The Last Uprising (Defectors Trilogy) (7 page)

I thought back, and my brain seemed to lurch and stall like an old car. Of course I knew that Amory had been held in a facility as I had, but I had no internal timeline to put the memory in context.

“I don’t know,” I whispered.

Greyson stared at me for a long moment, breathing in deeply. The look on his face told me he had reached a decision. It was as if this answer was enough to confirm his worst fear. I was not myself.

“I guess I expected that.” His voice was cold. “Well . . . you should clear off before Amory hears us. It’s not fair to put him through this.”

I took a deep breath, watching him and wondering what I was supposed to do. I did not belong here. I belonged with World Corp. That was what I had been trained for. These people were not my friends. Certainly Amory wasn’t — not after what I’d heard him saying to Roman. It didn’t matter what Greyson thought.

As I turned to go, Greyson’s voice startled me in the stillness.

“Do you remember sixth grade? Mrs. Sanders’s class?” I turned to look at him, startled, and suddenly had a picture of eleven-year-old Greyson. His hair had been longer then — wild, dark brown, and curly around the ears. He was small for his age.

“Yeah,” I said, but Greyson wasn’t listening to me anymore, and his voice sounded strangely choked.

“I feel a lot like I did then. Like I didn’t know what I was supposed to do — ever.”

The year we turned twelve was burned into my brain. It had been a horrible year for Greyson. His dad had died, and his mom had sunk into a bad depression.
 

I hadn’t understood that then, but I noticed the way Greyson came to school — as though no one had looked at him before he left the house. He wore the same T-shirt for several days in a row.
 

A boy in our class, Brock Epstein, took to tormenting Greyson every day in gym class — rallying a soccer-team worth of cronies to make each day a living hell. They stole his lunch money while he was changing into his gym clothes and, an hour later, told everyone that Greyson’s mom was too poor to afford food or wash his clothes. To this day, I could still hear the boys’ chants of “trailer trash” that seemed to follow Greyson down the hall.

I solved the problem as any sixth grader would: I shared my lunch with him and quietly told Brock and his friends to go away.
 

“Remember Brock Epstein?” said Greyson suddenly.

I nodded, my nails reflexively digging into my palms as I remembered. The pain had returned, throbbing in the back of my skull as the memory of Greyson’s tiny, sad face stared at me.

“I heard he’s PMC now.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Do you remember how you finally got him to lay off me?” He laughed a little. “It still amazes me to this day.”

“I snuck three cans of tuna to school in my backpack and poured the juice into his locker while we were in gym,” I said automatically, amazing myself with the clarity of the memory. My heart had been pounding the whole time, so sure I would get caught or Brock would turn his taunts on me in retaliation. “They made fun of him for the smell for weeks, and I got Cole Dillinger to tell him he was cursed.”

I glanced at Greyson, and we both tried to stifle our laughter. For some reason, this made me feel better than I had in weeks.
 

Something stirred inside me, which made the pain intensify. I ignored it and focused on the other feeling coursing through me: warmth all over and a great expansion in my chest that lifted the enormous weight I had felt for days. It was so strange to be laughing with Greyson, but tonight, he didn’t feel like the enemy.

As our laughter died away in the dark, I could tell the moment was over. Greyson’s smile was starting to fade, and we were snapped back to reality.
 

I had planned on leaving just then, but now it seemed foolish and impulsive. Instead, I turned around and followed the tire tracks back toward camp. It just wasn’t the time.

I sneaked back into my tent, which felt much colder than it had when I left.
 

Now, on top of feeling helpless and betrayed, I was wildly confused. I was starting to think Greyson, Amory, and Logan were telling the truth. We
had
been friends. So what had gone wrong? And why did I feel so sure that World Corp was right?

I had vague shadowed memories of a life, but that seemed so far away. It didn’t really feel as though it belonged to me.
 

Thoroughly drained by the encounter with Greyson and the memories he had dredged up, I didn’t have the energy to fiddle with my ropes to make it look as though I’d never left. I curled up on my cold pallet and pulled the sleeping bag over me.
 

