Enemy Inside (Defectors Trilogy)

by Benner, Tarah

  After a while, Amory helped me to my feet, and we climbed back into the van to curl up in the uncomfortable cloth seats. It was cold, and the armrest dug into my back, but I was so exhausted that I fell asleep almost instantly.

  The next morning, I woke with a start. I half expected Mariah to be hovered over me with a knife at my throat, but I could hear the others milling around the campfire outside, stoking the disintegrated logs and making breakfast.

  I could see my breath inside the freezing van, and the windows were mostly frosted over. Cracking the door, a rush of frigid air slipped up the sleeve of my coat.

  Greyson had a pot of oatmeal going on the fire while Amory struggled with a packet of instant coffee. Even though it was expensive after the Collapse, coffee had been one of his vices on the farm.

  “How much gas do we have?” asked Jared. He did not look up from the boxes of ammunition spread out on the tarp in front of him. He was taking inventory of what we had left and divvying up the rounds.

  “Not enough,” said Amory. “We might make it into the city, but we need a full tank if we want a shot at getting away.”

  “There’s more ammunition in my bag,” I said to Jared.

  Logan shot me a look from where she was huddled by the fire, but I ignored her. Since he had told us about the CIDs, I felt I should make some gesture of goodwill. I still didn’t trust him, but we would have to cooperate since we were posing as his prisoners. The thought made my gut twist uncomfortably, but after all his time undercover as a PMC officer, he was our best shot at getting across the border.

  Jared nodded at me once. “Good news is we have plenty of rounds and food, but we should try to scrounge some gas before we go any farther. I’ll take a look around and see if there are any cars left out here we can siphon from.”

  “I’ll go with you,” said Mariah.

  An alarm bell went off somewhere in my brain, but I tuned it out.

  “Are we just going to let them go off together?” Amory asked once they were out of earshot.

  “What are they going to do?”

  “Make a plan to kill us? Trade us to the PMC at the border?”

  “We have to try to trust them,” I said.

  “No, we don’t!”

  I didn’t say anything. Whatever Jared and Mariah were up to didn’t interest me. I was too worried about Logan. She was slumped over the picnic table, scooping up her oatmeal and letting it slide back into her bowl. She had dark circles under her eyes as though she hadn’t slept, and her skin had a pale, yellowish-gray tinge.

  “So how do we plan on finding the cure at World Corp International?” asked Greyson. “Are we just going to storm in and demand they cure Logan?”

  “No,” said Amory. “We need to know what we’re going into.”

  Instantly, I felt myself fall into planning mode. I’d spent so much time reacting and making impulsive decisions that going back to my nature of meticulous planning felt like greeting an old friend.

  “We need to get Mariah to tell us how we’re getting inside: How many guards are there? What’s the building’s security like?”

  “How do we know these CIDs won’t give us away by pinging the wrong rover?” asked Greyson.

  Amory’s eyebrows knitted together. “We don’t.”

  “They will,” croaked Logan.

  We all turned to stare at her.

  “The CIDs Jared has . . . they’ll only trick the long-range rovers . . . the ones designed for overpasses and major intersections. The close-range rovers — like the ones at Isador — those are designed for one data entry at a time. They don’t ‘miss’ a CID like the ones on the highway.”

  “So what do we do?”

  Logan grinned. “We have to trick a human into letting us in.”

  But Amory was already shaking his head. “No. No way. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Not if we go in the main entrance,” said Mariah from behind me.

  I jumped. “What do you mean?”

  “The Infinity Building isn’t some high-security military facility. It’s open to the public for tours and school field trips.”

  “So is the White House,” said Amory through gritted teeth.

  “We go in the front entrance and con our way up to the restricted access floors. The visitors’ entrance isn’t guarded by officers. There’s a receptionist.”

  Amory and I exchanged a look. Something was off. It didn’t seem as though World Corp International would be so careless with its most carefully guarded secret.

  “Is this the place where they cured you?” I asked.

  “There’s a private lab on one of the restricted floors. Any studies there are strictly off the books — nothing like a PMC test facility. They can’t risk something like this getting out, can they?”

  With no choice other than to trust Mariah’s word, we packed up the van and followed Jared’s directions to an old pickup truck they had found parked behind the ranger’s station.

  As he and Amory started siphoning out the gas, I felt the nerves beginning to thrum in my chest. My anxiety over what we were about to attempt was mixed with the sweet possibility of relief. After today, it would be over — one way or another.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Once we had enough gas, we piled back into the van and drove toward the border. We followed signs for the nearest precinct in the hope of procuring a PMC vehicle. Hiding the van off the road about a mile away, Jared changed into his officer’s uniform and set off for the station on foot.

  This first part of the plan was key. If he could convince the station he had experienced car trouble in pursuit of a suspected illegal, they might give him a cruiser. If they didn’t believe him, or if they demanded to scan Jared’s CID, we didn’t know what we would do.

  With the rebels causing so much trouble with their bootlegged CIDs, some checkpoint officers had begun demanding to see the site of the incision. Anyone with a scar from home removal or no CID scar to begin with was immediately taken into custody.

