by Tarah Benner
Her outburst attracts the attention of Seamus, who wanders over to watch us take it from the top. Lenny hasn’t quite mastered the takedown that Eli used on me, and I land awkwardly on my shoulder.
Suddenly she’s hovered over me, her fist poised to strike. I throw out my forearm to stop her punch and send her flying forward onto her hands. When her weight shifts, I throw her off-balance, and with one quick blitz, our roles are reversed. I throw a slow strike so she has time to block it, but my fist still glances off her jaw.
Lenny lets out an irritated huff, but Seamus is clapping, a ridiculous grin stretching across his face.
“Wow. I’m very impressed. Cadet Riley, is it?”
“Yeah,” I pant, getting to my feet and helping Lenny up.
“That was very good. Has Lieutenant Parker seen you do this?”
“Yeah.”
Seamus looks puzzled. “Well, his progress report shows you haven’t yet mastered that maneuver, but from what I can see, I have to disagree.”
I feel as if I should say something to defend Eli, but then I remember that he’s been lying to me from the beginning.
“I’ll mark this off for you so you can advance to the next level,” he says. “That was very well done.”
Lenny and I just stare at him, a little taken aback by his praise.
“Why don’t you work with Cadet Horwitz on her technique, and then we can see about you moving up?”
I nod, feeling vindicated. But something doesn’t feel right. Why would Eli keep me from advancing on purpose? He may be a liar, but nobody can say he doesn’t take his job seriously.
Before I can process this fully, I’m distracted by a rush of noise out in the tunnel. It sounds like the normal commotion before mealtimes, but it’s the middle of the morning.
Seamus frowns and crosses to the door. Without thinking, we follow him out into the tunnel, where a crowd has formed near the megalift. It’s mostly Recon people, but there’s an angry mob of ExCon and Waste Management guys pouring out of the lift.
Their shouts echo off the walls, and it’s tough to make out what they’re saying. I catch a few words here and there — words like “traitors” and “terrorists” — and the crowds are merging. I see accusatory fingers stabbing chests, and a few men throw out their forearms to hold their violent companions back.
Then a fist shoots out. The crowd roars, and a few more men start throwing punches. They’re sloppy, but the men are strong and full of rage.
In a matter of seconds, the angry mob has escalated into a full-out brawl. Guys in orange grab men in gray, and I see a Waste Management guy tackle a Recon officer to the ground.
Seamus’s cheery face drains of color. He jumps into the crowd to pull the closest Recon man away from the mob, but he just gets swept along with the crowd. I stare transfixed, unable to believe that the animosity at breakfast has actually led to violence.
I’m shaken out of my trance when an ExCon man barrels into a shrimpy new recruit I’ve never spoken to. I see a familiar look in the cadet’s eyes — that moment of freeze you experience when you’re caught in a fight and your body doesn’t remember how to respond.
He goes down on the ground as his companions stare in horror. I wait a beat for his training to kick in — for him to do something — but clearly he wasn’t subjected to Eli Parker’s school of hard knocks.
Bear nudges my arm. “Uh, should we . . .”
I give a shaky nod, but part of me is terrified. These men might not have any combat training, but they’re strong.
I grit my teeth. “Let’s go.”
“Uh-uh,” says Lenny. “No freaking way.”
But I’m not listening. I can’t just stand here and do nothing — even if this kid is a moron. Bear and Blaze and I jump in between the flying elbows and jostling shoulders, and I grab the ExCon man around the neck to yank him off the recruit. I get him in the side of the face with my left hook and hear a satisfying groan as I shove him aside.
The recruit is doubled over in pain, but he rolls to his feet and gets the hell out of the way. At least his direct command taught him that.
Up ahead, Bear and Blaze are mowing down men in orange and green and trying to avoid their clumsy punches. I follow in behind them, delivering quick kicks and elbows to the men they yank off Recon guys.
It’s a little easier than I expected. The other tier-three workers are strong, but their hits are slow and uncoordinated.
