by Tarah Benner
Aryus’s lips moved, and I heard his voice echoing inside my head.
You are my greatest achievement, Haven. You can’t fight it. You will be the end of this revolution.
Trying to shake the eerie feeling that this was some sort of premonition, I shuffled across the room and opened my door.
I barely had time to register Amory’s panicked look and smoky gray eyes before he pushed his way into my room and pressed me against the wall. His fingers were thrumming with nerves, and his face was as white as a sheet.
“The workers,” he breathed. “They’re back . . . with PMC.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I stared at Amory for a long moment. Our days of peace had reached an end, and there was still so much left unresolved. Something heavy passed between us as his gray eyes bored into mine — a silent acknowledgement of everything that had gone unsaid between us.
Not bothering to change out of my borrowed sweatpants and oversized T-shirt, I bolted down the stairs to the kitchen. Greyson and Logan were already waiting, looking grim. I stuck my head out the back door, and I could see a white PMC cruiser coming up the road through the trees.
“Drop your weapons and surrender,” boomed a voice from the cruiser’s intercom. “Resisting Private Military Company forces is an act of treason. You are all trespassing on World Corp International land and interfering with official operations. Please put down your weapons . . . and put your hands in the air.”
I stood frozen in the doorway, watching the cruiser approaching as though this wasn’t happening to me. Blood rushed through my ears, drowning out the panicked voices of Greyson and Amory behind me.
I stepped outside, barely thinking clearly enough to grab my rifle. The Hoopers, the Holts, and all the other rebels were already crouched in the yard behind cars, trash cans, and other makeshift barriers, their weapons poised. I ducked behind the 4Runner, pulling Greyson down with me.
The cruiser stopped where the trees met the driveway. Nobody moved.
Behind the cruiser leading the convoy were three heavy-duty construction trucks. Several vehicles back, I heard car doors slam and the sound of heavy footfalls. I suspected there were two more PMC cruisers bringing up the rear.
“This is your last chance to surrender peacefully,” said the officer. I could see him speaking through the windshield, but the booming voice did not match the pale, mustachioed man sitting behind the wheel. “Drop your weapons and place your hands over your head. If you do not surrender, we will open fire.”
The rebels were all staring at the officers with the same challenging expression. The officer was talking into his radio again, but no voice came over the intercom.
Then four officers from the front of the convoy got out toting riot shields, rifles pointed at the rebels nearest them. They looked vaguely surprised. Clearly, the PMC had only been expecting to defend the workers against a horde of carriers.
As the officers advanced, the rebels opened fire. The shots cracked through the trees and sent a violent surge of adrenaline through my veins. Two of the officers went down at once, but not before they’d hit one of our men.
More PMC were spilling out from behind the trucks. There had not been two cruisers in the back as I’d thought. Over a dozen men were marching toward us, and they kept coming.
I looked at Greyson, whose face had gone white. We had not prepared for PMC defense of this scale.
I raised my rifle and aimed at the officer nearest me, but it hit him in his vest. He went down, clutching his chest in agony, but he wasn’t dead. I aimed at his head, but my second shot ricocheted off his vehicle.
A bullet whizzed past my head, and someone behind me cried out in agony. I ducked and aimed again at the officer I’d shot. This time I hit him squarely in the forehead, and I watched him slide down the closed door of the cruiser, his eyes staring straight ahead.
Behind the line of officers, there was a strange commotion going on in the construction vehicles. Men in blue overalls were jumping out and fleeing toward the back of the caravan, but a few had picked up the fallen officers’ weapons and were using the dead bodies as shields as they shot at us.
It struck me as very odd that these men — the scared people who had been cowering in the communes since the Collapse — were rallying behind the officers who had enforced mandatory migration in the first place. These were the people Ida was trying to convert, but the look in their eyes told me they had taken World Corp’s message to heart. They truly believed we were the evil ones.
I saw one man leaning across the seat of the cruiser, speaking into the radio. I aimed and shot. The window shattered, and the man slumped back. He was still alive. I had hit him in the shoulder. He was speaking frantically into the radio — calling in backup — and I shot again. This time, he fell down across the console, a pained expression frozen on his face.
As I watched him die, a cold vise gripped my chest, squeezing the life out of me. My limbs were all pins and needles. I was just a floating pair of lungs and a cold, dead heart.
He had been one of the men in blue overalls — just an ordinary person, probably with a family back at the commune. He hadn’t truly been part of this — he had just been caught in the crosshairs.
And I had killed him.
I lowered my rifle. Suddenly I was looking at the others in a different light. We were the ones dressed in black. We were the ones shooting innocent people.
Not for the first time, I had the horrible feeling that I was doing something very wrong.
It didn’t matter. The battle continued to rage around me, and after a while, the shots quieted. Most of the officers and workers lay dead and dying in the gravel. Half a dozen workers had fled.
I looked around to our forces. A few of our men were wounded, and a small group was clustered around another man.
My heart sank. The PMC had come here expecting only a horde of mindless carriers, yet we’d lost one of our own already.
