The elevator doors closed, and we plummeted down again. As we descended, I felt weightless, unable to breathe or speak. Greyson looked pale green, as though he might be sick. Logan wore a grim expression. After a minute, the elevator slowed, finally stopping with a dull ping.
Atrium, said the robotic female voice. The doors swung open.
We stood in an enormous round room. The walls were white like everything else in the building, but the ceiling was velvety black. Looking closer, I could see it was a projection of the night sky with infinite silvery stars. It could have been beautiful, but there was an unnerving rhythmic, Christmas-light quality to the twinkling stars and a weird stillness to the dank basement air.
I glanced at Godfrey, but his expression had gone empty. Logan’s wary eyes were darting around the atrium.
We passed a dark room that was empty except for a metal exam table. Leather restraints hung from the sides, and I shivered, imagining Amory bound to the table. What were they doing to him?
I could hear voices. And strange music.
Heart pounding, I moved forward — toward the source of the noise — but Greyson grabbed my arm. He shook his head once almost imperceptibly, but I jerked out of his grip. Across the open atrium, I could see another room off to the side. The door was open. Every once in a while, a bright light would flash. I heard a scream, and my heart seized in my chest before I realized it was the canned sound of a recording. Someone was watching a movie.
I walked through the open doorway into the dark room and instantly wished I hadn’t.
On screen, a man had a woman by her hair. He was pummeling her skull with a hammer, spewing blood everywhere. Her piercing screams filled the room, and I realized it wasn’t a movie; the film had a shaky amateur quality. The screaming woman disappeared. She was replaced by a man with a black canvas bag over his head. He was sitting in a dark room with his hands bound behind his back. The camera shook. Another man appeared to the side with a gun and shot three times, four times —
I tore my eyes away from the screen, willing my ears to shut out the sound of gunshots. Then a crisp voice began to narrate over the violent picture.
Such a dangerous world requires a new generation of soldiers . . . a force for good to keep ordinary citizens safe from evildoers . . . safe from the violence of rebellion and the abominations created by the modern age.
An artificially grainy image of a carrier appeared, doctored to look extra frightening and menacing.
The Private Military Company of the United States is always working to protect and serve . . . Order. Compliance. Progress. This is our credo. Go forth and do your duty, citizen. Your country needs you.
Without warning, the screen flickered to silver, and the same voice from the elevators rang out.
End of simulation.
Then the screen went black.
I looked around the room. There were ten rows of white chairs lined up facing the screen, but only one of them was occupied.
Sitting there staring up at the screen was Amory. I could only see half of his face, which looked blank — emotionless. He was wearing a white T-shirt and cotton pants that looked like scrubs. He sat up in his chair straighter than I remembered, but otherwise he looked exactly the same.
“I don’t need an adjustment, so you can come back later,” said Amory. His voice was clipped, cold.
I stood there frozen, unsure what to do.
Amory sighed, twisting in the chair. “Why don’t you —” He stopped short, staring at me as if he had seen a ghost.
He stood up abruptly, and my body tensed, preparing to run or fight if he was so far gone that he did not remember who I was. But then he did something I had not expected.
Navigating around the chairs, Amory crossed the room and threw his arms around me.
“Haven,” he whispered into my neck, crushing me against him.
Everything about Amory came crashing back: his wonderful woodsy smell, the feel of his warm muscles through his shirt. Somehow, he was exactly as he had been. I tightened my arms around him.
“Wait —” Amory pulled away slightly, a look of confusion knitting his brows together. “Why are you here?”
He seemed to be working to piece something together, as though it had been years — not weeks — since we’d last seen each other.
“I —”
“Break it up, you two,” Godfrey grumbled behind me. “Could be cameras.”
We broke apart, and I looked up into his face. His gray eyes looked tired, but that fierceness was still there. His chiseled cheekbones looked a little more gaunt, but it was nothing a few days of good food couldn’t fix. He was alive.
Then his arm fell into my peripheral vision, and I stifled a gasp. All up his forearm, crossing over the jagged scar from his CID, were twenty HALLO tag burns lined up in a row like tally marks. The tender raised flesh looked painful, irritated. He had to have been tortured at least five separate times.
“What have they been doing to you?” I whispered in disgust.
Darkness flickered in his eyes. “They didn’t break me right away.” He swallowed, a muscle in his jaw flexing. “I fought it. Haven, I tried, but —”
Godfrey’s voice cut him off. “We need to get the hell out of here.”
I turned around. Greyson was watching Amory with apprehension, but Logan’s eyes were swimming with tears. She looked as though she wanted to throw her arms around him, but she restrained herself in case we were being watched.
Amory and I followed them out of the room into the main atrium. Looking up again at the artificial sky, I felt the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. Something about the perfect constellations was unnerving. Like everything else the PMC created, it was just an illusion.
What made me the most nervous was that no one was guarding Amory. There was a rover mounted above the entryway to the atrium, but there was no sign of PMC officers anywhere. In fact, there was no sign of any other test subjects, either. There were more dark rooms branching off the atrium, but I was too terrified to investigate further. Even if we found other people, it would be too risky to take anyone else out with us.
