s right. That together, we can rewrite what’s already been done.
But I tuck my mouth into a line, breathing through my nostrils, feeling more fury than fear. “Fuck you.”
He watches me a moment, studying the lines of my face, the anger cut into every crease and slope of my mouth, before he turns to one of the windows, peering out—even though I’m certain he can’t see anything through the narrow slats. “I know your tattoo is a map…,” he says calmly, his tone swinging from merciless to patient with a quick flutter of his gray eye. Now, at last, he’s getting to the point. “Can you decipher it?”
I close my eyes, then open them again, blinking through the sparks in my vision, trying to keep the room from tilting. But I don’t answer him.
I let the silence fall across the room.
I press myself into the corner—I won’t answer any more questions. I won’t tell him about my tattoo. He’ll have to kill me first.
After a long moment, he lifts a hand into the air, letting a thin shaft of sunlight illuminate his palm, nails trimmed short, scrubbed clean, then exhales through his nostrils. “Did you know we are evolved from apes?” he asks coolly, dropping his arm back to his side. “Most people don’t realize this, and sometimes I wonder if we’re no better than animals, fighting each other for food and land, anything we think we deserve. But do you know whatwehave that apes don’t?” He swivels back around, sliding his jaw left to right, not waiting for me to answer. “Language—the ability to discuss, debate, to use words to avoid pain.” He cracks his knuckles against his palms, breathing in, then blowing out a long, irritated exhale. “But if you refuse to use this marvel of evolution, then I will treat you like an animal instead.”
He gives me one last weighing look, like he’s considering what he’s going to do next—what torture or method of pain will be most useful—before he turns, teeth locked shut, then strides toward the door. I’m startled, watching him walk away—wondering if he’s really leaving me alone. Maybe this is part of the game: leaving me in the dark of this room to consider if my secrets are really worth keeping. If I’m willing to endure pain, to keep them. He’s going to let time sink heavily over me, until my own thoughts start to crack with doubt.
But before he reaches the door, he stops, glancing back at me. “I remember you… little lady,” he says, using the name he called me back at the miners’ camp when I pointed the rifle at his forehead. “From that little cabin up in the hills. You were with the tonic man.” He presses his hands together as if in prayer. “If I had known then who you were… I would have taken you instead of the horse.” He smirks, nodding to himself, remembering how close he was thatday. Only a few feet away. He even offered the choice to Pa: me or Odie. “I would have killed to get to you.”You have killed,I think, remembering the bodies hung from ropes in Fort Bell, remembering the barn. The screams of those inside. A twitch puckers his upper lip, becoming a snarl. A darkness sinking over his eyes. “You’re more valuable to me than anything else. And now that I have you… I’ll kill to keep you.”
