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Liam could never
know for certain, but it seemed — and more important felt — safe enough. The
cave was slightly off their present path and twisted into an ever-narrowing
hollow. While uncomfortable, the recess seemed like an unlikely spot for a
zombie, giving them a decent hiding place with only one entrance to guard. It
was the best Liam had seen, and if they didn’t stop for rest soon, they would
all be dead within a day. Dulled instincts were a bigger threat to players than
the opponents themselves.

“We’ll take
shifts,” Liam suggested, starting a small fire in the back of the cave. “I’ll
stay up while you two get some shut-eye. Tomorrow morning, I’ll grab an hour.”

“An hour?” Ana
said.

“That’s all I
need.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

The girl
furiously shook her head, stepping back toward the entrance. Liam turned to
Ana. Allowing her to leave the cave would leave them vulnerable.

“It’s OK,” Ana
assured her. “We’re safe in here. We won’t hurt you, and all of us need sleep.
Do you understand?”

The little girl
nodded, then shook her head as if to erase it.

Ana kneeled,
then slowly crawled across the cave floor until she was a few feet from the
unmoving child. She pulled the girl’s hands into her palms. “I promise,” Ana
said. “We won’t hurt you. Would you like to sleep with my sword?”

The little girl
nodded, then shook her head no again.

“We’re going to
be OK. It’s better in here with no zombies and maybe a little sleep, than out
there with all of one and none of the other.” She smiled and pointed to the
mouth of the cave.

The girl made a
face that looked surprisingly like a smile, and nodded.

Liam said, “Why
don’t you two girls huddle together. It’s freezing in here, even with the fire.
Cuddle so you can keep each other warm.”

“I’m going to
put my sword in the corner,” Ana held the girl’s eyes, “but you hold onto your
knife, OK?”

She nodded.

Ana thanked her
again for saving them and apologized for what had happened in the forest
before, then turned to Liam and told him their earlier story, letting her hear
as she explained that she hadn’t been trying to hurt her when she swung the
sword. She was scared and didn’t know what else to do.

The girl yawned,
looking a second from collapse, then finally nodded and crawled to a spot near
the fire where Ana came up and huddled beside her. She was asleep in seconds,
with Ana following her lead a minute after that.

Liam stared at
the girls as they slept, sorting his thoughts around the unexpected doubling of
his burden. He didn’t mind looking after Ana. He owed it to her, and to Jonah
even more. Betraying The Underground left Liam with a debt he intended to pay —
even if it meant settling the tab with his life.

Liam was
prepared to get Ana to the Final Battle unharmed, then kill himself before it
started. But keeping the child alive would be impossible. The Darwins had one
winner. If Ana lived, the girl died. So what was the point in prolonging the
inevitable?

As he stared at
the child, still beneath a heavy sleep, Liam wondered about the cruelties that
had draped her life in City 2. Liam had never been to any City outside of City
6 and had no idea if their Dark Quarters were similar, but human cruelty knew
no bounds, and he suspected that if someone cut her tongue out, the evils were
similar and possibly worse.

Liam felt a
chill, wondering how many atrocities had been visited upon people he loved
because of his betrayal. He fell asleep wishing he’d been more faithful to The
Underground.

Though Liam
tried staying awake until one of the girls opened her eyes, his lids grew too
heavy to lift and he finally fell asleep not long before dawn. He was asleep
for maybe an hour, though it felt like seconds, when he woke to the hum of
several orbs growing suddenly louder. Blue light bounced everywhere as
Kirkman’s voice echoed through the bottled air.

What the
hell?

“Are you ready
to wake up, contestants? I hope so, because it’s tiiiiime to play! And we’ll be
starting this morning with a brand-new mini-game!”

Liam sprang to
his feet and looked around. He was standing in a clear plastic box in an old
barn that must’ve been older than the Walling.

Morning light
poured through the open roof, illuminating the heavy vegetation creeping across
it. Liam looked for his companions and found another pair of plastic boxes, one
in the middle and the other at the far side of the barn, holding both Ana and
the child.

“No!” Liam
screamed, pounding his fist against the plastic wall. He was trapped; they all
were — likely gassed and dragged from the cave before getting tossed into the
old barn. Liam had never seen Producers get so involved in a show. At least
when watching from the monitors, the Games seemed to unfold naturally enough,
but this was an outright manipulation of events.

He wondered if
the audience had seen what had happened, or if they were lied to, seeing Liam,
Ana, and the child waking in the boxes and thinking they had somehow stumbled
inside the barn on their own.

“What did you
do?” Liam screamed into the monitor at the top of the box.

Kirkman smiled,
then said, “Are you prepared for another challenge? We have a BRAND
new
mini-game, added to the Darwins THIS SEASON! And you’re lucky enough to play it
first! The new mini-game is called
The Killing Choice
. Are. You. Ready?”

The barn doors
slid on their tracks, opening wide and spilling bright light inside. Beside the
light fell dozens of rapidly moving shadows, immediately followed by a horde of
shuffling zombies.

Liam looked up
at the monitor, screaming.

T
he rope bit
deeper into Jonah’s flesh as he pulled harder against his restraints. His
wrists felt like raw meat. He tugged with more force, sending a shock of pain
through his body as the cord bit into his tender skin. He winced, then hung his
head in defeat as he realized he wasn’t going to break free of his bindings.