Looking grim, Godfrey shuffled over to the officers lying by the cruisers. I tore my eyes away, not wanting to watch him put any of the men out of their misery.
I set my rifle down in the gravel. My hands were shaking too badly to hold it.
“Haven! Haven!”
I turned around. One of our men — a man whose name I did not recall — was limping over to me with one hand over the wound in his leg.
“What should we do with Jimmy?”
“I —”
“He’s bad. They shot him in the stomach. He needs help.”
My mind was racing. This man was dying, and the others were looking to me to save him?
I opened my mouth, unsure what I was going to say, when Roman stepped between us and put a hand on the man’s shoulder.
“Joe, take him straight into the kitchen. Amory will see what he can do.”
Amory heard his name and wheeled around.
I was relieved to see he was still in one piece, but I regretted the position he was in. I knew he didn’t feel ready to treat serious wounds like this — and maybe he wasn’t — but he was the closest we had to a doctor on the farm.
He nodded at Roman and squeezed my arm as he passed.
Roman ducked down to eye level with me, looking anxious. “Haven, what’s the plan?”
“What do you mean?”
“That worker you shot . . . he was in the middle of radioing for backup, wasn’t he?”
“It looked like it.”
“Well, we need to be ready in case they send another wave. We won’t have the advantage of surprise this time.”
I nodded. “You’re right. Tell the men —”
“I’m not telling the men anything. They take orders from you and Amory.”
“Why me?”
Roman shrugged. “They see you as a leader. You escaped Aryus and came back to our side when no one thought you would. You need me, I’m here to help. But I’m not a general.”
I stared at him. He was looking at me with those tough grizzly eyes, bu
t for the first time since I’d known him, it wasn’t a predatory stare. Roman was addressing me with respect.
I cleared my throat, wishing my voice sounded deeper, steadier. “All right, guys. We don’t know for sure, but it looked like one of them might have had a chance to call for backup.”
The rebels let out a collective groan, and my stomach twisted uncomfortably like a wet rag. They were angry and tired, and I somehow had to get them ready to fight again.
“Listen . . .” I said, gathering my resolve and letting it build in my chest until it was a low buzz of adrenaline. “That was nothing. There were only a handful of officers, and they weren’t prepared to find us here. We won’t be facing a few officers and unarmed workers next time. The PMC means business. It’s up to us to defend this place and send them crawling back north.”
There was a murmur of approval from the crowd.
“If you’re wounded, get into the kitchen and form a line. Amory will treat the most serious wounds first.”
A few of the rebels limped off, clutching bleeding shoulders, arms, and legs. Some leaned on their comrades, while others toughed it out on their own, eyes watering.
As Godfrey brushed past me on his way back inside, I grabbed his sleeve.
“What should we do?” I asked. “We need a defense plan for when they send reinforcements.”
Godfrey wiped the sweat off his face and sighed irritably, as though I’d asked him to take out the trash, not save a few dozen rebels’ lives.
“I say we try Greyson’s plan,” Roman offered. “Head them off on the road if we can.”
“Sure, that sounds good,” Godfrey grunted, shifting his gaze away.
I stepped in front of him to block him from going inside. “Wait. If you have a better plan . . .”
“Go with whatever plan you want. It doesn’t really matter.”
I stared at him, so sure I’d misheard. “What?”
Godfrey glanced around to make sure no one else was around and opened his mouth reluctantly. “It doesn’t really matter what we do. Ida sent us here to be a distraction, not to single-handedly end this war.”
Somewhere inside me, the frayed thread of my nerves snapped. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“A distraction?”
“Uh-huh. What? Did you think she would send a bunch of kids to win a revolution?”
“So we’re just supposed to die?” I spluttered. “Just . . . accept that we’re . . . what? A sacrifice?”
“You can accept or not accept whatever you want,” said Godfrey in a low voice. “It doesn’t change the facts.”
“Ida wouldn’t do that,” said Roman. “We can fight this.”
“All I’m saying is that it was never her intention for us to win.”
“Well, screw that,” Roman snapped. “I’m not just going to lay down and —” He looked at me, his eyebrows scrunched together in determination. “I’m taking the others to set up a blockade down the road. That will give us cover and keep them from driving in.”
I nodded numbly. I was still in complete shock. Then I turned to Godfrey, looking up into his rough, terrifying face with as much resolve as I could muster. “Listen. I’m in this. You have to be in this, too. These are people’s lives we’re talking about. Yes, we might die, but I would much rather live. Is that understood?”
Maybe I imagined it, but I thought I saw a ghost of a smile flit across Godfrey’s weathered mouth.
That just stoked my anger. “Do something!” I snapped, pushing him hard in the chest.
Godfrey gave me a long hard look before limping off across the yard.
I felt a little sick as I watched the others move the trucks, revealing big pools of blood in the gravel. The bodies were still there, and I didn’t know what we were going to do with them.
Roman rounded up a group of the beefier-looking rebels and disappeared down the road with a few of the vehicles for a blockade. That left us with fifteen able-bodied men and women to defend the farm if they should fail.
