The Last Uprising (Defectors Trilogy)

by Tarah Benner

  A look of pain crossed his face, and he rolled onto his knees. “Hey, hey. It’s okay.”

  I hadn’t realized I’d been crying. He moved to close the space between us and put his hands behind my elbows to pull me toward him. But as soon as he touched me, a surge of pain ripped across the back of my skull. I squeezed my eyes shut in a grimace and jerked away from him. I couldn’t get out of his reach. His eyes were bright, sad, and sympathetic, and I hated him for the pain he brought on every time he came here.

  “Stop!” I yelled.

  Amory fell back onto his heels, looking as though I’d physically struck him.

  I wanted to care. I wanted to tell him I was sorry, but the pain had only intensified, even though he had let go. Blinding and white hot, it had spread from the back of my head into my eye sockets. There was a vague ringing in my ears, and I curled over my knees and buried my face in my legs.

  Rocking there for a moment, I tried to focus on something — anything — besides Amory and Greyson. I focused on my physical space: the tent, the tarp, the crack of sunshine leaking in from outside.

  Slowly, the pain ebbed away. Within a few moments, it was only the shadow of hurt, a ghostly prickle of needles at my hairline. I didn’t trust it. It could return at any moment. I didn’t dare to move or speak.

  When I finally looked up, Amory was gone.

  The next day, I heard the crunch of footsteps through the snow long before Roman was due with my breakfast. It was still dark. I sat upright, drew my arms across my chest, and prepared an expression of appropriate surliness. Then the tent flap was drawn back, and I was surprised to see who it was.

  Amory looked younger — refreshed — as though he had actually slept instead of spending the night on lookout duty. His face bore no trace of the hurt I had seen there the day before. In fact, he looked positively cheerful.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, trying to keep my tone neutral.

  “I think good behavior has earned you a little time out of here.”

  The distrust was back in the pit of my stomach, mixed with another odd feeling. I became aware that I was still lying on the pallet, my hair mussed from sleep and stiff from days without bathing. I shrunk away from him as he bent to untie the rope binding my ankles.

  “Relax,” he said, sensing my unease. “I just think you could use some fresh air. Plus there’s someone you need to see.”

  I knew I should withdraw more, but I just shook my head a little to clear the feeling of needles pressing down at the base of my neck. It was just an outing — even the most despicable prisoners were allotted time out in the open air.

  I tried not to focus on Amory’s fingers brushing against my ankles as he untied me. But instead of grabbing the rope between my wrists to pull me into an upright position, he grasped my cold hands.

  His hands were bigger than mine — warm and callused. I pushed down the briefest feeling of pleasure that was quickly engulfed by a throbbing sensation in the back of my skull.

  Once I was on my feet, he held on just a second longer than he should have, squeezing my hands once for good measure. I jerked away, squinting in pain and avoiding his gaze, but I thought he smirked briefly.

  He pushed open the tent flap and let me pass in front of him. Instead of grabbing the ropes and dragging me along like an animal as Roman usually did, he let me walk ahead of him.

  I kept glancing over my shoulder for him to lead, but he just nodded with a reassuring smile and guided me with a careful hand on the small of my back.

  The camp was quiet, but the sky was lightening along the horizon. Soon the rest of them would awaken, and I would once again be on display as a circus sideshow — the freak prisoner everyone shunned.

  Amory seemed to sense this and led me quickly around the perimeter of camp, past the still-smoldering fire to a large tent marked with a red cross. Next to it was a smaller one-man tent, and Amory lifted the flap so I could pass under his arm inside.

  There was a small shape balled up on a thin pallet in the corner, and I caught a glimpse of golden hair unfurling from the mouth of a sleeping bag. My nostrils prickled at the strange smell filling the tent: the subtle scent of sleep and sickness.

  I knelt down on the edge of the pallet and watched Amory lean over the shape. He nudged the sleeping girl and whispered something I could not hear. She stirred slightly for a moment and then seemed to wake fully. She shimmied anxiously up out of her sleeping bag and propped herself on her elbows.

  Even with the dark shadows under her eyes, the pale pallor of her skin, and the strange lackluster quality of her once vibrant hair, Logan was unmistakable.

  “Haven!” she said in a hoarse whisper. “Where have you been?”

  Before I could prepare myself, Logan lurched across the mattress and strangled me in her arms. I stiffened in her embrace, but there was something familiar about her smell. Under the staleness of sleep and the stagnant tent air, I could just make out lavender. Soap, I thought. Homemade soap. I wasn’t sure how I knew that.

  Logan released me and pulled back to study my face. Then her eyes fell to my hands, which lay awkwardly between us, bound together by rope.

  “Amory,” she said. Her tone had shifted instantly from friendly to accusatory. “If this is some kinky new thing you two are —” She stopped, studying my face.

  I looked away, feeling embarrassed at her realization.

  “Oh my god.” She whipped her head around to look at Amory. “She hasn’t recovered yet.” She looked back at me. “That’s why you haven’t been visiting me. I’ve been asking for you, and they told me you were away from camp with Godfrey.”

