“You wish.”
“You could be right,” he says so quietly I can hardly make out the words. “It’s hard to tell.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.
“That’s a conversation for another time,” he says, grabbing my hand as we approach the building from the file. “Right now we’re going to pretend to fight. That should come easy for you.”
He grins and I stifle the urge to stick out my tongue.
“We’re almost there. I promise the walk will be totally worth it.” Atlas’s voice is raised loud enough for anyone nearby to hear. “Best tacos in Chicago.”
We wait for the light to turn, cross the intersection, and step onto the sidewalk where my mother lost her life. The dream replays in my head. The headlights. Her scream. Blood running on the concrete beneath my feet.
“Meri,” Atlas whispers in my ear. “You okay?”
I shake off the dream and focus on why we’re here. “I don’t see your taco place.”
He looks around. “I know this is the street.”
I roll my eyes. “You always do this. Why is it you never know where we’re going?” I demand.
“Just help me look, okay?” He lowers his voice again. “You take that side. I’ll check this one. If you find any evidence of this being what the plans say, come find me.” He walks up and down the sidewalk, looking at the black-and-silver building. I take the other side, searching for any signs of the terrible things we suspect are happening inside. The front door is locked. The small bronze plaque that reads “Unity Center West” is smudged with dirt and doesn’t appear to have been cleaned in a while. The tinted windows make it impossible to see inside.
I head down the sidewalk to the end of the building and follow the alley to the entrance for the underground garage. It, too, is locked tight. If this is Unity Center West, could there be an East? Or maybe more? If so . . .
“Need help, miss?”
I stop cold and force myself to smile at the woman who steps into the alley. She has a bag of groceries in her hand and an earnest expression on her brightly made-up face.
“I’m trying to help my friend find someone,” I say. She clearly lives nearby. Maybe she knows something that can help, since nothing about the building appears useful. “He used to work in this building. I was hoping someone he worked with might know where he went.”
The woman’s smile fades. “Oh, I’m sorry, dear. I haven’t seen anyone go into this building in over a month. They must have moved to a new location. Thank goodness. They always had delivery trucks coming and going in the middle of the night. The trucks woke my husband, and he got me up to complain that they weren’t obeying the curfew.” She laughs.
Disappointment cuts deep. The trucks coming and going during the curfew time—when no one else would be driving on the streets—reinforce what the plans made us think this place was used for. But if the trucks are gone, chances are the building is no longer being used for that purpose, if at all. “Did you know anyone who worked here who might know where this company moved to?”
She blinks. “Not really. There were always men with badges coming and going. I figured that’s why they were allowed to break curfew without getting in trouble. Maybe if you asked at the police station?” She shrugs and gives me a little wave. “I have to get my ice cream in the freezer. Tell your friend I hope he finds whoever he’s looking for.” With that she shuffles to a gate next to an apartment complex and disappears inside.
I check the entrance to the parking garage anyway, but it’s locked up tight.
“It’s empty,” I tell Atlas when I meet him back by the front entrance.
“I know.” There’s a stark hollowness in his eyes that steals my breath. “The guy in the coffee shop said his business dropped off weeks ago. No one has been around since.”
Laughter from the patio of the coffee shop makes the stab of defeat dig deeper. Others are happy, carefree, and oblivious—while Atlas is crushed by loss and all that he knows.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “But there could be other places like this. And now that we know what the government is calling them, maybe—”
“Walk.”
“But, Atlas. I think that we—”
“There’s a Marshal coming toward us. We have to start walking. Now.” He puts his arm around my shoulder and leads me out of the doorway. “Don’t look.”
Too late. I’ve already glanced down the sidewalk. There’s a girl in a blue cap, a couple of twentysomething guys in matching green sports shirts, and one lone guy in khaki pants and a blue button-down shirt striding purposefully behind them. He has dark straight hair and thick eyebrows that arch above narrow-framed sunglasses, which suddenly seem to be looking right at me.
“This way.”
We move toward the crosswalk and stop at the curb to wait as cars zoom past. Every second that passes, the guy in the sunglasses is getting closer. The guys in the matching shirts join us on the curb, and Atlas leans over to whisper in my ear, “Don’t move when the light changes.” He shifts his own backpack so that it is hanging from one arm, unzips it, and murmurs, “But be ready to run.”
The back of my neck prickles as the light turns and the pedestrian Walk sign appears.
“Hey, I think we might be on the wrong block,” Atlas says in a loud voice. He pulls me to the side and takes out his phone to make it seem like he’s looking up directions. I shift the weight on my feet as the lanky girl in jeans and a blue ball cap hurries past us. The sign changes to Don’t Walk as the guy with the narrow sunglasses reaches the curb.
I hold my breath. My muscles clench as I wait for Atlas’s signal to bolt—for the person Atlas marked as a Marshal to charge at us. Instead, the man ignores the electronic sign by stepping onto the crosswalk and hurrying to the other side.
“We’re good,” Atlas says quietly. “He’s after someone else.”
“How are you so sure he’s a Marshal instead of just some guy?” I ask.
“The way he’s moving and the shoes.”
