“You told the Docs where to look for them after the attack! There was a list!”
“I gambled that you would stumble across the information and be able to gather them all together—look we don’t have time for this!” She spoke very quickly, losing a small portion of her carefully measured composure. “We need to tell you—”
“That’s the riskiest, stupidest—”
“Look, Jade,” Victor cut me off. “We came to warn you. The Doctors are evacuating the city into the Factory. They are providing food, shelter, medical care, and a place of refuge against the rebel terrorists.”
“Terrorists?” Malek spoke up for the first time since he had threatened the policemen. “The nerve of those—”
“They came to a decision last night,” Mata said earnestly. “You must surrender, or they will evacuate all their citizens to a safer colony and obliterate Liminis, with you inside it.”
Though her voice was still soft, her words seemed to ring in my ears.
“That’s bullroke!” Malek roared. “They can’t kill me! I’m a Second.”
“You have twenty-four more hours to decide.”
“What? No! That was our ultimatum!”
Mata turned to leave.
Malek lunged after her.
“Stop!” shouted one of the policemen, and a gunshot echoed through the air.
It was as though my body had been waiting for this moment. The thin dam that had been keeping my fury at bay shattered and I ran forward, too, slamming my fist into Victor’s nose as fighting broke out all around us.
Unfortunately, he was stronger than I was, and my attack hadn’t taken him by surprise. He responded by grabbing my wrist, twisting my arm toward the ground until I yelped, and blocking my other fist as it came sailing again toward his face.
“You killed him!” I shrieked, trying to break free. “You killed him!”
“Jade, stop!” He had both of my arms now and forced me to my knees as I struggled to break free. “Gideon’s not dead.”
“You’re a liar!” I squirmed, trying to pull him down with me so that I could get the advantage again. “Get off me! You killed him!”
“No, I—”
Another gunshot strangled his sentence, and we both twisted around to stare at Mata, who scrambled away, panting, from a lifeless corpse.
“Malek!” I yelled as I jumped to my feet, pushed Victor out of the way, and scrambled to his body; he had apparently been shot by one of the other police officers. “No!”
“Stop,” Victor shouted. “Don’t shoot her. The hostages—”
But I didn’t care what Victor had to say. Malek was dead. Blood pooled around his shoulders like a cape, and it was the Doctors’ fault. Negotiations my ass. The sight of his crimson blood brought a dark calmness into my chest. They would never leave us alone, and all we could do was destroy as many of them as possible before the inevitable, gory end.
“There will be no compromise,” I said firmly, feeling a deadness behind my eyes as I glared at Victor from the ground. “Consider yourselves at war.”
Mata wiped the blood from her mouth as I dragged Malek’s dead body back to our stronghold.
Victor, his hands still raised to keep the police officers from shooting me, said, “So be it,” and turned away.
Chapter Twenty
Walter
3 hours later
Walter sat on the couch, watching the TV that covered the entire living room wall. There was nothing else to do, since the damned Smarts were running around, burning everything to the ground. A bright ball bounced from corner to corner, side to side, spinning and bouncing and spinning over a swirling background of color. He still had never learned the names of those colors. It was that sort of Knowledge that had destroyed the world in the first place.
The sort of Knowledge those filthy Thirds had.
The sort of Knowledge that filthy Third had.
He grew angry just thinking about her. She had dared come into his house, drink his liquor, steal his car—
The Ten Colony Council had failed to kill her.
He would have to do it himself.
They were supposed to work for him and they had failed.
What was the point of them, then?
The ball burst in two. He almost wondered how the ball could split like that, but he shook his head, and luckily the thought passed. Damn Smarts, he thought. Damn Council. Damn everybody! He had never had “thoughts” before. And now they plagued him almost daily. Understanding how things worked was sinful, and Walter had always been a saint. Always.
Until now.
Because he needed Knowledge to kill her.
In fact, the more he thought about her skinny waist, ugly hair, and terrible eyes, the more he felt his Hate for her grow. She had thin eyebrows, a small nose, and lips that spoke evil and laughed at him. He hated the sight of those lips. She was the worst woman he had ever met.
And she would pay.
Before he could figure out how, however, the ball disappeared.
A blonde male with eyes like leaves now blinked awkwardly in front of him. The male who had just been executed. Walter recognized him, of course. From the trial.
He was the male who Loved her.
“What the hell?” Walter grabbed the TV controller and jabbed at the buttons.
But the Second was everywhere.
“People of Liminis,” the male began, pale as Walter’s bedsheets. “My name is Gideon Aarons. They killed me because I know the truth: The Ten Colony Council does not exist. It is the Doctors. They lied to you in order to remain in control of your lives.”
Wait, Walter thought. He’s dead . . .
Walter didn’t know a lot, but he did know that people who were dead were supposed to stay dead.
