15

When I come to, my ears are ringing. My body is stiff with shock, and I’m coughing. My temple’s pounding like I rammed headfirst into a fighter jet.

I remember what happened: There was an explosion. I can still feel the tremors in my arms and hands and legs.

Dr. Piper was in the middle of giving me the shot. I reach a hand to brush the tender spot on my neck. When I pull my hand away, there are drops of blood on my fingers. I don’t know if she had the needle in all the way, if the plunger had released the serum yet.

I lift my head, wincing from the pain, and blink until my eyes adjust to the darkness. The ceiling lamp is dead, but there’s a little light coming in from somewhere. Part of the roof in the room behind me collapsed, I think. But the wall in front of me seems mostly intact. We must’ve been on the edge of the explosion’s reach.

The hallway outside is quiet, like everyone evacuated the building in case of another explosion. It felt like I blacked out for only a few minutes, but maybe it was longer.

The syringe is lying a few feet away from me. The blue serum has leaked out onto the floor—the plastic must’ve cracked.

Relief floods me. Dr. Piper didn’t administer the shot.

Joe is also lying near me, to my left, on his side. His chest slowly rises and falls. His lips are slightly parted, and a thin layer of dust covers his hair and uniform.

He’s still alive, and that means he can tell Sam where I am when he wakes up.

Setting my palms on the ground, I push myself to my feet. Pain shoots up every inch of my body, but I ignore it.

Almost everything around me is in pieces. Smoke and dust cloud the air, rising from the debris beyond the blown-out hole in the wall. The sink and cabinets are buried under chunks of gray building.

So is Dr. Piper’s body. I can’t see her face, but her arm and the sleeve of her lab coat stick out from beneath the rubble. Her arm’s hanging at a wrong angle like it fell out of its socket. The limpness of her body is what makes me lose my composure. Cady’s body was limp too, when the rescue crew pulled her out of her hovercraft.

This is too much. I want to turn away and run, and let someone else deal with this mess. But I need to know if she’s still alive, so I do what I have to do. I pinch the bridge of my nose to fight the nausea, and scoot close enough to reach for Dr. Piper’s wrist. I count to twenty as I feel for her pulse.

Eighteen, nineteen, twenty.

Nothing. The second guard is buried even deeper under the debris too deep for me to reach. I’m going to have to trust that he’s gone too, or at least too injured to tell anyone what happened.

Turning away, I wipe the blood on my pants. This was too close a call. Not just Joe finding out who I am and almost giving me up to Sam, but the fact that I would be dead right now if the other guard hadn’t been standing behind me. I would be buried beneath this pile of rubble with no pulse.

I thought I was okay with dying. I accepted the idea when I was on the spaceship with Oliver, and I knew it might be coming when I agreed to go undercover in the work camp. Death would let me leave all the pain in this world behind.

But now that I’ve barely escaped it again, I’m not sure I want to leave the world yet. Not until I’ve had the time to fight for the things I care about. Not until I’ve said good-bye to the people I love.

Death might turn out to be worse than everything I’m running from, and there will be no waking up.

Somewhere far away, there’s a booming sound that makes the walls shake. Another bomb.

It makes sense that the Alliance would’ve targeted this facility, since the kill chambers are one of Charlie’s biggest weapons. But I don’t understand why no one—not Mal or Skylar or anyone—told me they were planning this. They must’ve known there’d be people from the work camp in here for inspection. Why would they risk killing us too?

Unless something went wrong with the plan. Someone could’ve screwed up the bomb timers, set them off early.

Whatever’s going on, I need to get the vrux out of here. Another explosion could happen any second.

But first, I have to deal with Joe. He’s still lying on his side, his soft breath turning to mist when it touches the air. I’d think he were fast asleep if I didn’t know any better.

Maybe he’ll wake up and he won’t remember he even saw me, but I don’t think he’s going to forget. He’s going to wake up and tell the other guards I got away, and tell them where to find me.

I can’t let him wake up.

I take a slow step forward, lean down, and slip the gun out of his holster. It’s a copper like the laser gun I used in the Phantom war simulation game, the day I met him. The day he was almost my friend.

I wrap my palms around the barrel, aiming at his head. My hands are slippery with sweat, barely holding the weapon steady.

I’m not sure I want to do this. It’s not Joe’s fault Charlie made him a mindless soldier. It’s not his fault he ended up here.

But this is about protecting myself. And I can’t risk letting him go.

Don’t think.

