Reached

cure. Unless, of course, the virus changes again. But, for now, the data says that the worst has passed. I wouldn’t trust the data except that Cassia’s the one who sorted it.
    Now we’re heading toward a different time: once people are well, they will need to choose what kind of world it is that they want to live in. I don’t know that we’re going to come through that as well as we came through the Plague.
    “You saved the world,” my father likes to say.
    “It was luck,” I tell him. “We’ve always been lucky.”
    And we have. Take a look at my family. My brother went back to the Borough from Oria City when the Plague first broke, and they all managed to keep from getting sick until near the end. And even when they did fall ill, Ky arrived just in time to bring them back here so we could heal them.
    “We tried to hold the Borough together,” my father says.
    To his credit, they did. They rationed and shared the food and looked after each other for as long as they could.
    It’s not like they did anything wrong. My family has always believed that if you worked hard and did the right thing, you were likely to have it all work out. And they’re not stupid. They know it doesn’t
always
go that way. They’ve seen terrible things happen and it’s torn them up. But that’s as close as they’ve been to real suffering.
    Also, I’m a hypocrite, because nothing bad has really happened to me either. Ky’s family has disappeared entirely. Cassia’s family lost her father. But not us, not the Carrows. We’re all fine. Even my brother, who never did join the Rising. I was wrong about him. I’ve been wrong about a lot of things.
    But the cure we made does work.

    When it’s time for my break, I leave the medical center and walk out toward the river that goes through the center of the City of Camas. Now that the barricade’s down and the mutation is under control, people have taken again to walking along the river. There’s a set of cement steps cut into the embankment not far from the medical center.
    Ky and Cassia go there sometimes, when he’s back from an errand, and once I found him there alone watching the water.
    I sat down beside him. “Thank you,” I said. It was the first time I’d seen him since he’d brought my family in for the cure.
    Ky nodded. “I couldn’t bring my own family back,” he said. “I hoped I’d find yours.”
    “And you did,” I said, trying to keep the bitterness out of my voice. “Exactly where the Society left them.”
    Ky raised his eyebrows.
    “I’m glad they’re back,” I told him. “I’ll owe you for the rest of my life for bringing them in. Who knows how long it would have taken for them to get the cure otherwise.”
    “It was the least I could do,” Ky said. “You and Cassia are the ones who cured me.”
    “How did you know you loved her?” I asked Ky. “When you first fell for her, she didn’t really know you. She didn’t know anything about where you’d been.”
    Ky didn’t answer right away. He looked out at the water. “I had to put a body in a river once,” he said finally, “before all of this. An Aberration died in camp, earlier than the Society planned, and the Officers made us get rid of the evidence. That’s when I met my friend Vick.”
    I nodded. I’d heard them talk about Vick.
    “Vick had fallen in love with someone he wasn’t supposed to have,” Ky said. “He ended up dying for it.” Then Ky looked at me. “I wanted to stay alive after my family died,” he said. “But I didn’t feel like I was living again until I met Cassia.”
    “But you didn’t feel like she really
knew
you, did you?” I asked again.
    “No,” Ky said, “but I felt like she could.”

    I start down the wide steps to the water. Ky’s not there this time but I see someone else I know. It’s Lei, with her long black hair.
    It’s been days since I’ve seen her, even in passing. After she recovered, she went back to work, and our paths have rarely crossed since. When they have, we’ve both nodded and smiled and said hello. She likely knows that I’m working on the cure but I haven’t had a chance to talk with her.
    I hesitate, but she looks up at me and smiles, gesturing for me to come closer. I sit down next to her and I feel like a fool. I don’t know where to begin.
    But she does. “Where did you go?” she asks me.
    “To the mountains,” I say. “The Pilot took some of us there. That’s where we found the cure.”
    “And