“Yeah!” Cal agrees with shining eyes. He reaches me in three steps and clasps my hands in his. Despite our pretty good talk in the sector, I have to force myself not to flinch from the physical contact. “We can talk as much as we want now that you’re here. And we can work together again to take down the sectors! No one will be able to beat us with our team back together.”
My breath trips over the guilt stuck in my lungs. I try to hide it, but Ellis’s eyes narrow.
“Erik,” she says slowly. Carefully, like she’s trying not to spook a wild Feral, the vicious creatures that roam Outside. “You do know that coming back includes fighting with us, right?”
Thank the gods. She thinks I’m nervous about fighting the sector—not that I’m here as a spy. And I need to keep it that way. “Of course,” I say. “You think I’d come back just to sit around and chat?”
Ellis watches me carefully. Shadows flicker over her face from the candles, giving her an almost sinister look that doesn’t match the warring sympathy in her eyes. “Well, we can deal with that later,” she says eventually. “For now, there’s something I need you to do for me.”
I swallow, hard. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t suspect. Everything is fine. “Yeah?”
She holds out her hand, palm up. The shadows in the room shift again, and when I blink, a black butterfly is sitting in her hand. The edges are hazy like I’m looking at it through water. When Devin sees it, he smirks. Joan’s face remains neutral while Cal frowns.
“I trust you, Erik,” Ellis says in a voice that sounds more like she wants to believe that. “But I need to take precautions. You understand, don’t you?”
I nod, not trusting myself to speak.
“I’m going to put my butterfly in your shadow to keep an eye on you, make sure you’re not doing anything to betray us. It’s nothing bad—like I said, just a precaution—and it won’t hurt. I just need your permission, or my butterfly won’t be able to enter your shadow.”
Lai warned me Ellis would probably ask to monitor me as a test of loyalty—but it’s still unnerving. Knowing about it beforehand doesn’t make it any easier to say the words I know I need to. Once I agree, she’ll be able to see my every movement, hear anything I say. If I make even one mistake in getting info back to Lai and the others, Ellis will know what I’m up to. I’ll be as good as dead. But I can’t say no, or I might as well stab myself with my own sword right now.
“Yeah, sure thing.” My voice sounds steady. I think. “Do what you have to.”
Ellis smiles. Her teeth don’t show like they did before. She doesn’t move, but the butterfly takes off from her hand and flies straight for me. It lands on a section of my shadow falling across an armchair. It melts into it, but I don’t feel anything. My body doesn’t feel any different from before, either.
“That it?” I look at my hands, but there’s no change. “I thought I’d feel … something.”
Ellis laughs, and her apparent happiness from before finally returns. I try not to let out a sigh of relief. “Everyone always thinks that.”
Devin’s smirk is gone. Now he’s just glaring at me from under lowered eyebrows. “Are you sure about this, Sara? I don’t like it. I don’t trust him as far as I could throw him.”
“You can throw pretty far,” Ellis muses. Devin’s scowl deepens. “I’m sure, Devin. If Erik does anything suspicious, I’ll know about it right away.” Her eyes cut to me. She’s still smiling, but there’s an edge to it now. My heart misses a beat. “And I’m sure Erik knows what would happen if we found any reason to distrust him.”
I shrug and try to make the gesture look as careless as always. My heart pounds like crazy. “Why would I do something that stupid? Besides, it’s not like anyone back in the sector has my loyalties. Not anymore.”
“Good,” Ellis says. The edge falls away. “You’ve finally come back to us. Why don’t we catch up?”
Devin is still scowling, but I can’t read Joan’s expression. Cal is practically bouncing in place. “I’ll go make some tea,” he says. His excitement hasn’t dimmed since I got here, even though I haven’t returned his enthusiasm at all. I was expecting more of Joan and Devin’s reactions, not this … happiness. When Ellis isn’t trying to intimidate me, she seems just as excited as Cal—like she’s greeting an old, long-lost friend. Which I guess she is.
