The rumbles of the crowd are rising, and another voice calls out over them. “It doesn’t matter. We can’t afford to put ourselves at further risk looking for him. He knew the risk he was taking on. We have to stick to the mission, or else his sacrifice is for nothing.”
Another wave of arguing voices rises.
“Enough!” Raina hops onto the closest bench. “We are not going to lose our heads.”
She waits for the voices to die down, sweat beading on her brow in the heat and her expression stern.
“Yes. It’s possible the Licentia got him. It’s also possible – and more likely – the Directorate got him. He could have been discovered by a citizen and subjected to vigilante justice. Or he could have run for it before they got to him. For all we know, he could be out in the Quad somewhere, hiding, waiting for us to do something. But we don’t operate on ‘possibles.’ Intel is working around the clock to learn more about what happened. And yes, we do need to pursue this. Aside from saving Tad if we can, it could be a serious security issue.”
My stomach knots. If Tad did manage to get away, I guess it’s possible that he has secret hiding spots out there. Anything is possible. After all, I never would have thought it possible that the tunnels out into the woods existed. Or an entire world beyond the Quads. Or that I could be alive after my departure date. But the Quad I know? There’s no way Tad is out there hiding. There’s nowhere to hide.
“This is why we shouldn’t have our own people in the Quads,” another person shouts.
“This is why we need more people in the Quads!” another shouts back.
“What is taking so long with defusing the bombs? We need to attack already and take the Directorate down once and for all.”
“We need to get the rest of our people out of there and stop meddling. They’re going to find out, and we’re going to have World War Four on our hands when they do.”
Kinlee sighs and drops her head to the table. I wonder what she thinks about the contacts in the Quads, but maybe that’s a question for later. I wouldn’t be alive without them. I know that much.
All this chaos would never happen in the Quads. No matter how big the group, a single person speaks at a time. In the Quads, nothing ever happens to induce such panic in the first place. No one disagrees – the Directorate decides for us. Order is always maintained.
“We can’t lose our heads,” Raina scolds. “I know we all have opinions about how this camp should run, but this is no time for politics. We have a man in jeopardy, and we are going to get him back. The rest of this is going to have to wait.”
The panic flattens out into silence.
Raina continues. “I’m not telling you this to scare you. We’ve got a lot more investigating to do to. In the meantime, everyone needs to be extra-sharp about security. We need you alert, should anything out of the ordinary happen.”
She pauses and looks out at the crowd, which is frozen in silence. “Is that something we can manage?”
A murmur of agreement rises.
“Okay then. Meeting adjourned.”
Raina turns and leaves. A muffle of voices and movement swell as everyone gets up.
Connor and I turn to Kinlee, and it’s a matter of seconds before the other teens are doing the same.
She looks around at us. “What?”
“Tell us what’s really up with all this,” Ginnie prompts.
“Are you kidding? I have no idea,” she shrugs.
“Come on, Kin. You work with them,” Joel pushes.
“Yeah. And we have no idea.” Kinlee’s frowning now. “Not that I’d be able to tell you, even if we did. If I was allowed to, Mom would have said it already.”
“Seriously?” Meredith rolls her eyes.
“Seriously,” Kinlee snaps back, mocking her. “Why would we keep something like this from you?” She exhales in a sharp huff. “I gotta get back.”
She pushes herself over the bench and heads off.
“She’s been on edge the last couple of days,” Dave says. “Guess now we know why.”
I can’t imagine what it would be like to carry something as heavy this around, and not be able to tell anyone.
“We should get back, too,” Connor says.
“Right.” Except I’m not really paying attention. I’m staring after Kinlee, a weight growing within me as I consider everything we just learned.
When I don’t get up with Connor, he nudges me. “What’s on your mind?”
“What if it’s my fault?” The words tumble out of me before I’ve even realized that’s what’s bothering me.
Connor pauses, then gently runs a hand down my arm. “How could this possibly be your fault?” he asks.
“Tad tried to help me after my departure failed. Our interaction wasn’t exactly smooth.”
I tell him how nervous Tad seemed, how he stood out like a sore thumb. And how terribly un-smooth I was when he passed me his message.
“And then I left it in the bathroom trash can. Where anyone could have dug it up. I wasn’t thinking at all. What if…”
I can’t bring myself to say it. I pause and look at Connor for his reaction. There is none.
“I mean, the wastebasket. Shit.”
I run my hand through my hair, pushing it away from my face.
“You couldn’t possibly have understood anything at that point, though,” Connor says. “Sounds to me like he botched his job. Not you.”
“Connor! The man is missing!”
Saying it out loud makes my shoulders tighten, as if I could brace against it.
“And that’s awful. But getting people like you out safely is part of his job, right? Sounds like he caused a lot of confusion in what was already a dangerous situation. You’re not a spy. You didn’t even know we existed. How were you supposed to respond to that?”
It’s an interesting point. Why did Tad make contact with me like that?
Life is different out there, he told me. I can still feel his fingers digging into my arm as he said it. And he was right – it’s really different. But in the moment, it hadn’t sounded like a good kind of different. It sounded like a warning.
