Breathe

by Sarah Crossan

  “I knew they wouldn’t send out the zips for no reason. They had to be looking for someone,” he says.

  “Didn’t Petra try to stop you?” Alina asks.

  “Of course she did. Everyone else is in the bunker. She’s locked up the entire stadium and threatened to slice my throat if I left the bunker.”

  “Thank you,” Alina says.

  “Oh, I can’t wait to meet Petra. I think she’s gonna just love me,” Maude says.

  “You haven’t met Petra?” Dorian asks us. I shake my head. Dorian stops and turns to Alina. “Does she even know about them? Are they Resistance? I assume they’re pod division. Alina?”

  “They’re civilians,” Alina says.

  “You brought civilians without authorization? And I let them in? Someone might be getting his throat cut after all.” He rubs his forehead.

  “She can be trusted,” Alina says pointing at me. “She saved my life.”

  “And the other one?”

  Alina studies Maude carefully, trying to decide whether or not to offer her up as a sacrifice.

  “The old woman, Alina. Can we trust her?”

  “Yes,” Alina says slowly. “I suppose we can.”

  Dorian lets out a long whistle. “We should go down into the bunker. The zips might still be swarming,” he says.

  “They went right over and kept going,” Alina says. “Let’s show them around first.” She seems proud of this place. Dorian shrugs and we follow Alina down the wide concrete walkway, lined with kiosks.

  Nothing could have prepared me for what I see when we turn and enter the stadium. I am expecting a gaping snow-filled pit. We are standing on a shallow set of steps next to rows and rows and rows of seats. There must be thousands of seats in this stadium. Tens of thousands of red plastic seats and on them, hundreds and hundreds of mismatched oblong boxes with makeshift lids.

  “It can’t be,” I say, looking beyond the boxes to the soccer field. Dorian smiles. I stagger forward and he catches me. In place of the players and goalposts, in place even of a carefully cropped lawn, the entire area is covered with sparkling, snow-laden trees.

  More trees than I have ever seen in my life, and they are towering over us, climbing toward the sky.

  There must be hundreds, all different shapes and sizes, some bare and spiky, others fully clothed in coats of leaves.

  “Trees,” I murmur. I blink to make sure I am not hallucinating. When I open my eyes the trees are still there and Maude is running down the steps toward them.

  “Holy Mackerel!” she hollers. Alina and Dorian share a smile. I’ve never seen anything as splendid in my life. The trees are so strong and alive, even those without leaves, and they are driving their way up toward the sealed, slated roof of the stadium; I begin to run too, but my knees buckle and I fall.

  “Oh my …” I sigh. Many of them almost reach the roof of the stadium. “How? And when? I mean … How?” I don’t know where to begin. Alina pulls me off the floor. I lean against a seat to keep my balance. “Trees,” I whisper. I have never prayed. I do not know how. But if I did, I would say a prayer now, in homage to the trees and to the Resistance for creating this place.

  “She’s obviously one of us,” Dorian says, and that’s when I become fully aware of the second wonder. We are in the open air and Dorian is without a facemask. Instinctively, and a little irrationally, I reach up and touch his chest to see whether or not he has a heart. He doesn’t pull away and we stay there for a minute as I feel the rise and fall of his chest. “You can’t be human,” I whisper, getting to my feet.

  “He is,” Alina says, putting an arm around my waist.

  “I don’t understand. How do you live?”

  “Slowly,” he says. “And if you stick around long enough, we’ll show you how to do it, too.”

  33

  ALINA

  Dorian keeps shooting me looks as we head toward the bunker. I shake my head because I’m afraid that if I speak, Dorian will hear the tangle in my voice. Coming alone wouldn’t have been a problem—I had no choice but to flee the pod. But there is little excuse for bringing two unknowns with me, especially when one of them is ex-Breathe. Petra has strict rules. How else could she maintain security here? How else could she protect the trees? “What happened?” Dorian asks finally, pointing at my blood-stained bandage. I’d almost forgotten. I can’t tell Dorian or anyone here what really happened, or Maude will be in for it.

  “Long story,” I say.