The rebels are supposed to be heartless killers who want to wipe out all the ungifted from the world. But even though that’s the goal of the war they waged, they just feel like normal people. Without the adrenaline and mercilessness of the battlefield, it’s hard to really see them as the enemy. Especially when they’re clapping in excitement and saying they’ll make tea for you.
But still, Ellis’s sharp smile won’t leave my head. I need to be careful. No matter how down-to-earth these people seem, they are the enemy. I can’t forget that—as soon as I do, it could cost me my life.
* * *
Once we’ve finished tea—still weird—Ellis takes me on a tour through the rebels’ home base. Cal and the others split off to go do whatever it is rebel leaders do. I thought I’d be glad to have fewer people around, but as soon as they’re gone, I realize how much worse it is to be alone with Ellis.
After she leads me into the hallway, down a few flights of stairs, and out of the building, I realize why everything is so damn dark. We’re underground. Way above us, an earthen sky looms. It’s not as high as the dome of a sector, but it’s still up there. The cavern is wide and tall enough that the place doesn’t feel claustrophobic. A city of low, ramshackle “buildings” thrown together from sheets of wood and metal spreads out around us as far as I can see.
“Wow,” I say. “I didn’t know places like this existed Outside.”
“I doubt anyone in the sectors does,” Ellis says. She doesn’t stop walking, so I keep trailing her as my eyes try to suck everything in. Not because I think it’ll be helpful for Lai or whatever, but because I want to see it all. “The Etioles don’t explore Outside. Even if they found a place like this, what good would it do them? They can’t even go Outside without safety equipment—it’d be too much of a hassle for them to try and settle in.” She taps the side of her nose. “Nytes, on the other hand? The air Outside doesn’t affect us.”
“Makes sense,” I say. There’s no electricity. Flashlights and candles light up everything. As we pass a collection of rubble and blankets that’s serving as someone’s shelter, I realize the only real building in the whole area is the one Ellis and I just left. The homes are leaning wooden planks, or cobbled together with busted pieces of plastic and metal, or sometimes just blankets laid out on the ground around piles of things. Personal belongings. Small heaps of food.
I glance back over my shoulder. The sole building rises above everything else, a grand old thing with a steepled roof and elegant balconies.
“What’s with the building?” I ask. “You guys didn’t build that yourselves, did you?”
“It was already here when we found this place,” Ellis says. “When you and I found this place.”
A mystery if I’ve ever heard one—how did anyone find this place, anyway?—but I don’t push for more. With all the other questions I have, it isn’t exactly at the top of my list. And I don’t like the way she emphasized it being the two of us who found this place. It also makes me realize my mistake; I shouldn’t refer to the rebels as if I’m not a part of them.
I try to ignore my twisting stomach. “Okay, so, the building is like the central meeting point for all of us?”
“Something like that,” Ellis says. She steps over an abandoned teddy bear lying in what passes for a street. Empty paths twist through the messily assembled homes, but so far, none of them seem to lead anywhere in particular. “We call it the main office—and we use it for a lot of things. The room we just met in is where we make and discuss our plans. And by we, I mean me, Joan, Devin, Cal, and Gabriel—and you, in the past.”
“Gabriel?” I’ve never heard the name b
efore. When I think back to the ambush, I don’t remember seeing a fifth person, either. The thought that we’ve been missing an enemy general isn’t a great one.
“You’ll meet him eventually,” Ellis says with a dismissive wave of her hand. “His health isn’t the best, so he doesn’t get out much. But the main office is also where all the people I just mentioned stay. We have an infirmary and several multipurpose rooms—storage, smaller meeting rooms, stuff like that.”
A few people poke their heads out of the makeshift homes as we pass. Whispers follow. I catch Ellis’s name, obviously, but I hear mine a lot, too. It makes the hair on the back of my neck rise—and I always thought that was just some dumb expression.
