Bethari had questions—lots and lots of questions—but neither Abdi nor Joph seemed inclined to answer them. They ignored her until she plopped down beside me in a huff, muttering to herself.
Abdi and Joph were conducting an intense argument in whispers. But it was easy enough to guess the topic of their conversation.
Abdi gestured toward the door, but Joph darted to block his escape. “You promised you’d help me with anything,” she said, a bit louder.
Abdi’s back was tense. He murmured something, but Joph shook her head firmly. “This is the anything I want help with.”
“Come on, Abdi! It’s Teeg!” Bethari added. “Look at her.”
He did, reluctance clear in every line of his body.
I waggled my fingers at him, and he met my eyes for the first time. After a second, he sighed, deflating.
“All right. I’ll take you to someone I know, and they might take you to someone else, and that’s it.”
“That’s not a very firm plan,” Bethari said.
“They might not do it,” Abdi said bluntly. “They’re going to be very angry I have endangered the operation.”
I stood up. I had so much energy all of a sudden. Joph’s drugs were awesome. “Actually, you won’t have to bother your smuggler friends at all,” I said. “I have a new plan. We’ll break into that warehouse and get some answers. We use whatever we find for leverage, to get Marie out of trouble, and make the army let me go and live my own life.”
“Blackmail?” Bethari said. She looked as if she wasn’t sure whether to be excited or scared.
“I think that’s what they call it. Are you in?”
They tried to argue with me, of course.
Actually, Abdi did most of the arguing. Bethari was on board almost from the moment I opened my mouth, and Joph gave in after a few minutes. But it took me and Bethari shouting Abdi down to get him to even listen.
“Zaneisha’s keeping Carl Hurfest at home, and Gregor was off duty,” I said. “Even if Dawson’s awake, he won’t be found for a while yet. This is our best and only chance. We have to go right now.”
“Tegan’s right,” Bethari said. “If we can record evidence of whatever they’ve got down there, we might have something of value to trade for Tegan’s freedom and Marie. And we know that whatever it is, it has something to do with Tegan.”
“We don’t even know if there’s anything there worth recording!” Abdi protested.
Bethari shoved her computer into her pocket. “Gregor murdered a man just for talking to Tegan about this Ark Project. Armies don’t kill people to keep unimportant secrets.”
“You don’t know much about armies,” Abdi said, and scratched his chin. “It’s too dangerous.”
“If you’re scared, stay here,” I told him with that same Joph-enhanced bravery. I couldn’t run from the army, but I might be able to defeat them. “I’m going. Now.”
I started toward the elevator, Bethari close behind me. Joph joined us after a few seconds. “We can drive my mother’s car,” she said.
“What do your parents do?” I asked. A two-car family would be paying massive energy taxes.
“Mum’s in government. Dad’s an actor. It’s pretty boring.”
“You and me are going to talk about some stuff,” Bethari said ominously.
Joph sighed. “I couldn’t tell you about the smuggling, Bethari. It wasn’t my secret to share.”
“But did you have to put on the ditz act?”
“Yes. You know what it’s like at Elisa M. Everyone’s watching all the time. So I gave them something to watch. And now everyone knows I’m good at what I do, but no one suspects I’m capable of reverse-engineering a patent for Abdi. They just dismiss me as another fluffy chemist who spends too much time sampling her own wares.” She shot Bethari a sharp look. “Even you.”
I was trying not to slow down or turn around, but I couldn’t prevent a sigh of relief when I heard quick footsteps behind us.
“Thank you—” I began.
“You’re going to get us killed,” Abdi snarled, and refused to speak to me all the way there.
Looking back at it, I still think that if I knew everything I know now, I would have made the same choices.
I did the right thing by trying to get answers, although I could have been smarter about how I did it. But there were costs I hadn’t considered, and I wasn’t the one who had to pay all of them.
Joph parked the car several blocks from the warehouse, and we walked the rest of the way. If anything, my nerves were even more hypersensitized than during our first nocturnal visit, but this time I wasn’t afraid.
