Noah ran from the office and bolted down the stairs, hope surging through his heart. He had failed the qualifying exams twice now, and he was sure that he only needed one more chance.
“Dr. Noah Meyers,” he whispered to himself, tasting the words on his tongue. Determination burned in his veins. He was going to do whatever it took.
†‡†
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Brian felt the slight vibration of approaching footsteps radiate through the floor beneath him, and he drew his knees up to his chest. Finally. It felt like he had been waiting forever.
The door slowly opened, and he was greeted by Darren’s familiar silhouette along with a quiet sigh.
“Well, I’m glad I decided to check here first. I wasn’t looking forward to trying to sneak into recycling.”
Brian smiled. He could hear the relief in Darren’s voice.
“Yeah, glad to see you, too.”
Darren sighed again, pushing the door the rest of the way open and stepping into the room. The footlights that lined the hallway outside cast shadows over his expression, highlighting the worry on his face.
“So why are you hiding?” he asked, moving to sit on the floor across from Brian. “What’s going on?”
Brian raised a brow.
“You mean you don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“About the piers, what else!”
Darren shrugged.
“I figured you finally came down with a case of common sense and bailed out on the plan.”
Brian cursed under his breath.
“No, I went through with it,” he muttered, hanging his head. “I definitely went through with it.”
Darren pursed his lips.
“Don’t make me drag it out of you, just tell me already.”
Brian gulped.
“I…I made a mistake.”
“Huh, you don’t say,” Darren mused sarcastically. “Are you admitting that I was right? That the original plan was better?”
“The original plan was terrible!” Brian snapped, instantly annoyed. “Oh, and great job with the whole thing at breakfast, by the way. I really needed you drawing Amber’s attention to me like that―”
“What the hell happened, Brian?”
“She caught me! That’s what happened!”
Darren inhaled sharply as his eyes widened.
“What? How?”
“I don’t know! One second she was with the group on the other side of the ration dome, and the next second she was standing in front of me! I didn’t know she was there, I thought―”
“Wait, back up,” Darren interrupted, holding up his hand. “Start over, from the beginning.”
Brian took a deep breath and closed his eyes, replaying the day’s events in his mind for the millionth time.
“The beginning doesn’t matter, Darren―”
“It does to me! We have a problem now and if you’re involved, I’m involved!”
“It doesn’t matter!” Brian insisted. “I managed to stick with the tour just like I planned, okay? Fill in the blanks yourself—”
“No one noticed that you weren’t supposed to be there?”
“Paul Pearce noticed.”
“Are you serious?” Darren gasped. “Why didn’t he make you leave?”
“Because of Amber,” Brian answered. “She said I was her friend and she wanted me to stay with her.”
Darren’s eyes lit up with hope.
“Okay, that’s good, right? That means she likes you!”
Brian scoffed.
“I don’t think her asking me to stay means she’d be willing to keep a secret that could get her killed―”
“Then what happened? You went along with the tour, and?”
“We visited the ration dome last,” Brian continued. “I managed to leave the group at the door and headed for the middle set of piers, I figured it was far enough away to keep from being seen but close enough to make it back fast if I needed to.”
“Just like your idiotic plan, okay. And?”
“And that’s when she saw me. I got the first seven chips done in seconds, but when I got to the eighth, she just…appeared.”
“What did she see?”
“Everything!” Brian moaned quietly. “I had the goddamn chip in my hand—I figured I was already caught so I broke it right in front of her!”
“What did she do? What did you do?”
“Nothing, Darren! She asked me what I was doing and I…I froze! I couldn’t say a word! Then Paul showed up―”
“Paul? He saw you, too?”
“No, he didn’t see anything,” Brian quickly reassured him. “He was calling Amber and she ran back out of the row before he saw me.”
Darren whispered a curse and slammed his fist against the floor.
“I told you this was a bad idea, I told you not to do it!”
Brian made a face.
“Like the other plan was so much better―”
“Better than yours!” Darren retorted. “I had an access code ready for you! Ben agreed to switch shifts with me and I would’ve deleted the entry log the second you were done!”
“And if someone caught me in the act, they’d wonder why there was no matching record of an entry to the ration dome! How long do you think it would take them to figure out that the log was intentionally removed? It wouldn’t be the same as the incubation dome, Darren, you got away with deleting that one because they didn’t know when to look for.”
“No one would have caught you in the act because the ration dome is empty by ten!” Darren angrily shot back. “You should have listened to me!”
Brian crossed his arms defiantly.
“Right, and then what? Say I did use the code, say you did manage to delete the records without anyone else in security seeing you—then what?”
“Uhhh, you go back to your room and pretend it never happened―”
“No, Darren, then Executive Smith investigates. Then he starts looking for anything unusual, and what’s he going to find?”
Brian gasped mockingly.
“Oh, that’s right! He’s going to see that you just happened to switch shifts on the night that the piers were sabotaged! You’ve never switched shifts before, you think he’s just going to conveniently fail to notice that detail?”
