The Defectors (Defectors Trilogy)

by Benner, Tarah

  By the time he came to his senses, my mother was already infected. He wouldn’t leave her, and he wouldn’t hand her over to the PMC. I don’t know if it was love or guilt or a little of both that made him chain his fate to hers.

  She would die. It was inevitable. And once the PMC discovered my father was harboring a carrier, he would be killed, too.

  It was dark by the time the truck rumbled to a stop. Still subdued, we got out and began gathering firewood in the dark. It was slowgoing. We’d stopped in a thicket of trees at the edge of the Hudson River. It was beautiful but intimidating to know we were so close to Sector X — the prisons and the military base that was the largest PMC stronghold in the nation.

  I collapsed on the ground next to Amory, who offered me a tin of nuts. I took a handful gratefully and realized I hadn’t eaten all day.

  “We’re just outside the city,” Rulon said. “You all need to prepare yourselves for what’s coming tomorrow.”

  My heart thudded painfully in my chest. Soon I would know if Greyson was alive. I would see him again.

  “It won’t be like today,” he said, looking at Logan. “It will be much, much worse. The carriers we encountered were stupid, blundering murderers. They had no strategy, no unity. The PMC officers are highly trained soldiers — lethal. There will be no time for hesitation.” His black eyes settled on me.

  A chill ran down my spine. I wasn’t prepared to kill again — not after the last night’s carrier slaughter. It wasn’t that some people had it in them to kill and some didn’t — at least I didn’t think so. Anybody could be a killer once that door was cracked.

  But that wasn’t what I was afraid of. What scared me the most was acknowledging that I was prepared to do anything — anything — to get Greyson back.

  Trying to shake the anxiety festering in the pit of my stomach, I grabbed my knife and walked off on my own into the woods. The others were settling into their sleeping bags, trying to make the most of the last night of rest before storming into the epicenter of hell, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep even if I wanted to.

  I found a cluster of small trees at the edge of the hill overlooking the river. They’d already shed all their leaves, but they were probably dogwoods or redbuds, and I liked those.

  The sky looked velvety blue, and we were far enough from the city to see real stars. A distant glow on the horizon was the only thing that betrayed the beautiful scene. Flopping down on the cold, frozen earth, I stared out toward the lights, imagining that Greyson could feel how close we were. It was starting to snow. Shivering slightly, I pulled my jacket tight.

  The hushed crunch of dead leaves behind me made my spine go rigid. I twisted around, gripping my knife, not wanting to leap to my feet and make a sound that would alert whoever or whatever was nearby.

  Praying silently for a deer or a raccoon, my insides turned to ice when I saw the lurching outline of a person.

  I waited without breathing, unsure if I should risk exposure by jumping into a defensive posture or stay where I was and hope the stranger wouldn’t see me.

  “Haven?”

  I inhaled sharply, sucking in a great burst of air in relief. “Amory?”

  “Yeah. Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “I thought you were a carrier. I almost attacked you!”

  I could see his bright grin through the semidarkness. “Guess I should have learned my lesson after last time.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve had training, so this time I might actually have hurt you.”

  Amory came into view a few feet away, settling down on the ground next to me. “Don’t feel like sleeping?”

  I shook my head, teeth chattering.

  “We’ll free Greyson.” He leaned in toward me, hunched over slightly so he could meet my eyes. “I promise we will.”

  I felt a rush of gratitude spill into my chest like warm honey. “Have you been there?” I gestured toward the halo of light emitting from the horizon.

  “Not since the PMC turned it into a base, but my parents took me to New York once when I was really young. I’ve heard stories about Sector X, though. It’s not going to be pretty. We should prepare ourselves for the worst.”

  “Do you think he’s still alive?”

  Amory nodded. “If he hasn’t been branded a traitor, they can’t deny him his basic human rights, and they can’t kill him without just cause.”

  “Will they have IDed him?”

  “Unlikely. It’s difficult to guarantee a correct identification when an illegal is arrested off the streets. Even if he had a driver’s license on him, it could have been forged. Plus, they think holding him prisoner here is the real punishment. In their eyes, identification is a gift.”

  “Thank you for coming,” I said. “I’m really glad you’re here.”

  I should have blushed, but I wasn’t embarrassed to admit it. Ever since I first arrived on the farm, Amory’s presence had been important. He’d taught me how to use a weapon, and I’d found a new version of myself I wasn’t even aware of.

  Amory regarded me carefully with those intense gray eyes — as though he wanted to say something but couldn’t bring himself to voice it aloud.

  He finally stood up, as if he couldn’t sit still, and began pacing.

  “Haven, when this is all over . . . I don’t want you to just disappear. We can’t go back to the farm, we can’t go north . . .”

  Looking away, it was as if he was steeling himself for what came next. “Let me come west with you,” he said in a hurry. “Get Greyson, and we’ll get out of here. You and me. Hell, we’ll bring the others, too. Just —”

  “Sure,” I said without thinking twice.

  Amory’s face lit up, and he couldn’t suppress that glowing smile that probably came easily before the Collapse.

  “Good.”