  At first, I wasn’t sure why Jared willingly volunteered for such a dangerous task, but then I realized it either had to be him or Mariah. After our stunt at Isador, it was likely that Amory, Greyson, and I all had our pictures in the PMC database of most wanted illegals. We were too easily recognized.

  As we waited, I ran through the plan Amory and I had discussed. Jared, Greyson, Mariah, and I would be the ones infiltrating the building. Jared and Mariah would pose as PMC officers; Greyson and I would be two apprehended illegals. We would pretend to use the wrong entrance — the visitors’ door, which wasn’t guarded. If Mariah and Jared could convince them that we were wanted for questioning, it was possible we would be allowed up to the restricted floors. According to Mariah, the lab where the cure was stored was on the top floor of the building. Once we had the cure, we would pull the fire alarm and escape in the confusion. Amory would be driving the getaway car.

  I didn’t like bringing Greyson into danger, but Amory insisted that two of us would be better. If we ran into trouble with the PMC, it would be four against one. If Mariah and Jared betrayed us, it would at least be a fair fight. Amory had wanted to accompany me himself, but after his time in Isador, I didn’t think it was a good idea. He probably had a “kill on sight” status in the system.

  Suddenly I heard the screech of a siren up ahead. We all froze, unsure if we should run. It couldn’t be Jared. That was just too easy.

  A huge white SUV rolled into view. Sure enough, I saw the glint of his blond hair reflect through the windshield. He was smirking so deviously I was sure he would give us away.

  Greyson laughed. “He got the paddy wagon.”

  Just as we planned, we all jumped out of the van and grabbed as much as we could carry, sticking to the essentials. I heaved a case of bottled water into the trunk of the cruiser and jumped in the middle row of seats. Logan, moving more slowly than usual, focused on loading all our rifles and ammunition carefully into the trunk.

  There w
as a cage partition separating the front row from the back, and I couldn’t help shiver as I crawled in behind bars. Jared and Mariah got in the front, Mariah already looking smug in her white uniform. It was a little dirty and wrinkled from several days without washing, but she was still in her element.

  Logan curled up in the very back row to hide the fact that she was clearly in the first stage of the virus. The siren screeched, and we rolled back onto the highway. Jared had one hand draped lazily over the steering wheel, and Mariah didn’t even bother to conceal her smirk.

  “Try anything funny, and I’ll blow your brains out,” muttered Logan, although her threat didn’t carry much weight when she was curled up in the fetal position on the seat.

  “Don’t worry,” said Amory. “They won’t.” There was a hard edge to his reassuring tone, and when he moved his arm, I caught a glimpse of the handgun he had pointed at Jared from under his coat.

  I wasn’t the only one who had noticed it. Jared was sitting stiffly upright in his seat, now gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles at ten and two.

  “So, did you have any trouble getting the cruiser?” I asked, trying to break the tension.

  “Uh . . . no. There was only one guy manning the whole station. Older guy, second string by the looks of it. Told him I was in pursuit of a group of illegals and my partner was waiting with my cruiser. That way our story will match up if he radios ahead to the border.”

  The longer we drove, the more otherworldly it seemed that we were about to attempt what was supposed to be impossible: crossing the border as illegals.

  At first, the signs along the road seemed innocuous enough — basic messages urging drivers to be ready for identification and informing them that their data was checked for their safety but kept confidential. The closer we came to the border crossing, the more threatening the signage became.

  Transporting undocumented illegals is a CRIME. Violators will be punished.

  No CID, No Entry. No Exceptions.

  C1XX — Not in my city!

  “C1XX?” I asked.

  “That’s what they’re calling the virus now,” said Mariah.

  “Do you really think illegals get this far and think they can get across?” asked Amory.

  “I mean . . . that’s what we’re doing.”

  “Hey! Shut up and put these on,” said Jared. He tossed back a bundle of zip ties, and I caught them. I took two and passed the bundle to Amory, my breath catching in my chest as I fastened them in loose loops. They reminded me too much of my first encounter with carriers when I’d been tied to a tree, convinced I was going to die. If I looked closely, I could still make out the scars from where their bonds had cut into my wrists.

  Amory looped his very generously — loose enough that he could still keep his gun trained on Jared from under his coat.

  Up ahead, I could just make out the checkpoint. It looked like an ordinary tollbooth, except the barricade had dozens of rovers mounted under the overpass — all of them trained in our direction. My palms felt sweaty, so I focused on taking deep breaths. I told myself a little anxiety would not raise a red flag for the officers — after all, I was supposed to be a fugitive — but I couldn’t help worrying that my shallow breathing would give us away.

  We moved forward at a crawl in the long line of vehicles — all of them PMC cargo trucks. Officers in white were inspecting the cargo, questioning the drivers, and consulting the CID data flashing across their smartlenses.

  “Do you think it’s suspicious that we have the guns and supplies in the trunk?” I whispered, not turning my head in case we were being watched through the security cameras.

  “Too late now,” breathed Jared. “Lucky all those guns were stolen from the PMC.”

