The next morning found Reed up earlier than usual. He had the room to himself for, despite Michael’s warning, both Reagan and Riley spent the night somewhere else.
Reed was at his shelves, going through his clothes and tossing an occasional item in his backpack. He was packing to leave. It felt so strange and final, like going through the yearbook at the end of school. Each shirt had a recollection attached to it—where he had bought it, when he had worn it, who had liked it—and, as ridiculously sentimental as it sounded, each felt like an old friend. Still, he took only what he needed or couldn’t bear to part with.
He’d almost finished his task when the door opened softly, and Reagan tiptoed into the room. He stopped when he caught sight of Reed. “What are you doing?” he whispered, closing the door. “I thought you’d still be asleep.”
“Just… cleaning out my closet.” Reed went on with his task, forcing himself to sound casual. He had not anticipated Reagan returning so soon.
“At this time of the morning?” Reagan sounded doubtful.
Reed opened a drawer. “Sure, why not?” He did not look up from his work.
Reagan moved over to his bed and sat down, watching him in silence. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”
Reed stopped. “What?”
“You’re leaving the Hill. Don’t try to hide it. I can tell.”
Reed forced himself calm. “What makes you say that?”
“You,” Reagan said. “I’ve been watching you lately. You’re different. You’ve been hanging out with Elijah’s group. They’re changing you, Reed. Everybody sees it.”
“They say I’m… different?”
“Yeah. People notice, dude.”
There was a pause. “So what’s that got to do with my closet?” Reed said, still hedging.
“Come on, Reed! You hang out with Elijah, who gets thrown in jail; you’re in deep depression till he mysteriously escapes; you get mugged a week later and don’t explain how you get away; and now you’re packing. It’s not that hard. You’re leaving with him, aren’t you? Why?”
Reed deliberately zipped his pack shut. He stood and faced Reagan. “You’re right: I am leaving. I have to. For one thing, the Council’s after me, and it’s not safe for me here. But it’s more than that; this place isn’t enough anymore. I know there’s something better out there! I’m not going to find anything in this place. It’s not… not… well, it’s not what I thought it was.”
Reagan stared at him with an expression Reed could not interpret. “And you think they’ve got what you’re looking for?”
Reed hesitated. “Yes,” he said, “I think they do. I know they’ve got something. I’m not getting any answers around here.”
“Where will you go?”
“I don’t know, but I’ve gotta leave now.” He shouldered his pack and stuck out his hand. “Thanks for everything, Reagan. You’ve been an awesome roommate.”
Reagan reached out and shook it, still staring at him. “You do realize nobody can help you if you get caught. You’ll be on your own.”
Reed returned his look. “I know. I’ve thought about it, but I figure it’s worth the risk. G’bye, Reagan.”
He turned and opened the door.
“Reed.”
Reagan’s voice stopped him half-way out. He turned. Reagan stood in the middle of the dorm room, looking tired and small. The usual airy spiritedness was gone and left him an ordinary, dejected kid.
“Reed, if… if you do find what you’re looking for, I wish… would you… could you find some way—any way—to come back and tell me how?”
“I will, Reagan. If it’s at all possible, I will. See ya, bro.” He shut the door.
Half an hour later, when he arrived at the factory, Reed found Lucy already behind her desk, alone in the lobby. She smiled as he entered. “They’re gone,” she said.
He nodded. “Good, I guess. What about us?”
“Gabe said we should meet at the Dorms after work and go to the Gorge together. He’s still really worried about us.”
Personally, Reed doubted Gabe was very worried about him, but he didn’t say so.
“That’s fine,” he replied. “Whoever gets back to the Hill first should wait for the others outside your dorm. It’ll be easier to find each other.”
She agreed, and they parted.
The rest of the morning was a typical Saturday at the factory. The other workers complained about working weekends, took a poll on how bad breakfast at the Mushroom had been, and argued about the movie premiere the night before. Reed didn’t enter into the conversation. He contemplated how different things would be this time tomorrow.
The morning dragged on. Reed began to feel nervous and wondered if noon would ever come. Noon came. But the whistle did not sound nor did the belts stop promptly on the hour. The teens mumbled about paid overtime but continued their work.
Twelve-thirty approached and passed. Still the belts rolled on. The mumbling changed to louder grumbling. Reed began to worry.
One o’clock came and passed. Nothing changed. The grumbling turned into angry outbursts and dark looks toward the door. “What do they think we are, slaves?” some began to growl. Reed sweated and tried to stay calm.
One-thirty… two… two-thirty… three. Everyone was furious by now. Several tried the door into the hall, but it was locked like it usually was during working hours. Reed chewed the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood.