Then I hear a shrill whistle from the megalift. When I look over, there are a dozen controllers streaming out into the tunnel, shocking whomever they can reach with their nightsticks. They don’t care who started the fight or why — they’re taking everybody down.
Suddenly, I hear Eli’s voice in my head telling me to get the hell out of here, and for once, I listen. I don’t need to give Control any reason to arrest me again.
I look around for Bear and Blaze and see Bear on the ground. He’s buried under two ExCon guys, and I feel a surge of panic. One man is holding him down while the other punches. Bear’s face is screwed up in pain.
Not thinking about the controllers or the fact that I’m in way over my head, I launch myself at the two men. I elbow one in the side of the head as hard as I can and grab the other one around the neck the way Eli taught me: by expanding my lungs to tighten the choke. As I crush his windpipe, he panics and tries to buck me off him.
Then everything becomes a blur. I see Bear on the ground, bloody but conscious, and two controllers elbowing their way through the crowd.
I hit the ground — hard — and my already-sore shoulder throbs in protest. The man rolls over on me, and I let out an involuntary yelp. A fist comes out of nowhere and connects with the side of my body. This is nothing like the hits I took in the Institute. This is a fully grown man delivering a strike to the kidney.
I know I should use the move I just learned to flip the man over, but his forearm is crushing my face, and I can barely tell which way is up. Everything is slow and blurry.
Then, from under the man’s armpit, I see a blur of blond hair and pale, milky skin. A tiny, sharp elbow flies out, and the man on top of me lets out a guttural yell.
He kind of goes limp, and I use all my remaining strength to shove him off me.
When his weight lifts, I know I wasn’t hallucinating. Kindra is standing over the man, looking pissed. He’s got an elbow-shaped bruise already forming on the side of his face, and she throws out her foot to connect with his groin.
I jump to my feet, smiling through the gripping pain. She returns my grin with a satisfied nod, and Bear gets slowly to his feet. He looks terrible. His nose is already swelling and dripping blood all over the place.
With the crowd blocking the megalift and Recon people pouring out of the training center, our escape options are limited. Luckily, the controllers are busy with someone else. When the crowd shifts, my jaw drops. They’re struggling to restrain Blaze, who’s going ballistic on a huge ExCon guy. His coppery hair is sticking up all over the place, and his lanky arms are windmilling in every direction.
Seamus bumps past me, muttering an angry stream of curses.
“Adams!” he yells. “What the hell are you doing?”
Blaze barely registers Seamus’s voice. I think he’s forgotten that we have a new instructor altogether.
The controllers look irritated and exhausted from holding Blaze back. Finally, one of them draws an electric nightstick and zaps him. He yells, and his long body collapses in a heavy convulsion. I’m pretty sure I see sparks fly from his crazy hair.
Seamus is on a rampage, and I can’t tell if he’s angry with Blaze or angry with the controllers. Either way, it seems like a good time to escape, so the three of us elbow past the crowd toward the east tunnel, grabbing a shell-shocked Lenny on the way.
My compartment is the closest, so we take cover in there. When I see Bear’s face in the sickly florescent light of my compartment, reality punches me in the gut. His nose looks broken — it’s gus
hing blood all over my carpet — and he’s going to have one hell of a black eye.
Now jumping into that crowd seems like a really stupid idea. The ExCon and Waste Management guys may not have been trained, but we aren’t full-on Recon yet.
I dig an ice pack out of my mini fridge and apply it to Bear’s face. He groans, which only confirms my suspicions that his nose is broken. And judging by the way he’s holding his side, I would guess he has a few broken ribs, as well.
He needs to go to the medical ward, but it’s too risky. Controllers or no controllers, the compound isn’t safe for Recon right now.
“Thanks for jumping in there,” he mumbles, wincing when he tries to smile.
I laugh at his strange expression. “I would have been in trouble if Kindra hadn’t helped me.” I turn to look at her, and she slips us a shy smile. “Thanks for that.”