  “So you fled,” Dorian says. This is a question.

  “Abel’s dead,” I tell him simply. I won’t betray myself, won’t reveal that there’s more to Abel’s death than a comrade falling. Resistance members die all the time and there’s a protocol for grief. We gather, we remember, we raise our arms in defiance of the Ministry, and we move on. Keep planting. This is a place of action: there is no time to mourn.

  “Abel? I don’t know him. Was he new? How did he die?” Dorian asks.

  “He was a terrorist. Killed as he tried to destroy the pod. Apparently.”

  “How original. Poor guy.”

  “I don’t know what to tell Petra,” I say.

  “Just tell her the truth,” he says.

  “I will, but listen—let me go in first and you hang back with these two while I talk to her. I’ll soften her up a bit before I tell her I’ve compromised her life’s work.” I give Dorian a pleading look. We both know that if he agrees to hide them, even for a few minutes, he’ll be complicit. He looks back at Maude and Bea.

  They are still giddy. I don’t blame them. When I first saw the trees I was in a state of euphoria for days. I don’t usually go around grinning, but I couldn’t help myself. After spending my entire life being told that any existence outside the pod was impossible, the idea that there could be something else was mind-blowing. That my parents had died for something was comforting, too.

  “We missed you,” Dorian says suddenly. He throws his arm around my shoulder and squeezes me. Dorian and I have flirted with each other at times, but I can’t do it today.

  “I wish I could come with better news,” I say. I laugh, though I don’t know why.

  “When has anyone ever turned up here unexpectedly with good news, Alina?”

  Bea joins us, first pointing to Dorian’s mouth and then her own facemask. “How do you do that?” she asks.

  “How about I show you the lab where we keep the seedlings and cuttings first? Later I’ll explain all this. Let’s go.”

  Bea stares at me. “Aren’t you coming with us?”

  I glance at Dorian. “I’m going to see Petra. Follow me down once you’ve had the tour. Show them the bunks, Dorian. And the showers. We have hot water here.”

  “Aye aye, cap’n!” Dorian salutes.

  “What’s going on, Alina?” Bea asks.

  “Don’t worry. Take a look around.” I hurry along the wide corridor and down the stairs. The lower level is in absolute darkness, and I have to feel my way along the damp concrete wall to find the door to the bunker. I knock using the code. After a minute there is a click, a sucking sound, and the heavy door swings inward. I slip inside and push it closed behind me. “Alina,” a voice whispers.

  “Hey, Jazz!” I say, touching her spirally red hair. “Where is she?”

  “Sleeping,” Jazz says. “Why are you here?”

  “The usual.”

  “Who died?” she asks.

  I can’t say his name. “A new recruit,” I tell her.

  “A new one? That’s the worst,” she says. “Do you want me to wake her?”

  “You better not,” I say.

  “No. You better not. I can do what I like.” Jazz bounces ahead of me into the dimly lit bunker. She is the youngest of us: a nine-year-old and the only person I know who was actually born in The Outlands. But her mother couldn’t cope, gave up, and left the Resistance long before I ever joined. She abandoned Jazz, just a baby at the time, without leaving a note, and no one ever heard from her again. Jazz
spends most of her days skipping through the corridors of The Grove and chattering with anyone who’ll stop to smile at her. When she isn’t playing, she’s wherever Petra is.

  I follow her. Every available bit of space is occupied by someone either lying on a bunk bed or sitting cross-legged on the hard floor: all two hundred or so Resistance members must be hunkering down here, and many of them are reading paper books. There are columns of salvaged books stacked up against one whole side of the bunker. “Alina!” a voice calls out. Then someone else calls my name. Within minutes I’m surrounded by twenty or more friends hugging me. No one is wearing supplemental oxygen and eventually Song, Dorian’s cousin, unbuckles the mask from my face.

  “You don’t need that,” he says, pointing up at the vents. “I’ve got it set to eighteen percent. That should be enough for you, shouldn’t it?” I nod. Song is our biochemist, and once he’d helped the engineers install the camouflage blinds for the roof of the stadium, he quickly figured out a method for farming, storing, and transferring the oxygen from the trees and plants in the stadium to certain locations in the building. Even though most members can do what Dorian does, there are times when everyone indulges in higher levels of oxygen—just to keep their brains healthy. Song is an invaluable member of the Resistance and never released for missions. Petra keeps a close watch over her prized recruits.

