Suzanne Collins - Gregor and the Code of Claw

Try as he might, Gregor could not keep his eyes open. At one point Luxa whispered, "Sleep, we will manage this."

So Gregor just let himself drift off. When he awoke, everything was quiet. Luxa, Hazard, and Boots were asleep on the bed across from him. Temp snored gently on the floor. Ripred must have sent everyone to bed. Gregor tried to go back to sleep, but his back and hip hurt. He was hungry again, too. He made his way to his feet in stages and went into the code room. Lizzie and Ripred were asleep on the floor, as they'd been the other night. Ripred opened one bleary eye, took him in, and then let the lid slowly slide shut. Gregor went over to the food cart and rooted around for a snack. He found a tureen half-filled with lukewarm beef stew and finished it off. His stomach felt better, anyway.

Gregor wished Howard would come by with some more medicine. But when he thought of the wounded, and his shoes sticking to the bloody floor of the High Hall, he knew Howard hadn't had a second to do it. He could send a message to the hospital, but again, they were so busy just keeping people alive he felt like a wimp bugging them. He wondered about his mom up at the Fount. Was she getting the care she needed? Or was the hospital there as overwhelmed as the one in Regalia? And what about his dad and grandma? Boy, he hoped his dad wasn't having any ideas about coming down here to rescue them all. Maybe his relapse was bad enough to keep him in bed. It was an awful thing to wish on his dad but it was better than having him drop straight down into the jaws of the rats.

He poured a mug of cold tea and gave up on the idea of returning to bed. He wasn't really tired now, anyway. Might as well make himself useful. The area on the stone grid was covered with the latest messages all neatly transcribed in Lizzie's aqua marker. But there were still bunches of the old code spilling over baskets. Gregor grabbed a handful of strips and settled himself down to work. It was mostly the same-old same-old stuff about troop movements that had occurred weeks ago. And then out of nowhere came this message:

// |||\ |\\ // |/ / // |\\ \|. ||\ |\\ \ ||\. |\\ \\ . \| |\\ //.He wrote it as the alphabet:

UXJUDIUJQ. FJEF. JP. QJU

And then applied the Code of Claw using Lizzie's system. The words stabbed him in the heart.

Twitchtip. Memories of the rat swam before his eyes. Her nose buried in the moss of the arena because the smell of humans made her ill. The desperate look on her face as she spun around in the whirlpool. Her claws digging into his life jacket, as she choked out, "Don't — let — go!" And he hadn't let go. He had risked his life to save an outcast rat when no one else would bother to try. And then they were friends, despite the rat/human thing. Twitchtip was the first one who knew he was a rager. She had given Boots food. She had dragged herself through the rats' maze to help Gregor find the Bane, then forced him and Ares to leave her to die. But she hadn't died. Not right away. The rats had kept her alive in a pit and probably tortured and starved her while they tried to extract information out of her about Gregor. And finally, only recently, she'd left the world. As alone as ever. The tears splashing down on the words surprised him because he hadn't cried in such a long time. Not for his mom or Ares or the mice or Thalia or Luxa, or even for himself when he knew about the prophecy. It was just that it had all been so awful, Twitchtip's life. Banished to the Dead Land because of her remarkable sense of smell, living alone in that harsh world before she finally, desperately, had teamed up with Ripred. Bleeding to death in the maze but not fast enough, not soon enough to escape falling into the hands of the rats who hated her for being a scent seer and then hated her even more for helping Gregor.

"All right. All right now." Ripred was looking over his shoulder at the message.

"It's not all right!" Gregor's voice was harsh, but low, because he didn't want to wake everyone to see him like this. "I should have gone back for her."

"We thought she was dead," said Ripred.

"But we didn't know. And they had her all this time. And we never even found out for sure," said Gregor. He thought of his dad, wasting away for years in that rat pit. Had she died in the same one they'd found his father in?

"Even if we'd known, there's almost no chance we could have gotten her out," said Ripred. "It isn't likely they —"

"Just shut up, Ripred! I mean, what do you care? You never even liked her! You treated her like trash. You only made that deal with her to help yourself, so I' could kill the Bane for you. Don't act now like — like she mattered to you!" said Gregor. He hadn't kept his voice down. Practically everyone was awake now. Frightened by his outburst. Afraid the rats had broken into the palace. "Just shut up!"

Gregor stormed into the rat room and yanked the curtain closed behind him. He sank down on the bed and wept. He knew it wasn't just about Twitchtip, it was about all of the dreadful things that had happened and the ones that awaited him in the coming hours. A hand, Lizzie's he thought, tentatively edged around the curtain. "Leave me alone!" The weeping sent new shock waves of pain through his ribs, but it was a long time before he'd cried himself out. Then he just lay on the bed watching the soft flicker of light from an oil lamp on the wall. It was quiet outside again. Everyone must have gone back to sleep.

Footsteps entered the code room. "Where is Gregor?" asked Howard in an exhausted voice.

"In there," Luxa replied. She had not gone back to bed, then. She was waiting for him. "We had word of Twitchtip's death. They had her imprisoned in a pit until recently. He is greatly upset."

There was a moment of silence while Howard absorbed the news. "So should we all be. Only Gregor's grief should not be mixed with shame, as should ours," said Howard. He had not attempted to save Twitchtip from the whirlpool at first but had taken excellent care of her afterward. "She did us all a great service and what poor treatment we gave her in return."

Howard opened the curtain to the rat room and came in. "I am sorry," he said. Gregor didn't reply. "Come. Sit up. You must have need of this." Howard helped him to a sitting position, administered a dose of painkiller, and gave him the rest of the bottle for later. He painted a new coat of medicine on Gregor's hip and calf stitches, and applied fresh bandages. Finally he examined his back. "Quite a bruise, but the bones are holding in place," he said as he wrapped the ribs again. Then he sat on the bed, elbows on his knees, digging the palms of his hands into his forehead, trying to find the right words. "Gregor, of all those Twitchtip knew in her life, I am sure she would wish you the least amount of grief," said Howard.

"You helped her, too. After the whirlpool. In the maze," said Gregor.

"Because you were right," said Howard. "You were the only one of us who looked past her fur and teeth and claws and saw who she really was. If we are ever to have peace, that will be the first step. The alternative is this." Howard waved a hand vaguely, somehow suggesting their current situation. "Slaughtering one another. Walling ourselves in with our dead. So pointless. All of it." He gingerly touched his eyes, bloodshot and swollen from fatigue. "You must rest your back if it is to heal."

"You need some rest, too, Howard," said Gregor.

"No. If you could see the hospital..." Howard looked down at his hands. They were shaking badly.

"Only I begin to fear I will do more harm than good."

"Just for a few hours. Lie down. I promise I'll wake you," said Gregor.

Howard looked at him as if he couldn't quite process the words. "A few hours?"

"You are going to hurt somebody. Lie down." He stood up and pushed Howard back on the bed.