Some of them smile with recognition, and a bunch say hi, but no one tries to actually talk to us. They’re all young, most of them around fourteen, I’d guess. Of course. Everyone here is a Nyte, so obviously everyone is younger than twenty—but it still throws me off to see kids who can’t be older than six or seven running around tossing balls back and forth.
I wonder if I knew any of these people in the past. I wonder if everyone already knows I lost my memories and if that’s why they’re not saying more than hello even though they look like they want to talk. Which is another surprising thing. When they see Ellis, they don’t act like they’ve seen some terrifying leader who rules with an iron fist but like they’ve seen their guardian. Their eyes light up. They call out greetings to her like they would to any other person on the street. A few little kids run up to her and wrap their arms around her legs until she laughs and gently pries them off.
The feeling of camaraderie is so thick I almost choke on it. Whenever I thought of the rebels before, I always imagined them as desperate—clinging to anything that might let them live and attack the sector. But the people I see are different from that. The farther we go into the underground city, the busier it gets. Kids run around screaming obnoxiously but happily. Some of the older Nytes keep an eye on them, protective older siblings, while others stroll down the streets running errands as if all this was totally normal. Picking up food at the distribution center Ellis points out to me? All right. Chatting with anyone you happen to run into on the way? Cool. Living in the dark underground? Sure, why not.
They don’t seem like bloodthirsty killers. They’re just going about their lives. Yeah, sure, without most luxuries that living in the sector gets you, but there’s no sense of danger here. They’re all in this together, and you can tell from the feeling in the air. Everyone here is just … normal.
When we reach the end of what I’d guess is the main street, Ellis stops and spins around to face me. She’s been dropping so many names and so much info on places we pass that it’s all spinning in my head. “So?” She holds her hands clasped behind her back, arms extended straight behind her. It’s the same exact thing Lai does when she’s messing around. “What do you think? Not bad for only having two years behind us, right?”
“Not bad is an understatement,” I say, and I mean it. “This place is incredible. I still can’t believe you managed to find such a perfect place for all this.”
“Well, we couldn’t have done it without the help of our fellow gifted,” Ellis says. “This place isn’t the only one of its kind, either. The other underground caverns are much smaller, but they make the perfect locations for bases.”
“Why even bother having bases aboveground, then?” I ask, thinking of my first mission with the team, when we took out a rebel base. The memory unexpectedly hurts. It’s only been a few hours, but I’m surprised by how much I miss them. Or maybe I just miss the feeling that I could trust them with my back. Now, I’m surrounded by people I have to watch my every word around. “Wouldn’t it be safer to just do everything below? How do you even have the supplies to build bases aboveground, anyway?”
“Not everything can be done belowground,” Ellis says. “Besides, if we always have our people coming up and down for everything, it’d only be a matter of time before the military caught on. We do everything of import down below, and the aboveground bases act as transition points for less critical matters. That way, even if they’re taken down, it won’t be a huge loss to us. And we don’t build the bases up above—they already existed, just like these caverns. We just fix them up a bit and take them for ourselves.”
Great to know how much effect our mission had. “How do you just find abandoned bases? And wouldn’t one of the sectors have claimed them?”
“It’s the same with these caverns and the broken sector we set up our ambush in,” Ellis says. “Sorry about that, by the way. But they’re places that used to be occupied before people up and abandoned them for whatever reason. Probably from before the nuclear war. And sure, the military could try to occupy them—but they’re so far out of the way of the sectors themselves, it would be too much trouble to keep them. What Etiole wants to wear that stupid protective suit and go all the way to the middle of nowhere to guard a base that has no strategic value to the sector? It’s not worth it for them.”
It makes sense as she says it, but I’d never thought too deeply about all that before. Who cared how the rebels set up their bases? Where the buildings came from? My only job was to empty them out, and I only did that because the military told me to and I had nowhere to stay other than with them. Maybe it’s time I started asking more questions.