  “Thanks,” I say, handing him my airtank.

  Jazz elbows her way into the center of the group. “Hey, you’ve gotta come. Petra’s up. She’s in the back alcove. She’s waiting.” I follow Jazz into the recesses of the bunker and find Petra sitting on top of an elevated mattress covered in a plethora of multicolored blankets and pillows. Petra’s legs are crossed, her eyes are shut, and she is humming. Her graying, waist-length dreadlocks, normally twisted into a thick chignon, are unfurled—snaking their way down her back and thin, bare arms. “She’s meditating,” Jazz whispers. “She’s memorizing strength and endurance.” I nod and we watch her. All Resistance members practice meditation with Petra. Jazz is pretty good at it. She climbs up onto the bed and sits cross-legged next to Petra, then closes her eyes, too. I study them for a few minutes, focusing in on Petra’s right arm, which is covered with a sprawling tattoo. The spindly roots of a dark tree begin on her hands. The trunk climbs up her forearm and the branches and leaves fan out at her elbow and continue to spread up across her shoulders toward her chest. Jazz has a new tattoo of her own—a small cluster of orange flowers above one eyebrow.

  Petra stops humming, opens an eye, and nods at me. She gets up and stands in front of me, close enough for a few loose strands of hair to tickle my face. I step back.

  “Alina,” Petra says, taking my hands and pressing them between her own. “There must be a fire of resistance burning in the pod for them to send out the zips. We heard tanks, too. What’s the news? We didn’t expect you so soon. Did you get the clippings?” She gazes intently at me.

  “I did, Petra.”

  “Good.” She lets go of my hands and turns to retrieve a full-length, long brown coat from a makeshift hook on the wall. It is patchy and worn—a relic from a bygone age. She starts to button it up.

  “People are in danger.”

  “What happened?” Petra asks in a whisper so no one will overhear.

  “The stewards came for me. They were armed and weren’t going to leave without an arrest. I escaped, but Silas was there. And my aunt and uncle may be in serious trouble, too. I didn’t know what else to do.” I am rambling. Petra does this to me. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come,” I say.

  “Why not? Why would you say that?” she asks quietly.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You did the right thing coming, Alina.” She kisses my forehead and cups her hand under my chin. Her skin is dry and cool. She looks at Jazz for the briefest of seconds and almost smiles.

  “Thank you, Petra,” I say, standing a little taller. “But there is one dead. A new recruit. Abel.”

  “Abel? You mean Aaron.”

  “No, it wasn’t Aaron. Aaron’s fine, I think. It was Abel. He was Pod Resistance only.”

  “I don’t know the name. Jazz?”

  Jazz opens her eyes, looks up at the ceiling, and then back at Petra. “Never heard of him.”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t Aaron?”

  I nod. “Silas said you authorized him,” I say, but with Petra’s shrewd eyes on me, I’m not sure. Did Silas tell me that or did Abel tell me that Silas had received authorization from Petra? “I think Silas told me.”

  “You think?” Petra says.

  “Silas definitely told me.” If Silas didn’t tell me that, if Petra has never heard of Abel, then who was he? Why would he lie to me to get into the Resistance and then die for the cause?

  “Well, if this Abel is dead, we needn’t worry, Petra,” Jazz pipes up. Petra nods. I swallow and clench my jaw.

  “So tell me, if they had you flagged, how did you pass security?” Petra asks.

  “Uh … I …” I stutter, not knowing how to tell her about Bea and Quinn.

  “Don’t be ashamed. We’ve all found creative ways to survive,” she says. In order to escape, many members of the Resistance, especially the girls, have had to offer up their own bodies to the stewards in exchange for safe passage through Border Control. Some recruits have betrayed friends to get across, and there are those, like Petra, who have murdered for freedom.

  “I befriended a Premium,” I begin. Petra nods.