As we exited the atrium and started down the long corridor to the elevator, I turned around to ask Amory about the guards. He wasn’t behind me.
Amory was standing just inside the atrium, looking out at us with mournful eyes.
“Come on,” I hissed. “We have to go.”
He shook his head slowly, looking confused again. “I don’t think I can.”
Logan rolled her eyes. “What do you mean? Of course you can.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “I’ve tried to come through here before. It’s like there’s an electric fence.”
I backtracked until we were only a few inches apart and placed a hand on his chest. “Just run through really fast. Don’t focus on the pain. Focus on me.” I locked my eyes on his. “We’re getting you out of here.”
He nodded and took several paces back. I stood and waited as he let out a long burst of air and gritted his teeth, bracing himself.
Amory lurched forward like a sprinter exploding off his blocks, running toward the threshold. His face instantly contorted in pain, and he staggered off to the side as though he’d run into an invisible wall. He looked wounded but undeterred.
Keeping his eyes on me, Amory took a step forward but pulled back instantly as if he had been burned. He tried again, this time more slowly, his face turning ashen as he tried to walk out.
He stopped, panting. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I can’t explain it. Every time I try to —”
Again, he moved forward, face screwed up in pain. He stopped, clutching his head as though he were physically hurting.
Godfrey sighed. “They’ve implanted a new CID. That’s why he’s a test subject here. They’re experimenting with controlling people’s behavior. Whenever he’s in range of a rover, his CID emits a signal to keep him in bounds. When he tries to leave, it causes him pa
in.”
“What?” Greyson looked aghast. “But how can they —”
“The behavior modification with the old CIDs never worked, but for a long time I suspected the PMC was trying to get it right.”
“How do we get him out?” I asked.
Godfrey sighed. “He has to walk out. Only way. If we try to remove him by force, he could turn on us. We don’t know what they’ve conditioned him to do in response to pain.”
Amory shook his head. “I can’t.”
My heart was starting to beat more frantically. “Amory, just turn it off. The pain is all in your head. They’re just trying to control you.”
He looked scared. “They do control me,” he said in barely a whisper.
“Just try.” I was trying to keep my voice calm, but I could feel the panic welling up inside.
“You don’t understand. I physically can’t.”
“Yes, you can,” I said fiercely, fighting to keep my voice steady.
Logan shook her head but didn’t speak.
“I’m sorry,” said Godfrey in a low voice. “If he won’t go, we can’t take him with us.”
It took several beats for his words to sink in. They wanted to leave Amory behind. He was healthy and beautiful and alive, but they wanted to walk away and leave him in this horrible place to be controlled by the PMC.
“No!” I snapped. “We can’t . . . I won’t leave him here.”
Tears were streaming freely down Logan’s face now. “Haven, we said —”
“I said I could do what needed to be done. We need to get him out of here!”
I stared at Amory, who looked utterly helpless. That familiar resolve was gone from his eyes. They looked dark and far away.
“Why is he like this?”
“They’ve been conditioning him,” said Godfrey with distaste. “Pain, the simulations, probably drugs to distort reality. They’ve been breaking him down. He’s been here a long time.”
I turned away, trying to keep a hold on the runaway panic filling me up. “I’m getting him out of here. You three can leave, but I won’t unless he’s coming with us.”
I could see Greyson watching me closely. Perhaps he was remembering what it was like to be the PMC’s prisoner — to be on the inside not knowing what would become of you or if anyone was trying to get you out.
“I’ll help you,” Greyson said. I met his gaze, and I wanted to hug him. Greyson was back, and it was us against everything else once again.
“Haven.” Amory was looking at me as though he was trying to break bad news. “I can’t walk out. You need to leave.”
But my determination had already taken over. “If you can’t walk, I’ll drag you myself.”
“I don’t know what I’ll do. I could hurt you.”
“You won’t.” I was already back in the atrium, and Greyson appeared on Amory’s left side. Gripping Amory by the upper arms, we pulled him forward toward the threshold. He dug in his heels like an ox, but Greyson helped me heave him through the doorway.
Amory yelled out in pain, and I saw beads of sweat glistening on his forehead. He was out of the atrium, but the pain had not stopped. If anything, it seemed to have gotten worse.
“Come on,” I said, threading an arm under his shoulders and pulling him forward. He dragged his feet, and I pushed against him. His face was screwed up in agony, and his bright eyes had disappeared into the creases of his face.
He yelled again, but Greyson clapped a hand over his mouth. I heard a sound like knuckles cracking, and Greyson swore under his breath.
“He bit me!”
Thinking fast, I undid the cloth belt of my uniform and tied it around Amory’s mouth.
“Sorry,” I whispered, but he did not seem to hear me. He was clutching his head, his knuckles white as though he was trying to split his skull in two. He groaned into the fabric around his mouth, but Greyson continued yanking him forward.
Then Amory did something I had not expected. He swung out a fist, almost connecting with Greyson’s jaw, but he was too slow. He wailed through the fabric, lashing out again, but I dug my fingernails into his arm to hold him back. He jerked out of my grip, lunging toward me instead, but the pain was making him weak. Greyson yanked him back, shoving him down the corridor.