“The shoes?” Now that I’m paying attention, I can see the smooth steps of the man are getting faster. He passes a couple pushing a stroller and is veering around the guys with the green shirts. “If he really is a Marshal, then who is he following?”
“He is a Marshal, and I’m pretty sure he’s following that girl—there.” He points to the lanky girl in the blue baseball hat, who has stepped off the sidewalk and is currently weaving between moving cars as she crosses outside the crosswalk to the opposite side of the street.
Sure enough. The guy with the sunglasses leaves the sidewalk and with even, measured steps follows the same route as the woman, who is moving north down the sidewalk, never pausing to look behind her.
“So what do we do?” I ask.
“What do you mean what do we do? We’re going to go back to the park, retrieve your bike, and get you home.”
“But what about her?” The girl in the blue hat disappears around the corner. The minute she’s out of sight the Marshal pulls out his phone. He punches something on the screen, slides it back into his pocket, and quickens to a jog. “You’re not going to just let him catch her, are you?”
“She’s not a Steward.”
“So what? That means it’s fine for her to just . . . disappear?” To end up like his dad or my mom? To have her family told a lie about how she vanished or why she died? “You want me to live with knowing that I saw something bad about to happen and I did nothing to stop it?”
Yeah, I don’t think so.
“Look, Meri, we have to—”
I don’t wait to hear whatever Atlas thinks we have to do. Instead, I look both ways at the cars coming down the road and bolt across the street.
Thirteen
Cars honk.
Tires squeal.
“Meri! What the hell?” I reach the other side and ignore the blinking Don’t Walk sign as I race across the next intersection. I’m not sure if I will be fast enough to find the
girl, but I’m determined to try.
I dart around a couple stopping to admire something in a window display and stumble as Atlas appears, breathing hard beside me.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he pants. “Are you trying to get caught?”
“No,” I yell, jogging around a man shoving his chair back from an outdoor café table. “I’m trying to stop anyone else from feeling like we do.”
“What are you going to do if you catch up to them? Ask the guy to dance? If you interfere with whatever it is he’s doing, he’s going to see you as a threat.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do.” I haven’t really thought that far ahead. I have to find the girl first.
I keep my eyes forward and just keep jogging.
“Great,” Atlas snaps. “But if you really mean to do this we’re going to have to go a hell of a lot faster.”
When Atlas says faster, he means faster.
A guy walking a German shepherd shoots us dirty looks as Atlas streaks by the dog and down the concrete sidewalk, past the boutiques and ice-cream shop and the weekend window-shoppers. He rounds the corner, and it’s all I can do to keep up with his long strides as he cruises down the mostly residential block.
“I don’t see them,” I shout, squinting into the distance. “Do you?”
“Our scary friend just turned north at the far end of this block.” He darts to the other side of the street and I jump off the curb and follow. “We’ll take the alley and do our best to catch up. Let’s just hope she’s quicker than you.”
Okay, the insult did the trick.
I ignore the fire building in my chest, dodge a skateboarding kid, and keep pace right behind Atlas. If Atlas is right about the Marshal and the girl, what we do next could save someone like me from losing a person they love.
Our footsteps slap against pavement.
Atlas shifts the bag on his shoulder before it can slide off and somehow manages to not slow down.
My chest is about to burst. My legs burn.
Atlas glances back, his forehead glazed with sweat, and gives me an approving half grin for mostly keeping up. That smile fuels me to keep going until the alley dumps us out onto the next sidewalk.
“At the end of the block.” Atlas points. “See her?”
She’s easy to spot because other than Atlas and me, there’s no one on this street filled with three-story town houses or apartment buildings.
A dog barks somewhere nearby. The girl glances at us, then heads in the opposite direction from where we stand. Her back is to us, so there is no chance to signal to her that something is wrong.
“Where’s the guy?” I say between pants, but see the answer to my own question come into view at the corner about twenty steps behind the girl. The guy with the sunglasses pauses and looks down at the phone in his hand.
“They’ll make their move soon.”
“They?”
Atlas nods. “This block is quiet. Almost no one’s around. Perfect time for a grab. If we’re going to stop them, it has to be now. You ready?”
No. But I started this. So I guess I have to be.
Atlas pulls his backpack off his shoulder, lofts it in the air, and yells, “Well, if you want this bag back, you’re going to have to catch me.”
And off he goes. He barrels down the sidewalk while letting out another shout. I urge my legs to get moving again as sunglasses guy turns to look in our direction. He steps to the side to let Atlas pass. When he does, I glance down at the Marshal’s shoes. They are black—not boots, but not quite high-tops, with thick soles and buckled straps. A cross between a running shoe and something worn in military movies.
“Come on,” Atlas shouts as he increases the distance between himself and the man. “You can do better than that!”
I’m trying, but I’m not sure I can. Every part of my body is quivering with fatigue. But this isn’t the time to give up. I pump my arms and legs and am just closing in on the Marshal when a sedan zooms around the corner behind me and zips down the street. The man in front of me starts to run as the shiny black-and-silver car screeches to a halt just in front of where the girl in the blue hat is walking. The back passenger door of the car swings open and the girl spins.
