The Defectors (Defectors Trilogy)

by Benner, Tarah

  As we ran, I didn’t feel fatigue. I didn’t feel anything, but it wasn’t the measured endurance of a race or a long run. It was a numbness to the world and a blind focus toward finding the prison and freeing Greyson. I couldn’t think of our escape; just putting one foot in front of the other and running to the prison required every ounce of my energy.

  What happened to the others? Did they get away in time? Were the rebels after us? And worst of all, was there anything we could have done to stop the explosion?

  I told myself it had happened too quickly. Even if we had managed to get back in, we probably would have blown up inside. There was no time to warn everyone, no time to evacuate. Despite the logic, I could not shake the horrible, dragging guilt that we had stood silent while dozens or hundreds of people died.

  There was no street sign indicating we had arrived. We didn’t need one. A hastily erected fence topped with curling tendrils of barbed wire towered over what had once been a courtyard. The prison yard was eerily quiet.

  Amory squeezed my arm, pointing up to the watchman’s tower. It appeared to be vacant. Something was wrong.

  “Here,” said Amory, handing me a pair of thick leather gloves from his pocket. “You go first and then throw them back over.”

  I slipped the too-big gloves over my hands and toed my feet into the holes of the chain-link fence. It was slowgoing, and even as I reached the top — precariously balanced by holding on to the last row of chain link — I had no idea how I would get myself up and over the barbed wire.

  Gingerly, I grasped the smooth section of wire and pushed down, bending it against the top of the fence. I winced as a barb cut into my wrist, but Ida’s excellent shirt afforded some protection. I swung one leg over and struggled to find a new foothold and steady myself. I was twisted awkwardly over the fence, and it was impossible to get a solid grip with my foot.

  Readjusting my weight on my hands, I swung my other leg over. My pant leg caught on a sharp ribbon of wire. Losing my balance, I slipped from my precarious perch on the fence. I fell, catching my arm on a thorn of steel.

  Pain sliced up my side as I hit the cold, hard brick. The wind was knocked out of me, and my right shoulder seared in agony where it made contact with the ground. I felt as though my entire right side was shattered.

  “Haven!”

  I forced myself into a sitting position, bones protesting, trying to reorient myself. Amory.

  Miraculously, I got to my feet and threw the gloves as hard as I could so they cleared the top of the fence.

  Amory caught them deftly and wasted no time shimmying up the chain links. He made it to the top more quickly than I had and even cleared the wire with effortless grace.

  “You’re bleeding,” he said.

  It was true. A generous stream of half-congealed blood was winding around my wrist. Apparently, Ida’s shirt could not protect against everything. I wiped it hurriedly on my pant leg.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  There was a locked gate on the other side of the courtyard — presumably where inmates would be buzzed in and out of the prison yard. It was made of thick reinforced steel.

  “There are explosives in my pack,” I said.

  Amory looked wary but unzipped my backpack with careful hands. He reached in and withdrew one of the small explosives Godfrey had given me.

  “Stand back,” Amory said.

  I stepped back to give him a wide berth, but I didn’t need to tell him how they worked. I watched as he pulled the pin and stuck it on the gate near the lock.

  There were three rhythmic beeps, and then two in close succession. Amory threw himself back against me, and we hit the deck.

  The mosaic bricks scraped my chin and hands as Amory flattened me to the ground and covered me with his body. He had his hands over his head. I squeezed my eyes shut and smashed my hands over my ears, just in time.

  I couldn’t believe how loud the explosion was from such a small device. Acrid black smoke billowed out of the gate, filling my lungs and making me cough violently. My throat felt acidic and rough as sandpaper.

  “No — point — being — stealthy,” Amory stammered between hacking coughs. He was still sprawled on top of me.

  He staggered to his feet and pulled me up with him, waving his other arm violently to clear a path through the smoke. As it dissipated, I could see that the gate was hanging open half off its hinges.