  “Did he hurt you?”

  “It wasn’t like that. We didn’t—” I stop to arrange my thoughts. “He was with an auxiliary, a girl, and they found a way to get me across. They followed me and—” I pause. “They saved my life again a few hours later when a drifter … Well, that doesn’t matter, but they followed me and saved me. We were nervous about leaving the drifter behind so we brought her with us. She’s a little old woman. She isn’t a threat to anyone. I meant to give them the slip but we were chased and I couldn’t.”

  Jazz has given up pretending to meditate and is watching me with large eyes. Petra breathes in and out deeply through her nose. She pulls her hair out of her face and secures it behind her head using a small band.

  “Don’t tell me.” She covers her eyes with a hand.

  “They’re upstairs. Not the Premium, but a drifter and the girl. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  Jazz gasps and starts to wriggle. Petra steps back, perhaps to prevent herself from striking me. She takes her hand from her eyes.

  “You’ve compromised our way of life to save a drifter?”

  “No, I—”

  “Where is the Premium?”

  “He got captured, I think. Nowhere near here. Or buried alive. A tank came and fired at us. I managed to get to the Underground with Bea and Maude. I couldn’t very well leave them. He didn’t make it.” Until now I’ve tried to believe that Quinn’s alive. But the chances of that are slim. And though he annoyed me so much I wanted to hurt him, my stomach tightens when I think of him writhing for breath. He was a Premium, but he wasn’t the worst of them. He didn’t deserve to die. I can’t tell Petra this. To her, no Premium, especially one whose father works for Breathe, can have value. A tree in the stadium is more important to her than Quinn’s life.

  “So you’ve brought two civilians here. Do you even know who the drifter is? Do you know what she’s done and what she’s capable of doing?”

  “Yes, Petra. Ex-Breathe. I thought you could use her.”

  “You thought? You thought? Do you remember the vows you took? The rules for protecting our project?”

  “Yes, Petra, I just—”

  “Your Premium must be alive. He must have led the zips here.”

  “He doesn’t know where The Grove is. I think …” I take a deep breath. “I think I drew them here.”

  “You?” A thin vein in Petra’s temple throbs.

  “I stole a tank,” I admit.

  “You what?” Her eyes narrow.

 
“You what?” Jazz shouts, jumping up from the bed and standing next to Petra. “She stole a tank,” Jazz repeats, tugging on Petra’s coat. “Did you hear that?” Petra puts a finger to Jazz’s lips.

  “I thought we could use it. I didn’t know that I—”

  “You have started a war,” Petra snarls.

  “It’s war now,” Jazz repeats in a twitchy whisper. She pulls a curly piece of red hair into her mouth and sucks on it.

  “Our goal is to be invisible. Did you forget that?” I shake my head. “Jazz, I need Roxanne and Levi,” Petra says, and Jazz scuttles away. “You bring two unknowns and you steal from the Ministry. You also tell me that you recruited in the pod without authorization. Your stupidity is dazzling. I ought to expel you. We would be well within our rights to shoot you.”

  “I got the cuttings you wanted,” I whisper.

  “And we are being invaded as a result. It’s a good thing Levi heard the zips in time for us to shut down or we would be dust already.”

  Jazz returns with Roxanne and Levi, and I’m glad for the distraction because nothing I could say would justify all my stupid mistakes. Petra’s right: I didn’t follow protocol and now people will die. People are already dead.

  “Boss?” It’s Roxanne. She wears an eye patch over one eye. She is vital to the Resistance because she is ruthless: both she and Levi are.

  “We have uninvited guests,” Petra tells them. “Tie them up and put them in a cell. The old woman is a drifter, so take precautions with her. And remove whatever tanks they’re using. I’d like to be in control of their oxygen consumption from now on. Order Song to pump some air into the cell.”

  Song appears at Petra’s elbow as though she’s conjured him up with her words. “What level?” he asks.

  “Moderate. No more than twenty percent. They’ll get used to it.”

  “Don’t make them prisoners. There’s no need for the cell,” I say. Maude is wily, but I’m thinking of Bea. “We can trust them. I’m sure of it.”