At last, when the time neared three-thirty, the parts stopped spilling down the belts. The workers bolted out of the room in a mass exodus. Reed was the first to toss his backpack over his shoulder and dart up the steps and out the door into the lobby. Lucy’s desk was empty.
With a groan, he dashed out the double glass doors and down the road to the park’s entrance. When he arrived at the gate, breathless, he found that his company had not been the only one to keep its workers overtime. Young people were still streaming down from the other factory and pooling by the road. That was a relief; Gabe and Lucy must have been delayed as well. But the crowd was not waiting on the curb as usual. A growing line stretched down the sidewalk into the city. Reed, confused and out of breath, stopped a passing girl.
“What’s going on?” he panted.
The girl scowled. “The shuttles aren’t here, and they’re not coming. We have to walk back to the Hill.”
Reed’s shoulders slumped. That was a long way on foot, but there was nothing else to do. Cursing under his breath, he started down the street at a brisk walk.
He hadn’t gotten far when he became aware that someone was walking beside him. He glanced over and saw Hunter, keeping pace and eyeing him curiously.
“I wondered how long it would take you to notice.” The other boy grinned when Reed caught his eye. “You look like you’re in a hurry. Goin’ somewhere?”
“Yeah, back to the Dorms like everybody else.” Reed turned his eyes back in front of him. “I just don’t like being three-and-a-half hours late.”
“Late for anything in particular?”
“Nope. Just in general.”
“So… you don’t have anywhere to be or anyone to meet?”
Reed shot him a sideways glance. “Why should I?”
“Aw, come on, Reed!” Hunter exclaimed. “Everybody knows you’re the life of the party. What ya got planned? I know there’s something.”
“Nothing,” Reed shrugged. “Why?”
“Oh, it’s just my business to know things. I know all about everything.”
Reed had to smile at the boast. “Everything? Then tell me about these supposed plans I have tonight. I’d love to find out about them.”
Hunter snorted. “Don’t get smart, Reed. I know what I’m talking about.”
Reed glanced at him, half-annoyed, half-amused. “You know, you’re kinda creepy sometimes. Why do you make it your business to know all about everything and everybody? Does somebody pay you?”
“Who would do that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. The Council pays the ringer. Maybe they’d pay…” Reed’s grin faded, and he broke off as if struck by a lightning bolt.
Hunter’s eyes snapped to his face and burned there with a terrifying intensity. Reed looked back at him, stunned. Any doubts about his sudden flash died at what he read in those steely gray eyes. It fit like a long-sought piece into a puzzle.
“You,” he finished in a whisper. “You? You’re the… ringer!”
Hunter’s face had lost all teasing, like paint melting from iron. It was hard and sharp with a dangerous glitter in the eyes. Nothing he said could deny what was written on that face, and they both knew it.
“How?” breathed Reed, “How could you? You always hated the government.”
“I do,” Hunter shot back. “I always told you I was in it for myself. I walk the line, work the system to get what I want. If the government pays me, fine, I’ll do that. But I’m not loyal to them. I get what I want from them, but I hate them.”
“You mean they give you benefits for being a...?”
“They do. They pay me, give me bonuses for ‘special assignments,’ extend my rules, you name it. They hired me before I even got here and gave me top-of-the-line training for any kind of situation. But I took that a little further than they think. I do more than they know when it serves me. Right now, with what they taught me and what I’ve taught myself, I could go superhero or turn terrorist. I’ve got anything and everything I want. Oh, yeah, they pass me on shakedowns, too, so my room’s frickin’ stacked. There’s a whole arsenal in there they don’t know about. I was the one who armed the gunner at the street fair. He bought that stuff from me.”
Reed could scarcely breathe. “You killed sixty-seven kids? You turned in the potheads and set off the first shakedown? You were the one who turned in Elijah?”
“I was.” Hunter sounded proud of himself. “And much more. But I had a little help on the Elijah thing, from you.”
“Me? Never!”
“Maybe not that you know about, but yes, it was you. The first day I met you on the bus, I could tell there was something about you. I decided to stick with you ’cause you might be useful. I was right. You got famous, and you were invaluable. Not long after we got here, I thought I was on the trail of this Christian group the Council wanted, then you started disappearing at nights. You were very clever, all of you; I never could find out names. It took months, but I got closer and closer. We almost got you that night in the woods. Finally, it all came together when you let your guard down for the first time and led me straight to a bright-eyed, pretty-faced kid on a park bench. The next morning, they arrested Elijah on my say so. No, you didn’t know it, but you were very useful.”
Reed went numb. So he had done it. Him. It was his fault all along. He pushed the painful thought aside to make way for another.
“You mean all that time, you were just using me? You didn’t care for me as… a friend?”
The cold steel of Hunter’s face never changed. “Why should I? I look out for myself, not anybody else.”