I’ll imagine someone else’s hands are squeezing the trigger. I’ll pretend Joe is Charlie, and I’m beating him at last. That will make this easier. But even as I make the decision, Joe’s head moves a little. He’s waking up.

I have to do this fast.

I slide my index finger through the trigger. Joe’s eyes flutter open and he blinks slowly.

A small sound escapes his throat, like he’s trying to say something, but he starts coughing instead.

Now. Do it.

“Wait,” he chokes. “Please don’t.”

My fingers are glued to the gun, but I can’t squeeze the trigger.

He was my friend once. How can I shoot him?

“I won’t tell anyone I saw you,” he says between coughs. “I’ll let you go.”

I am frozen, my heart hammering in my chest, my arms impossible to move. But I have to shoot him; I have to.

I can’t trust him. I don’t have a choice.

“No,” he says, almost whimpering. His eyes are watering. “Please, please don’t shoot me.”

He’ll say anything right now, but he’s still going to follow Charlie’s orders. He isn’t like me and the others in the Alliance; he can’t fight the serum.

But when I start to squeeze the trigger, my hands falter again. What if I’m wrong?

Joe’s watering eyes seem clearer than they were a couple minutes ago, not hazy like the eyes of the mindless. Almost like he hit his head hard enough to wake up.

“Please let me go,” he says again.

“Why should I believe you won’t hand me over to Sam?” I ask, snapping the words. “Tell me.”

Please give me a good reason. Please don’t make me shoot.

“Because I’m on your side,” Joe says quickly. “I want to join the Alliance. I’ve been trying to contact one of you, to let you know. But I didn’t have a chance until now.”

That makes me pause. I haven’t heard anyone on Charlie’s side mention the Alliance before. Maybe he’s telling the truth. But one thing still doesn’t make sense.

“Then why did you tell the doctor my real name?”

“I couldn’t control what I said. I didn’t want to tell her, but my lips moved and I couldn’t stop them.”

He was subdued. And now he isn’t.

My hands still won’t unfreeze. Even if I wanted to shoot him, even if I was sure I had no other choice, I’m not sure they would let me squeeze the trigger.

But he’d better be telling the truth; he’d better not hand me over to Sam.

Slowly, I lower the gun.

Joe struggles to his feet, using the wall to help himself up.

“Thank you,” he says.

“You owe me for this.” I wipe my sweaty forehead with the back of my hand. “If you get the urge to tell anyone where I am, remember I could’ve killed you.”

“I will,” he says.

“Good.”

I double-check over my shoulder that Dr. Piper’s body hasn’t moved. She’s still buried underneath the rubble, along with the other guard. I silently thank whoever set off the explosives for taking care of them for me.

Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Joe’s hand slipping behind his back. Going straight to the second gun all officials carry with them, the one I forgot to remove from his belt.

There’s a split second where panic grips me, where I’m not sure what I’m going to do. But rage hits me with full force, overpowering everything else.

He lied to me. He is not my friend.

I can’t let him give me to Charlie.

He draws his gun. I spin around and strike my copper sideways at his head, knocking him off balance.

A shot goes off from his gun, sending a laser beam into the rubble behind me.

As Joe regains his footing, I hit him with the barrel again, yelling through my teeth. Twice more I bash his head, until he slumps, silent, onto the floor. Blood trickles from his hairline.

I stare at him, my hands frozen again, my legs immobile. The bloody gun slips from my fingertips and hits the floor with a clang.

He lied to me. I had no other choice.

I’m sorry, I think.

And then I run.

*   *   *

I limp down an empty corridor, moving as fast as I can with my legs still aching. The pounding in my temple hasn’t subsided yet.

My hands have Joe’s blood on them.

I don’t even know if I killed him. But I hope I did. Otherwise, he will wake up and tell Sam exactly where to find me.

There are distant cries from corridors behind me, and the sound of boots pounding somewhere up ahead. A rescue crew must be on its way, if it isn’t here already. I don’t know where the explosions were centered, but they were close enough to the exam rooms that plenty of other people could’ve been injured. How many kids were trapped under the rubble? Hopefully Hector, Evie, and the others got out of here alive and Logan wasn’t anywhere near this place.

Around a corner, the facility entrance comes into view. Three guards stand talking with guns in hand, their backs to me. Behind them, a medical crew carries an empty stretcher through the door, and two more guards follow them. They must be gearing up to begin the rescue mission.

I’m trying to decide what I should do—limp past them and hope they don’t notice, or pretend I’m more injured than I really am?—when one of the guards spots me. He says something to the other two and starts jogging toward me, signaling two male medics with a stretcher to follow.