  Amory thrust it open, and I followed him into the prison. He looked grim.

  “What is it?” I whispered.

  He glanced at me. “It’s just . . . those are PMC-issued explosives. I wonder how Godfrey came by them.”

  It was odd. But then, the rebels must have encountered PMC officers to get the CIDs. They probably had to kill the officers to steal their identities. The thought made me feel sick. How many people had to die at the hands of the people I had placed my trust in?

  As we pulled aside the wrecked door, it occurred to me that we should have encountered more guards — or at least more doors designed to keep the inmates from escaping. Apparently, the PMC had not deemed it necessary to install more security doors in the building they’d renovated to accommodate the overflowing criminal element. Perhaps they thought the city was secure enough with rovers tracking every occupant.

  The entrance to the ground floor had “Men’s Ward Level X” spray painted in huge black stenciled letters. I could hear the murmur of voices. We wound our way through uniform sterile-looking corridors that reeked of ammonia. The smell was familiar: clean, unfriendly, and medical.

  I decided the building must have been a hospital before the PMC reclaimed it and turned it into a prison. It wasn’t as though they needed big hospitals anymore; the PMC would treat officers in their own facilities, and they didn’t offer medical care to the carriers, the illegals squatting in the city, or the prison inmates.

  The deeper into the building we went, the louder the sounds of unrest grew. Deep angry voices — shouting — and the loud echoes of fighting. Something was not right. The uprising was not being stifled by PMC officers.

  If there was a riot, maybe Greyson had already escaped, I thought.

  If Greyson had escaped, there would be no finding him again. He would disappear into the city and become invisible. He would not show himself and risk going back there or death by the PMC.

  As we ran down the hallway, my eyes struggled to adjust to the flickering glow of failing florescent light overhead. The sickly pale-yellow walls were giving me vertigo, so I trained my eyes on the thick red stripe running down the center of the tile floor. The sound of shouts echoing off the walls was deafening.

  We rounded the corner to the first row of cells and were thrust into absolute chaos. Escaped prisoners in gray jumpsuits filled the corridor, breaking down more cells as they went. Sounds of shouting and fighting and scraping metal ricocheted off the cement walls. No one noticed us.

  Stepping over a dead PMC officer, I tried not to look at the wound gaping at his jugular. It appeared he had been stabbed with a sawed-off piece of copper piping. Another officer lay farther down the corridor, stripped of his gun. Someone had kicked his head so forcefully his skull was crunched in. His thin hair was matted with blood.

  Tearing my eyes away, I searched each prisoner’s face frantically. Where was Greyson? I knew I should be afraid of these men. They were wild and unkempt, and some were brandishing weapons: guns they’d taken from the dead officers or broken bars and pipes. As menacing as they looked, I knew most of the men had not gone there as violent criminals. Most were just illegals, like Greyson and me. What happened to them in confinement to make them this way?

  Feeling desperate, I pushed my way through the crowd. I was being jostled on all sides, and I lost track of Amory. I turned to a man with fiery red hair and an orangish beard.

  “Do you know Greyson Frey?” I asked.

  He looked surprised to see me standing there, but his expression quickly turned to irritation. He shook his head and pushe
d me aside — right into a pale man with a shaved head and a dragon tattoo inching up his neck. He was incredibly tall with thick muscles roping up his arms.

  “D-Do you know —”

  “And who might you be?” He leered down at me and gripped my forearm in his fist.

  My stomach churned, and I tried to pull away. He held on, too strong for me to break free. I moved in to escape as I had practiced, but he shook me hard. His dirty nails were digging into my skin.

  “Not so fast.”

  He was pulling me into him now, and I could see track marks all up and down his arms. He had rotten teeth.

  “Let me go,” I said, my voice loud and steady. Panic was rising in my chest.

  The vein in his neck pulsed beneath the inky dragon. I could smell the sweat on his skin and feel his nails digging into my arm.

  “Hey!”

  The voice was loud and vicious, almost a bark.

