Authors: Erin Bowman
“We saw you lower a lifeboat—a
full
lifeboat.”
“It got overturned,” I say. “The three people you just killed were the only ones who didn’t freeze to death that very night.”
“You have a history of lying, Gray, and I don’t believe you.”
“That’s not my problem.”
It’s so dark, I don’t even see the blow coming. My face is suddenly burning, my mind blurry. It is the worst punch I’ve ever taken, but then I hear Marco reholster his handgun, and I know far worse than his fist struck me. I blink, move my head side to side, test my jaw. When I find it working, I toss a few foul words Marco’s way.
He grabs me by the collar and shoves me. A shelf along the wall hits my back and I cough in pain. I feel a deep, suppressed urge to push him off, but when I try to move, my limbs are too heavy. It’s like I’ve already given up.
“Why are you here?” Marco snarls again.
“Seeking shelter on my way into AmWest. That was our goal, just like you suspected: cross the border.”
“Then why turn off the cameras here?”
“I didn’t.”
“We know you did. It’s the only reason we even found you!” I think he shakes his head, almost in embarrassment. “Sitting on the borderlines, waiting like idiots. I should be thankful you made such a stupid move.” He shoves me harder against the wall. “Last chance, Gray. Give me the location of headquarters, and I’ll spare the rest of your team.”
“I already told you. They’re dead. That threat means nothing.”
“Have it your way. It makes no difference to me whether we get the location now or back in Taem.”
And this is fine. Marco can take me to Frank, throw me in his prisons, torture me for the location. I’ll die before I give it. At least Bree and the others can escape after I’m gone. I refuse to be responsible for the death of everyone under my lead.
Marco twists toward the doorway and shouts, “Get the choppers set to evacuate. And ready the weapons, too.”
The guards’ feet stomp off through the snow. Marco grabs my arm and tugs.
“I know your team is here somewhere, Gray, and I don’t have the time to search them out. I’ll let the bombs do that instead.” He leans toward me. “But since you claim they’re already dead, I guess you can just think of this as an unceremonious flattening of a deserted test group.”
And at this, the numbness in my core melts, because I can
not
be the only one to make it out of this alive. I twist when Marco least expects it, deliver a blow to his gut. He trips over something hidden in the darkness. I throw another two punches, grapple for his gun. It’s so hard to see, though, and he’s stronger than I anticipate. His elbow catches me in the jaw, then a boot finds the inside of my leg, near the knee. I buckle, and then collapse as I’m kicked in the stomach. Again, and again. I’m trying to scramble to my feet, trying to crawl to safety, but each time his foot finds me in the dark. I shield my face in my arms, try to protect myself from the blows. I feel his hands on the back of my shirt, flipping me over. His gun is right before me, the barrel pressed against my forehead.
“I know the posters ask for you alive,” he sneers, “but believe me when I say I have no problem bringing back a corpse if you fail to cooperate. I can get the Rebels’ location from someone else. It’s only a matter of time.”
“Good, then you do that,” I say, positive he’s bluffing. “Go on. Shoot me.”
He flicks the safety off. Reaches for the trigger.
And then he does the unthinkable: He drops the gun. His eyes bulge. His hands fly to his neck.
I grab the fallen weapon and scramble backward, trying to make sense of things. Marco is sputtering, flailing, grabbing at something beneath his chin.
I step to the side and the figure comes into view: dark skin, dark clothes, almost invisible except for the whites of his eyes. Bleak. I don’t know when he snuck out of the tunnels, or how he managed to get into this room unseen, but he’s here now, a rope looped around Marco’s neck. He pulls back on it with all his strength, and when Marco starts to go limp, Bleak lets him slide to the ground.
“If I can come with ya, I’ll get yer team to the Wall. I swear it.”
“Deal,” I say immediately.
We shake at the same time Marco stumbles to his feet, coughing. He pulls a small knife from somewhere along his waistline and I turn on him, the gun aimed. We’re little more than an arm’s length apart, my weapon inches from his chest, his held out just as close.
“Don’t even think about it.”
“All I have to do is call for help,” he says, voice raw.
“You make a sound and I’ll shoot you.”
“You won’t pull the trigger.”
“Are you sure you want to test me?”
“No,” he says. “Maybe not.”