  My heart pounded against my ribcage. I couldn’t do this. If we failed, it would be my plan that had gotten us in this mess.

  But it was too late.

  We continued to inch forward in the line until there was only one truck in front of us. Logan slumped against the window so that her golden hair fanned in front of her face. If the officers noticed she was infected, we were done. They would never let us pass.

  One of the officers approached our vehicle. It was a smug-looking man with greasy black hair and just the right amount of stubble that made me think he grew his facial hair that way on purpose. He had a smartlens perched on the bridge of his nose, the glare obscuring half his expression.

  “Morning, officers,” he drawled, his eyes hovering too long on Mariah. He sneered.

  “Morning,” said Jared automatically. His expression was perfect: slightly tired, bored, but trying to be friendly. No wonder he’d worked undercover as an officer.

  “What have we got here? Undocumented illegals?”

  Jared sighed. “Defectors.”

  The man nodded. “That’s good. You can’t bring any undocumented people in for any reason. Not even prisoners.”

  I watched Jared in the side mirror. He swallowed. “Yep. They’re all defectors. Caught ’em on the run headed west.”

  The greasy man chuckled. “That’s a pretty common story. They’re not, uh, rebels, are they?”

  “Not from what I could tell. Picked up just the four of them. Half-starved, too, by the looks of it.”

  “Why are you bringing them in?”

  “World Corp is collecting test subjects that match their ages.”

  The man stopped suddenly, shining his flashlight into the back seat. My heart stopped as it settled on Logan.

  She turned her face ever so slightly toward him, and I caught the glint of yellow in her eyes as the flashlight beam illuminated her face.

  “Hang on a sec,” said the man.

  My heart was pounding so loudly, I was sure the officer could hear it.

  He’d seen Logan’s eyes. He knew.

  He appraised her for a long moment. “You sure caught yourself a hot little piece.”

  I breathed out, releasing the edge of the seat I’d been white-knuckling.

  The man smacked his lips. “I sure hope you got to have a little fun first.” He sneered through the window at Logan and me. “This one ain’t bad, either.”

  I looked away, feeling my face burn with anger. Logan put her head down, trying to hide her flared nostrils and murderous eyes.

  “Sure did,” Jared said with a hard laugh, not missing a beat.

  I glanced at Amory sitting next to me. His hands were curled into fists, and the zip ties were making deep divots in his skin as he focused on restraining himself.

  “All right. Open up the trunk. Gotta check for contraband.”

  I exhaled the breath I’d been holding as the officer moved around to open the trunk of the cruiser. I heard his boots scuffing on the asphalt, and then I felt a rush of cold air as he opened the tailgate.

  For a long minute, there was nothing but the nearly inaudible sound of his smartlens computing. Then I heard his boots again as he approached the front of the vehicle.

  “Any reason you have six unregistered weapons back here?”

  He knew. I couldn’t breathe. We were finished.

  Jared made a guilty clicking sound with his mouth. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I know it’s against regulation, but our precinct was overrun about a week ago. We grabbed what we could and ran for it.”

  The greasy man’s eyes glazed over, and I knew he was checking something on his smartlens. “Says here you two are from different precincts.” He gestured between Jared and Mariah.

  “Right. When I said ‘we,’ I meant my partner. He was killed raiding a rebel camp. I picked up this lady at the debriefing. She’d lost somebody, too, so we figured we’d team up and look for illegals.”

  The man glanced away from the stream of information flashing across his lens and regarded Jared. Then, as if seeing nothing wrong with this explanation, he nodded. “Well, I’ll need to confiscate two of those weapons. No more than two rifles per officer at any time. That’s regulation. But I’m not going to write you
up for it . . . extraordinary circumstances and all.”

  “I understand.”

  Logan was fuming silently behind me, and I begged her silently not to speak. We couldn’t have one of her outbursts blow our cover. Losing two guns was unfortunate, but at least we still had the hidden handgun.

  “Man, you sure got a lot of food back here,” the man mumbled from the back of the truck.

  “Well, we’ve been on the road for a week. Not a lot of places to stop.”

  “Is it that bad?” The officer reappeared. “Phew am I glad I was stationed at the border. Those poor sons of bitches in Sector X were overrun. Overrun. Were you there for that?”

  “Nope. We were part of the cleanup crew, though. Absolute mess.”

  The officer nodded. “Well, I’ll let you go on through. But you take them straight to World Corp, you hear?”

  Jared grinned. “Will do.”

  The man waved us through, and Jared accelerated a little faster than he should have, blowing past the other officers watching idly from the checkpoint. The rovers swiveled like crazy trying to latch on to our CIDs, but we were through.

  Amory aimed a hard kick at the back of his seat, and Logan leaned over behind her to reach for a gun.

  “Hey!” Jared yelled. “Just playing along.”

  “He did what he had to do,” I said, watching Amory. “And he was good.”

  “Thank you! Jesus Christ. You know what I’m risking for you people?”

  “I bet you were right at home with these assholes,” Amory growled.

  Jared shot him an angry look in the rearview mirror. “They make me just as sick as you. Don’t act like you wouldn’t have done the same exact thing to get us through.”