Enemy Inside (Defectors Trilogy)

by Benner, Tarah

  Several nearby rebels had turned to stare at me, but I didn’t care. Somebody ought to call Rulon on his bullshit. Godfrey was watching me out of the corner of his eye, too. It was hard to tell in the dancing firelight, but I thought I caught the flash of a grin.

  Rulon’s face looked as though it was carved from stone. He betrayed no emotion, but I knew my words had touched a nerve. I wanted to knock the whisky out of his hand, but instead, I stormed off into the woods.

  I heard two pairs of feet crunching over the frozen underbrush behind me and felt Greyson’s worry hovering in the darkness before he even spoke. He and Logan had been sitting nearby, and I knew they had heard everything.

  “What the hell was that?” Greyson hissed. “Are you trying to get us all killed?”

  Feeling the anger ripple through me again, I refused to look in his direction. “I know you like these people, but the whole point of joining forces with them was to rescue Amory. They were never going to help us. It’s time to try something else. I don’t need Rulon or his men.”

  He stopped, grabbing my arm and spinning me around. “You think I like these people? I was in that closet when they were torturing you, remember?”

  In the darkness, I could just make out the whites of his eyes. I swallowed. How could I forget? The three rectangular chemical burn marks on my arm were a constant reminder. They wouldn’t heal like regular burns.

  Miles, the rebel who tortured me, had been killed on the bridge by the PMC. The man who had stood by and watched had gone AWOL. Nobody at the camp ever talked about the rebels’ interrogation methods, but I could never pretend it hadn’t happened under Rulon’s command.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But I just can’t sit here doing nothing if there’s even a chance of saving Amory.”

  Greyson’s smile stood out in the darkness. “When do we leave?”

  I sighed. No matter what had happened to him in prison, at least the important things about Greyson hadn’t changed. He was still my most loyal friend. “Whenever we can find out how they’re breaking into the city and where the PMC might be keeping Amory.”

  We stopped walking. Greyson fidgeted, chewing on his words. The silence hung between him and Logan, and I knew they were both dancing around something they did not want to say to me. That wasn’t like Greyson.

  He took a deep breath. “Haven . . . if they think he has information about the rebels, he’s not going to be in good shape when we get him out.” He swallowed, as if trying to keep his next words down. “If he’s still alive.”

  My stomach clenched. Even though the horrible thoughts of what the PMC might be doing to Amory were on a constant loop in my head, hearing Greyson say it made it real.

  “I know. But I won’t leave him.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to.”

  I paused, mulling over Rulon’s words. “Rulon said ‘facility,’ not prison.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t think they’re holding Amory in prison.”

  Greyson snorted. “Well, the rebels destroyed all the prisons. They’ve just been killing all the illegals they find.”

  “Why would they hold on to Amory, then? The other rebels left in the city would have more information.”

  “His father doesn’t want him killed.”

  “No. His father wouldn’t want people thinking he was being soft on his son. How would that look? Amory defected. He’s a traitor.”

  “What does Amory have that the other defectors don’t?”

  I thought back to something Amory had said in the rebel bunker — how his father used him as one of the first test subjects for the CID.

  “There was something different about his CID,” I said. “They tried to modify his behavior. It obviously didn’t work very well, because they haven’t tried that with anyone else.”

  “That we know of.”

  I shivered.

  “I know where he is,” said Logan, startling me. She looked pale in the anemic glow of the moonlight filtering through the bare trees, and the dead look in her eyes gave me a chill. “They’ve got him in Isador.”

  Greyson and I exchanged blank looks, and she continued.

  “I never thought it was a real place, but they sometimes talked about it when I was in training.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “No place you want to be. It’s off the books, but it’s where the PMC runs tests on people to develop new technology. At least that’s what I’ve heard.”

  “How do we get there?”

  “I don’t know where it is. Just that it’s somewhere in Sector X.”