The ghost continued, “The Doctors live in luxury while we live in squalor. I know. I’ve seen it. All those citizens who died? There wasn’t a massive outbreak of influenza. Firsts, Seconds, and Thirds who learned the truth gathered in Erroris to fight the Doctors, and the Doctors killed them all. Knowledge is—”
The screen went blank, but the words rang in Walter’s head.
Doctors? Ghosts? Squalor? Walter didn’t know what that meant, but it didn’t sound good. The Doctors were just . . . nothing. They were nothing. How could they be allowed to rule over someone as important and righteous as himself?
Could this be true?
Angry voices started to fill the streets, and he went to his front door.
“Did you hear, Walter? It’s the Doctors.”
“They’re behind everything.”
“Those nobodies won’t control me; that’s for damn sure.”
Walter grabbed the gun he kept by the door.
The Ten Colony Council was supposed to work for him. If they had failed, then he was done. He would take things into his own hawking hands.
He would take control.
And it was time.
Chapter Twenty-One
Victor
“Roke, roke, roke!” I had never sworn so much in my life, but I did so now—and loudly—as the cameras stopped humming and the screens went blank.
“What happened?” Gideon asked.
“We lost the signal.” My ears felt hot as I dove frantically into the pile of cords on the ground, unplugging everything I could reach before plugging it all back in again.
“Are they jamming our transmission?”
“I don’t know, Gideon!”
“I’ll check the fuse box,” Shan said, disappearing from the broadcasting room as I continued to panic.
“We have to get it back up!” Gideon jumped from his seat and hovered like a big, useless insect.
“Don’t you think I know that?” I growled in return.
We couldn’t just spring something like this on Liminis without explaining. We had twenty minutes, maybe, before panic and chaos completely took over, and if the Doctors outside of the colony found out what we were doing—
If we didn’t get this fixed,
we could all be dead within the hour.
“Go help Shan,” Gideon snapped from above me,
fiddling with the camera now.
“Hey, don’t touch that!”
“Hurry!”
There wasn’t time to argue. Leaving the camera alone with Gideon—who was now even whiter than he had been moments before—I rushed after Shan, but the second I stepped out of the room, a strong hand grabbed my wrist and forced me into the shadows.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Mata hissed, squeezing my wrist so hard, it felt like it was about to crack. “The Second is alive?”
I yanked my arm out of her grip. “I didn’t know if we could trust you.”
“So you went rogue?”
Before I could respond, however, a metal pipe flew out of the darkness. I ducked and threw my fist out, making contact with Dr. French’s right cheek.
“Victor, watch out!” Mata shouted unhelpfully.
“Oh for the Love—”
Dr. French rebounded quickly, swiping the pipe at me again. “Did you really think you would get away with this!” she shrieked.
At Mata’s cry, Gideon came crashing through the door, distracting me just long enough for Dr. French to bring her pipe down on my shoulder.
“I’ll hawking die before you take this town from me!” she cried hysterically.
Tears stung my eyes as the left side of my body went numb, but I still managed to jam the heel of my hand into her nose. Howling, she dropped the pipe and clutched the now bleeding protuberance, so I took advantage of the situation and jabbed her in the stomach with my fist.
How had things gone so wrong?
Her eyes widened wildly before she threw herself at me, the weight of her body toppling me to the ground.
“Victor!”
I threw my hands up over my face as she started to punch me over and over again, but then I snatched her wrists and held her steady. “What did you do, French?” I yelled, feeling slightly manic. “Cut the power? Disconnect the server? What?”
I shook her and she tried to pull away, but the pipe came sailing through the air again as Mata smacked her in the back of the head. French’s body went limp as she slumped forward on top of me, apparently unconscious, and I struggled to get out from underneath her.
“What did you do that for?” I shouted, seizing the pipe from Mata. “She was about to tell me what she did to the broadcasting equipment!” For the first time in years, I had completely lost control.
“Like hell, she was,” Mata panted. “She would never tell you anything.”
“What’s going on?” Shan asked, sprinting back into the hallway with enormous eyes as she surveyed the scene.
Ignoring the Second, Mata straightened her jacket and swept her hair out of her face. “There’s something you need to see,” she said, clearly trying to summon the calm that all Doctors were expected to possess. “We need to get out of here, before it’s too late.”
“We’re not going anywhere until we finish that broadcast!” I yelled at her, blood pulsing through my ears.
“Don’t you understand?” she snarled. “No one will pay attention, even if you do get communications back online. Do you have any idea the chaos you’ve just unleashed?”
I opened my mouth to argue back, but Gideon interrupted me.
“What do you mean?”
She threw her hands up with a sigh of exasperation. “Between Galilea, the rebel activity, and now this, people have some pretty good reasons to stop trusting the Council.”
“Good!”
“Not good!” Mata barked back at me. “We don’t have an alternative to offer them! The colony will descend into anarchy and they’ll destroy each other before we get a chance to make things right. Or before the other Doctors have a chance to blow us all to smithereens!”
I opened my mouth again to respond, but no words came out. Holy roke, she’s right, I thought. I had never planned that far ahead. If we took away everything their lives were based on, how were they supposed to go on?