One of the other guards is Sam. There’s some distance between us, so maybe I’m wrong, but he’s the only one not wearing a helmet, and I’d know his blond hair anywhere. I’m pretty sure he’s staring at me.

Pretend you’re hurt.

“Help!” I double over, clutching my belly. At least when I’m standing like this, I have an excuse to keep my face down.

I wipe my nose with the back of my hand, and rub some of the blood still on my cheeks around a little. Hopefully that will make me look less like Clementine, since I’m sure I’ll have to pass Sam on the way out of the building.

“Where are you hurt?” the guard asks when he reaches me. His figure blocks Sam from view.

“I’m fine,” I say, but when I let go of the wall I purposely lose my balance. He grabs my shoulders so I won’t fall.

“No, you’re not,” he says, and signals the medics to set the stretcher on the ground. “Where did you come from?”

“One of the exam rooms.” I talk fast. “A wall blew apart right after my doctor gave me a shot. I think it knocked me out. I woke up and she was dead. Her blood was all over me. I heard another explosion and I knew I had to get out of there. I was so scared.”

“It’s gonna be okay.” The guard helps me over to the stretcher, and the medics help me climb onto it.

“Who set off the bombs?” I ask, curling up on my side. “How many people died? Some of my friends were in the other exam rooms.”

“We got a lot of people out, but we don’t know how many were trapped inside, or who made this happen.” The guard crouches beside the stretcher. “Listen, uh…”

“Brea.”

“Brea. These nurses are gonna take you outside and make sure you’re okay, and get you back to the camp safely. We’re gonna make sure your friends got out. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“You’ll be just fine,” he says.

“Promise?”

“Yes.” The thinness of his lips tells me he’s lying. He must know Charlie’s plans for me and everyone else in the camp. He knows, by the end of it, it’s likely we’re all going to end up dead.

He straightens as the medics lift my stretcher. We start down the hallway, and I curl up tighter, wrapping my arms around my stomach. Sam is straight ahead. There’s no way he won’t recognize me, if he gets a good look at my face. Joe did, after all.

Joe’s face flashes through my head, with the blood trickling from his hairline.

No, I will not berate myself for what I did to him. This wasn’t like what happened with Cady. I was ready to let him go; I was ready to trust him, because I didn’t want to kill him. But he gave me no choice.

The sound of Sam and the other guards talking tells me when we’ve reached the entrance. I open my eyes a little, enough to see Sam giving orders to several more officials who’ve just entered the building.

“I want teams of two,” he says. “You check every room. Haul out anyone who’s still alive, and try to identify the rest.”

He doesn’t spare a glance my way as the medics carry my stretcher out of the entrance. But I keep expecting him to. I can’t believe he really wouldn’t notice me a second time.

Not ten seconds later, we’re outside, and his voice is lost in the midst of others. There are a few more officials moving on the wide pathway, but mostly it’s filled with the nurses and doctors who must’ve evacuated. There aren’t as many as I would expect—nine or ten at the most. Smoke is heavy in the air; it smells like the whole world is burning. Some of the nurses are crying loudly and hugging each other, like they can’t believe this happened.

The medics set my stretcher down on the side of the pathway, where it branches off into another road along the edge of the cavern. It must lead to the city because there are transports parked here—small, silver ones Sam and the extra guards and the medics must’ve used. It makes sense they’d have a faster way to get here, instead of cutting through the camp.

“They’re gonna need us inside,” one of the medics says.

“You go,” his partner says. “Tell the lieutenant I’ll get in there as soon as I can.”

As the first medic jogs back to the building entrance, I push myself up with my elbows, ready to stand and limp back into the camp. Sam hasn’t come out of the quarantine facility, but he could at any moment. The camp is the safest place for me to hide.

“Hold up there,” the medic says, putting a hand on my shoulder to push me back down. “You need to sit tight for a minute. I’m not letting you go until I’ve had a look at your injuries.”

I was afraid he’d say that. “I’m not really hurt. The blood isn’t mine.”

My head’s still throbbing, but I doubt there’s a way he can fix it without giving me a shot, and I’m done with those forever.

“I need to at least check your vitals,” the medic says, stepping over to the back of his medical transport. “And maybe you’d like clean clothes, or some water? I’d take advantage of this, if I were you. I know your daily rations are scarce.”

He has a point, if he’s going to make me sit here anyway. “Water, I suppose.”