She shrugs as if it’s no big deal, but I can tell it’s a huge deal to her.
“I can’t believe they’re trying to pin this all on us,” Lenny growls. “People can’t actually think we’d bomb the compound.”
“Apparently they do,” says Bear in a muffled voice.
“ExCon and Waste Management are a bunch of morons,” she snaps. “How can they not see that the board is just looking for a scapegoat?”
“They probably just don’t want to get lumped in with Recon,” I say. “That’s why they’re doing this. They don’t want the blame shifting on them.”
We fall silent and spend the next several hours on the floor of my compartment. The noise in the tunnel doesn’t die down until after lunch, and Control institutes a curfew until sixteen hundred. Nobody is supposed to be roaming the tunnels, and for the first time since I can remember, I actually feel trapped — trapped in this room, trapped in the compound, and trapped by the malware on my interface. I’ve shoved it under my pillow, but I know Constance can probably still hear everything we’re saying.
When the curfew lifts, we head for the megalift in a tight group, quiet and subdued after the violent attack. Bear’s steady enough to make it up to the medical ward on his own, but we’ll be safer moving as a pack. Even healthy Bear couldn’t hold his own against a couple of decent-sized ExCon guys.
There’s a long line in the tunnel to reach reception — mostly Recon people sporting similar injuries. There are a few workers from other sections in the mix, but they know they’re too outnumbered to pick a fight up here and live.
It’s nearly twenty hundred by the time Bear is ushered into a blindingly bright exam room. Kindra and Lenny leave to grab dinner before the canteen closes, but I stay with Bear.
Part of me is hoping to see Sawyer again, and part of me is just worried about him. I don’t know why I feel protective of a guy who’s literally twice my size, but Bear has always seemed too gentle for Recon.
Finally, an exhausted-looking doctor shuffles in, wearing a wrinkled lab coat. His mouth is sagging in a permanent scowl, and his hair is sticking up in all directions.
He doesn’t say a word. He just glances at the notes on his interface and stabs a finger into Bear’s ribs. When Bear winces, the doctor’s mouth tightens into a hard line of annoyance. He gives Bear a disapproving look, makes a note in the air for his interface to record, and leaves.
As soon as he disappears, an army of interns in red scrubs descend upon Bear to clean up his bloody face and tape his nose straight. I lean back in the little plastic chair next to the door and watch the other interns jog from room to room pushing carts of supplies. I’m so tired I could almost fall asleep right here.
Just when I’m about to drift off, I hear the frantic scuffle of feet and the rattle of a gurney.
The door is open, and I stick my head out in time to see four nurses flitting around a limp body, rolling down the tunnel at breakneck speed.
It’s the gray uniform that catches my eye — and something familiar about the dark head of hair.
I don’t even realize I’m standing until Bear asks me a question. I mutter an excuse and tear down the tunnel after the gurney, horror spilling into my chest. Nobody tries to stop me, but it wouldn’t matter if they did. I’m not paying attention to anything except that gurney.
One of the nurses moves to the side, and I see a dirty, sunburned face I recognize. It’s covered in blood and dust from the Fringe, but there’s no mistaking Eli.
twenty-seven
Eli
The second I become conscious, all I feel is the pain.
My left arm is on fire, and no one will help me. My throat is so raw and scratchy that it feels as though it might tear if I try to talk.
I feel horrible, though I can’t remember why.
Slowly, I peel my eyes open and squint at the bright florescent light overhead. I can’t be dead, because I know hell isn’t this well-lit. It isn’t this cold, either.
I glance down at my body. It looks too clean — pink and perfect, as though they’ve forcibly scrubbed away the Fringe.
Someone has draped a thin cotton blanket over me, and I’m pretty sure I’m wearing one of those horrible assless hospital gowns. There are tubes everywhere, and someone has cocooned my throbbing arm in soft white bandages.
I wiggle my toes, and I feel them lift the blanket. Thank god those still work.