  “Rulon knows,” I said through gritted teeth, feeling the hatred boiling in my veins. He had the information we needed to rescue Amory, and still he did nothing. He would let him die.

  “We need those maps,” I said, thinking of the ones Rulon had shown me in the leaders’ tent. “They had all the safe routes marked.”

  “Tomorrow,” said Greyson. “We’ll wait until Rulon and his guards leave camp, and then we’ll sneak in and steal them.”

  The thought of letting yet another night pass while Amory was in the hands of the PMC made me sick, but we couldn’t go running into Sector X without a solid plan again. That was what got us into this mess.

  We felt our way back through the trees, stumbling occasionally over exposed roots and underbrush hidden in the snow. I began to wonder how far we had walked into the woods. I could no longer hear the sounds of laughter and slurred conversations.

  Finally, I saw the flickering light of the fire through the trees, but something was wrong. It was too quiet.

  Someone shouted, and I heard the sounds of heavy footfalls crashing toward us. A hulking shape emerged in the darkness, and I took an automatic step backward, bumping into Greyson. An enormous hand closed over my arm, jerking me forward and almost yanking my arm from its socket.

  “Found her!” the man shouted.

  I twisted reflexively, bringing my elbow up to knock the man on the side of the face just as Logan had taught me, but he was too fast. A huge, muscular arm twisted around my throat, pressing down against my windpipe. I choked as I was lifted off my feet and dragged through the trees. I smelled sweat and alcohol on his breath, and I started to panic.

  We emerged into the clearing where the fire was still burning, but no one was drinking or laughing. They were all staring at me with anger and distrust. Rulon stood alone in the middle, looking smug.

  “We have a traitor among us,” he said loudly to the watching crowd. “And traitors must be punished.”

  A hiss rippled through the crowd. Rulon took a step toward me, wearing an expression of cold disgust. “Take her in.”

  I tried to look for Logan and Greyson, but I couldn’t move my head. My captor’s arm was still wrapped around my throat too tightly, and he continued to drag me through the camp as all the rebels watched. Whatever was happening, no one was going to stop it.

  We passed down the rows of tents, and I felt the dread burning in the pit of my stomach. We were heading to the large black tent at the end of the block. It stood apart from the others in shadow, as if no one wanted to be that close to it.

  The man tossed me inside as if I were a bag of trash. Caught off guard, I fell forward, knocking my head against something hard as I hit the ground. The pain radiated through my skull, and I squinted through the darkness to the man who had grabbed me. I didn’t know his name, but I recognized him as one of Rulon’s closest guards. He followed him everywhere.

  Light fell across the trees outside, throwing shadows over Rulon standing in the entrance to the tent, his face unreadable. Someone muttered behind him, but he didn’t turn his head to the speaker.

  I recognized that voice.

  As Rulon and his companion crowded into the tent after the guard, I felt the sharp smack of betrayal.

  Godfrey met my eyes, and there was no remorse in his expression. Although I knew he was a rebel through and through, I’d always thought I could trust h
im. Godfrey was the only rebel who had seen what happened on the bridge. He watched Amory throw me into the water and sacrifice himself to the PMC. He knew why I had to go back.

  Rulon hung the lantern on the ceiling and looked down at me with an expression of pure loathing.

  “I’m sure you know why you are here.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Rulon edged closer to me, and I could see the snow melting on his boots. “You’ve been busy, I hear.”

  I said nothing. If this was what happened to rebels who spoke out against Rulon, I would have a better chance of walking away unscathed if I did not argue. I took my time rising into a sitting position, trying to decide what I should say.

  How had he heard me talking to Greyson and Logan? Did he have spies in the woods?

  “Godfrey tells me you have been training others in combat without authorization, and now I hear you are trying to shift the tides against me in my own camp!”

  I tried to arrange my face to hide my confusion. If Godfrey had really seen me and Logan practicing in the woods, he would know she was training me. Something was wrong, but I could not tell them about Logan. If they knew she was trained by the PMC, they would think she was a spy.