We hid in the same alley while Bethari hacked into the cameras again and declared the coast clear. “I’m putting them on loop,” she said. “If there are any cameras underground, they must be on a closed system. But the outside ones are going to show an empty warehouse until we get out.”
“If this is such a big secret, why don’t they have more security?” Joph asked. “Guards patrolling, or something.”
“Because putting a lot of security on something would be a good way to attract attention,” Abdi said reluctantly. “It’s a risk, but a calculated one.”
“Okay, I’m nearly ready to spring the gates,” Bethari announced. “You know, Tegan, things are much more exciting with you around.”
“Why, thank you.”
“You’re very welcome.”
“Any questions?” I asked. Abdi opened his mouth. “Any sincere, nonsarcastic questions?” He closed it. “Okay, then. Let’s go.”
Bethari tore down the alert system on the gate in a matter of seconds. At her command, it swung open.
“Now, that was too easy,” Abdi said.
“Not if you’re this good,” Bethari told him sweetly, and strolled in.
“Leave it open,” I warned. “We might have to leave in a hurry.” I’d given Abdi my sonic pistol, knowing that my uneasiness with the weapon might slow me down at a crucial moment. Joph had a sonic pistol of her own, and Bethari had some sort of Taser thing that she was supposed to carry for self-defense. I had nothing.
The warehouse door proved to be a little more challenging, having a physical lock rather than an electronic one. Abdi eyed it. “I suppose we could try to break it down,” he said doubtfully.
“Let the past-timer at it,” I said, kneeling by the door. I’d rummaged through Joph’s lab. She had a lot of tools, and a couple of them were close enough to torque wrenches. The hairpins Tatia had used to keep my do in place were very strong and, suitably bent, provided decent rake substitutes.
“Keep watch at the gate,” I told Abdi. “Bethari, tell me if anything’s happening in the warehouse.”
Then I got to work. It would have been much, much easier with Alex’s electric pick gun, but I still had the skills that had gotten us into a lot of technically impregnable construction sites and buildings slated for demolition. Locks apparently hadn’t changed a great deal in a century.
Twenty minutes later, the fifth pin jumped up, and I felt the door give. Joph signaled to Abdi, and we stepped inside.
“You have to teach me that,” Bethari whispered.
Abdi, Joph, and I shoved the scrap-metal bin away and pulled out our weapons. Bethari braced herself in front of the elevator hatch and gestured at her computer.
“Black shoe alligator glue,” said the voice of the curly-haired soldier, shockingly loud in the empty space.
Nothing happened. My heart sunk into my borrowed shoes.
Then, smoothly and silently, the elevator rose, and the door opened.
I stepped inside, and the others came with me. We were silent as the elevator descended, clutching our weapons tight.
There was no going back from here.
The corridor at the bottom was long, dark, and empty. I said a mental prayer of gratitude. Joph started to say something, but Abdi clapped his free hand over her mouth and shook his head. Computers gave us enough illumination to see, and a door twenty meters ahead was slightly ajar, a shaft of yellow light striking across the bare concrete floor. A second later, laughter came from that doorway.
Abdi inched forward, sonic pistol in his hand, and Bethari slunk behind him with her Taser. He peeked around the door and signaled Bethari back. “Four of them,” he breathed in my ear. “Kitchen. Poker party. We can sneak past.”
Walking past that door was scary, and the relaxing effects of Joph’s breather were wearing off. Opening the other doors along the corridor was even more terrifying. We didn’t know who might be waiting inside, or if some sudden noise would bring the guards out to shoot us all down. We found two dorm rooms with two bunk beds each, shower facilities, a storage room piled with supplies, and even a little laundry room with piles of black T-shirts and coveralls. The facility had obviously been prepared for long-term stays.
I was feeling doubtful now. Maybe Abdi was right, ludicrous as it seemed. Maybe there really was nothing to find.
There was only one door left. Like the others, it was unlocked. I saw a big, dark room, ushered the others in, and pulled the door shut behind me. I was focused on the corridor outside, and the silence of the others didn’t seem strange until I turned.
And saw what they had seen.
The room was enormous, and the glow of our computers illuminated sturdy metal racks that towered above us and stretched out into the darkness. The racks were filled with clear plastic containers, each about the size and shape of a coffin.