He paused to take a breath.
“And guess what else, Darren? Smith’s not going to stop there, because there will be witnesses proving that you were at work. You can’t be at work and in the ration dome―that means he’d be able to prove that someone else was involved, too, and once he starts asking people about who you hang out with, we’re both done!”
“That doesn’t mean you should have tried doing it during the day, Brian! It was stupid, it was never going to work!”
“It would have worked fine if Amber hadn’t shown up!”
Darren punched the floor again, fuming under his breath.
“That’s everything, nothing else happened? She didn’t try talking to you afterwards?”
Brian glared at him.
“Sorry, we actually had a twenty-minute conversation that I just forgot to mention―”
“Asshole.”
“No, she didn’t try talking to me, I would have told you if she had!”
Darren frowned thoughtfully, falling silent for a long moment before glancing up.
“Okay, well, I don’t think she’s snitched on you yet. Everyone knows you and me are always together, so if they were looking for you, they would have started with me.”
Brian scowled darkly.
“Or they’re keeping it a secret so they can blindside me.”
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t think anyone has even realized what you did yet, no one’s running around the facility freaking out like they usually do when there’s a problem and the alarm hasn’t―”
“Or they’re keeping it a secret so they can bli
nd―”
“Stop, Brian, that’s not what’s going on!” Darren snapped. “Think about it, it doesn’t make any sense! Smith goes on a rampage even when stuff breaks normally, you really think he could hold back if someone told him that eight ration piers have been destroyed?”
“If it means catching a sympathizer―”
“He’s out of control, Brian, come on!”
“Okay, fine. Let’s believe for just one second that rainbows still exist and miracles really do happen and no one knows yet and Amber hasn’t ratted me out. Now what?”
Darren shrugged.
“I don’t know. Maybe Em will have an idea.”
Brian’s heart stopped. Em was the name Darren had given to their mystery contact, but her rule was that except in emergencies, only she was allowed to reach out.
“You signaled her?” he gasped. “Why?”
Darren shot him a withering glare.
“Don’t give me that look, Brian! Of course I did, what the hell else did you expect? Stupid plan plus vanishing act equals emergency!”
“I expected you to at least talk to me first! What if she decides I’m expendable because of this?”
“Correction, Mr. Johnson,” a woman’s voice rang out. “The very nature of what we’re doing makes you and every other sympathizer expendable until the day we succeed, it has nothing at all to do with me.”
“Speaking of the devil,” Darren muttered, rolling his eyes as he scooted closer to the open door. “Hi, Em. Nice to see you—oh, wait, never mind.”
Brian could hear the woman chuckle lightly from her place right outside the door; the edge shielded her from view, maintaining her anonymity.
“I know you don’t like the secrecy, Mr. Yale,” she said. “But as I’ve explained before, this is how things need to be for now. There are too many lives at stake.”
Darren made a face.
“Yeah, ours.”
“Did you think being one of us would be like an assignment in housekeeping?” the woman asked, her voice rising in annoyance. “Of course it’s dangerous, of course some of us aren’t going to make it. Whether you fully believe it or not, however, my goal is to do everything I can to prevent unnecessary losses.”
“Yeah, but you know who we are. That gives you the advantage―”
“You called me for some kind of emergency, and I’d like to hope I didn’t risk my life coming here just so you could have another argument about my identity.”
“No, of course not,” Brian said, shooting a warning glare in Darren’s direction. “Something else came up, something important.”
“Really?” the woman replied impatiently. “I’m curious as to what could possibly be important enough to find both of you here instead of preparing for the task you were given. You have less than two hours to get to where you need to be, so I’d suggest you stop wasting my goddamn time and make it quick.”
Darren laughed derisively.
“Yeah…about that. You know how we agreed to do a midnight run when you first told us about the plan?”
“Go on.”
The woman’s voice had grown suddenly strained, and Brian gulped.
“I…I didn’t think that plan was going to work,” he managed to say, his voice wavering. “There were too many risks, so instead…I decided to do it today.”
She scoffed in disbelief.
“What the hell do you mean, today?”
“I was assigned as an escort for one of the new arrivals this week, and I stayed with her during the orientation tour. I figured a big group inside the ration dome would be a perfect distraction―”
“But you’re not supposed to attend tours like that!” the woman hissed angrily. “You didn’t think Smith would be suspicious if he found out that you were there?”
“Exactly what I said,” Darren sang under his breath.
“Yes, but hanging around for a tour with my escort assignment makes at least some sense,” Brian pointed out. “It’s a lot easier to explain than being caught in the ration dome at midnight―”
“I don’t care what’s easier to explain, I care about results!” she barked out. “Whatever you tried doing today obviously failed, which means you need to get into position! You need to go―”
“It’s too late for all that,” Darren quietly interjected.
“What do you mean, it’s too late?”
