by Jaye Wells
“She’s telling the truth,” Zed said, coming over to join us. “After Bravo and the youngs were taken by a Troika patrol, I went to Saga.”
Murmurs spread through the room. Clearly the Scribe’s reputation was well known.
“He’s the one who asked Carmina to help me infiltrate the prison.”
Alex looked skeptical. “How many are in your army? Are they outside the walls?”
Zed’s face fell. “You don’t understand. There is no army. It’s just us.”
Silence descended over the barracks. Alex, Cleo, and Tuck all looked to Matri as if wanting her to confirm Zed was joking. She just shrugged.
“Look,” I said, “we may not have an army, but we do have a plan.”
Tuck sighed. “Make it fast. I’m due on shift in half an hour.”
“We need to create a diversion. There’s dynamite in the camp somewhere, right? You have to use it for mining.”
“Don’t be crazy. The vamps would never let any of us near it. They use the human guards to do the blasting if it’s needed during the day.”
“So we’ll just have to convince one of the humans to give us the key.”
He shook his head. “With what weapons, girl? With what strength? We’re all half-starved.”
“We’ll use their weapons.”
Tuck waved a dismissive hand in my direction, but he didn’t speak to me. Instead, he tuned to Matri. “This is a waste of time.”
“We’re the only chance you got,” I said. “You think anyone else is coming for you?”
He stopped and looked at me. “Let’s say you get the dynamite. Then what? The front gates are locked fifteen ways to Sunday. Only open with permission from the camp director.”
“That gate won’t stand up against a train going full speed.”
He didn’t sound as impressed as I’d hoped. Instead he walked toward me. He looked like a living shadow of a man. “Tell me this, smart girl, how you gonna decide who stays and who goes?”
Seventeen
Matri
The girl had spunk. You had to give her that. Unlike Bravo, who worked very hard to appear confident, Six wore her bravery like a comfortable second skin. But brave ain’t the same as smart.
“I said, how are you going to decide who stays or who goes?” Tuck repeated. “That train can only hold a couple hundred people. This camp has thousands of prisoners.”
Carmina remained silent, but her skin paled. Her eyes took on a hunted look, as if she hadn’t considered liberating the entire camp.
Like I said, brave ain’t the same as smart.
“Did you really expect us all to help you save yourselves while the rest of us stay behind?” I snorted. “You put all of us in danger just by being here. If the Troika catch you, we’ll all be punished.”
Behind me, worried chatter and panic rose on the air. I held up a hand. The chatter lessened but the panic was still palpable.
“We’ll take as many as we can,” Zed said.
The girl didn’t look in his direction. She was watching me, trying to decide if she could win me to her cause or if I was just another obstacle in her way.
“It does no one any good to take risks that doom all of us,” she said finally. “Trying to free everyone will be impossible. When we fail, the Troika will kill all of us.”
I crossed my arms. “Why shouldn’t we just kill you right now?”
Zed stepped forward, his shoulders back and his hands curled into fists. That one was a fighter. Too bad he wouldn’t live long enough to prove it.
“Killing us only guarantees you’ll all die in this camp.”
“I already made peace with that, girl.”
“If we can get out of here alive, we’ll be able to make a plan for a more focused attack. Raise enough of an army to make a real liberation attempt.”
“An army?” I laughed. “Sweetheart, the workers in this camp outnumber the vampires fifty to one. We have superior numbers, but they have the weapons, the power, and every other advantage over us. It’s not an army we need. It’s a miracle.”
Six threw up her hands. “So you’re going to lie down and die? You’ve given up? Fine. That’s your choice. I’m leaving with those children tonight. If you want to help, fine. We’ll take everyone out of here that we can. But you’re never going to convince me that it’s better to surrender than to try, damn it.”
The room fell silent. The pressure of dozens of expectant stares weighed against my skin.
“There might be a way to save the rest of the prisoners,” Tuck said.
I glanced at him in surprise.
He smiled. “The minute y’all take that train, the guards are gonna swarm you like angry wasps.”
“Yeah, so?” I said.
“So the distraction might give the rest of us time to hide in the mines. There’s water and air shafts down there. Could probably survive a couple of days if y’all come back to help us.”
The room fell silent as this sunk in.
Finally, Zed said, “That might work. You’ll be protected from the explosions and we can come back to dig you out once the vamps are cooked.”
“This is a pipe dream,” I said. “You’ll die in those mines and the rest of you will die trying to make a break for it.” I shook my head. “I used to have hope too.” I sighed to release the pressure of disappointment in my chest. “I had it back when I was young and thought that life would work out for me if I only wanted it badly enough. But then I grew up and realized that those stories of heroism we were raised on were just fictions created to fool us into believing life is worth the trouble.”
“If you really think that, why are you still here?”
“You mean, why haven’t I killed myself?”
Six nodded.
“Because I’m too stubborn to prove them right.”
“Who?”
I nodded toward the door. “The vampires. They want us to believe that we don’t matter. If I give up the only things I have left—the air in my lungs, the blood in my veins—then I’m only proving them right.”