There were hundreds of them.
I knew what was inside. We all knew.
Bethari was the first to step forward, holding her computer over the nearest cryocontainer. “It’s occupied,” she reported, her face expressionless.
I stepped up beside her and peered in at a woman about Marie’s age, with pale skin and dirty-blond hair in matted strands. She was naked, but there was no wound visible on her body—just the tubes connecting her jugular vein and carotid artery to the container walls, and a Texas star tattoo on her right hip. Her skin had an odd, waxy sheen, stretched tight over prominent bones.
She looked frozen.
I stumbled back, and Abdi caught me, wrapping an arm around my waist. “Breathe,” he murmured in my ear, and after a moment I nodded and pulled away, looking into other containers. Was this just the place where they stored the volunteers for Operation New Beginning? Had we broken into a perfectly ordinary storage facility?
But they were so skinny. I mean, they were all dead, but they really didn’t look well.
I remembered the long list of addresses that Bethari’s computer had found in that government database, and shuddered. This was just the Melbourne location. Were they all like this?
We moved quietly among the silent dead. Bethari was scanning her computer over the cryocontainers, narrating in a whisper, and pausing every now and then for a close-up. She stopped, peered closer at something, and beckoned me down.
“What is it?” I asked, staring apprehensively at the dark-skinned man inside.
“Look at the dates,” she said, and pointed at the little screen that was attached to each cryocontainer. “They’re all the same day.”
She was right. I checked about twenty in the opposite direction, and they all read 8 JAN 2125.
“They all died on the same day?” I said.
Abdi stiffened beside me. “And the same place,” he said, pointing at a three-letter code in the bottom corner of the screen. “HOW. That must be Camp Howard. It’s one of the refugee camps in West Australia.”
“This one’s KEA,” I said.
“Camp Keating, in Queensland,” Bethari said. “And a different date—17 March 2126.” She moved down the line. “Keating, Keating, 17 March, 17 March… These must be refugees.”
“Refugees can’t afford the freezing process,” Abdi said.
“So the government paid,” I said. “But why? And what killed them? Some kind of disease?”
“In different camps?” Abdi asked. He sucked in a deep breath. “Didn’t you say you got a list of addresses connected to the Ark Project, but this was the only one in Melbourne? Where were the others?”
That list of addresses flashed into my head again. “Mostly the Northern Territory and West Australia. A few in Queensland.”
“Where the camps are,” Bethari said.
There had been over twenty of those addresses. If they all corresponded to facilities like this, that added up to tens of thousands of dead refugees.
Abdi’s face was very grim. “Maybe asking what they died from is wrong. Perhaps they died for this. Those experimental bodies your Dr. Carmen is working on; where do they come from?”
“They’re volunteers,” I said. “Like me, that’s why they had to use me. I donated my body to science before I thought coming back was a real possibility.”
“Are you sure they’re all volunteers?”
Bethari and I stared at each other, trying to come to grips with the enormity of what Abdi was suggesting.
“The army wouldn’t kill refugees,” Bethari said. “I mean, maybe if they knew they could bring them back, when there was enough food for them, when the world was safer…. But Tegan’s the only successful revival. These deaths are from before she was even brought back. They wouldn’t do that. They couldn’t.”
“Oh? Why not?”
Bethari stopped, then spread her hands hopelessly. “Because it isn’t right.”
Joph had wandered down to inspect cryocontainers farther away. She let out a low cry and rushed back to us. “Children,” she said. “There are children down there.”
“Oh, fuck,” Bethari said, and squeezed her eyes shut. “I don’t think I can handle dead weens. I just—”
“Give me the computer,” I told her, and took it from her hand before she could protest. Joph buried her face in Bethari’s shoulder and shook.
Bethari’s computer seemed to know what to do without my interfering. I forced myself to look into the containers instead of just recording blindly. Abdi paced beside me. The tiny bodies were thin, with spindly limbs and every rib clear on their chests. “They’re so young,” I said.
“About six or seven,” Abdi said.
“Are you sure? They look younger.”