  Twisting in the man’s grip, I saw Amory standing there, glowering at the man. He was drawn up to his full height with his fists clenched at his sides, his mouth in a hard line. He looked menacing.

  The man sneered but released my arm, eyeing Amory’s rifle with apprehension. Amory put an arm around my waist and pulled me away, throwing the man a deadly look that made me want to shrink back against the wall.

  “Stay close,” he growled in my ear, his hand resting protectively on the small of my back.

  Together, we approached some of the newly freed men and asked them about Greyson. None of them knew him.

  There was a crash to my left, and four prisoners pulled away a cell door as though it were a piece of cardboard, freeing the man inside. One of them had a sandy beard and bright blue eyes. He looked . . . friendly.

  I touched him on the shoulder, and he spun around defensively.

  Maybe not, I thought.

  “Who the hell are you?” he asked, wiping a stream of perspiration from his temple and eyeing our black rebel clothes.

  My heart thudded hard against my chest after the encounter with the tattooed man. “I-I’m here to free my friend,” I choked. “Do you know a Greyson Frey?”

  A flash of recognition swept over his stormy expression, but he scowled. “Nah.”

  “Yes, you do!” I said, my voice rising a decibel in desperation. “I can tell you do.”

  He glowered at me. “Get the hell out of my way.”

  Amory still had an arm around me, and he made a move to pull me away from the man. I stood my ground, ignoring him.

  “Please,” I said. “Please tell me where he is.”

  The man sighed. “Yeah, I know him. Kind of a . . . skinny kid with a real mouth on him?”

  “Yes!” I said, my heart pounding faster. “Yes, that sounds like him.”

  “They moved him about a week ago.”

  “Moved him where?” I spluttered.

  “They had him on the third floor — in isolation, last time I checked. Although, one more incident and they were bound to have him transferred.”

  How could that be? What had he done while he was there? What if he was already gone or in another prison altogether?

  “Did the third-floor prisoners all go free?” Amory asked.

  “Not yet, but they will.”

  I just had time to say thanks before Amory was pulling me down the hall toward the stairwell.

  We took the steps two at a time, bursting out onto a floor that looked nothing like the first. The cellblock we had come from had big, barred holding cells with several prisoners in each bank.

  There were no bars up there — just room after room closed off by heavy metal doors with tiny glass windows looking out into the hallway. Each cell was eight feet by eight feet with no window to the outside. These cells must have been built by the PMC; no hospital had rooms like these.

  Amory took one side, and I took the other. Moving methodically down the hallway, I pressed my face against each window and looked down onto the prisoners one by one.

  These men looked as if they were in much worse shape than the men down below — pale, skinny, and sickly, as though they were not let out for exercise. In some cells, it was impossible to tell if the man could be Greyson or not; some were so emaciated they would be completely unrecognizable to anyone. They were shrunken and withered into the corners of their cells with their heads down.

  “Haven!” Amory shouted.

  I turned. He was farther down the hall, staring into a dark cell. I ran over to him and peered in through the shadows.

  “Is that him?”

  My heart sank when I remembered that Amory had never seen so much as a picture of Greyson. The man in the cell was young with tousled black curls and sharp, chiseled features whittled down to the bone.

  It wasn’t him.

  “Stop right there!” shouted a deep, booming voice.

  I thought I might be having a heart attack. A feeling like a bucket of cold water washed over my chest, freezing me to the core.

  This was it. We were finished.

  I spun around to see a PMC officer standing with a gun pointed at Amory’s chest. His eyes were cold and exacting, but a line of nervous perspiration was working its way down his nose. I knew he would not hesitate to shoot us both.

  “Drop your weapons!” he shouted. “Drop your weapons, and turn to face the wall.”

  I stood there, waiting for Amory to make the first move. The only sound I could hear was his strained breathing, but I was sure his hand was gripping his gun.