Zed stepped into the conversation, forming the third point of a triangle. “Then help us.”
“What’s in it for me?”
Six raised her chin. “They crave our surrender. They want us to give up our blood, our lives, our hope. I say we show them that humanity still has some fight left in it. If we’re going to die anyway, let it happen with our feet on the ground and our fists flying.”
Behind Six, Cleo was rubbing her red hands together. Tuck’s white teeth flashed as he chewed contemplatively on his lower lip. Only Wu looked unmoved by the girl’s passionate speech. His expression was as skeptical as it had been from the minute the conversation started.
I raised an eyebrow and watched Cleo for a reaction. When it came, the nod was almost too subtle to see, but then she glanced at Tuck, whose lips spread to reveal aggressively bright teeth, gleaming like stars against a night sky.
Something tugged at the hem of my tunic. Little Finn looked up at me. He was only as tall as my waist and barely wider than one of the floor planks. “Matri,” he said, “are we really going to leave?”
The backs of my eyeballs stung and my chest tightened painfully. This was crazy. I wasn’t ready for this. I’d spent the last several years in survival mode. Trying to do whatever it took to keep the children alive and curry favor with the vampires and the traitors to buy us some time. But now I realized I’d been buying time for this. Buying time for something—or someone—to come along and give us a reason to hope again.
I placed a hand on little Finn’s head and smiled at him even though emotion was making my lips tremble. “We’re done here.”
Whether we were leaving the camp for the outside world or leaving our mortal bodies, I didn’t know. I just finally understood that taking this risk was better than extending the dead-end lives we’d all been living.
I looked at Meridian Six, whose own eyes were red, as if she’d been dealing with a sting of
her own. “All right,” I said. “What’s the plan?”
Eighteen
Zed
The sun was too low. After we’d convinced Matri and the others to help, we’d wasted too much time trying to adjust the original plan. It had been a necessary step, but every minute that passed took us closer and closer to the hour of doom, when the monsters crawled out of their bunkers.
After we’d made the plan, Six told me to work with Tuck on getting enough dynamite and slipped out the door. My decision to ignore her order took about two seconds. I chased her outside and stopped her before she could march off.
“I told you to talk to Tuck.” She jerked her arm out of my hand.
“Where are you going?”
“I have my own mission.” Her posture was stiff, as if she was bracing for a physical fight instead of just an argument.
“You’re going after Dr. Death?”
She met my eyes but didn’t speak.
“You can’t go alone.”
“Wrong. I have to go alone.”
“No you don’t. You don’t have to kill him at all. Let’s get the train loaded up and get the hell out of here before the vamps wake up.”
She placed a hand on my cheek. Her palm was calloused, but I found myself pressing into her touch because it had been so long since anyone had touched me with any sort of comfort. “You save your kids. Don’t worry about me.”
I jerked my head away from her touch. The patronizing edge to her tone pissed me off. “If you want to commit suicide, it’s your choice, but don’t act like you’re some sort of martyr here.”
She had the nerve to look wounded. “I-I’m not a martyr.”
“Bullshit. You know that’s exactly what Saga and Icarus want, don’t you? A glorious memory they can hold up to all the rebels to inspire them. Poor Meridian Six who died for the cause just like her mother.”
Pain exploded across my cheek before I realized she’d slapped me. The throbbing eased just as she spun and marched off toward the center of camp. “Six!” I repeated her name two more times. On the second try, she threw her middle finger up over her head and picked up speed.
I sighed and rubbed at my hot cheek. What the hell was I supposed to do now? My legs itched like maybe I should chase her, but my pride reminded me that if I chased her it would be like admitting I was wrong. I was not wrong. She knew that, which was why she’d hit me.
Bravo was in charge of rounding up the children, and I needed to go help Tuck with the explosives. Instead, I stood in the dusty air and watched Six’s retreat. Something deep in my center—not my heart, but my gut—told me that if I let her walk away I’d never see her again.
“Damn it.” I hissed the words aloud, almost as if to give myself a chance to change my mind. But I didn’t. I took off in a jog that quickly turned in to a run. Tuck could get the dynamite without my help, but I wasn’t about to let Six murder that vampire alone.
* * *
When I caught up with her, she’d reached a part of the camp I hadn’t yet seen. It was a central square of sorts. If it had been the center of a town back before the war, it would have had a courthouse with a small diner across the street. But this was a prison camp, so the center of the dusty square was dominated by a flagpole bearing the Troika’s black flag and red lightning symbol. On each of the four sides, a different building stood. One was obviously the barracks for the guards, which looked like a luxury condo block compared to the shacks the prisoners were forced to live in. Another building was most likely the mess hall and another was a laundry used specifically for the vampires. I’d seen the meager prisoner washhouse, which was made up of little more than tin wash bins with cakes of lye soap. This place, however, looked like it held a variety of modern industrial washers and dryers, along with pressing machines to ensure the guards had knife-pleats in their pants while they beat the prisoners.