I turn my head. A Korean girl with big glasses and red scrubs has noticed I’m awake. She’s jogging down the long tunnel toward me, looking anxious. I remember she’s Harper’s friend — the one I met before.
Harper. I have a vague memory of seeing her recently, but she was upside down, and she looked scared. Harper is never scared.
Suddenly the girl stops, and a man in a crisp beige uniform steps in front of my door. He’s speaking in a low voice and keeping his body between me and the girl. She’s arguing with him, but her eyes are darting around nervously — as though talking back to her superiors isn’t something she does on a regular basis. She’s scared, but I can tell she’s brave.
The pain in my arm is getting worse, and I try to follow the clear plastic tube in my flesh to its source. They better be giving me the good stuff for the pain. Whatever it is, it’s wearing off.
I stare at the deceptively neat bandage and wonder what kind of nasty injury it’s hiding.
The explosion.
All at once, it starts coming back to me. Miles and I were ambushed just outside the cleared zone, but the drifters didn’t just have guns this time; they had explosives. There were only two of us, and we didn’t stand a chance.
How did I make it back to the compound? There’s no way I walked back.
Miles. I don’t remember what happened after the explosion, so I don’t know if he made it out alive.
I fumble around on the bed, looking for the call button. I need a nurse or a med intern or someone to tell me what happened. The girl in the glasses has disappeared.
“Oh, relax,” says a voice from the door.
I jerk my head up and see Remy standing just inside the room.
“They can’t come back in here until I give the all-clear.”
“What?”
He sighs. “I need to be sure you don’t pose a threat to internal security, Parker.”
“Why would you say that? What happened out there?”
He braids his fingers in front of him and looks down at me with a stern expression. “I was hoping you could tell me.”
“Where’s Miles?” I ask. “Did he make it back?”
Something skirts across Remy’s face, and the corner of his mouth quirks.
Is that how this guy smiles? What a creep.
“Yes. Private Hackman got you both back to the compound safely . . . and six days ahead of schedule, I might add. You did not complete your assignment.”
“We were ambushed,” I say, feeling the anger bubble up to the surface. “Sorry if that threw things a little off schedule.”
“So Hackman says.” The inflection he’s using is one of interest, not alarm, which makes me think he doesn’t believe us.
“Have any drifters broken through the perimeter?” I ask.
“Lieutenant, I’m the one asking questions here. Tell me, did you see anything out of the ordinary before you got past the cleared zone?”
“No.”
“So you and Hackman made it past the mines, and then . . .”
I sigh in exasperation. “We were patrolling the perimeter around the cleared zone. It was . . . quiet. I should have known it was too quiet. We didn’t find any squatters in the first town we checked.
“There’s a few rusted-out old cars about half a mile outside the mines. We took it slow, but when we got close enough, the drifters ambushed us. There was an explosion, and —” I break off because I can’t remember what happened next.
“What did they look like?”
I shrug, my breath coming faster with the memory of the attack. “They were all men. Thirties and forties. Dirty. I don’t know.”
“Did they look healthy?”
I stare at him, confused. “I didn’t get a great look.”
Remy looks irritated for a moment but then smirks. “Well, that is a convenient story. Can I trust you won’t go spreading it around to your little Recon friends?”
“What?” At first, I’m not sure what the point of this interrogation is if he’s just going to disregard everything I’ve said, but then I realize Remy wants to make sure I don’t tell anyone within the compound that the drifters are mobilizing against us.
“Lieutenant, I don’t care if you and Hackman skipped out on your assignment or if you really were ambushed by a gang of drifters,” says Remy in his cool, clipped voice. “I’m simply here to ensure you are fit to be integrated back into the compound. I cannot release you until I can be sure you do not pose a threat to internal security.”
I let out an angry stream of air from between my teeth and slump back. “No, sir,” I mutter. “I am not a threat to internal security.”
He doesn’t look convinced. “And what will you tell people when they ask why you returned from your mission early?”