Enemy Inside (Defectors Trilogy)

by Benner, Tarah

  “Lie still,” I whispered.

  “Are they gone?”

  “Yeah. But there could be others.”

  Amory’s thin T-shirt was damp with cold sweat, his chest rising and falling rapidly, and I was suddenly very aware that every part of my body was pressed against his. I felt the heat rising up my face and was grateful he could not see.

  After a while, I couldn’t hear the sirens anymore. The night was completely still.

  Cautiously, I lifted the cardboard off my head and peered around. Nothing.

  I sat up and pushed the bits of rubble off us. Amory pulled himself into a seated position. He was shivering.

  “Come on,” I said. “We have to get to the safe house.”

  I visualized Godfrey’s map. I knew we were still several blocks away. I didn’t want to cut across the main roads and risk another rover, so we made our way slowly around the perimeter of our route until I found the street we were supposed to take.

  Amory was silent as we traipsed through the snow. I worried his last episode had taken a toll on him, but I didn’t want to ask. Running from the PMC, it was easy to forget that he resented me for breaking him out and making him a fugitive again. But now that it was quiet, the distance between us seemed to grow.

  Sneaking a glance in his direction, I could see he was shaking from the cold, and his lips were turning blue. He had his hands tucked inside Greyson’s thin jacket.

  “We’re getting close,” I muttered.

  He nodded but did not look at me.

  The trip back in the direction we came seemed twice as long as the journey to the tunnel. Then, I had felt relieved that Amory was all right and hopeful that we would escape Sector X. Now, we had no prospect of leaving, and it was becoming very clear that Amory was not all right.

  I knew we were almost to the safe house when buildings began to rise from the rubble. I should have felt reassured to have more cover from the eyes of patrolling PMC officers, but instead, the rising apartments and offices made me feel boxed in and trapped like a wild animal. Any escaped carriers that had survived the riots could be hiding in the shadows. My hands were freezing where they gripped the cold metal of my rifle, but I was on high alert and ready to shoot anyone or anything that posed a threat.

  Walking the streets, it was easier to see the remnants of what had been Manhattan. We passed an abandoned newsstand, a market, a cleaners, and several restaurants. The buildings here were older, but the scars of a more recent evacuation were fresh. Parked cars stood collecting snow, trash bins overflowed, and boxes of belongings people couldn’t take with them were piled in the alleyways.

  Finally, we reached the block Godfrey had marked on the map. Remembering the address, I squinted up through the darkness for a building number. We counted down the block, and when we reached the building with the correct address, I knew instantly that we were in the right place. Stenciled onto the brick with black spray paint was a lion just like the one that marked Uprising Pub.

  The building was boxy and nondescript, sandwiched between a police station and another abandoned apartment building. Fire escapes snaked up its flat face of brown brick, and all the windows were dark.

  I tried the door, but it was locked.

  “Did he give you a key?” Amory asked.

  I shook my head.

  “How are we supposed to get inside?”

  I didn’t know. I racked my brain, trying to remember if he had given me any special instructions. He probably expected me to figure it out, but I was cold and exhausted, and I felt as though I might collapse.

  Amory’s eyes drifted up toward the fire escape. “Do you think . . .?”

  “It’s worth a try.”

  The ladder hung over my head several feet out of reach.

  “Here,” said Amory. He crouched down in the snow, and it took me a moment to realize what he was suggesting.

  I breathed out slowly and swung a leg over his shoulder. He held out a hand, and I took it for balance as I sat on his shoulders and swung my other leg over. Gripping my thighs, he stood up easily. I wobbled, clutching his upper arms for balance.

  “Don’t drop me.”

  “I won’t.”

  My heart was thudding. It felt strange to be sitting on his shoulders like a child, but he managed it as if I weighed nothing. I didn’t trust myself not to lose my balance, but Amory had a strong hold on me, and I trusted him. I reached up and grasped the ladder, the metal creaking in protest as I yanked it down.