Closing her eyes, Mata took a deep breath. When she opened them again, her calm composure had completely returned.
It made me feel even more frustrated.
“Come on,” she said more gently this time, reaching out for Gideon’s hand. “A patrol captured someone last night, and the Doctors are holding her in the clinic. Trust me, it changes everything.”
Before I could think of a compelling argument to get them to stay, both Gideon and Shan shrugged and followed Mata out of the broadcasting center.
“Hey, wait!” I called after them, but it was too late. I was left alone, standing in the hall with only the limp form of Dr. French as company. No ghost, no cameraman, no girlfriend.
I needed to get Meghan back.
Growling to myself, I spun toward the back door, my mind quickly formulating a new plan. The only reason I had gotten involved in this mess in the first place was so I could be with Meghan, and if Gideon was going to ruin everything by leaving, then I had no choice but to go and rescue her from the Orchard.
After I had her, we could follow Mata to the clinic. After we were together again, we could figure out what the hell we were supposed to do next.
Bursting out into the open, one thought continued to run through me head: How had things gone so wrong?
Part Four:
The Fall
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Wait, he was dead!”
“That’s the third time I’ve heard someone say that about the Doctors.”
“So maybe it’s true?”
“In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established.”
Rebels and hostages alike reeled at what they had just seen on the small television inside the Orchard storage room, but I knelt on the floor, stunned.
“You killed him!” I shrieked, trying to break free. “You killed him!”
“Jade, stop!” He had both of my arms now and forced me to my knees as I struggled to break free. “Gideon’s not dead.”
“You’re a liar!” I squirmed, trying to pull him down with me so that I could get the advantage again. “Get off me! You killed him!”
“No, I—”
My first thought had been that I was hallucinating, but everyone else saw it, too. So maybe it had been a pre-recorded message, taped before his execution. But Victor’s words kept ringing through my head: Jade, stop! Gideon’s not dead! He’s not dead! He’s not dead . . .
If that was true—if they had been working together—if no one had bothered to tell me—
I was going to kill him.
Both of them.
I jumped to my feet, my heart thundering inside my chest. “I have to go.”
“Jade, wait!” Cece grabbed my arm and tried to pull me back, but I forced myself out of her grip and tumbled out into the Orchard.
Rushing through the dark trees on legs that had grown strong from weeks of hiking all over the Southern Island, I sprinted toward the exit. I didn’t care if it was guarded by policemen. I didn’t care if anyone saw me. I didn’t care if they brought the might of the Doctors down on my head; nothing was going to stop me from finding him.
The broadcasting center was no more than a mile away. I could get there in ten minutes or less, easily. My body slammed into the Orchard door, trying not to lose too much speed, and I snatched at the handle and pulled with all my strength.
But I was not prepared for what met me outside of those doors.
All of the police cars that had guarded the Orchard were now gone, and toward the center of town—where the Factory could be seen in the distance—the sky glowed orange. Explosions sporadically filled the air—I could only assume from home-made pipe bombs or something—as well as the sounds of screaming and yelling. The ground almost shook with the upheaval.
My eyes widened as a trio of people came racing toward me.
“Watch out!” the lead sprinter said, and I realized with a jolt that it was Alexander.
He grabbed my hand and pulled me behind the little green outbuilding just as a spray of bullets peppered the walls, dropping the one runner who had not been fast enough to find cover.
“What’s happening?” I shouted at him, throwing my hands over my ears to muffle the sounds of the gunshots as my palms prickled with terror.
“All the tension that has been building snapped when that Second took over the airwaves,” he said before sticking his head out from behind the wall and taking a shot at our attacker. After he pulled back, he continued, “we came to get the others, but this hawking Doctor followed us.”
“I have to get to the broadcasting center.” I closed my eyes as another torrent of bullets shattered the two windows at the front of the building, ducking closer to the wall to avoid falling debris.
“Are you crazy?”
It had never stopped me before.
Without waiting for a response, however, he ducked his head out again and took another shot. With a whooping cry of triumph, he said, “I got ‘em!” and then looked back at me.
“Listen, Jade, you can’t—”
But as soon as he announced that our assailant had been incapacitated, I jumped to my feet and was off again, this time staying clear of the main road.
With conflict escalating into war all around us, I wasn’t sure how long Gideon would stay at the broadcasting center, and the thought pushed me to run even faster. I had just been thinking how lucky it was that this street had remained untouched by conflict when the pavement a foot to my left exploded, and my stomach flew into my throat.
“I had a feeling you’d be here,” a cruel and dreadfully familiar voice called as he clicked another shell into place.
Walter.
“Why won’t you just leave me alone?” I yelled at him, dashing behind a utility car parked outside the Nutrition Center before he could shoot another round.
“How dare you speak to me!”
Boom!
The van rocked with the impact of the shot, and I threw my hands over my head, crouching behind the front tire.
“Hawk off!” I screamed, feeling blood rise to my cheeks.
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