Shivering and still aware of whatever had stirred inside me, I ignored the prickle of needles at the base of my neck and fell into an uneasy sleep.

The sound of sirens shattered the stillness of the night. I was up and out of my tent before even opening my eyes, clamping my hands over my ears to block out the incessant, piercing note.

Panic choked me instantly. They were much too close.
 

Within seconds, beams of blue light flashed between the trees from two different directions, and the rebels started rushing out of their tents, groping for loved ones and sprinting into the woods.

I backed away into the trees. My heart was pounding. I couldn’t think clearly. Still in the fog of sleep, I tried to piece together an explanation. The PMC was rounding up the rebels. Already I could hear the screams and shouts and the scuffle of feet in the snow.
 

I focused on breathing and tried to tell myself that they were not the enemy. The PMC officers were on my side. They would not hurt me. Some foolish part of me half expected one of the officers to demand to know what they had done with Haven Allis.
 

But this was not a rescue mission. This was a raid.

I saw movement in the darkness: a lone figure sprinting around the edge of the woods toward me — or, rather, toward my tent. It wasn’t a PMC officer. He wasn’t wearing the reflective white uniform.

Gunshots erupted in the darkness, and I crouched down, covering my ears and trying to get ahold of myself.

What was wrong with me?
After everything I had been through, why
now
?
I couldn’t freeze up. I had to make a decision — had to move. The PMC raiding the camp wouldn’t know my face. They would think I was a rebel.
 

That thought was almost a relief. Some tiny, demanding part of me was tearing around in my chest, ordering me to run away from the PMC toward the fleeing rebels. It didn’t make any sense.

“Haven!”

I heard the sound of my name like a whisper. It was urgent, but I could not identify the source of the speaker. I had lost my view of the dark figure.

“Haven!” It was Amory, and his voice was coming from just outside my tent.

The canvas rustled. Amory swore quietly and tore out into the woods — right toward my hiding place.

Without thinking, without stopping to consider the consequences, I heard his name escape from my own lips.

He stopped, looking around wildly.

“Here,” I hissed.

Not bothering to tread quietly, Amory crashed through the frozen leaves and drifts of snow, stumbling slightly on a hidden tree root. I didn’t see his face until it was inches from mine, his hands gripping my arms, traveling down my forearms to untie my ropes and feeling only skin.

“Oh, thank god. How did you —” In the dark, I could see his mind working out an answer. “Never mind. We have to get out of here.”

Gripping my hand hard, Amory pulled me deeper into the woods. The shouts of the PMC were growing louder. Gunshots reverberated in the frigid air, making my teeth rattle.

Amory had broken into a run, yanking me through the trees behind him. Stray branches whipped me in the face. I swatted my left hand blindly in front of me, my right still clutched in Amory’s hard grip.
 

I couldn’t tell how far we ran or for how long. After a while, my legs went numb, working on their own. I couldn’t breathe, but it was from the wild fear choking my airways rather than fatigue.
 

Amory never released my hand.

As the fear pumped adrenaline through my veins, I noticed a strange clarity I had not felt since my rescue. There was no pain in my head. If anything, my senses seemed to sharpen. My brain had been wired to thrive on this fear — this choking drive for self-preservation at all costs.

Amory would not hurt me. I didn’t know why I trusted him, but I did, and I kept running.

I had failed World Corp — that I knew. I had made a decision, leaving with Amory, and now I was a fugitive like the rest of them. The PMC did not forgive traitors.
 

I could not blame Stockholm syndrome for turning my back on the officers. Hating the rebels in my tent for days didn’t count. During a revolution, it was one choice — one split-second, life-or-death decision — that cemented your loyalties and showed the world where you stood. I couldn’t even bring myself to regret fleeing with Amory.

Up ahead, a bulky shape emerged from the blackness. The bluish light filtering through the trees gave it a strange gleam, and I slowed my pace. It was an old, rusted-out Volkswagen van. The garish orange paint was washed out in the dark, and huddled near the tires were Logan and Greyson.

“All right?” Amory panted, hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath.