  “Drop the weapons,” the officer repeated. I heard the sound of a click, and the man’s lip twitched in a reflexive motion, as if he wanted to lick his lips. The tension just before the kill excited him.

  All I could hear was the blood pounding in my ears. I couldn’t let him shoot Amory. I couldn’t lose him.

  Resigned, I slowly lowered my gun.

  “Easy!” the officer shouted.

  “Haven,” Amory whispered. “Don’t —”

  “Don’t talk to each other!” the officer yelled. He jerked the gun and took another step toward us.

  Chest heaving a mile a minute, I could feel the adrenalin pulsing in my veins like electricity. I was wound so tightly I feared that the slightest movement from the officer would send me over the edge.

  Bending at the hips, I took my time lowering my gun to the floor.

  I heard the echo of shouts ringing up through the stairwell, approaching quickly. If we could just hold out long enough . . .

  “Drop your weapons, illegals, or I shoot. Three, two —”

  The stairwell door burst open, and a crowd of prisoners spilled onto the floor. Jerking up, I took advantage of the guard’s distraction and whipped my gun up to point at his chest, but there was no need. The guard flew around and trained his gun on the approaching mob.

  It was no use. There were too many of them.

  A shot rang through the air, and shouts of victory filled the hallway. Stubby hands clutching his gut, the guard collapsed to the floor, a sick gurgling sound erupting from his throat. The sharp sting of blood cut the antiseptic stench of the hospital hallway.

  I looked up for the shooter, wondering if I should fear for my own life. My gun still trained in front of me, the air caught in my throat as I laid eyes on the person I feared I would never see again. It was Greyson.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  At the front of the mob spilling into the hallway stood a triumphant Greyson. His eyes met mine, and something registered deep in the recesses of his brain.

  He had his gun aimed straight at my chest.

  “Haven?” he yelled.

  I couldn’t say anything.

  For several seconds, we just stood there staring at each other — both of us still holding our weapons, me standing with a dead guard at my feet. I didn’t turn my head, but I could feel Amory’s eyes watching us warily.

  Greyson recovered first. He slowly lowered the gun as men fanned out around him to break down the heavy cell doors. His hair was much shorter than
I had ever seen it, almost a crew cut, and his features looked darker.

  He made a gesture of surrender with his hands, and I put my gun down, too, feeling embarrassed.

  “What — what are you doing here?” he asked incredulously, reaching me in a few long strides.

  His question confused me.

  “W-We’re here to get you out,” I stammered, gesturing to Amory.

  “Oh,” said Greyson, looking genuinely surprised. “I mean, great.”

  He stepped in, closing the distance between us. “I can’t believe you’re here.” His eyes were just as warm as I remembered, and they had an electric spark of excitement that was vaguely disconcerting. “I thought you would have gone and got your dad . . . headed west, like we planned.”

  “No, I . . . I mean, they’re —” I broke off. Saying it out loud to Greyson would make it somehow more real. “They’re gone.”

  His face fell. “They left?”

  I shook my head, words catching in my throat. “They’re dead. The PMC killed them.”

  He looked shocked. “I’m so sorry.”

  We fell silent.

  “Well, that’s all the more reason, really.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Greyson’s eyes lit up. “The revolution is just starting. We have to stay and fight.”

  The commotion around us was becoming deafening. The sound of lead pipes banging against the steel-plated cell doors echoed down the cellblock like sudden bursts of thunder.

  “What are you talking about?” broke in Amory.

  Greyson met his eyes for the first time as if only just seeing him. “Haven’t you heard?” His voice was quick, excitement bubbling just beneath the surface.

  “They just took out the main PMC base and who knows how many officials.” Greyson turned back to me. “It’s starting.”

  “How did you know about that?”

  “Never mind that now. It’s time.”

  “Yeah, it’s time to get out of here,” said Amory impatiently.

  “Out of the city?” Greyson looked between the two of us, reluctance etched in his dark features. “And who are you?” he asked, looking Amory up and down.