“Malnutrition does that.”
I stared into the next container, at the little girl with white skin and dark hair. She could have been my sister. Where had she come from—Armenia? Kentucky? How far had she come, and what had driven her here?
It was almost too horrible to contemplate, and yet I had to think about it. My army had done this. My government, of my beautiful country, had put this child in this box.
Abdi looked over my shoulder. “Do you still want to use this for blackmail?” His voice was very calm.
The horror was subsiding, and rage was rushing in to fill the void, tingling through my entire body. “No. I don’t know what’s going on, but I think people need to know about this.”
“What makes you think people will care?” he said.
“They have to,” I said, startled.
“They didn’t care before, when this same girl was rotting in the camps.”
“But this is different,” I argued. My voice sounded weak in my own ears.
“I guess we’ll see,” he said, sounding skeptical, and then the lights flashed overhead, and we spun to face the doorway.
One of the guards was standing there, eyes wide as she stared at the four teenagers roaming around her top-secret facility. “What the—”
Bethari shot her.
The Taser prongs hit the guard square in the chest, and she gurgled as the voltage coursed through her. She convulsed wildly, limbs flailing as she dropped.
“Go!” Abdi shouted, and we ran out of that room of the dead and bolted for the elevator.
The guards were facing the wrong way, prepared for someone breaking in, not out. Joph shot the next guard, and Abdi got the third, and they fell, inner ears ruptured by the sonic beams. But even with intense vertigo, the soldiers were conscious, and they were professionals ready to fight. One of them grabbed Bethari’s ankle as she rushed past, and she fell full-length to the concrete, wind knocked out of her. Before I could react, Joph ran back and tugged Bethari’s shoulders, urging her to rise.
The fourth guard’s bullet took Joph in the thigh. She screamed and fell on top of Bethari, clutching at the wound. Blood spurted out between her fingers.
“Halt! Disarm!” the fourth guard thundered, pointing his gun at Abdi. The downed guards were staggering to their feet, using the walls to steady themselves. Joph’s lips were white with pain.
“Please be calm,” Abdi said.
“Are you joking, kid? I’m not messing around. Put your weapons down or I’ll shoot.”
I shoved the computer into Abdi’s hand and stepped forward, covering his body with my own as I pressed him back into the elevator.
“I’m Tegan Oglietti,” I said calmly. “The Living Dead Girl. If you kill me, you’ll be in so much trouble.”
The guard hesitated. His hand dipped toward the other side of his belt, where the sonic pistol rested in its holster.
“Go!” Joph screamed, and threw herself against the soldier’s leg.
“Black shoe alligator glue,” said the voice from Bethari’s computer, and Abdi’s hand shot past my waist, sonic beam dropping the last guard to the ground. The elevator rose, and Abdi dragged me out into the warehouse, hand firm around my wrist.
I yanked out of his grip. “What are you doing? We have to go back!”
“We can’t. They’ll have reinforcements on the way.”
“But the girls are still down there!”
“They’re alive.”
“So far as we know!”
“Tegan, she said go; we have to go!” He grabbed my shoulders and looked into my eyes. “This is the only proof we have. We have to get it onto the tubes before we get caught. All right?”
The elevator began to descend.
“All right!” I said. We ran out of the warehouse, through the yard, and into the street. There were trucks coming, army vehicles with ominous shapes on their roofs, but we ran through the dark streets, choosing turns at random as we hunted for some kind of safety.
Abdi stumbled to a halt, clutching his side.
“What’s wrong?”
“Can’t run anymore,” he gasped, and gave me the sonic pistol. “One moment.”
I dragged him into a side street, wondering what to do. Should I leave him? Upload the footage right now? Did we have time for him to catch his breath?
“Tegan, stay still,” someone said from behind us.
It was Zaneisha Washington’s voice.
I didn’t even look over my shoulder to make sure it was her. I darted left, right, and kinked around a corner, yelling at Abdi to move.
Bless the dark and narrow streets. They were a maze. If I’d been trying to find a specific building, I might have been in trouble, but all I was looking for was escape.