But he doesn’t lower his knife. He attacks.
I twist away instinctively, and as a cold sting rips down my thigh, I realize too late that I’ve missed my chance to fire. Marco darts for the door, but Bleak is quicker. He tackles him, loops the rope around his neck a second time, and drags him backward. Marco is gagging, making a scene that is sure to get us caught, but the pain blooming over my leg is so sharp and unforgiving that I barely hear him. I feel in the dark, wincing. The knife went in at the meaty part of my left thigh and trailed toward the outside of my knee as I twisted. It’s dangerously deep for only an inch of the entire cut, but there’s already a lot of blood. Too much blood. I shed my jacket and wrap it around the wound, tying it as tightly as possible by the sleeves.
There is a horrible screeching sound, and when I look up, Bleak has dragged something that looks like a short bookshelf to the center of the room. He throws his rope over a rafter, hauls a wheezing Marco atop the bookshelf, and tightens the looped section of rope around his head.
In a flash of recognition, I know what I’m seeing. Gallows.
Bleak pulls on the rope and Marco gags, toes barely reaching the wood.
“It’s yers to finish,” Bleak says to me.
I hobble forward. Marco mumbles something I can’t quite hear. All I can comprehend is the gun in my hand and the fury in my chest, hot and rancid. I despise this man more than anyone I have ever met. He has taken so much from me, things that cannot be replaced or mended or rebuilt. He held invaluable pieces of my life in his palm and smothered them without hesitation.
I raise the weapon, aim directly at Marco’s heart. I reach for the trigger.
It will be loud. The Order will hear. But I have to do this. I
need
to do this.
My hand shakes just slightly.
Marco chokes on his laughter, the sound escaping him broken and ragged. “And your father sacrificed his life for you! What a waste. Look how weak you are.”
The shaking gets worse. I can’t steady my arm.
“You don’t have it in you!” The amusement in his voice is unmistakable. “You can’t pull the trigger.”
I lower the weapon. “You’re right. I can’t.”
A triumphant smile spreads across Marco’s lips.
“But I can do this,” I say, “and it’s for my father. For all of them.”
I lift my good leg and kick the bookshelf from beneath him.
I DON’T LOOK BACK.
Bleak leads the way through a side alley. I can barely see where we’re going, but he must have the town’s layout memorized, because he plows ahead despite the darkness. I stumble after his form, not nearly as quiet as he is because my feet are unprepared for the sudden dips in the earth and my injured leg is throbbing. I hope I’m not bleeding into the snow, giving the Order an obvious trail to follow. They’re bound to check on Marco soon. And that’s if they didn’t hear our struggle to begin with.
Bleak and I dart into a building with a collapsed roof and have to crawl beneath a fallen beam before we can stand again.
“This way,” Bleak says.
I move toward the sound of his voice and find him holding back a raglike cloth that hangs against the wall. Behind it is a small room. He lifts something in the floor and reveals the top rung of a rickety-looking ladder.
He’s halfway down it when the Order finds Marco. I can hear their shouts.
“Get him down from there! Do it quickly.”
“It won’t matter. He’s beyond saving.”
“Find the boy!”
Pushing aside the pain in my leg, I move after Bleak and pull the trapdoor closed overhead.
The passageway we drop into is in rougher shape than most of Burg’s tunnels and only a fraction of the size. At the bottom of the ladder, we have to flatten onto our stomachs. I hear the sound of a flint striking, and then Bleak holds a feeble flame. The tunnel walls around us are dirt and earth and rubble. I instantly worry they’ll collapse on us.
“Where are we?” I whisper as we begin shimmying through the tunnel on our stomachs.
“Underground.”
“I know that much. Did you dig this?”
He nods. “So I could go above on my own terms.”
“Is that what you were doing tonight?” I think of the journal he keeps stashed in the schoolhouse, the girl’s dreams that have become his own.
“No. Yer friend Sammy found me, told me what was happenin’. I locked Bruno and Kaz in Titus’s room and ordered a few people I trust to spread the word:
There’s a fight comin’. Stay hidden. Wait for me to come back.
Then I locked yer team in the Room of Whistles and Whirs.” He glances over his shoulder at me, apologetic. “I thought ya were with them, ya know? The Reapers? I thought ya’d be up here tellin’ ’em how to find us, but then I heard what that man did to yer team, Gray, even after ya showed yerself.” A quick pause. “I’m sorry.”
