FOR THE LONGEST TIME, no one spoke. Chancellor Maddox was calling us terrorists? Here all this time I thought we were the good guys.
“Which crime would you like to answer to first?” Maddox said. “Running away from your resettlement camp? Burning down an infirmary? Killing soldiers of the Republic? Oh, and let’s not forget your little stunt with the avalanche. Thank goodness Dr. Gallingham and I had just left camp.”
She took a step forward until she stood next to Jocelyn Perrella’s desk. Her eyes blazed. “Did you really think I wouldn’t find out what you were saying about me? I’m the next president of the Republic, you little turds!”
I was too stunned to speak. One moment we were heroes, warning the president’s aides about the dangers of Chancellor Maddox—and the next we were traitors.
“How do you explain those weapons at the launch facility?” Hope asked.
The president-elect actually laughed, a condescending kind of chuckle that suggested this was better left to the adults.
“I don’t doubt that you saw a launch facility, and I don’t doubt that there were a number of rifles there. Frankly, I can’t think of a better place to store weapons. Can you?”
“Then why were you moving them to the Eagle’s Nest?”
“First of all, there’s nothing unusual about moving arms and ammunition from one site to another—that’s standard military procedure. Especially in a time of rebellion,” she added pointedly. “And secondly, I’ve never heard of this Eagle’s Nest and doubt that it even exists.”
“What’re you talking about?” Hope sputtered. “Of course it exists. It’s your headquarters.”
“Now I know you’re lying. Everybody knows I’m stationed at Camp Freedom.” She turned her head to share a smile with Jocelyn Perrella.
“But I saw it,” Hope said. “I was there!”
“I see. And my soldiers just let you into this fictional place?”
“I broke in.”
“So you broke into ‘my headquarters,’ where you mistakenly thought I would be, even though you’d allegedly seen firsthand how I treated so many of your friends? Why is your story not making much sense to me?” She sent a condescending smirk in Perrella’s direction.
Hope looked at me and I looked at Heywood, appealing for understanding. He stared back at me with cold, indifferent eyes.
“How about Camp Freedom?” I asked desperately.
“How about it?” Maddox replied.
“It was a concentration camp. Twins were experimented on there, tortured, killed. Girls died because the doctors injected poison into their veins. Hope’s sister was murdered right before her eyes.”
“Yes, I saw the pictures you gave to Mr. Heywood. But how do we know when they were taken? Or what they really represent? As far as I can tell, they show some girls with bruises and sad expressions.”
“But it’s all true!” Hope blurted. “It was my own sister. Dr. Gallingham dunked us in the freezing water! I survived, but Faith didn’t! And then you did this to me!” She angled her cheeks to the president-elect.
“You honestly think I would carve up a girl’s face?”
“Yes, because you did!”
Hope was hyperventilating so much that I was afraid she might pass out.
Maddox gave a nod to Jocelyn Perrella, and the head of the presidential transition team slid open a desk drawer and pulled out a large manila envelope. She slowly removed its contents: a thin stack of eight-by-ten photographs. She arranged them neatly on her desk.
“Take a look,” Maddox said.
We leaned forward. They were pictures of Camp Freedom.
But they weren’t the Camp Freedom that we knew. This was like some dream Camp Freedom from the past, where all the buildings were freshly painted and there were flower beds and manicured lawns. Signs on the buildings read Rec Room, Swimming Pool, Library. Even stranger were the groups of smiling, giggling children. A far cry from the Camp Freedom we had experienced.
“I don’t know about you,” Jocelyn Perrella said, “but this doesn’t look so bad to me.”
“Maybe this is how it used to be,” I said. “Way back when. But it’s not that way now.”
“You sure about that?”
“Positive.”
“Funny,” Perrella said, “because Chancellor Maddox invited us there just two weeks ago, and that’s when we took these pictures. It’s exactly how it looked.”
Air left me. What was going on? It was like we’d stepped through a portal into some universe I didn’t recognize.
“And perhaps you can tell me this,” Chancellor Maddox said sweetly. “Why are the graduates of Camp Freedom so happy?”
“What’re you talking about?” Hope said in disbelief. “They’re not happy. The ones who manage to survive are the most tortured people alive.”
“The reports claim otherwise. The girls graduating from Camp Freedom are consistently the most well-adjusted, the brightest, the happiest of all our young people. They’re the ones we need most in leadership positions. So you see, it’s not a concentration camp, but rather the very model of how all resettlement camps should be.” With her long, elegant fingers, she gestured to the pictures on the desk. “It might be that you’re just jealous.”
My mouth hung open dumbly. This was all some kind of massive conspiracy, but there was no way for us to prove it. That’s when I noticed that a half dozen Brown Shirts had slipped into the tent and were now standing directly behind us.
“One last thing,” Chancellor Maddox said, removing a piece of paper from an inner pocket of her coat. She placed the paper on the desk, then rotated it so we could read it. It was a short typed letter, addressed to My Fellow Inmates of Camp Liberty.
It’s up to us, the letter read, to bring this government down—now. Whatever it takes, these leaders must be destroyed.
The signature below the sentences was familiar. It was mine.
“Where did you—”
“Apparently soldiers found it in your bunk after your escape from Camp Liberty,” Maddox said. “Do you deny writing it?”
“Yes, I deny writing it!”
“And yet that’s your signature, is it not?”
I wanted to say no, but one look told me it was absolutely my signature. I didn’t know how they’d forged it—maybe they’d taken it from the report I’d filed after we first found Cat—but it was definitely mine.
When I didn’t answer, President-Elect Maddox turned to one of the Brown Shirts.
“Sergeant, take these three terrorists away and lock them up. President Vasquez asked that I give them a trial, and I just did. They’re guilty of high treason. A week from tomorrow we’ll hang them, right before the inauguration. A little present for the new Congress—to show what we do to terrorists.”
Before we had a chance to respond, the soldiers stepped forward, grabbed our arms, and roughly pushed us out of the room.