  “We were just practicing,” I said.

  “Practicing?” He laughed once, cold and sharp. “For what?”

  “To fight the PMC,” I said. “We want to be of use to the cause.”

  “You? You and your friends from the farm?” He laughed again. “I have moles embedded in the PMC . . . former marines and snipers at my disposal. How could you possibly help our cause?”

  I bit down on my tongue, the anger welling inside me. So it was true that the rebels had people on the inside.

  “I don’t know why you would be teaching our comrades to fight in secret, unless you were working against us.”

  “I’m not!”

  He continued. “I have been naïve. I probably wouldn’t have believed this treachery until I saw it for myself tonight. Your friend Amory is probably lounging in the PMC barracks as we speak. This was all an act to see what we knew — learn our operations. I have been right to play my cards close. I can see that now.”

  Rulon looked at the man who had dragged me here and flicked his eyes to the chair I had hit my head on.

  In an instant, the strange man’s hands were on me, pulling me up and shoving me into the chair by the front of my coat. I struggled, kicked, and tried to hit him, but he slapped me hard across the face. My skin stung with heat, and my eyes watered.

  While I was subdued, the man stuffed something in my mouth: a piece of fabric. I gagged, but he just shoved it in farther, and Godfrey moved to help him. It tasted like sweat and diesel fuel.

  I heard the loud rip of duct tape and felt the sticky adhesive close over my mouth. Someone wrapped it around my face, and it clung to my hair and pulled at my skin. I was too terrified to move.

  The larger man held my wrists while Godfrey taped them together and bound me to the chair. I breathed hard against the tape, trying to find air, and I felt myself begin to hyperventilate. My chest seized, and I felt tears well up in my eyes. Where were Logan and Greyson? Perhaps the other rebels had ganged up on them and they were in trouble, too. If they couldn’t save me, no one else would.

  I was so distracted by the sudden restraint that I hadn’t noticed Rulon digging in a box on the floor. He retrieved something I recognized: a small white case no bigger than a man’s wallet. He flipped it open, and I tried to scream through the fabric inside my mouth.

  Rulon dragged another chair directly in front of mine and sat down, a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. He grabbed my bound arms roughly and twisted my left arm to reveal the three perfect burns.

  “Hmm. Last time you got fire.” He licked his lips. “I’d like to try something new.”

  You bastard, I thought. So Rulon had been the one who instigated Miles’s torture.

  He pulled one of the tiny strips of film out of the case. This one was black. I tried to jerk my hands away, but his grip was too strong. I thrashed around, remembering the fire licking my skin, the smoke and suffocation, and my own charring flesh.

  Rulon’s guard had me in a headlock from behind, and for the first time, I saw Godfrey’s eyes flick away.

  The piece of film felt cold as it suctioned to the skin parallel with my red burns.

  A flash of cold prickled up my arm, tickling my spine as I shivered. But it was not ice as I expected; it felt as though I was being doused in frigid water. The water moved up my body in splashes, freezing and jarring, but not excruciating as before. It lapped at my ankles. I was wading in a cold pool, the water rising quickly to my knees and thighs. Suddenly, it was at chest level, splashing against my neck and chin.

  As it rose up my body, the water got colder and choppier. Before I was wading in calm waters. Now I was treading in the middle of the ocean.

  Waves splashed against my face, filling my nose and mouth. I coughed and spluttered, but I could not clear my throat. The water was rushing in too fast.

  I beat my arms and legs, trying desperately to keep my head above water, but I just sank farther.

  Thrashing desperately, I tried to come up for air, but my legs and arms were too heavy. I could not swim. The weight of my body pulled me down into the dark water, as if I had sandbags strapped to my chest.

  The water engulfed my head, beating down on me. Like a whirlpool, the water was churning — forcing itself into my airways. I choked, and my chest tightened as I fought for air. I moved my arms, trying to surface. It was no use.