Again, it seemed
that working on Egan was his only chance of freedom.

When he looked
up, Jonah was surprised to find himself staring at Egan, though he’d not heard
the man enter the room.

Egan sat in the
chair across from Jonah and stared at him for minutes without words.

Jonah’s head
screamed as his flesh burned. “What?” he snarled, daring Egan with his voice.

“Have you given
any thoughts to your defense?”

“I don’t even
know the crime I’m charged with.” Jonah swallowed, trying to keep from covering
Egan in spit.

“Murder, of
course. Someone must pay for the deaths of my wife and son.”

Jonah said nothing,
certain Egan wasn’t searching for apology. He was on safari for something else,
though Jonah couldn’t begin to guess what that might be, and he felt too beaten
to try. He sat quietly, waiting for Egan to give words to thought.

“I’ve been
thinking,” Egan finally said, nibbling on a fingernail while narrowing his eyes
at Jonah. “You said you were set up for your wife’s murder, right?”

“Yes,” Jonah
nodded.

“And you’re
sticking with that story?”

He nodded again.

“So, how was The
State able to manufacture such damning proof against you? I mean, the evidence
had to be airtight, right? They couldn’t throw you out like they did me. No,
you were a Watcher. So, what did they have on you, Jonah?”

“My daughter
testified against me.”

Egan’s eyes went
wide as his mouth split into a giant smile.

“Oh,
reeeeeally?”

His cheeks
twitched, but Jonah refused to satisfy Egan by revealing his anger.

“Your own
daughter testified
against
you? She must’ve really hated you.”

“No,” Jonah
shook his head. “She didn’t.”

“So, what was it
then? Why would she help set you up? Was she corrupt like her daddy?”

“I don’t know
how they did it,” Jonah said. “I suspect The State planted memories in her
mind. A good friend of mine swears there’s a chip inside every citizen living
behind the Walls, and that the Cities use these chips to plant false memories
at will.”

“A chip?” Egan
said, clearly trying to suppress a skeptical laugh as he raised an eyebrow.
“And who is this friend?”

“Someone in The
Underground. Name’s not important.”

“How could this
friend possibly know about such a chip, if it really did exist?”

“I don’t know
whether he actually knows or suspects.” Jonah shrugged. “He has plenty of
conspiracy theories and no shortage of outlandish ideas, so it’s hard to know
what to take seriously. I thought it was far-fetched until I stared at my
daughter in the witness box, listening to her swear she saw me murder her mom
in cold blood.”

“So you think
they somehow corrupted your daughter’s memories?”

“I don’t know,”
Jonah said, hoping honest answers would color him as cooperative or at least
sympathetic, and that Egan might be more willing to grant leniency. “I can’t
see any other reason why she’d testify as she did. She seemed so certain during
the trial, so filled with rage — the sort of anger that could never be faked. I
don’t think she was intentionally lying. She believed that she saw me murder
Molly.”

“Hmmm,” Egan
said, stroking his chin as if considering Jonah’s situation. “Why would The
State want your wife murdered?”

“I’ve no idea.”
Jonah shook his head.

“Did you have
any information on The State, or Keller? Did they somehow discover your role in
The Underground?”

“They questioned
me on The Underground. I don’t know if they knew, someone told them, or perhaps
it was just one of Keller’s many witch hunts.”

“Are the tunnels
still open?” Egan asked. “Can The Underground still get people in and out of
City 6?”

“They were
working when I was arrested, but without me there, I don’t see how they could
keep them running unless they had someone else — someone I didn’t know about — on
the inside. They might be open, might be closed. Your guess is exactly as good
as mine.”

“Could you find
the tunnels now?”

Why is he
asking this?

Egan’s people
had to know many, if not most of the end points. There were catacombs and
abandoned tunnels running beneath most of the land from The Barrens to The
City, a winding maze few people knew well enough to navigate, but if Egan had
been living here and receiving new citizens to his underground city, then
surely he was aware of at least some of the tunnel locations.

Something wasn’t
adding up. But Jonah would hide his suspicions for the moment, in hopes that
Egan would spill some information that might shed light on the confusion.

Jonah looked
Egan in the eyes. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know about my involvement
with The Underground. However, I’m not willing to give away any information
that might compromise the organization or put anyone’s lives at risk. I’m
sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry,”
Egan said, then stared, just long enough for Jonah to start squirming in his
seat.

Egan then stood
up and looked down at Jonah. “The Underground sounds like quite the noble
enterprise, helping people escape the treachery of The City. Yet, when
I
was forced into The Games, no one thought to help my family, no one came to
retrieve my wife or children and usher them to the other side of the Walls. Why
do you think that is, Lovecraft? Any theories you’d like to share?”

“I don’t know. I
wasn’t part of The Underground then. Maybe the tunnels weren’t operational, or
maybe used only on rare occasions. All I can do is speculate, and I don’t see
how that helps either of us.”

“So, if you
had
been
with The Underground then, you’re saying you would have helped my
family escape to the outside? You would have laid your life on the line for
theirs, made sure they were spared, safe outside The City?”