I hit what might have been a dead-end alley for many people. For me, it was a way out. I jumped onto a recycling bin, hauled myself up a brick wall, used a windowsill to hike myself higher, and finally scrambled onto a roof.
When I flattened and wriggled close to the edge, I couldn’t see Abdi. Keeping away from the rooftop’s ridge, I slunk along it and let myself down onto the next roof. I didn’t have to go too far. Zaneisha had him pinned against a wall, and she was talking into his ear.
No backup had arrived, which was weird. I crept a little closer until I could hear Zaneisha’s words.
“—need to find her,” she was saying, her voice tinged with something very close to desperation. She pulled Abdi away from the wall and shoved him in front of her as she moved down the alley. She had her sonic pistol jammed into his back. It couldn’t kill him. But it must have felt like a real gun, a real threat. I caught a glimpse of his eyes, wide with fear, and wriggled back from the edge, trying to reason out the situation.
Moving an unbound prisoner was a really stupid move if you had backup, and Sergeant Zaneisha Washington was anything but stupid. Therefore, she had no backup. Whatever Zaneisha was doing, she was doing it alone.
Therefore, I might have a chance to extract Abdi and escape with him.
“Tegan,” she called softly. “Tegan, come out.” She moved her light beam around. I ducked as she flashed it across the rooftops. “You can’t get far. Come back with me. We found Dr. Carmen.”
I stifled my gasp.
“She’s safe, but we really need you to come in and explain. Tegan, she said something about an Ark Project. Is that what that Inheritor was talking about? If you tell me about it, I might be able to help.”
I wavered. If she meant it, if she truly didn’t know, then maybe she would help us. But it could be a trap. Could I take the chance?
“I don’t want to have to call the others in; someone might get hurt. Come with me. I won’t hurt you or Abdi, I promise.”
I think she meant it. That’s the thing that pricks my conscience, like a splinter worked deep into my memory. Zaneisha really thought she was doing the best thing for me, trying her hardest to protect me, even from myself. And if it had been just me, I might have taken the risk.
But she had Abdi. And whether she knew it or not, she had the footage that was our only proof of the Ark Project.
So the next time she flashed her flashlight in my direction, I rose over the top of the roof ridge and shot her in the face.
I truly hate guns. But I was weirdly calm and my hands were steady, and, most important, I had a clear view and a big height advantage. Zaneisha fell. She did it perfectly, breaking the drop with her arms to protect her head and rolling nearly to her feet. Then the vertigo caught up with her, and she staggered, vomited, and fell again, this time with much less grace.
I could hear her cursing as I climbed down, but by the time I jumped off the recycling bin, Abdi had Zaneisha’s gun in his hands and was pointing it steadily at her.
“Don’t shoot,” I told him.
Her eyes narrowed, focusing on my lips. With ruptured eardrums, she probably couldn’t hear me. “Don’t run,” she said as I slipped off her EarRing. Her hand groped for my wrist and gripped hard. I broke the grip with a move she’d taught me herself. “It’ll be worse if you run,” she insisted.
Zaneisha’s computer was flashing a message. I glanced at it and swore. She must have managed to trip the alarm even as she fell that second time.
“They’re coming?” Abdi said.
“Yes.”
“Let’s go.”
“One second.” I couldn’t trust Zaneisha with our precious footage. But I scribbled a note for Zaneisha on her computer and tucked it into her pocket. Maybe she could do something to help Joph and Bethari. “I’m sorry,” I told her. “I really am.”
Then I turned my back on her and ran.
“Stay,” Zaneisha called after me. “Tegan, please stay!”
We got a few blocks away, but while Abdi had obviously gotten his second wind, I was flagging.
He cast a look around and tugged me into another alley, where he yanked out the computer and crouched over it. “We’ll upload it now,” he said.
I nodded, pressing my hands to the ache in my side.
But he never got the chance. Because that’s when they caught us, the people who had been following me, patiently and professionally.
They wore plain linen in pale colors, what I had come to think of as the uniform of the Inheritors of the Earth. There were two of them, and they carried long-barreled weapons that looked like plastic rifles.
“Wait—” I said, and then they shot me.