THEY’RE WHISKED AWAY DOWN a long, dark passage, led outdoors, then marched across town to a large canvas tent. Inside it is an enormous steel cage—the New Washington jail. The guards toss the three of them into it, slam the door shut, and lock it with a key.
Hope, Book, and Cat stand there a moment. Then Hope goes to one of the cots and begins stripping blankets and throwing them to the floor, preparing her bed. No one says anything. They’ve been outwitted by a former beauty queen. Their private audience with the authorities only made things worse. Now they’re going to be hanged.
“Did you notice?” Cat says out of the blue.
“Notice what?” Hope asks.
“The Brown Shirts.”
Hope gives a glance to the flap in the tent, where armed soldiers stand on the other side. “What about them?”
“No badges,” he says.
Cat’s right. Hope’s father always told her those three inverted triangles weren’t a symbol of patriotism as much as they were one of hatred, and her entire life she’s feared them. They represented an attitude: I belong and you don’t. But here in the capital, there are none. Why?
“Maybe they’ve come up with something new,” Book says. “New president, new symbol.”
“Maybe,” Cat says. But she can tell he doesn’t think so. She doesn’t either.
When she finally drifts off to sleep, it’s not triangles or even her upcoming execution that occupies her thoughts. It’s one simple nagging question. What is Chancellor Maddox really up to?
The sad thing is that she’ll never find out. Her body will be dangling from a rope in downtown New Washington before Maddox’s true intentions are revealed.
Days pass and the Conclave nears, and with the passage of time there’s an increase of excitement in the capital city. Through a crack in the canvas at the back of their tent, Hope watches as people hurry to and fro in preparation for the festivities. It’s easy to see their anticipation for the big events: the inauguration, the commemoration . . . the hanging.
Cutting through the noise is the persistent sound of hammers, and Hope can’t help but wonder if it’s from workers building an execution scaffolding. If so, each nail pounded in feels like it’s going straight into their coffins.
“You think they’ll let us speak?” Book says one evening. All three lie on their beds, staring up through the steel bars at the tent’s ceiling.
“What’re you talking about?” Hope asks.
“Before they hang us. It’s customary for a prisoner facing execution to get to say some final words.”
“I doubt it,” Hope says. “The last thing Chancellor Maddox wants is three terrorists speaking publicly.”
“Yeah, but if she’s not president yet, who says we can’t? So what if?”
Cat rolls his eyes. “You and words. Me, I don’t plan on saying anything. I came into this world not speaking, and I plan to exit the same.”
Book can’t help but smile. Typical Cat.
He turns to Hope. “How about you?”
She thinks a moment. “I guess I’d tell Chancellor Maddox that she can carve up my outer world, but not my inner one.”
“Now you’re talking.”
“And that she’s not half the person my father was.”
“Good.”
“And that if she wants to be a real leader, she should bring people together instead of splitting them apart. Anyone can be divisive, but it takes someone special to unite people.”
“I like it.”
They’re quiet a moment. Hope didn’t mean to say so much, but now that she has, she’s glad.
“How about you, Book?” Hope asks. “Lemme guess: some famous quote?”
“I’ve thought about that. At the end of A Tale of Two Cities, right before Sydney Carton goes to the guillotine, he thinks, ‘It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.’”
“That’s not bad.”
“But then there’s Nathan Hale, who was hanged in the Revolutionary War. His final words were ‘I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.’”
“So which one are you gonna go with?” Hope asks.
“Neither. I think I’ll say, ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but calling me a Less Than will never hurt me.’”
At first, Cat and Hope are too stunned to react, but when they see a smile spreading across Book’s face, they can’t help but smile, too.
“I would pay to hear you say that,” Cat says.
“Me too,” Hope adds. “The smartest of the bunch choosing a children’s rhyme. It’s just what Maddox wouldn’t expect.”
“So maybe we should all do it,” Book says. “‘I know you are, but what am I?’”
“‘I’m tellin’, you’re smellin’,’” Hope says.
“‘You think you’re hot shit, but you’re really just cold diarrhea,’” Cat chimes in.
“‘Yo mamma.’”
“‘Yo daddy.’”
“‘Your bald-headed granny!’”
They’re giggling hysterically now, barely able to catch their breaths.
“Is this what they mean by ‘gallows humor’?” Hope asks.
“I guess so,” Book says. “Never really experienced it before.”
“That’s ’cause we’ve never been hanged before,” Cat points out, and that makes them laugh all the harder.
When the laughter dies and a silence settles on them, they hear the hammers pounding nails.
“We tried, you know,” Book says. “We escaped the camps, we rescued a lot of people. . . .”
“We didn’t finish,” Hope says.
“No, but not bad considering we’re a bunch of outcasts. It’s just a shame we couldn’t prevent what happened in those towns. All those deaths.”
The thought of it clenches Hope’s stomach. It’s not just what happened—it’s what will continue to happen once President Maddox takes over.
A similar thought must be going through the minds of Book and Cat, because the conversation comes to a dead stop. They lie there, three prisoners about to be hanged.
Maybe it’s the dark, maybe it’s because of what’s about to happen to them, but Hope finds a sudden courage.
“Did you love her?” she asks Book.
“Who?”
“Miranda.”
The echo of Miranda’s name dissipates into air before Book answers.
“No,” he says, softly.
“You can tell me the truth, you know.”
“No,” he says again. “I liked her. She was fun. But no.”
Hope is surprised by a rush of emotion surging through her—how his simple answer prompts something raw and powerful in her.
“And you’re sure it was her? In the Compound?”
Book nods in the dark. “She looked different, but yeah, it was her. No question.”
“How was she killed?”
Book opens his mouth to answer, then just as quickly shuts it.
“Those towns,” he says, almost to himself.
There’s something about his tone that startles Hope. “Which towns?”
“The ones we rode through. Tell me about them.”
She swivels her head and looks at him funny. “What’re you talking about?”
“Tell me what we saw,” he says.
“You were there like the rest of us.”
“I know, but what’d we see?”
Hope shrugs. “Bodies. Blood. Crows picking at corpses.”
“Yeah, but how’d they die?” He suddenly sits up, swinging his feet to the floor.
“What’s this have to do with anything, Book?”
“Yeah, where’re you going with this?” Cat adds.
“How were the towns wiped out?” Book asks.
Hope shares a look with Cat. “Shot, of course.”
“Were there bullet holes?”
“There was blood.”
“Were there bullet holes?”
At that precise moment, Hope knows that Book is onto something.