I reached Six when she was almost at the flagpole. Before she saw me, she’d already paused and was staring off in the fourth direction, which I had yet to observe in my rush to reach her. I paused beside her. She didn’t look at me, but I felt sure she knew I was there. I didn’t want to speak first, so I followed her gaze.
The fourth edge of the square held a large cinderblock palace. The Troika’s symbol was on display at the top of the building, like a marquee, but that wasn’t what had captured her attention.
A massive banner hung over the building’s door. On it, Meridian Six looked up toward the sky, as if looking to the future. Her hair was tied back into a bun and she wore the gray uniform of a high-ranking human slave—the kind that was trained in the special “education” centers in Nachtstadt. The slogan underneath the image said, Freedom through blood. Life through labor.
That’s when the shame hit me. I pulled my gaze from the image to look at her face. The sharp contrast between the clear, unblemished skin of the beauty on the banner versus the swollen and bruised face of the woman next to me was painful. I’d just told her that she was being used, as if it was something that might never have occurred to her. But now I understood that being used was all she’d ever known.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“You were right.” She didn’t look at me.
“I know. I’m still sorry.”
She tipped her chin. I wasn’t sure if she was accepting my apology or simply acknowledging that she’d heard me. Either way, I didn’t feel better.
“I have to kill him.” She said it simply, like stating a fact, such as “I need oxygen to live.”
“Why?”
She turned to look at me then. Her eyes shone like new nickels. “I was…shared with him.”
Suddenly I needed to kill him too.
“Let’s go.” I started to walk toward the building with its banner that displayed Six like some sort of blood trophy.
She grabbed my arm. “Wait. Don’t you have to help Tuck—”
I jerked my hand out of her grasp and stepped toward her, getting close enough to whisper. “We are all getting out of here. All of us. Got it?”
She looked taken aback, as if she hadn’t suspected I was capable of anger. I wished I could tell her exactly how I was feeling. About how the idea of her being passed around by the bloodsuckers made me want to burn the entire world down. About how I wanted to grab her and hold her until she believed that there were people in the world who didn’t see her as a thing to be used. About how I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t just a kid for her to patronize. But I also knew that she’d laugh and reject all of those thoughts. Instead, I’d have to show her what I meant. How I felt.
She watched me with an unreadable expression for a few tense moments. I braced myself for the arguments I knew she was formulating. But she surprised me.
“Suit yourself, but when the time comes, I get the kill on Dr. Death. Understand?”
I didn’t understand why she needed to be the one, but I didn’t argue. “Let’s go.”
Nineteen
Meridian Six
The good thing about having vampires as an enemy was that they loved tunnels. Whenever the Troika took over a new city or town, the first thing they always did was turn the Earth under that town into an underground maze—like a rabbit warren. In fact, the first time I met Dare and Icarus was in a set of tunnels under the Sisters of Blood convent. The abandoned tunnels had been used during the Blood Wars and after the vamps had taken over New York and turned it into their capital, Nachtstadt, to escape the Troika’s slaughter patrols.
The tunnels under the blood camps were still in use; they were clean and well lit. According to Matri, the vamps use them to transport laundry and food to the main building, where the top officers lived and worked. Special prisoners were given access since they provided the labor for those services. Prisoners who’d earned the honor wore special red uniforms. The vampire in charge of the uniforms was a female guard called Billy. I didn’t know her real name, nor did I care, but Matri told me the nickname referred to the female’s resemblance to
a goat. “She’s about as smart as one too,” Matri had added.
The thing I learned about vampires—especially those on power trips, and weren’t they all?—was that they always underestimated humans. If they’d respected us as foes or recognized that our desperation made us determined and resourceful, they would have assigned more guards. But as it happened, Billy was alone.
She rose from her chair—and rose and rose. Matri hadn’t mentioned that Billy was well over six feet tall. Her eyes were wide apart, almost on the sides of her face instead of anywhere near the center. Her pupils weren’t vertical like a goat’s but her irises were pure black and lacking all empathy.
The uniform vault was located inside a caged room. Through the door behind Billy, I could see rows of different-colored uniforms on racks that rose several feet in the air. The plain uniforms we’d brought with us on the train that day filled most of the room, but my eye was drawn to a single row of red uniforms on the top bar. It wouldn’t be easy to reach them, but first we had to get through Billy.
“You’re not allowed in here.” Her voice was scratchy and high, but paired with her imposing size the effect was unsettling. “Who sent you?”
Zed bowed his head and whispered, “Matri sent us.”
Billy frowned. “She has no authority here. Go.” She crossed her arms to punctuate the command.
“She said we were to report here to get uniforms.” He stepped forward to continue speaking, but his hands were behind his back and he waved his fingers to the right.
I glanced that direction. Strapped to the wall was a long pole with a hook on the end. I realized this must be the tool Billy used to reach the uniforms on the upper racks. The hook had a protrusion at the top. It wasn’t sharp enough to cut through flesh on its own, but with enough weight I might be able to break skin.