  “I don’t really know why you want me with you,” I murmured. “I’m not a great fighter. All of this is new to me.”

  Shaking his head, Amory knelt down to grab my hand and squeezed it tightly. “Haven. I just . . .” He looked up, as if searching for words. “I just want you there. For the first time since I cut that damned CID out of my arm, I feel like something’s going right for a change.”

  Finally, he looked at me. “I just want to be with you.”

  I sat there, letting his words wash over me. His hair was mussed from where he’d raked his hand through it in frustration, and I felt a deep ache tugging at me that I couldn’t explain.

  “I want to be with you too,” I said, standing up next to him.

  Amory shook his head again. “No. No, it’s like . . .” He struggled to find the right words, brow furrowed, holding my hands in his. “You know how people say, ‘I don’t want to be without you because you’re a part of me’? I never understood that because it didn’t seem real. No one person ever seemed like they could be important enough.”

  I nodded. I knew what he felt. What was worse, I could relate more to thinking no one was ever important enough. There were bigger things to worry about than who you were going to date — who you wanted to spend your life with.

  “I think that’s beautiful,” I said. “But it’s just words.” I swallowed back tears that threatened to come. “Everyone I love is dead. I can’t feel anything else.”

  He leaned in, eyes burning with hunger, his face inches from mine. “It’s not just words, Haven.”

  He grasped both my hands tightly in his bigger ones, caressing my wrists with the pads of his thumbs, and I felt the warmth radiating throughout my whole body. “You feel this, too.”

  I shook my head once, feeling my heart seize even as I did. But Amory would not be deterred.

  “I know you do,” he said in a whisper.

  I met his gaze and nodded once.

  He grinned, and some of the tension released.

  So why did I feel more panicky than before?

  “Can I just . . .” Now it was his turn to look panicked. But it was gone in a flash, taken o
ver by that familiar resolve in his eyes.

  My heart pounded, and my breathing was sharp and erratic. I didn’t know what to do.

  He leaned in, his face inches from mine, and my eyes fluttered closed.

  Then his soft lips brushed mine, tentatively at first and then burning hot and urgent, and I felt the sudden overwhelming need to be closer to him.

  Sloppy, drunken kisses at house parties hadn’t prepared me for this.

  This was too real. The feelings came sharp and intense, just like everything else about Amory.

  His hands found my waist and wrapped around the small of my back, pulling me in to him, and I wrapped my arms around his neck. He was so warm and strong; my whole body ached for him.

  His kiss was hungry, and mine was lingering — almost in protest. I wanted to taste every detail of him and commit it to memory. He kissed me as though there wasn’t enough time in the world for all the kissing he wanted to do.

  Amory’s fingers pressed into my side tightly, pulling my hips into his. He moved up to my hair, braiding strands of it in his hands. I shivered, and our kissing intensified. His lips moved to my jaw and then my neck, and I felt his breath tickling the top of my spine and lifting my hair.

  He let out a groan and pressed me against the tree, running his hands up my sides and pushing his body into mine. I could feel all of him, and a warmth spread from my core down to my toes.

  I wanted more, and some part of my brain — the part that told me we were about to enter a war zone and what I really wanted to do with him was dangerous and irresponsible — clicked off quietly in the back of my mind like a light in a vacant room.

  I pressed against him with equal force and ran my hands down his chest, feeling every muscle under his thin shirt. Fingers contemplating, I lingered for a moment at his belt, but he already had his hands around my waist, hoisting me up off the ground. He gripped my legs tightly, holding me up against him. His fingers brushed the small of my back under my shirt, and I didn’t stop him from exploring up the skin of my bare back.

  His kiss was demanding, and I was eager. I bit his lip, gripping the back of his neck and running my fingers through his hair, and I felt us cross over something — as if we were cresting a steep hill, about to plummet down at an unstoppable speed.

  Finally, my brain seemed to catch up with my wandering hands, and something flickered in the back of my mind. I paused and pulled away to look at him.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, setting me down. I restrained a smile at how out of breath he sounded. His cheeks were flushed, and his eyes were brighter than I’d ever seen them.

  “What are we doing?”

  He grinned. “What I’ve wanted to do since the day I tackled you.”

  I shook my head, trying to clear it. “We can’t do this.” I pulled away. “Everything’s falling apart, Amory. We may not even survive tomorrow.”

  “I know it doesn’t make sense, considering everything else that’s going on. But I’ve thought about you ever since you got to the farm. And after this —” He broke off, looking serious. “I realize I should have been kissing you every day.”

  “I want to be with you,” I said. “But we can’t do this right now.”

  Amory looked resigned. He knew I was right, and he knew “this” wasn’t just referring to what we had been doing up against the tree.

  “I’m not sorry,” he said. “About any of it. We should be together. Maybe some time in the future, things will be different for all of us. But whether things change or not, I’m going to keep doing that.”

  “I hope so.” I really did.

  We flopped down on the ground, looking down at the glow of the city. I drank the moment in, eerily aware that tonight could be the last night I was alive and free to stare out at the sky — possibly the last night with Amory right there next to me. I leaned against him, and he wrapped his arm around me.