Even from a distance I can see the fear on her face as a big man in a gray suit jumps out of the car and starts toward her. The Marshal in sunglasses is closing in as Atlas reaches into his bag, pulls out a handful of papers, and sends them flying in the man’s face.
Sunglasses Marshal grabs at the papers, as if trying to pluck as many of them out of the air as he can. The gray-suit dude turns to reach for one of the pages sailing past his face and never sees Atlas spin and kick the man square in the chest.
The man in gray flies back into the open car door. He hits metal and crashes to the ground. Papers flutter in the air around him. The gray-suited Marshal grabs one that floats against his face, crumples it, and immediately climbs to his feet—feet encased in the exact same military-style running boots as the man who had been following the girl.
Sunglasses Guy slows and reaches behind him, under his shirt. When he pulls his hand back out, I see the sunlight glinting off the dark metal of what can only be a gun.
“Watch out!” The warning I choke out is barely more than a gasp of air.
A third man jumps out of the driver’s side of the car and races toward the blue-baseball-cap girl, who is running toward the end of the street. Atlas kicks and blocks as he fights with the man in the suit. He ducks under a fist and isn’t paying attention to the Marshal with the sunglasses. But I am, and that one is lifting the gun and taking aim.
I push myself to run faster, even though I know I will never reach the man in time. I’m still half a block away.
Too far back.
Too slow.
I yell out another warning, still not strong, but loud enough for the Marshal with the gun to hear and glance in my direction for just a fraction of a second. Thankfully, that’s all Atlas needs. Atlas grabs the guy in the suit, locks his arm tight around the suit man’s neck, and spins so that he is now standing behind the Marshal in the suit when the shot cracks across the air.
The world stops.
No one moves.
I can’t breathe.
Then it feels as if everything speeds up. Atlas lets go of the Marshal in the suit. The man takes two staggering steps forward. His eyes go wide. The gray suit jacket flaps open. Blood blooms bright like a rose against the white of the shirt beneath and grows larger with every beat of my heart, and suddenly all of this is far too real.
The words.
The Stewards.
The Marshals.
The world hidden in plain view that I have known nothing about but which has surrounded me all along.
In my head I knew my mother had been killed, but I didn’t really understand.
I knew running after the girl could be dangerous, but the reality of the danger was just verified by that single shot.
The injured Marshal falls to his knees, then slowly pitches face-first onto the pavement. The man in sunglasses glances down at the one he shot, then points the weapon at Atlas, who no longer has a living shield. The Marshal smirks. His arm straightens as I cross the last of the distance between us and half leap, half stumble into the man’s side, sending him pitching over with me right on top of him.
“Get off!” The Marshal pushes up from the ground, and I am sent rolling to the side. My knee cracks against concrete. My elbow skids over the hard, rough ground. Pain sings down my leg and up my arm and I grit my teeth and ignore it all as I shove myself to my feet.
Something cracks and snaps beneath my shoe—the man’s sunglasses are toast.
“Watch out!”
I turn to see the Marshal I just tackled now on his knees, pointing the gun directly at me.
A scream builds in my throat as Atlas’s foot connects with the man’s hand. I flinch when the gunshot cracks like thunder and the weapon goes flying.
&
nbsp; I could have died.
Atlas saved me.
Our eyes meet for a split second.
Then the girl screams. The sound of her voice scraping the air acts like a sharp slap of a hand against my face—snapping me out of the shock and back into the moment. The girl bucks against the driver. He has her gripped tight in his arms as he drags her toward the open back-seat door of the car.
“Here!” Atlas tosses me a thick black book. I fumble but catch it, then dart forward. I skid on the loose pages scattered over the pavement and kick the large man as hard as I can in the shin. It’s not the balanced, powerful kick Atlas used to save me, but it distracts him long enough for me to swing the book and crack it against the side of the man’s face. The Marshal yelps, and his grip loosens enough for the girl to wriggle free. She stumbles forward, and I grab her arms to help her keep her balance. Someone from above yells, “What the hell is going on down there? I’ve called the cops.”
Any cops that show up would be on the Marshals’ side.
“Both of you, get out of here!” Atlas shouts. He ducks, throws his backpack into the face of the man with the gun. The Marshal stumbles. Atlas spins and rams his foot into the man’s gut, sending him flying backward into the street as another black-and-silver car comes roaring toward us.
The Marshal who held the girl lunges toward me. I swing with the book again and connect with his shoulder as the girl lands a kick to his pelvis.
“Go! Now!” Atlas yells.
The new car screeches to a stop behind the first.
“I’m right behind you.” He kicks the Marshal staggering to regain his footing and sends him back against the rear tire of the first car. Atlas then ducks under the fist of the Marshal I kicked, who has started to shout for someone to call for more assistance. “Go!”
The doors of the second car fly open and four new men in suits climb out. I don’t want to leave Atlas. I got him into this, but there is very little I can do to help. I don’t know how to fight—not against men who have guns and are willing to kill. And there’s the girl to think about. She’s the reason I insisted we come here. Now I have to get her to safety. If Atlas says he is going to follow, I have to believe he will.
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