  I felt Amory move beneath me. He sank to one knee and held out his arm to help me off his shoulders. Without looking at his face, I clambered off him and climbed up the creaky ladder to the first landing. Amory followed. The fire escape shook slightly, and I noticed that the entire landing was covered in ice.

  The window was grimy, but when I pulled up, it slid open easily. Peering through the darkness, a draft of musty air hit my nostrils.

  “Don’t go in yet,” Amory murmured. I jumped. I hadn’t realized he was standing so close behind me.

  “Why? This is it.”

  “You don’t know what’s in there.”

  “Neither do you,” I snapped.

  He shrugged off the sting of irritation in my voice and gently pushed past me. Ducking his head under the windowpane, he swung a leg over and stepped inside. As I shivered out on the landing, I watched him move about the dark room.

  “Hey!” I hissed. “Take this.”

  Amory turned, and I handed the rifle through the window. He took it and moved cautiously to the door on the other side of the room. He opened it and, seeing nothing, disappeared down the hallway.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Standing out on the fire escape in my stark white uniform, I felt exposed.

  Why had I let him go without me?

  The seconds ticked by, and I began to panic.

  When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I ducked in through the window and closed it behind me to shut out the freezing air.

  Even inside, I could see my breath, but at least I was out of the wind.

  I was standing inside a tiny abandoned studio apartment. The smell of mildew clung to the walls, as if the apartment had been closed up for a long time. It was completely empty except for a bare mattress in the corner, and the peeling wallpaper looked faded and dirty. Across from the bed was a kitchenette with a rusted sink, and next to that was a tiny bathroom with grimy tile.

  I knocked the snow off my boots and moved to the open door. The hallway was dark and smelled faintly of stale cigarette smoke.

  The apartment we landed in could not be the safe house Godfrey had in mind. We needed food and water, and that unit looked as though nobody had lived there in years. Moving silently from one door to the next, my muscles thrummed with anticipation. I half expected the PMC to jump out at any moment, and I was beginning to wish I had my gun.

  Through the darkness, a glimmer of silver caught my eye. I squinted through the dust and shadows, positive I was imagining the tiny bell hanging from the doorknob of one of the units. It blended in perfectly with the dusty bird wreath the previous tenant had left hanging on the door. I remembered the code the rebels used to mark their safe houses: across the street, three doors down.

  Filled with a childlike sense of glee, I counted three doors down on the opposite side of the hallway. Sure enough, there was a tiny lion carved into the beat-up wooden door.

  As I reached for the knob, the door swung open, nearly knocking me backward off my feet. My heart stuttered violently, and I aimed a hard kick at the door. The person on the other side grunted, stumbling back.

  The door creaked to a stop, and I saw a flash of white scrubs. It was Amory.

  “I’m sorry!” I whispered, stepping into the room and searching his face for any sign he was hurt.

  “Haven?” he spluttered, rubbing the side of his arm where the door had slammed into him. “I told you to hang tight while I checked it out.”

  “I know! But you took such a long time . . . I wa
s worried.”

  “So you kicked in a door on me?”

  “I didn’t know it was you. You surprised me.”

  He sighed. “Well . . . I think the place is clear. The other units on this floor are locked, but check it out.”

  Amory stepped back, flipping the light switch.

  At first, nothing happened. Then I heard the quiet hum of a generator, and the lights flickered on.

  I looked around the room and felt a glimmer of hope. Godfrey had not let us down after all.

  The two-bedroom apartment was cramped but luxurious compared to the studio. There was a small living room area with a squishy couch that had seen better days, a banged-up coffee table, and even a rickety bookshelf.

  The kitchenette had pallets of canned food and bottled water stacked against one wall and a small wooden table against the other.

  Amory and I went from room to room, taking in the comforts of home. The tiny bathroom had clean towels hanging by the shower and a fully stocked medicine cabinet with toothpaste, soap, and first aid supplies. Both bedrooms had stacks of extra blankets and a mishmash of black rebel clothing piled in the closets.