Greyson nodded. He was hunched protectively over Logan, who looked ghostly pale in the fractured moonlight.

“You guys weren’t followed?”

“No,” said Greyson. His voice was bitter, and I remembered he had been on watch. “They came out of nowhere. Must have been driving with their lights off ten miles an hour. Then they turned the sirens on and floored it. I grabbed Logan and came straight here.”

“They had to have been tipped off,” said Amory. “They knew exactly what they were looking for. We’re lucky they didn’t hem us in on all sides.”

“Who do you think it was?” asked Logan.

“Could’ve been Roman,” said Amory in a cautious tone, as though testing the waters for the others’ opinions.

“Don’t be stupid, Amory,” Logan snapped. “He’s out. He risked his life to save me and Haven.”

“Yeah, but he left us once before, didn’t he? I wouldn’t say he’s beyond betrayal.”

“Glad to hear you have such high opinions of me,” said a voice from behind us.

We all jumped and looked around, startled. Roman was a huge guy with massive shoulders and a beefy neck that seemed to swallow his ears, yet he moved through the woods with the stealth of a ninety-pound ninja.

He emerged from the shadows with a rucksack slung over his shoulder. “Don’t suppose any of you were smart enough to take some supplies?”

Greyson, Logan, and Amory stared at their feet.

“Yeah, didn’t think so.”

Everyone stood silent. Then, finally, Greyson voiced the question no one else would. “How many of us are gone?”

“You mean killed or captured?” The question was sharp and accusing.

Greyson shrugged, and sympathy tugged at my chest. He felt responsible.

“Couldn’t tell. Seems like most of the old crowd disappeared into the woods, but a lot of the commune defectors were being rounded up. They aren’t built for this life.”
 

His voice was laced with disgust, but I couldn’t tell if it was distain for the commune defectors or general anger at the state of the world.

“Who was on lookout at the point?” asked Greyson.

“Supposed to be Rogers, I think.”

Amory ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “How did he not see anything?”

“Maybe he was the one who tipped them off,” offered Greyson.

“He couldn’t know he would be on watch,” said Roman. “We make it random to keep things like that from happening. No, it had to be some fucking commune coward.”
 

Amory sighed. “Whoever it was, he’ll be long gone by now.”
 

“It doesn’t matter,” Logan broke in. “We should keep moving. The PMC is probably searching the area.”

Amory nodded, eyeing Roman with suspicion.

“You got something else to say?” Roman snapped.

“No. Nothing.” But Amory still had that look in his eye.

“How many times do I have to put my neck on the line for you people before you realize I’m on your side?”

“Enough!” snapped Logan. “Your fighting is what’s going to get us all killed.” She turned on her heel and plowed off deeper into the woods.

Greyson trailed behind her wordlessly, and Amory motioned for me to follow.
 

We walked in silence with Roman bringing up the rear. I sensed his presence like an itch on the back of my neck, but I never turned around. I couldn’t shake the feeling that he wanted me gone. It shouldn’t have bothered me, but it did.
 

Now I had nowhere else to go. I couldn’t return to World Corp after I’d fled. Even when I’d had the perfect chance to escape and bring back intel, I hadn’t left. I was a traitor.

After two hours of walking, my legs had begun to burn from crunching through the heavy snow.
 

“Where are we going?” I asked Amory.

“We’re just scouting the area for a good place to camp out for a day. After that, we’ll regroup with the other survivors.”

“Is that a good idea?”

“The PMC never returns to the same place once they’ve cleared it. They haven’t got the resources for that . . . not with all the rebel activity that’s moved north of the border.”

“Why do people come north if they aren’t documented? Isn’t that more dangerous?”

Amory smiled grimly. “That depends what you’re more afraid of: the PMC or the carriers. No carriers north of the border, and a lot of people prefer to loot from the PMC than try to make it on their own in the states.”

“Let’s stop,” said Greyson. “We’ve walked far enough.” He was eying Logan, who still looked slightly pale and queasy. Clearly, she still hadn’t recovered from the nasty side effects of the cure.