Had Ida sent us here on a suicide mission? I wouldn’t accept that.
While the rest of our forces reloaded, I ran inside the house to help Amory patch up some of the less serious wounds.
Greyson was already working on one of the men, and Logan had busied herself at the stove boiling water, sanitizing instruments, and collecting fresh supplies. She hated blood, and it was beyond her ability to patch up a bleeding man without throwing up.
I fell in with Greyson and applied pressure to one man’s wound. He had taken a bullet to the shoulder. His face was roughly the shade of cooked oatmeal, but I knew it was mostly due to shock rather than blood loss.
Amory was bent over the man on the table — the one called Jimmy with a bullet in his stomach. I watched him reach up with a bloody gloved hand to dab the perspiration gathering on his forehead, and I felt very sorry for him — sorry he had this responsibility.
Godfrey’s words were still ringing in my ears, but I pushed the sick feeling down.
We were not a sacrifice.
Amory’s strong back muscles were working furiously, but then he stopped again, and his back buckled. Suddenly, he swore loudly and slammed his fist on the table, making his instruments rattle.
He stood there for a moment, breathing heavily, before turning to face us. “I need help moving him.” Amory’s voice was thick. “He’s gone.”
Greyson got up, and the two of them carried the dead man outside.
I wanted to reach out for Amory — comfort him — but there was no time. I was scrubbing the kitchen table with soap and water, and Amory was already helping me heave the next man onto the table.
For a moment, I just watched him speak to the injured man. His voice was as even and controlled as ever, but his jaw was stiff, and those beautiful, intense gray eyes were tight with grief.
He turned to grab a fresh pair of gloves, practically colliding with me. Before I could stop myself — before I could think — I reached out and threaded my fingers through his.
For the briefest moment, his eyes met mine, and the corners of his mouth lifted into a tired smile. His trembling hand stilled.
Then the back door banged open, and Godfrey strode in. “They’re back.”
The rebels had used the cruisers and trucks to form a barricade to shield us from the immediate line of fire. They’d parked the trucks bumper to bumper and piled cinder blocks, lumber, and debris from the PMC’s construction site on top of and underneath the vehicles. It wasn’t an impenetrable wall, but it was better than nothing.
I was relieved to see that the bodies had been moved away, though the blood-soaked gravel was a stark reminder of what had transpired. There were little bumps of gravel here and there, as though someone had tried to cover up the blood but had given up.
The sound of gunshots coming from up the road cracked through the air and bounced off the trees, giving them an almost organic tenor. My heart was pounding, and I nervously checked my pockets for extra ammunition.
There was just Roman and fifteen of our men between the PMC and the rest of us. If they couldn’t hold them off, it would just be us.
We had no backup — no one to pick up our guns and rally. I didn’t even have anyone who would miss me if we all died today, I realized. We would be permanently erased — a welcome void on the PMC’s radar.
Suddenly, the gunshots drew closer. Two rebels standing next to me hit the deck, and I ducked behind the wall of cinder blocks, too. I scrambled to find a good vantage point to shoot, but I still didn’t know where the shots were coming from.
Then I saw officers through the cracks in the cinder blocks. Some were emerging from the woods, and some were running toward us from the driveway.
Their bullets ricocheted off the trucks, but the vibrations still shook my chest. I aimed at one officer standing out in the open and fired. He yelled and collapsed on the ground. I’d just hit his leg.
I shot again, and he went still.
A bullet flew over my head and shattered the window of the truck I was hiding behind. Glass rained down on my back, and I scooted away carefully. Logan had made herself a hole in the cinder blocks and was in full sniper position.
With the stability from the ground, she was able to take out three men in a row, but the rest of our forces weren’t doing as well. A couple had caught stray bullets, and the rest weren’t great shots. We had wounded and killed a few officers, but more were encroaching, spilling out like dozens of white spiders.
As more officers appeared, any hope I had felt was absorbed by a black hole of cold resolve. Roman would never have let so many through — not unless the PMC had overwhelmed our forces. It was just us now.
Amory reappeared from the house covered in blood and threw himself behind the barricade to help us take down the officers.
Part of me felt glad he was here by my side, but the other part wanted to die hoping he might have survived.
Death. That was what I was preparing for now. I refused to be taken — refused to have my mind hijacked again.
Officers were approaching slowly and cautiously, taking their time. They had us outnumbered, and they knew it.
I pointed my gun at one who was crouching in the trees. He was inching along, trying to get a good shot around the side of our barricade. I had him in my scope, but then he stepped forward, his toe nudging one of the tiny bumps in the gravel.
An explosion erupted, throwing the officer backward in a burst of flames. I threw myself onto the ground closer to the house, and the wave of heat washed over my back.
Stars erupted behind my eyelids, and three more booms echoed through the trees in quick succession. They shook the ground and rattled my ribcage. My body was a tuning fork, quaking from the blast.
I heard yells and screams and saw fire licking at the ground as I forced my eyes open. The smoke burned, and tears streamed down my face. Everything was blurred and shaking.
I didn’t know who was hit. There were bodies everywhere.