Amory looked back over his shoulder, and the look in his eyes pierced my heart like a dull blade — the look of a cornered animal about to die. I averted my eyes and took his other arm, focusing instead on inching him forward. Greyson and I were getting him out of here.
It was slow progress down the passage leading away from the atrium. Godfrey’s eyes were darting all around, searching for hidden cameras. It was against his better judgment that he stayed.
When we made it halfway down the hallway, Amory collapsed onto one knee, his face red and his shoulders shaking. Tears were streaming silently down Logan’s face. She could not look at him writhing in agony, and for the first time since we’d met, I was angry with her — angry that she wanted to leave Amory. She was weak — too weak to do what had to be done. She would rather have let Amory rot down here as the PMC’s guinea pig than watch him suffer like this.
But after a few horrible moments, I almost had to agree. As we rounded the corner, Amory’s pain seemed to escalate. The fight went out of him, but it wasn’t because the pain was subsiding. He was giving up. I saw tears in the corners of his eyes, and his yells through the cloth were desperate, pleading. We had broken him.
“It’s not too much farther,” I said. My voice hitched, but I would not let the tears come. If I gave up, there would be no one left to fight for him.
“We have to get him out of the building and hope that takes him out of range,” said Godfrey.
Amory was doubled over now. Greyson and I were half dragging, half carrying him down the hallway. His whole body was shaking, and he yanked down the gag.
“Please,” he whispered. “Please don’t, Haven. Leave me, please.”
He broke off, falling to his knees and retching on the floor. I bit back my tears.
“Just a little farther,” I said, trying to pull him up. My voice hitched. “I’m sorry. We’re almost there.”
Greyson heaved Amory’s arm over his shoulder and dragged him the few yards to the elevator. I saw the rover quivering, searching for CIDs.
“Get him out of the way,” said Godfrey.
Reluctantly, Greyson pulled Amory back a step.
The rover settled on Godfrey, Logan, and Greyson, and the elevator doors swung open.
Godfrey raised his rifle and shot at the rover once. The black dome shattered. “Get in. Quick.”
Greyson and I dragged Amory into the elevator, and Godfrey punched the button for the parking structure.
“I don’t know if we are going to be able to get out,” he said. “Any time a rover goes down, the officers all throughout the city are alerted. It’s the middle of the night, so that buys us some time, but —”
I wasn’t listening; I was too busy holding on to Amory. He was doubled over in pain, dry heaving, his face wet with tears. My heart tore in two, and I worried whether he would be all right. What if the pain was too much and it killed him? The farther we got from the room, the more it seemed to amplify.
As the elevator dinged, Amory yelled out. He crumbled onto the floor, and I lost my hold on him. He collapsed onto his hands and knees, gasping for air.
“We have to get him out,” whimpered Logan.
The doors to the elevator flew open, and my stomach dropped. Four PMC officers stood blocking our exit, their helmets glinting in the artificial light.
“What is going on here?”
Logan and Godfrey fired. The officers looked surprised, and then two collapsed onto the ground. One officer shot at me, barely missing my left ear, but Godfrey landed a bullet in her chest. Greyson looked stunned. He was holding my rifle as well, and I realized at some point in the struggle with Amory I had handed mine off.
Logan dropped the last officer, and God
frey stepped out of the elevator into the small room off the parking structure. The glass door slid open, and he jumped out to secure the dimly lit garage, rifle raised.
“Hurry. There will be more.”
Amory was still writhing in pain, seemingly unaware of the four dying PMC officers outside the elevator.
I tried to pull him to his feet, but either he had finally succumbed to the pain, or it had intensified once again. I grasped him under the shoulders, trying to move him, but he was too heavy.
Greyson appeared at my elbow with both guns slung over his shoulder and yanked Amory to his feet. He was much stronger than I remembered.
As we pulled Amory toward the car, he let out another yell of pain. I wanted to curl up inside myself and die. His suffering was almost too much to bear.
“Get the stuff out of the truck,” Godfrey barked at Logan. “We have to switch vehicles.”
Godfrey grabbed his rucksack and turned to the PMC cruiser next to ours. It was unlocked.
Greyson helped me push Amory into the backseat, but as soon as he was inside, he began clawing at the door, trying to get out. I slid in behind him, pulling him against me, and Greyson followed.
Logan threw our bags into the cargo area and then climbed into the front seat, looking ashen.
Godfrey pressed the ignition button on the dashboard, and the engine hummed to life. One of the perks of top security clearance seemed to be an all-access pass in Sector X. He peeled out of the parking spot and flew toward the ramp.
“If they warned the others, we won’t be able to get past the checkpoint,” he said. “Haven, take him and go through the tunnel. If you can’t, hide out at the safe house. If we’re not back in three days . . . you’ll have to figure it out.”
My stomach lurched. I’d forgotten about this part. What if Amory still wasn’t himself when we left the building? We couldn’t get past the PMC with him like this. We wouldn’t make it out of the city.
As we approached the exit, Amory began to shake uncontrollably in the backseat. He yelled, and it reverberated inside the small space. I wondered at what point the pain would become too much for him.
Enemy Inside (Defectors Trilogy) Page 5