  Most of the clothes looked like the sort of garments you might find in the lost and found, and almost all of them were twice as large as what I needed. It didn’t matter. Now that we were safe, I couldn’t stand to wear the stiff PMC uniform for another minute. I rummaged through the clothes, searching for something that might fit.

  Amory wandered back into the kitchen, and I fished out a black T-shirt and a pair of pants that looked about my size. They fit perfectly, and I wondered if they had belonged to Mariah before she became infected and wasted away. The thought made me cringe.

  When I emerged from the bedroom, Amory was already standing over the stove, heating a can of chicken soup. Deep in thought, he looked as though preparing the soup took every bit of his concentration, and I noticed for the second time the dark circles under his eyes and the sharpness of his cheekbones.

  While he stirred the pot, I cracked open the pantry to see what else we could eat. I salvaged a packet of saltine crackers and grabbed two bottles of water from one of the pallets on the floor.

  Amory ladled out a steaming bowl of soup for each of us, and we sat down in silence to eat. I brought a hot spoonful to my lips, savoring the warmth that spread from my throat to my fingertips.

  I scarfed our feast down quickly and felt the nourishment begin to wear down some of the hard edges of my despair. I thought back to what my grandmother used to say: Nothing seems as bad once you’ve had a hot meal.

  But after the initial relief of safety and food had worn off, I felt the awkwardness fall over us once again. Exploring the apartment, it had almost felt as though we were us again, but now I remembered that this Amory was not the same person as before.

  I washed our dishes in silence, and an intense wave of fatigue hit me. My body ached all over, and I realized I had not slept at all.

  “I’m going to lie down,” I said.

  Amory stood up suddenly, nearly knocking over his chair. “Haven, wait —”

  His hand wrapped around my arm, holding me back. I turned. That familiar fire was burning in his eyes, a flickering reminder of the Amory I recognized.

  Before I could say or do anything, he pulled me into his arms and kissed me. His lips were soft, tentative. I felt the dam break in my chest, and all the longing came flooding through. I wanted him to kiss me harder. I wanted him to be fine. I wanted everything to be as it was.

  It was too painful.

  As I pulled away, the look of hurt in his eyes was undeniable. Heart pounding, tears threatening to burst in my throat, I gently pulled out of his grasp, crossed to one of the empty bedrooms, and shut the door.

  Collapsing on the bed, I let the tears come. They were tears of anger, fear, and grief. The PMC had stolen so much from us. They’d killed my parents, they’d killed Max, and they had broken Amory.

  I tried to muffle my sobs in the pillow, but Amory must have heard me.

  A moment later, the door creaked open.

  He didn’t say anything, but I heard him cross the room. The bed shifted as he sat down next to me, and I could hear him breathing.

  I felt ridiculous. After everything he had been through — the torture, the behavior modification, and who knew what else — I was crying. It was selfish, too. I was crying for what I had lost.

  His hand brushed my back, tracing small circles into my skin. It felt good, and it hurt. It hurt too much to have him right here when it wasn’t the same. I didn’t know what he had meant by the kiss, but it wasn’t how he had kissed me on the hill that night. It was a thank-you kiss, a pity kiss.

  I felt his hand move to my hair, smoothing out the waves, damp from melted snow. My tears had finally stopped, and I turned to look at him.

  He was wearing rebel black now instead of the white scrubs.

  “Did I do something wrong?”

  I shook my head wordlessly, fighting back more tears that threatened to emerge. I hated myself for crying, but I had swallowed down my emotions for the last three weeks, and now they were bubbling up uncontrollably.

  “I’m sorry I’m . . . different,” he said. “After everything with the PMC . . . I don’t know what they did to me in there. And I don’t know if I’ll ever be right again.”

  He took a deep breath, his voice shaking a little. “Sorry I kissed you. I understand if you don’t want to pick up where we left off. It was stupid for me to assume . . .”

  My heart was breaking. He thought I didn’t want to be with him anymore? I sat up.