He returns with a bag of medical supplies and a small canister of water. I take the canister and down the cool liquid in only a few swallows. I wish I’d taken my time after it’s gone.

The medic chuckles as he takes the empty canister away. He reaches into his bag and pulls out a stethoscope. He listens to my heart, while my eyes stray to the smoke trailing from the ruins of the quarantine facility, up to the mossy stone in the high ceiling of the cavern. I hope the kill chambers are really destroyed, and the furnaces and all the medical equipment too. I hope when Charlie hears what happened here, it makes him furious.

I’m almost smiling to myself when I remember he has Beechy. What will he do to him for this?

“Thomas,” someone says behind me.

The medic looks up. “Yes?”

“Lieutenant Sam wants you in there. I’ll get this girl back to the camp.” The person sets his hand on my shoulder, gripping it a bit too tightly.

It’s Skylar, I’m 99 percent sure. But I have to act normal.

Thomas mutters something incoherent, but takes the stethoscope out of his ears and straightens. “All righty, then. It seems you’re well enough, Brea.”

“Thank you for the water,” I say.

“My pleasure.” He smiles and tosses the empty canister into the back of the medi-pod, and heads back to the building.

I get to my feet a bit unsteadily and turn to Skylar. She has a helmet on but the visor’s open, so I can tell she’s glancing over my body.

“You’re gonna get me all bloody,” she says, and grips my shoulder again and shoves me toward the medi-pod. She lets go of me to climb into the back, to rummage for a towel or something. “Don’t you dare move,” she adds loud enough she must want people to hear her.

Quieter, she says, “Did they give you a shot? Whisper when you answer, or I swear I’ll strangle you.”

“No, they didn’t,” I say in a low voice. “The first explosion cut them off.”

“Good thing you made it out of there alive. Paley and Jensen screwed up the timers. The explosives were supposed to go off this morning.”

“I wondered if it was a mistake.”

“Yeah, well at least it’s over.”

She steps out of the medi-pod and hands me a towel. I wipe off the blood from my cheeks, though some of it seems already dried.

Skylar checks behind me, then says, “Listen. Charlie’s got a lot of people looking for you.”

“So I’ve heard,” I say. “Do you know if he wants me dead or alive?”

“Alive.”

That’s what I don’t understand. Charlie was going to leave me to die in the flight hangar the day of the bomb. I’d become too reckless for him to have any hope of turning me into one of his mindless soldiers anymore. The only reason I can imagine he’d let me live now would be to punish me for my crimes before he kills me. To torture me worse than he already has.

“So what am I supposed to do?” I ask.

“I need you to stay undercover in the camp as long as you can. Spread the word to everyone you can that an uprising is underway. Those in the camps can be a part of it soon.”

Now that they’re all subdued, I’m not sure how much help they’ll be. But hopefully some of them—those with stronger wills—will be able to fight the injection. Those are the people I can still get on our side.

But I don’t know how Skylar expects me to be useful if she keeps me in the dark about Alliance movements. “It would help if you’d keep me informed about what you and the others are planning,” I say, not hiding the annoyance in my voice.

“It’s too dangerous to get messages to you often,” Skylar says, grabbing the towel from me and throwing it back into the pod. “But I’ll try. Now let’s get you back to the camp before someone comes over.”

Gripping my arm, she hauls me toward the gate, less than twenty feet away.

We need more time. I have at least a hundred more questions about Beechy, and Mal, and whatever information the Alliance might’ve found out about Charlie’s plan by now. But one thing can’t wait.

“Logan. Is he in the other camp?”

“Yes,” she says. “He was called for inspection this morning like you, but Jensen checked on him, and he was already out of the building when the bomb went off.”

She pushes me through the open camp gate with more force than necessary. But I don’t even care. I could laugh, I’m so relieved. Logan is alive; he’s all right.

The gate clangs shut behind me. I push myself to my feet and turn in time to see Skylar walking away, before she disappears into the crowd.

She seemed harsher than her usual self. I hope she’s not still angry at me for Cady’s death. I hope she’s just trying to stay in character, even when no one’s watching.

As I turn away from the gate, her last words play through my mind again: He was already outside the building when the bomb went off.

Every limb of my body freezes.

She was talking about Logan. She said he’d been called in for inspection, but if he was outside before the explosion, that means he finished sooner than I did. He got all the way through his examination with a doctor.

That can only mean one thing: he was given the shot. He couldn’t have gotten out of the exam without it.

Logan is one of the mindless.