I should say something, but my tongue feels swollen and it’s not like words will fix what’s been broken. They won’t bring back Emma or Bo or Xavier.
“I don’t know if yer a Reaper or not,” he continues, “but I know ’nuff to see that the ones out there are yer enemy as well as mine. And if yer fleeing from them, I wanna flee with ya, too. And I wanna make sure my people don’t get the same fate they got last time those killers crossed our Wall.”
We crawl in silence after that.
The tunnel is not terribly long, but the going is slow. I imagine it took several years for Bleak to dig. Eventually we spill into what must be his room, tumbling through a blanket hanging against the wall. The space is even more bare than Titus’s. No table or chair-crates. No hammock. Just a mat on the floor. A blanket is folded and set to the side. Knives positioned with care hang from the wall. I spot the modified hayfork he mentioned the other day, its attached rope coiled into organization.
Bleak springs across the room and grabs it, followed by a pair of knives.
“Here,” he says, thrusting one toward me. It’s a good weapon, made of bone. The grip is smooth and slightly curved, fitting easily into my palm, and the blade, no longer than my forefinger, is sharpened expertly.
We slip from Bleak’s room and through the halls, making our way to the Room of Whistles and Whirs. The door isn’t locked as Bleak said, but in a manner, the team is indeed “locked in.” Two people who must be Bleak’s friends stand guard. They are armed with knives—in hand, strapped to their backs, hanging from their belts—and have stacked a series of crates in the doorway. Anyone exiting the room would be slow and easy to take down.
“They ain’t our enemy,” Bleak says, striding up to the boys.
He fills them in, and I scramble over the crates, too impatient to clear a proper entrance. The entire team is inside, huddled around the computers. Bree sees me first. Her eyes dart from mine, to my bloody leg, to my eyes once more.
“You made it back.” She sounds like she doesn’t believe her own words.
The rest of the team spins around, and their faces light up. Sammy embraces me the way Blaine often does, one hand clasping mine, the other smacking my back.
“The second Bleak shoved us in here, I thought you’d chosen the wrong guy to trust,” he says, “but it looks like he saved your skin after all. Although dammit, Weathersby, you really cut it close.”
“Close?”
“Marco’s countdown,” Clipper says from near the computers.
“Sammy nearly wet himself with relief when Marco stopped at
two
,” Jackson says.
I force a smile but can’t bring myself to tell them the truth. If they heard the countdown, they must have also heard Emma confirm that Xavier and Bo are dead. But Sammy still seems relieved, the Forgery is cracking jokes, and Bree is scowling only semifiercely so she might as well be smiling, all of which means that they couldn’t possibly have heard the gunshot. They think Emma’s still alive, and that small victory seems to have rendered them hopeful. I can’t ruin that by telling them I was too slow, that I am the reason Emma is dead like the others. I need their hope to fuel us all, because I’ve run dry.
“I sent out a distress call,” Clipper announces. “I couldn’t reach Xavier and Bo and then when we got locked in here, I started thinking: about these computers, all the AmWest rumors, that message from Ryder to
engage
.”
“What are you saying, Clipper?”
“You were up there with Marco and we didn’t know if you’d make it back. The Order had us surrounded. Still do, actually.” Clipper’s eyes move from the keyboard, to the computer screen, and finally back to me. “I thought they’d be our best shot. I couldn’t reach them directly, so I just . . . I sent out a broad call. Addressing the Expats. Hailing them for help.”
“What?” A wave of panic rushes through me. “I thought you said the computers were only networked with Franconian technology.”
“They are. But the Rebels had spies at the source. Remember Christie, who helped you and Harvey get the vaccine? Who’s to say there aren’t Expats in important places? With access to Franconian information?”
“But if you sent a call in the open, doesn’t that mean that the Order could pick it up, too?”
He frowns. “Well, yeah. It was always a risk.”
“A risk?” I shout. “Could you have done anything more stupid, Clipper? If the Order hadn’t called for backup already, some will definitely be sent after they hear your ‘distress’ call. And why would the Expats even
think
of helping us now? We’re surrounded, with more Order forces likely on their way. Aiding us would be like walking to their deaths!”