But that can’t be right – I must have been too scared, too confused, to understand him. He way trying to help. Wasn’t he? Everyone from the Alliance has done nothing but help. But… well. Even then, Mara thought it was strange, the way he had spoken to me.
“I have to tell them what I know. It probably doesn’t matter, but...” I don’t know how to explain this weight that has settled into the pit of my stomach, or how it’s not going to go away.
But Connor nods. “Go. I’ll finish up at the farm.”
“Thanks.” I squeeze his arm and bolt after Kinlee. “Kin!” It’s not easy to dart through everyone to catch up to her, and by the time reach her, my breaths are heavy.
“Seriously, I can’t say anything else,” she says as she turns to me.
“No, Kin, I met Tad. On my Departure Day. Maybe I can tell you something.”
She raises an eyebrow and tilts her head. “Yeah, definitely. Mom and the others will want to talk to you. Follow me.”
Kinlee leads me through the trees, and I start to realize each turn is marked with a small red dash of paint on its bark. But even with the marks, you’d have to already know where you were going to know which way to turn at each one.
“Is Intel hiding its location from the Directorate or from the camp?” It’s a lame joke, but I’m nothing but nerves right now and the quiet is killing me. “Really. Where are you taking me?”
Kinlee smirks. “You know, the Directorate shut itself off gradually at first. It took a while for other countries to get concerned enough to respond. First they responded in small ways, like sanctions. Then, when the Directorate ignored that, everything escalated. Eventually it started a war.”
We pass another red mark, and Kinlee makes an abrupt turn. I do my best to keep up.
“Sure. We got a version of that in lower grade History,” I sa
y. “Though in the Directorate’s version, the other countries attacked the Directorate for protecting peaceful, painless life.” Sarcasm leaks into my words as I quote the lies I was fed for so many years. It feels icky to say it out loud now, after so many weeks free of them.
Kinlee nods. “Uh-huh. So during the war, the Directorate put all these bunkers around its outer perimeter for border security. Their technology was a lot more advanced than the other countries. They obliterated us,” Kinlee says. “Then they closed themselves off completely, and we had no way to stop it. But, they left the bunkers on the outside.”
Kinlee comes to an abrupt stop, and I bump into her.
“Okay. And why am I getting this very delightful history lesson?” I say.
Kinlee stomps the ground. It doesn’t make the muffled thud of soft earth. It makes the tinny clang of metal on metal.
“What the…?” I exclaim, jumping back.
Kinlee laughs as she presses her thumb to a scanner embedded on the corner of the trap door, and it pops open.
“Whoa,” I say. It’s the first decent tech I’ve seen since I got here.
Kinlee lifts the door. “Come on.”
Then she swings in and starts the climb down.
I step to the edge and look in. The bunker below is deeper than I imagined, ending in a scuffed-up metal floor. It looks familiar, and my first arrival to the camp flashes back to me – this is the second ladder I climbed when I first got here that took me up to the camp. With my sprained ankle. My stomach churns at the memory. It’s not so bad with two working legs, but all the same I take it slow, staring intently at my knuckles as they turn white, clenching each bar on the descent.
Kinlee gets down quickly, and by the time I’ve caught up, she’s already getting Raina.
Unlike the rest of the camp – where we’re practically living like people did a couple of hundred years ago – down here, everything looks state-of-the-art. It’s floor-to-ceiling metal, and the entire wall to our left is covered in video feeds on large screens, showing various angles of the camp’s perimeter. Three people man the desks in front of those screens, with more chairs pulled out near other disheveled desks.
Some of the feeds are surveilling something else, though. Perfectly lined sidewalks with perfectly manicured grass and perfectly spaced trees, with perfectly calm and content citizens walking past – the Directorate. On the wall opposite the screens, a large map is stretched out and marked up. A series of bubbles, tightly organized, takes up almost half the map, each with a number, and other notes. I didn’t realize there were so many Quads.
This is what Kinlee’s up to while Connor and I are milking cows? Goofy, sarcastic Kinlee? It’s like there’s a totally different person hidden inside her that she doesn’t show us.
I must look as nervous as I feel, because Kinlee cocks her head. “Relax. This is an interview, not an interrogation.”
I try to smile. “Right.”
“Maybe we should talk about something else,” she says. Then her mouth twists into a mischievous grin. “Maybe we should talk about Connor.”
“What! No. Why would we do that?”
“I don’t know. Why would we do that?” She lifts one eyebrow suggestively.
“Damnit.” What’s the point. She already knows. “I hated him. When did he get cute?”
Kinlee snorts with laughter. “Better question: When are you going to stop being a chicken and do something about it?”
“What! No way.” I think for a second. “What if he doesn’t feel the same?”
“First of all, I have known him forever, and he does. You’ve done something to him. He’s been so angry, for so long. Not that he doesn’t have reasons to be angry. But since you got here, it’s been fading. He’s smiling more.” A warm rush comes over me. “And second of all, so what if it turned out he didn’t? Life would go on.”
“But…” I don’t know how to say the other thing holding me back. A cloud of dread that warns me to keep them all at arm’s length, like I always have, to try not to make it any worse for anyone when my departure date finally catches up with me. Then I realize, it would be impossible to explain any kind of fear to Kinlee. “How are you so fearless?”