  “Thank you,” I said. “For being here.”

  I felt Amory turn his head next to me, although I couldn’t make out his expression.

  “I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”

  My heart swelled with affection. It was a vaguely foreign but wonderful feeling.

  “We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow,” I said.

  “No.”

  I turned to him. “Then I guess . . . why not?”

  Without hesitating, I leaned in and rested my palm against his strong chest. Somehow I found his lips in the darkness, and I gave in to the soaring sensation in my stomach as I kissed him.

  Tonight it didn’t matter. Tonight I allowed myself to be happy because none of us could know if we would survive tomorrow.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  We woke before dawn. One minute, I was dreaming of Amory kissing me on the hill, and the next, Logan was shaking me awake in the semidarkness of early morning.

  Considering we were about to storm into the city to rescue Greyson — possibly engaging in a fight against the PMC — it seemed to me that we were moving incredibly slowly. The air was thick with tension. No one was talking or laughing. I concentrated on packing to keep my panic in check: rolling my sleeping bag, gathering my clothes, and taking inventory of my weapons.

  Roman rekindled the campfire, and Mariah cooked us a breakfast of bean stew. After several days on the road, the unsavory provisions had been mixed together and recombined to make something Max would never allow in his kitchen. I took a tin cup of the reconstituted sludge and ate without really tasting it. All I could think about was finding Greyson and getting him out.

  He had to be alive. I couldn’t consider the alternative. I couldn’t try to imagine what we would do once we escaped Sector X, either. All that mattered was getting him out alive.

  Rulon spread a map of the city out on the ground, placing stones at every corner to hold it down against the wind whipping over the riverfront. There were several highlighted routes and city blocks circled in different colors.

  “This is our entry point,” he said, placing an acorn over a spot where several highways merged. “There will be a checkpoint with guards, but our cover is a postal truck. There will be several coming in around the same time. We could get lucky and not need to kill anyone. That would be best for us. A quiet arrival buys more time.”

  I shivered. I knew killing PMC officers was a strong possibility, but the way Rulon talked about it made murder sound like an afterthought.

  “Once we’re in the city, stay out of sight. The place will be crawling with PMC. If one sees you, kill immediately or be killed. Don’t hesitate — they certainly won’t.”

  “Everyone needs one of these,” said Godfrey, handing us each a strip of white plastic. It was a wristband. A glint of gold caught my eye. Glued to the plastic was a Citizen ID chip.

  “Mica reprogrammed these so they’re only live within a one-mile radius of Sector X,” Godfrey said. “They should trick the rovers into thinking we’re PMC.”

  “How did you get these?” Logan asked.

  I closed my eyes in horror. I could only imagine one way they could have acquired them.

  “It wasn’t easy,” said Godfrey, his voice grim.

  Rulon traced a highlighted route into the center of the city with a weathered hand. “This is Chaddock, the prison where your friend is most likely being held.” He placed a small pebble over a city block.

  “Now, between here and there,” he held his fingers over the entry point and the prison, “we will be taking out a PMC base.”

  “What?” said Amory. “You never said —”

  “I said we would transport you and your friends to Sector X,” said Rulon, “but this is our primary mission.”

  “We didn’t know you’d be involving us in an attack,” I said.

  Rulon looked over at me with a hardened expression. “Sure you did. How did you plan on rescuing your friend from prison? Asking nicely?”

  I felt the slap of his words and realized he was right. He had said it wouldn’t be a problem, and I hadn�
�t thought to wonder what that might mean. Even worse was that there wasn’t anything I wasn’t prepared to do to rescue Greyson.

  “This is bigger than all of us,” he said.

  I looked from him to Amory, utterly shell-shocked that the rebels had waited this long to share their plan.

  Rulon’s face hardened. “If this goes well, you’ll have no problem infiltrating the prison. It’s just the diversion you need.”

  “What’s the target?” asked Roman.

  “That’s classified. We never reveal more than absolutely necessary in case any of us is compromised.”

  Amory and I exchanged glances, but there was nothing we could do. It didn’t matter if we trusted Rulon; he was our only hope of getting Greyson and getting out of Sector X alive.

  Godfrey produced another piece of paper. It was a blueprint of the building.

  “There will be guards posted here, here, here, and here,” Rulon continued, “on every corner surrounding the building. I need snipers at the ready in case someone sounds the alarm. That will be you five. Mariah and Godfrey, you already have your assignments.

  He turned to me. “After the base goes down, that’s your cue to get to the prison and get your friend out.”

  “How?” I asked.

  Rulon pulled a small hand-drawn diagram out of his jacket and smoothed it out over the main blueprint.

  “You should enter from the prison yard. It’s the entry point where security is weakest. Normally, there are guards on the ground level and in the watch tower, but on a day like today . . .” He trailed off. “You will have a small window when security will be compromised. Get in and get out.”

  “What if he’s not there?”

  His expression became stoney. “Chaddock is where all the low-level prisoners are held. If he’s not there, I don’t know what to tell you.”

  My heart sank into my stomach. I couldn’t think like this. He had to be alive. I had to get him out.