Horror, fury, and disgust filled Reed’s soul in a rush. “You traitor!”
“Chill.” Hunter cut him off icily. “If you care for your life, you’ll keep your mouth shut, now and permanently.” His gray eyes, somehow wolf-like, sent shivers down Reed’s spine. “I’m in hot water since Elijah escaped. The Council’s angry and expects me to find him. I know exactly where he’s going to be this afternoon, and I’m bargaining with them for that information right now. I’ve named my price, and they can’t say no. They want him too badly. If you mess anything up, you will pay for it. I’ve never even met Elijah, but I will make sure he is destroyed, and you, too, if you get in my way.”
The utter hatred and cruelty that filled every word shocked Reed. With his mask off, Hunter was a different person—a monster. His complete callousness left Reed hurt, stung, reeling. And the realization that he had led the Council to Elijah’s door was terrible to him. But above all these, another thought rose in his mind. This treachery, this baseness was what he had ascribed to Gabe. Gabe who, he saw, had only acted out of loyalty and love for the others’ safety all along. Gabe, who fought for his friends with the same tenacity that Hunter fought to destroy them. To load him with this betrayal… it was unjust, cruel, undeserved. Reed saw that plainly now.
They had reached the Hill and climbed the sloping road to the Dorms, wrapped in the conversation. Reed broke from his swirling thoughts to find they were some of the last to arrive on the Square. The crowd was enormous; the entire Hill was outside.
Why don’t they go inside? he wondered. “What in the world?”
This last comment was spoken out loud as he realized the pandemonium that filled the Square. All was confusion. Five thousand teenagers swarmed over the pavement, buzzing like a hive of upset bees. Some appeared bewildered and lost; others looked angry. The walls of the Dorms echoed and doubled their babbling drone.
Reed searched the mass for a familiar face to question and found one almost at his elbow. It was Allie, and he grabbed her as she passed.
“Allie, what’s going on?” he demanded. “What happened?”
She turned a teary face toward him. “I don’t know! I just got back and tried the door to my dorm, but it’s locked! They all are. We can’t get in!”
“Locked? Did you try your key?”
“They don’t work. All the lights are turned off, and even the Mushroom and rec center are shut up. We can’t find the RDs anywhere!”
Reed was about to question her further when a boy pushed through the crowd and sprang up onto the high edging of a nearby flowerbed. He waved his arms for silence. “Hey!” he yelled. “Listen up!”
A gradual hush fell. “I just came from Dorm Four.” His voice bounced off the brick walls so all could hear. “Michael the RD is gone, but his door was open. He left a note in his room.” He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and began to read aloud.
“If you’re wondering what’s going on, I’m not sure I can tell you since I’m not an economist or a lawyer. Most of you know our government was broke, living off credit to other nations. That stopped today. I don’t know exactly what happened, but the limit was reached. It was time to pay up, and Big Bro couldn’t. The market plummeted, banks closed, businesses went bust…it’s complicated. In terms we can understand, the government has collapsed. All federal agencies and programs have fallen through and are dissolved. The Hill is shut down permanently.”
A complete uproar erupted as the boy finished reading. The angry and despairing cries of disbelief from five thousand former Hill residents were deafening. Reed heard Hunter, still next to him, explode.
“How dare they!” he bellowed, “the double-crossing traitors!” With much more and much worse, he spun around, raging. “I’ll make them pay for this!” His wild eyes fell on Reed. “You’ll all pay! Nobody pulls something like this on me!” He darted away into the crowd and out of sight.
In the meantime, the boy who read the note was still atop his flowerbed, trying to restore order. This was difficult, to say the least, and it was several minutes before he could make himself heard. When the chaos died down, there was silence for a moment. Reed thought he heard a faint tinkle like breaking glass, but he paid it little attention. The boy was speaking again. “You heard what Michael said. We’re dumped.”
“What do we do?” cried a girl in the crowd.
The boy waved. “The Dorms are still here; who’s going to stop us from living in them? They can’t kick us out.”
“But the water and power are both out,” objected someone else. “That’s no good.”
“I say we go downtown,” shouted another. “The Council got us into this; they should get us out!”
A widespread rumble of assent went up.
“Yeah! This is the Council’s fault!”
“They should fix this for us!”
“It’s their responsibility!”
Everyone began shouting. Reed shook his head. He didn’t know where this was going, and he didn’t know what to think about it. He needed a few moments of quiet to absorb it all and think it through.
No one else seemed to need any time. Momentum mounted, sparked by the accusation and fanned by the anger that swept across the Square. The confusion and chaos were swallowed up by the raging fire of a new sentiment; a scapegoat had been found. All the murmuring vanished, beaten down by the thundering drum of thousands of united voices. The crowd was chanting. “The Council’s fault! The Council’s fault! The Council’s fault!”