“I’ve been wondering this for a while,” I say, thinking back to the team, “but what were you guys doing at those old warehouses in Sector Eight? Why attack them? It doesn’t seem like a strategic place to strike. There’re rumors you stole something, maybe a weapon, but…”
Ellis looks at me evenly. The expression reminds me so much of Lai my skin crawls. “I think it’d be best,” she says slowly, “if we don’t discuss that just yet. But what we took wasn’t a weapon. It was information.”
“Information?”
She shakes her head. “It’s not important for now. When it becomes relevant, I’ll let you know.”
Her tone doesn’t really leave room for argument. Even though my curiosity is only stronger now, I need to switch topics before I make her suspicious. “Well, anyway, you guys really do have a great system set up here.”
“We have to if we’re going to take down the sectors.” Ellis’s nose wrinkles like she just smelled a pile of crap. “Nytes are stronger, but the sectors have more people, more resources, and more firmly established structural organization. We need to use everything we have in the most efficient way possible if we’re going to win.” Her eyes suddenly harden. For the first time since I came here, she looks like the rebel leader I met in that broken sector. Ruthless. Proud. Wild. “And we will win.”
I’m saved from having to reply when someone says, “I see the rumors are true.”
Ellis and I both turn to see a tall black guy with short, curly dark brown hair walking toward us. He looks like he could be nineteen or twenty, probably one of the oldest people here. He walks with a cane, his back slightly hunched, his mouth turned down at the corners in a mildly concerned frown.
The crazed fervor disappears from Ellis’s eyes as she smiles and waves to the new guy. “Gabriel! Glad to see you up and about again. How are you feeling?”
“Like a byc just plowed into me,” he says dryly. He stops in front of us and takes a second to catch his breath before straightening. His dark brown eyes look me up and down, lips pursed in thought. “You really came back, Erik?”
“I don’t remember anything,” I say reflexively, somehow filled with the need to defend myself even though this guy probably already knows that and he didn’t mention my memories or past whatsoever. But how’s he think I’m supposed to answer a question like that?
Well, at least now I can solve the mystery of the last rebel leader.
“I know,” he says. Obviously. “I’m just a little surprised.”
“Why’s that?”
He laughs. “You’ve always been skeptical of everything and everyone. I didn’t think you�
��d take a shot on us having told you the truth. At least not so quickly.”
“Yeah, well, the Council wasn’t exactly doing me any favors branding me a traitor. Figured I might as well take my chances here.”
He cracks a grin. “Well, glad you did. It’s good to have you back.”
“I mean, I haven’t really done anything but ask questions and be clueless, but thanks.”
He laughs again and I abruptly find myself wishing he would keep laughing. But then he says, “Sorry, I haven’t introduced myself yet. The name’s Gabriel.”
“Erik,” I say. Ellis explained on her tour how all the Nytes here have dropped their last names in defiance of the sectors that use them to track you. Ellis being the exception, since she wants to announce her betrayal loud and clear. “But you already knew that, I imagine.”
“But of course.”
“Gabriel has the ability to neutralize other Nytes’ gifts,” Ellis says. “We’d have a much harder time on our hands without him.”
My heart almost stops. This is the person responsible for all those neutralization power crystals that gave us so much trouble? Of course someone with such a useful gift would be one of the rebel leaders. I should’ve thought of that before. But somehow I thought he’d be … different. Not hunched over a cane looking like a good wind would blow him over. Not that there is wind down here.
“You’d still manage,” Gabriel says. I’m probably imagining it, but I think there’s sadness in his voice, in the way his smile comes more slowly than it did before.
“But at a much higher cost,” Ellis says. “The more gifted lives we can save, the better.” She beams at the both of us. “Sorry to take my leave here, but I have a meeting planned with Joan. Why don’t you two catch up—or become better acquainted, I suppose.”
She goes on her way with a smile and a wave to us. After she leaves, she doesn’t look back.
An Outcast and an Ally Page 7