“Brian was caught.”
“Caught? Who caught him?”
“The girl I was escorting,” Brian answered. “She walked around the corner and saw what I was doing.”
He could hear the woman’s teeth grating despite how far away she was, and the slow breath she drew whistled as it passed between her lips.
“We had a responsibility to the others, Mr. Johnson. We had a plan―”
“A plan that would have likely gotten both of us killed!” Brian shot back, abandoning caution as his temper flared. “Oh, but wait—we’re expendable!”
“The important thing is forcing the algae harvest so future generations don’t have to live the way we do!” Em snapped. “The other facilities are all moving tonight—except us, because you’re too stupid to follow a simple set of instructions! I should have never trusted you with this, I should have known better!”
“It would have worked, dammit!” Brian insisted. “It was working, I got to eight of them before Amber caught―”
“What do you mean, eight?” the woman demanded. “Eight piers?”
“No, eight trays in the cafeteria,” Brian retorted. “Of course piers, what else would I be talking about―”
“You’re sure?”
He made a face.
“Yes, lady, I’m sure! I opened the maintenance slot in the third row, pulled the red chip out of the yellow wiring harness, snapped it in half, and tossed the pieces back inside. I did it just like you said—and I did it eight times!”
“That’s strange,” Em mused, her voice suddenly growing hushed. “I haven’t heard a word about it—when did this happen?”
“Around lunchtime.”
“Strange,” she repeated, more to herself than to him. He could hear her fingers begin drumming against the wall outside, then the sound abruptly stopped.
“I would know about it if Smith knew,” the woman said. “No alarm, no emergency meeting—that means this girl hasn’t said anything for some reason, and no one’s figured out that eight piers aren’t working yet.”
“Told you,” Darren whispered, meeting Brian’s gaze.
“Eight out of twelve isn’t bad,” she went on. “It’s not going to be enough to drop us below the redline for ration production, but it should be beyond the scope of a targeted population eradication. This will definitely hurt the program.”
Brian could hear the woman’s feet scrape against the floor as she spun on her heel. She was leaving.
“Wait!” Darren called out. “What are we supposed to do about Brian? He was caught!”
“And it would appear that by some miracle, he still has time to do something about it,” the woman replied. “I’d suggest you think of something quick.”
“Like what?” Darren snapped, despair in his voice. “What the hell are we supposed to do?”
“The staircases are tall, Mr. Yale,” she said. “And the floor is a long way down, especially for accident-prone new arrivals. Use your imagination.”
Brian scoffed incredulously.
“You’re not seriously suggesting that I could possibly get away with that!”
“If you’re capable of being smart about it, yes. Unless you want to experience Smith’s version of an interrogation, you can either take care of her or take care of yourself. You need to choose one, because I guarantee you that if Smith gets ahold of you, you’re going to end up taking Darren down with you.”
She began walking again, then hesitated.
“You two are done for now as far as I’m concerned, I won’t put our venture a
t risk because you can’t follow a plan.”
“Wait, but I didn’t do anything!” Darren protested. “Why can’t I―”
“And this is why secrecy is important, Mr. Yale,” the woman answered. “Brian knows who you are and you know who he is. You’re mutually-exclusive, so until this situation is handled with the girl and I can be sure that your further involvement won’t compromise us, you’re out.”
With that, her footsteps retreated, and Darren cursed under his breath.
“That woman is insane,” he whispered. “Absolutely and completely insane.”
Brian sighed heavily and dragged himself to his feet.
“Someone falling over the edge of an upper walkway would be chalked up to an accident.”
Darren’s mouth dropped open.
“You’re kidding, right? Tell me you’re kidding, not after all that bullshit about how unfair this place is! What happened to the whole ‘people shouldn’t be disposable’ thing―”
“This is different, Darren, and you know it!”
“No, it’s not, and you know it!”
“Okay, fine!” Brian snarled. “So then I guess it has to be me, that’s what you’re saying?”
“Of course not―”
“Yes, you are, because that’s the only other choice I have!”
Brian stormed out into the hallway, fuming as he headed back towards the main wing.
“Wait!” Darren called after him. “Come on, Brian, just stop!”
“Leave me alone!”
“I said stop!” Darren repeated, catching up and grabbing Brian’s arm. “You’re the only person I care about here, I can’t lose you―”
“That’s not what it sounds like to me!” Brian growled as he yanked away. “It’s me or her, I have to do something!”
Darren reeled back, sudden shock filling his eyes.
“You’re…you’re really thinking about this, aren’t you?”
“She’s going to be dead soon anyway, just like all the female breeders!”
“That doesn’t give you the right to speed it along―”
“I don’t have a choice!”
“Brian…” Darren’s voice had grown suddenly husky, and for a moment, it almost looked like he was fighting back tears. “That’s not who you are. I don’t want to lose you, but I think…I think that’s what will happen if you do something like this.”
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