  “No,” I whispered. “Of course I do.”

  “I just don’t want you to think things have to be like they were before if you don’t want that. I know things have changed. It’s a lot to deal with.”

  “I thought you didn’t want that anymore.”

  “Why would —”

  “You said . . . you said you wished I wouldn’t have come for you. I thought you wanted me to leave you alone.”

  His eyes widened in shock. “That’s what you thought?”

  I looked away, feeling the heat rise in my face.

  “I just meant I didn’t want you to put yourself in danger.”

  “I thought you didn’t want me anymore . . . after what you’d been through.”

  “Not want you anymore? Haven, you’re all I thought about in there.” He grasped my hands. “The only thing that kept me going was thinking I had to just get through it all so I could see you again.”

  “After what they did —”

  “That couldn’t change the way I feel about you.”

  My heart wrenched, and the words that had been playing in my head for weeks came pouring out all at once. “I’m so sorry for getting you captured. It’s all my fault. If I had just —”

  He shook his head. “It’s not your fault,” he said firmly. “I was the reason the rebels turned on us in the first place. And I would do it all again.”

  “But Max . . .”

  “Max got to be the hero for Logan,” he said, and I could hear the lump in his throat as he said Max’s name. “She was all he ever wanted, and he got her in the end.”

  He brushed away the tears suspended on my cheek with the pad of his thumb. His eyes were bright and fierce, even through the darkness, and I knew he was still the same Amory.

  “All of us know the risks, Haven. People are going to die. It could be you, it could be me, but that doesn’t mean we stop and hide to protect ourselves. That’s the cost of fighting the PMC.”

  We sat there looking at each other for a long moment, unsure how to proceed.

  I wanted to give him time to recover, but with our present safety, the two of us together, we both felt the urgency. Leaning forward, I brushed my lips against his to test the waters. With a sharp intake of breath, he returned my kiss with fervor.

  It was more incredible than I remembered. So many feelings I had been suppressing came flooding to the surfac
e. He was alive. He was all right. He was here.

  The moment escalated quickly. We had lost time, and who knew how much we would have. His lips were hot and anxious on mine, his fingers ghosting down my cheek and neck. I shivered.

  I ran a hand through his hair, and he groaned softly, pulling me into him. He kissed a trail down my jawline, and my skin burned where he touched it. My breath came faster. Running a hand down his chest, I could feel all the perfect muscles there. My fingers itched to rip off his shirt, but I did not trust myself. With Amory, everything was more intense than I expected.

  As if reading my mind and deciding to push the boundaries, Amory rocked me back against the bed. Holding his weight off me with his arms, I could still feel every part of him pressed against me. My skin tingled with longing and anticipation as my fingers sneaked under his shirt, exploring his lower back.

  His hips pressed into mine, and I couldn’t stand it anymore. I yanked the hem of his shirt up to his shoulders, and he stretched up to pull it over his head. The look of him straddling my hips startled me. His chest, shoulders, and abs were taut and sculpted to perfection. His smooth skin gleamed in the silvery light from the window and begged to be touched. I had only ever seen him this way for the necessity of bandaging his wounds, and my memories couldn’t do him justice. The one thing that was different was the row of burns from his time in Isador. They formed a pattern over his arm with the jagged scar from his CID.

  I drew in a sharp intake of breath. In this context, he was even more beautiful — and somehow more dangerous. Amory’s brow furrowed, almost self-consciously.

  He cleared his throat and looked at me sideways. “Do I look . . . different to you?”

  I shook my head once, unable to tear my eyes away. “You’re perfect.”

  That was all he needed: validation that the way I felt about him had not changed, that his time in Isador had not diminished him in body or in spirit. He fell against me, and all my senses were thrown into a frenzy.

  I explored him methodically with my hands, memorizing every detail — his perfect back, broad protective shoulders. My fingers traced the soft skin at his sides, and he tensed. He was ticklish, apparently. I moved on to his chest, feeling my way down his abdomen.