  More water rushed into my lungs. They were on fire. I couldn’t breathe.

  Black spots appeared at the edges of my vision.

  I was drowning. I was going to die.

  Then my body started to feel weak and heavy, as though it were made of lead.

  I floated down, down, down, until I finally settled against the bottom of a pool of brackish water.

  The rough concrete scraped my skin, but it felt nice resting there. My legs and torso were too heavy to stay buoyant. Everything was so heavy. It was easier down here.

  I thought about Amory kissing me up on the cliff. It was strange — like watching someone who wasn’t me being kissed. That seemed so long ago. Amory was so far away. I just wanted the agony to stop.

  Something flickered in the back of my mind. I could not sleep at the bottom of the pool.

  As my head went light and fuzzy, I felt an urgency stirring in my chest. Raising my head, I tried to remember which way was up. I squinted through the blackness to the bright light refracting off the water’s surface. I pushed off toward the light, feeling the water flowing through my fingers. My head broke the surface, and I felt the cold sting of air against my face. I gasped.

  Coming up was awful.

  I choked, and the pain in my throat matched other pains I had not felt in the water. I retched, but no water came up. People were moving around me, talking in low voices. I ignored them.

  Someone kicked me in the gut. I whimpered and withdrew into a ball but did not move. I just wanted to be left alone.

  I couldn’t remember why someone tried to drown me, and I found I did not care. I closed my eyes, willing them to go away. They did.

  Then I felt something brush against my cheek like the wing of a bird.

  Someone tugged on my ponytail gently. It was such a soft gesture that called back to another time: me, ten years old, being awoken in the middle of the night at summer camp. We were sneaking out to the lake to look for frogs. Only one other person could remember that.

  Slowly, I opened my eyes. Greyson was staring down at me, looking horrified. I was lying on my side against the tarp on the ground, still taped to the chair with my right arm wedged painfully underneath me. I must have thrashed hard enough to knock myself over. Someone had removed the tape and fabric from my mouth, and my scalp prickled where bits of my hair had ripped out with it.

  “Come on,” he whispered. “We hav
e to get you out of here before they come back.”

  He withdrew his knife from a back pocket — the knife I had carried in my bag over a thousand miles for him — and cut the tape binding my wrists. He ripped it off quickly like a Band-Aid and began cutting me out of the chair. As I struggled to roll over into a sitting position, my limbs felt strangely weak, and my head was still spinning.

  I looked down at my arm. There were four clear strips of film stuck to the skin there; the color had leeched into my bloodstream with the poison. I tried to peel them off, but my hands shook. Greyson saw me struggling and did it for me. There were new marks there now, these ones shiny and raised as if the flesh had bubbled as it burned. They looked like tally marks ticked off in a row.

  Looking down expectantly, Greyson held out a hand to help me to my feet. My gut ached painfully where one of them had kicked me, and I felt other bruises beginning to form along my side where I had crashed to the ground. There was a tender skid mark on my cheek from falling over onto the tarp.

  Greyson held on to me as he poked his head outside through the flap. Seeing no one, he pulled me out into the snow and around the side of the tent. We made our way along behind the row, careful to stay out of sight as we moved down the block to the tent I shared with Logan.

  We entered through the back flap, and Logan jumped as she heard the rustle of canvas.

  “Oh! It’s you,” she sighed. Even in the dark, I saw her expression change immediately when she saw me. “What the hell did they do to you?”

  I shook my head, shivering as I sank onto my sleeping bag. My clothes were soaked with cold sweat.

  “They tortured her,” Greyson spat. He was shaking with anger. “They used four this time!”

  “You got through four?” Logan looked at me in disbelief. “I’ve never heard of that.”

  “What are those things?”

  “HALLO tags,” she said. “They were developed by the PMC to be a more ‘humane’ form of torture.”