If Kinlee had a departure date, I don’t think she would hesitate to get it diagnosed at all. She’d never have a fit of panic, run away, and then let it sit like a weight at the back of her mind for weeks.
She shrugs. “I have fears. But the more you get used to doing the thing you’re afraid of, the less of a big deal it becomes. I do it all the time for Intel training. Then her face lights up and she jumps. “You should do Intel & Recon for your last rotation.”
The idea alone shoots a shiver of fear through me. “That seems like a very bad idea.”
“It’s not,” she says. Her eyes glint with excitement at the idea. “But suit yourself.”
I’m still struggling to get my head around the idea of me working in a place like this, when Raina strides up, along with a large man in a soldier’s uniform, and I remember why I’m here in the first place. They pull up chairs for all of us from a nearby table, and we sit.
“This is Grant,” Raina says. “Tell us everything,”
I try. I give them every detail I can remember. Though it turns out my awareness for details on that particular day was terrible, with everything that was going on. They ask me a million questions on every point, parsing out some kind of meaning from it all that I can’t see.
I start out talking too quickly, not quite saying what I mean. Their questions slow me down, though, and I start to understand what kind of information will help them. They don’t care that Tad’s gelled-back hair stood out from the other site workers; they write down every detail I can remember about what he was wearing.
When I get to the part about taking the note, they frown, and my cheeks flood with heat. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize what I was doing. I was so stupid – ”
Raina cuts me off, reaching out to give my arm a comforting squeeze. “Whatever is going on, Tad broke protocol a few times over that day. It’s not your fault.”
I let out a sigh of relief. The tight ball of nerves in my core settles.
Then, I tell them about the rest of my time at the crem site until I got in the car with Suits One and Two, and slump in my chair.
“So… what happens now?” I ask.
Raina and Grant lean in, frowning.
“Whatever happened, I don’t think it had taken place yet. But I can see why he was an easy target,” Raina says.
A target for who? For what? A new kind of uneasiness comes over me, inching up my spine.
Grant shakes his head. “Whatever the case, one thing is clear: Even if these behaviors somehow didn’t contribute to his disappearance, wherever he is now, if he’s alive, he is a security risk who can’t be trusted to follow protocol and keep his mouth shut.”
Raina nods. “Even just a few years ago, we would have insisted he should have more training before throwing him in like that.”
The uneasiness creeps into my shoulders and clenches into them deep. This is bad. Even worse than it seemed before.
But there is nothing else I can do about it. Kinlee leads me back to the ladder.
“So what now?” I ask.
She shrugs. “We don’t know yet. But this was good, Ev. This helped.”
I still can’t believe Kinlee is involved in all this. It’s so different from the screwball who I’ve come to know this past month. Has it really only been a month? This place and its free, messy life already feel so natural. So necessary. Remembering the Quad is like remembering a dream – a bad dream, where the walls are too tight and it’s hard to breathe.
We stare at each other solemnly. The Directorate has never felt so threatening, even when they were trying to correct my departure. That was simply a matter of maintaining order. But if they took Tad, this is something much worse.
I climb up the ladder and give Kinlee what I hope is an encouraging wave
before shutting the hatch.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Evie
When I pull myself out at the top of the ladder, Connor is there.
“Hey!” I try not to sound too excited, but seeing him there, waiting for me, helps me shake off a little of my worry. “You’re done at the farm already?”
“Already?” Connor frowns. “It’s been a couple hours since you headed off with Kin.”
“Oh. Wow.” I guess we were talking for a while.
“So what happened?” he asks.
The nerves come back, tingling over my neck and knotting through my core.
“It’s bad,” I say. “I mean, really bad. They were really interested in what I had to say. I think it helped. But Tad’s in serious trouble. I think we all might be.”
How can a person just disappear? I look to Connor. His eyes are busy with thoughts, and his forehead is creased with concern. He reaches out and rubs the sides of my arms.
“You all right?” he asks.
He’s peering into my eyes like he’s going to find an answer in them.
“Yeah. I guess. I can’t stop thinking about Tad. They said he wasn’t following protocol. That if he’s out there somewhere, captured, who knows what he’s saying? And… I don’t know. I saw him. I talked to him. What if I could have done something differently? What if he got caught, trying to help me, and it’s all my fault? Maybe it was a mistake, trying to get me here.”
Connor’s hand runs down my arm and squeezes my hand. His touch is like magic, quieting my thoughts.
“No way. If anything, he compromised your safety by breaking protocols. This isn’t on you. You’re perfect. You’re right where you belong. Understood?”
He says it like it’s a fact, as unchanging and obvious as any other piece of his ever-churning flow of information. I look at him, and his expression is so earnest and sweet. Could Kinlee really be right? Could he feel the same about me?
Connor blinks, and I realize how long I’ve been staring. His cheeks flush bright pink, and he shifts to pull his hand away. But I reflexively tighten against his pull – I’m not ready to let go yet. He gives in, his fingers relaxing as they intertwine with mine.
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