Reed turned and surveyed the sea of angry faces. There were so many! What could any of them do now? Their world had fallen out from under them in one day.
He caught sight of a lone figure streaking away from the Square and away from the city. He had a vague suspicion who it was but didn’t have long to reflect.
At that moment, there was a terrifying roar from the east side of the Square. Reed spun around and froze. On the side of the Square farthest from him stood Dorm Six, its narrow front facing the crowd. Reed’s eyes fell on the building just in time to see its windows vaporize before the power of a massive explosion. Time slowed. Flames and smoke shot out from the bottom-story windows. The brick walls bowed outward and then, in a curtain of fire, disintegrated with an earth-shaking roar.
The deafening explosion drowned out the screams and cries that replaced the chanting. The force from the blast swept the Square and flattened the crowd before it like a battering ram. Dust mushroomed over the Hill in a choking cloud as glass, brick, concrete, wood, steel, and tile rained down thicker than hail. For what seemed an eternity—an awful eternity—the world turned upside down.
The shower of debris ceased. The rocking earth righted and stilled as the last echo of the explosion died away. There was absolute silence. Dazed, Reed rose to his feet and looked around him. A thick haze of smoke, dust, and ash hung in the air. Where Dorm Six had once stood, there was only a pile of rubble with an occasional flame licking upward. The trees near the site were blasted of their leaves and blackened on one side. All the windows of the other Dorms facing the Square had been blown out.
The other teenagers were getting up now, staring about them in silent shock. Many bled from gashes on their faces and arms. Not a word was spoken by anyone for a moment. Then a wail rose from one of the girls. “They’re trying to kill us!”
Her cry was joined by others. “The Council did it! They want to murder us all!”
“They don’t want us to use the Dorms again!”
“This was their plan all along!”
The boy who had read Michael’s note leapt back up onto his flowerbed, gripping his forearm with a gory hand. “See what they’ve done?” he shouted. “They dragged us here, and now they’re trying to destroy us! Are we going to stand for that?”
“No!” The angry cry echoed back as one voice.
“No, we’re not!” the boy yelled. “We won’t be slaughtered like cattle! We won’t be duped again! We won’t let them get away with it!”
The crowd responded with an unintelligible roar.
“There’s only one thing they’ll understand: make them pay! Let’s go get ’em!” He flung his blood-covered arm toward the city and jumped down from his platform.
In a deafening uproar, the mob—for such it had become—broke from the Square and poured over the Hill like a raging waterfall, surging onto the road down toward the city below.
The last of the furious mass streamed away, and their roar faded into the distance. Reed was left alone on the Square. Those teens were not the same friends he had left that morning. They were ferocious, out-of-control animals. Something terrible had transformed them in a few short hours. It was betrayal, anger, and the hopeless loss of everything they loved. It was the unleashed rebellion that had been simmering since the beginning. Woe to the Chairman and the Council now!
Reed, dazed, dragged his eyes over the empty Square. Empty? Not quite. Amidst the thick litter of timbers, brick, chunks of concrete, and broken furniture, there were bodies, dozens of them. They lay where they had fallen—broken, twisted, unmoving. With a rush of horror, he realized that not everyone had escaped with only cuts and bruises.
He dropped down to the nearest form and felt for signs of life. There were none. He moved to the next and stopped. It was Allie. She wasn’t breathing. He realized then that none of them were. There was not a single cry or groan, not a movement in the entire Square. He stood up and stared about him. He knew many of them. There, off to the left, was Sam lying on his back. Poor, foolish Sam. He had loved the Dorms, but they had destroyed him in the end. Reed suddenly understood how Elijah had seen him the whole time.
Elijah! Reed had completely forgotten. He was supposed to meet him at the Gorge hours ago. One glance at the sun, hanging red through the smoke, told him it was growing late. Lucy must be there already. With a last look around him, Reed snatched up his backpack and ran out of the Square.
Down the North Stairs, across the Mushroom parking lot, through a maze of sidewalks, out onto the country road, Reed did not slow his pace until he reached the creek that marked where he was to turn off into the woods. He stopped to catch his breath and looked back the way he had come.
The Hill was still partially shrouded in a dusty haze, the Dorms jutting out of it like an ancient ruin. From the city, billows of smoke swelled up from what he guessed was downtown. Elijah had been right. Woe to anyone caught in the Council’s headquarters that day!
Further to the right, another dark, swirling pillar towered into the sky. Reed knew that area well. It was the Boulevard or, rather, it had been. Apparently, the mob’s wrath knew no bounds. Before nightfall, the whole city would probably go up in flames.
He took a last look at the spreading darkness, inky black in the red rays of the dying sun, then turned his back on the scene and plunged into the woods.