THIRTY

HIS HEAD TURNS, BUT THE ORDERLY PUSHES him away so fast, there’s no chance for him to say anything. The pounding of soldiers’ feet comes next, and I press myself under the desk. The hallway is filled with the sudden shuffling of slippered feet, and when I peek out, I see the Connies being herded by the orderlies and nurses into their rooms. But the crowd keeps the soldiers from running down the hall, and I say a prayer to whoever’s watching out for me—thank you for the delay.

I slip my fingers between the collar and my neck, feeling the heat of it. I never knew the collar burned. Now I feel even worse about all the times my mom’s had gone off. I wait for it to send me to my knees again, but though I can still smell that faint burning and I hear a low, constant hum that comes from inside my skull, I’m no longer staggering. No more double vision. I breathe. In, out. Breathe and concentrate on being calm.

I hear Dr. Donna’s voice barking out orders, but I don’t dare peek around the desk.

“She can’t have run very far. You, check the stairs. You, the elevator; she might’ve been stupid enough to try that. And you and you, start checking each and every one of these rooms! Get these people out of my way! Move it!”

They’re going to catch me, and when they do, I’m sure that their starving me will be the least of my worries. At the thought of all the other things they might do to me, the hum in my head gets louder. I close my eyes against a sudden surge of red haze. Once, in gym class, I’d run too fast in heat without drinking enough and passed out in the locker room. This is the same red haze that overtook me right before I went down, and I can’t afford to be unconscious now.

My hands run along the bottom of the desk, looking for a drawer. There must be one, where they keep the pencils and pens and paper clips. I find it, pulling quickly, no time for quiet. They’re coming.

The drawer comes out too fast, spilling everything. I fumble, clumsy, trying to keep my eyes focused on the junk strewn all over the floor. I find a paper clip and straighten it, even though my fingers don’t want to work. I drop it. Can’t find it.

Breathe, Velvet, I hear my mother say. Breathe, honey. You can do this.

I find the slim piece of metal and slide my fingers along the collar, searching for that tiny, nearly invisible hole, but it refuses my touch. Desperate, the sound of pounding boots coming closer, I slip the paper clip in the laces of my sneaker and bend the wire just enough to keep it there.

Then I run.

I don’t overthink it—I head for the room across the hall and directly for the window, where I slip behind the curtains. I unlatch the window, which opens out to a parking lot. This building is massive and I’m ten stories up. Surrounding the parking lot are the familiar green fields that dot most every place around Lebanon.

If I can get out this window and down to the ground, I can run, fast and far.

But the only way to do it is jump. I might be Contaminated, and so far it’s made me furious and reckless, but it hasn’t yet made me fearless. I don’t have time to strip the bed of sheets and make a rope. I barely have time to squeeze out the window onto the narrow ledge that leads from window to window. I tug the curtains closed behind me to give myself some time, and then I’m clinging to the ledge with my fingers tight against the bricks.

It’s like climbing the rock wall, except there are no soft mats to catch me and no conveniently placed grips. But I tell myself it’s just like the rock wall so that I can keep moving. Slide my hands, slide my feet along the ledge to the next window, where there’s nothing to hold on to but the glass, and I’m afraid to go across it in case the curtains are open and they can see me.

So I stay there, trying to force myself to move until at last there’s nothing to be done but to do it. My fingers slip on the smooth glass, but I find a place to hold on to above the window. I go as fast as I can. Hand over hand. Feet sliding.

I fall.

At the last second, I grab, fingernails bending and breaking. It hurts, though I’ve had worse. I swing, first from one hand, then grab with the other and hang. My feet dangle inches above the ledge below me. Above me, there’s a rattle of curtain rings, and a window, not the one I came out of, opens. I hear shouting and wait for someone to look out and down, but apparently they’re not expecting me to have jumped out the window, because nobody does. At least not on this floor.

I do hear sirens, though. Not fire, nor police, more like an alarm going off inside the building. And, even though my fingernails are split and bleeding and I’m dangling from a ledge several stories above the ground, knowing that the fall could break every bone and probably kill me—and that’s if I’m lucky—I start to laugh.

I laugh at the thoughts of Dr. Donna’s face and Cody’s broken nose and how I’m just a kid who got away. Wearing a collar, no less. I guess security doesn’t have to be so tight when almost everyone inside the complex has been made incapable of fighting back.

I can’t hang there forever. I work my way to the next window, and the drainpipe there. I cling to that like a barnacle, waiting for it to break free of the brick and toss me to the ground, but it holds long enough for me to slide down it to the next floor. Then another. The rivets holding the metal brackets bite at me, tearing my skin through my tracksuit, but there’s no choice. It’s slide or fall. Or jump, I think when I ratchet down another floor and the agony in my thighs from the cutting metal makes me want to pass out. I’m still three stories up when I twist to the left and I see an open Dumpster. Can I do this? Hand over hand, my fingers cramping and aching, I climb out along the window ledges—these are bricked-up windows now, no longer glass—until I’m hanging over the Dumpster. If I’ve miscalculated, I will definitely break myself on the edge. Images of me hitting wrong and breaking my neck send me into a cold sweat, but I don’t have a choice.

I drop.

I fall.

I land up to my waist in a mess of cardboard and coffee grinds. Shattered glass slices my calf, and both my ankles explode into agony, but when I test my weight on them, they don’t seem to be broken. Breathing hard against the choking stink of the garbage, I crouch and try to gather my wits.

How long do I have before they come for me? Can they track me by the collar? I don’t have time to figure it out.

I pull myself out of the garbage and land, legs buckling, next to the Dumpster. The sirens are still going off inside. The collar settles on my throat, and I wait for another surge of shock to disable me, but though I can hear the humming and the red haze filters around the edges of my vision again, my muscles don’t spasm.

I gather myself, looking around for any signs of something I can run toward. The parking lot is huge and mostly empty, but I’ll be totally exposed. Even when I get into the field beyond, anyone looking out the windows could see me. I have no place to hide. Nowhere to run. They’re going to find me.

I run, anyway, when a car pulls up next to me, and it keeps pace with me. The guy behind the wheel rolls down his window. “Get in.”

I stumble over my shoelace and hit the asphalt on my hands and knees. At least I’m hidden now by the car, which is between me and the building. Panting, my sweaty, stringy hair in my face, I look up at him.

“Get in,” he says again. “I got off duty twenty minutes ago, before the shit hit the fan, but when I heard what was going down, I thought I might find you. Get in.”

I know this kid. It’s the same young soldier who helped me get away that day when I tried saving those Connie kids.

I get in the car.