  She released my arms, and I sank back onto my heels with caution. From what I remembered about Logan, I knew she had a volatile temper. Something told me she wouldn’t hurt me, but that distrust rumbled in my gut like a hunger pang.

  “Have you been keeping her tied up like a hostage?” she hissed at Amory, not bothering to mask her disgust. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “You don’t understand,” he said in a quiet voice.

  “I thought you would, of all people. She stood by you,” Logan said, nodding at me, “when you were ripping apart carriers and beating people up. Haven was the only person who thought you were still you.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “Is this the deal you made with Roman to bring her here?”

  Amory sighed, looking annoyed. “It’s not just him. There’s a lot of people who were against the idea of me bringing her here.”

  “Ida wouldn’t stand for this. When she gets back . . .”

  “She doesn’t remember what side she’s on,” said Amory in a strangled voice, avoiding my gaze. “She doesn’t remember us.”

  My stomach twisted, and a sharp pain stabbed the back of my head.

  Logan turned to me. “Is that true?”

  I took a deep breath. “I know who you are. It’s just . . . most of my memories are gone. I don’t trust you.”

  Logan seemed to deflate in front of me.

  “She’s been conditioned not to trust us,” said Amory. “They wiped away her memories. But she’s coming back.” The hopefulness in his voice was enough to break my heart. He couldn’t be faking that.

  “Amory —” began Logan, casting me a glance.

  “She is! She gets headaches just like I used to, which means she’s fighting it.”

  Logan was watching me with that same defeated look Amory had the night before. She was tired. Amory seemed to sense this, too, because he motioned to me that it was time to leave.

  As I started to stand up, Logan reached out and gripped my arm tightly, pulling me in awkwardly for another embrace. This time, I tried to give in to it despite my bound wrists, and a surge of pain shot from my brain stem down the back of my spine. I backed away from Logan and the ghost of lavender that clung to her hair and out into the early morning sunshine.

  “It happened again, didn’t it?” asked Amory, coming out behind
me. “The headaches.”

  I ignored his question. I would not encourage his smugness or the fragile hope he held that I would suddenly remember everything about him and want to join the revolution.

  “What happened to her?” I asked.

  “Don’t you remember?”

  I shook my head.

  Amory sighed. “She was infected. We broke into World Corp headquarters for the cure. It made her really sick. Aryus said it himself . . . it’s not ready yet.”

  The thought seemed to distress Amory more than Logan’s adverse reaction, which I thought was strange.

  “We’re going to need a lot more where that came from,” he said, sensing my confusion. “The virus has mutated. The vaccine doesn’t protect us against stage-five carriers anymore.”

  “That doesn’t seem right,” I muttered. “The New Republic would never . . .”

  “What?”

  “They wouldn’t let people believe they were safe if the virus had mutated.”

  Amory gave me a strange look. “Was that part of your conditioning?”

  My stomach twisted uncomfortably. I didn’t like when he called it that.

  “I suppose they covered it in training,” I mumbled. Truthfully, I could not remember where I’d picked up that information.

  Amory didn’t say anything more about it, but I followed him away from Logan’s tent across the camp. People were already stirring in their tents, and a few early risers had emerged to relieve themselves in the woods, throwing us curious looks.

  I thought Amory was leading me back to my tent, but he cut around it, and I followed him into the woods.

  It was like being in a blizzard. White paper birch trees towered all around, shorn of their leaves, rising up through the untouched snow. I instantly felt a quiet calm settle over me, unknotting the cords of stress that had tightened around my chest. Amory continued into the trees, and I had the fleeting thought that he was leading me out to kill me.

  I followed anyway. If they had just been holding me for information, my fate was inevitable. There was no point prolonging the mental anguish or the horrible uncertainty.

  But when Amory turned to face me, it was to sink down on a felled tree. He wasn’t looking at me, but he wore a conflicted expression, as if deciding whether or not he dared to speak.

  “Come here,” he said without looking up.

  I stood frozen. Something about the resolve in his face scared me more than anything.

  “Please.” He patted the spot next to him on the log.

  Watching his face carefully, I shuffled over and sank down next to him. For a moment, I just breathed in the crisp, cold open air and reveled in the whiteness of it all. It was untouched and empty, but here the emptiness was not a prison.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  I swallowed, not sure if I should agree, but nodded.

  “What’s the memory?”

  “What?”

  “The one memory you have of me . . . it must be bad if it makes you hate me. It’s just . . . it’s driving me crazy because I can’t think what I’ve ever done to you to make you think . . .” He shrugged, dragging in a heavy breath and looking away.

  “Oh,” I said, taken aback. “It’s . . . it’s just a flash of a memory, really. I’m on the ground, and you’re on top of me. You look really angry . . . like you’re going to kill me. I swing at you with a knife and hit you, but then . . . I don’t know what happens after that.”

  To my surprise, Amory’s eyes crinkled into a grin, and a short, heavy laugh burst from his lips. “I can’t believe after everything, that’s what you remember.” He chuckled again. “You really don’t remember the circumstances?”

  I shook my head.

  “That was the first day I met you. I was at the farm, on carrier watch, and I saw you sprinting toward the house. If you could have seen yourself . . . you looked like you could be infected. You were too skinny — half-starved to death — and you were covered in blood and dirt.”

  Amory looked at his hands, a soft smile playing on his lips. “I thought you might be a threat . . . until you tried to stab me with that dull knife. Then I knew you were just a survivor, like me. I had to know you.”

  He finished the story, and I couldn’t help but stare at him. It made sense, and I was more curious than ever.

  “And we . . . we became friends after that?”

  He nodded, that cute smile still playing on his lips. I mentally slapped myself for staring. “Oh yeah. Fast friends.”

  I folded my hands together, not sure what to say. I didn’t remember any of that.

  When Amory spoke again, his voice was gentle. “Haven . . . I don’t know how long it will be before it all comes back to you . . . or if it ever will. But I’m not going to stop trying to find you.”

  Then he did something I wasn’t prepared for. He reached over and clasped my cold hand. He was wearing thick fingerless gloves, but I could feel the warmth emanating from his fingertips. I breathed in sharply, and a hard blow of pain crashed against the back of my head. I breathed again, willing it to stop.

  “It’s all right,” whispered Amory. “Don’t fight the pain. You have to let it in.”

  I closed my eyes tight to stop the tears that were threatening to spill over.

  “Trust me,” he said. “It’s the only way.”

  When I opened my eyes, he had released my hand, but his bright gray eyes were focused on my face. The look there was so intense and earnest I had to break his gaze.

  “Haven, I know it must go against everything they . . . taught you. But you have to tell us what you know. The resistance is not doing very well. We’ve lost a lot of people.

  “The attack on the last World Corp base went badly wrong, and now we have all these refugees who have defected from the northern commune and no real center of leadership.

  “We’re recruiting faster than we can mobilize everyone. These newest defectors aren’t mercenaries like the rebels at Rulon’s camp. They’re older. Some of them aren’t even strong enough to fight. But we can’t just abandon them.”

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “We’re still north of the border, which means we’re in enemy territory. We don’t have the hordes of carriers to deal with, but supply runs are getting too dangerous. The PMC here is much better fortified than they were in Sector X.”

  I let this information wash over me. Somehow, I knew I should be suspicious and angry with Amory, but I found I was merely curious. The needles prickled at my hairline, but the pain did not cripple me the way it had when Amory touched my hand.

  He seemed to be the source of all the pain, which only intensified my fascination with that memory. I’d reflected on it so many times it only felt half-real, and it didn’t make sense.

  By now I knew my memory had been damaged in training, though whether that was intentional or merely a side effect, I couldn’t be sure. But if World Corp had withheld some memories on purpose, what was the harm of the Amory memories if he had been hostile? Surely they wouldn’t think those events would shake my loyalty.

  “What else did they tell you about the New Republic?” Amory asked suddenly, pulling me back from my reverie. “In your training?”

  “You know everything I know,” I muttered. “You just choose to ignore it.”

  Amory waited, hanging on my every word, so I continued. “The New Republic formed after the acquisition of the New Northern Territory . . . after the Collapse of the federal government and after the Great Migration. Citizens were protected against the virus and protected against themselves.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Mandatory Identification. When people knew someone was watching, there was less crime . . . more security. Through order comes progress. We’re building a better world. The only true threat left are the rebels who look to destroy everything we have done.”

  “A better world? What do you mean by that?”

  I wanted to stop. I knew I should stop, and looking
at Amory was making the pain creep up the base of my neck. I shook my head to clear it and continued. “Energy efficiency . . . a republic that is completely self-sufficient. World Corp International has made great strides on the crops we can grow, technology, medicine . . .”

  The pain had turned from a dull throb into a sharp stab that seemed to press through my skull, but I rolled on. “We’ve already conquered North America. We’re well on our way to taking the entire western hemisphere.”

  “How? How does the republic plan to take over? Aryus is losing control in his own stolen territory.”

  I stopped, turning away from Amory to hide my shame and ignoring the persistent pain in my brow.

  Why had I told him all that? Any information I gave would be used against the republic.

  “Haven —” Amory reached out to squeeze my arm, but I jerked out of his reach.

  “Stop. Just stop. I know what you’re doing.”

  How could I have been so stupid? I thought. Everything Amory had done — every look, every word — had been designed to manipulate me, wear me down, and make me trust him so I would give them information about World Corp’s plans.

  He sighed, running a hand through his hair in frustration. After a few minutes of silence, he stood up and reached for me. I ignored this gesture, and he seemed to brush it off as I followed him back toward my tent.

  I fought the gawking stares of the others at camp as I ducked around to the front of my tent and went inside. Amory looked angry about all the unwanted attention, but he turned back toward me with a slight smile playing on his lips.

  Slumping down in the corner, I looked up at Amory with a challenging stare. He hesitated for a moment and then left without binding my ankles.

  I knew it was meant to be a gesture of goodwill, but I could not help feeling that he was taunting me. Amory seemed to know I would not attempt an escape because I had nowhere else to go. Or maybe he sensed my curiosity and knew it would weaken my resolve to leave.

  I did not see Roman for the rest of the day. Amory took it upon himself to bring me my meals, as though he suddenly felt invested in my well-being.