Within These Walls: Series Box Set

by Tracey Ward

  But I know it’s a lie. I know I would always wonder. I would wonder the way the ring still resting on my finger felt heavier the longer I was away. I worried for Vin and the rest of the people in this building every second of every day, and no matter how hard I tried to distance myself from them, I never really left. A part of me was still with them here in this building, trapped and burning to be set free.

  “No matter what we do or where we go,” I tell them softly, “we see this through to the end.”

  Ryan nods. “Of course.”

  I look up at Trent to find him staring out the door and down the hall. I can’t tell what he’s looking at. The long hall is dark and filled with Colonists milling around, waiting for whatever is going to happen to hurry up and happen. Nothing looks unusual to me at all. Whatever has his attention, though, it has it strong. I don’t think he’s blinking.

  “Trent?”

  “I’ll play follow the leader until it’s done,” he replies, his voice dead.

  I frown at Ryan, confused, but if I’m looking for answers I’m looking in the wrong place: his face is a mirror of mine. I’m about to ask Trent what he’s looking at when Vin appears at the end of the hall. People say hello to him as he passes, and generally bask in the glory that is Vin. Women smile, men step aside, and I can immediately see why they fell in line behind him so easily: he has it. It’s the same thing that I don’t have. Never have and never will. The same thing that Ryan has that Trent doesn’t—charisma.

  “Thanks for waiting,” he tells us as he comes inside and closes the door solidly behind him.

  “What else were we going to do?”

  He grins. “I’m glad you’re back, Kitten. I’ve missed that.”

  “Missed what?”

  “Your bluntness.”

  “What happened to the Leaders?”

  “See, there it is. Right down to business.”

  “What happened to them?” I repeat.

  “What do you think happened to them?”

  “They’re dead,” Ryan guesses.

  I shake my head. “No, they’re not dead. They’re in prison.”

  “Why would you think he’d spare them?”

  “Because it’s what I would have done. They’re a liability but they’re valuable, but the big question is what are you going to do with them?”

  “It’s already happening,” Vin confirms. “We’ve been using them to keep up communications with the other Colonies. We rotate them. Put each of them on the radio at different times to keep up appearances that everything here is business as usual.”

  “How long do you think you can keep that up?”

  “Not much longer,” he admits, taking a seat. “We’ve been buying time, that’s all. It’s not a permanent solution by any means.”

  “What’s your plan then?”

  “You.”

  I can’t help but laugh. “Me?”

  “You were always the plan. Well, except for when I was the plan. You’re what we’ve been stalling for. We’ve been waiting for you to come back with reinforcements. You were supposed to come back with The Hive, but I guess you had other plans.”

  “You mean Marlow had other plans,” I say sharply, bristling at the implication that I didn’t do my job. “We went to him. I stood in the center of his filthy lair and I told him everything. I even showed him your ring, and do you know what I got in return?”

  “A ride up a brown creek without a paddle?” Vin asks knowingly.

  “Winner, winner.”

  “I’d like it back, by the way.”

  “What? The boat?”

  “Hope you can swim,” Ryan mutters.

  “No, not the boat,” Vin says impatiently. “The ring.”

  I slide it off my finger and toss it to him. He catches it easily. When he slips it on his own finger, I swear I see him relax. As for me, my hand feels oddly empty without it.

  “So you brought me savages in place of soldiers?” he asks.

  “I brought you what I could get. We even went to Vashon Island looking for help.”

  Vin sits up straight, suddenly very interested. “For real? You hit up the Vashons?”

  “We tried.”

  “And how’d that go?”

  “We ended up in prison,” Ryan tells him frankly.

  “And now they hate us,” I add. “Colonist boats showed up out of nowhere so they assumed we were spies. We barely made it off the island alive.”

  “Colonists showed up how long after? Days? Weeks?”

  “Days. There was a fight out on the water. The Vashons won. We barely survived it. The boat Marlow lent us sank, we ended up on the Colonist shore, and that’s when we were found by the cannibals.”

  “And the cannibals took you in like the compassionate, social butterflies that they are?” he asks sarcastically.

  I scowl at him. “No. They took us prisoner.”

  “You’ve been to jail a lot lately,” Vin chuckles. “Do you want me to lock you up for the night? Will you feel more comfortable?”

  “They took us to their city under the streets,” I continue. “That’s when they offered to help us.”

  “And why would they do that?”

  “Because they hate the Colonists as much as anyone else—maybe a little bit more,” Ryan tells him.

  “They told us about the arrangement,” I snap.

  I shouldn’t have brought it up, not now, but I couldn’t help it. It was out of my mouth before I even knew I was saying it.

  Vin looks at me blankly. “What arrangement?”

  “The one in your stables. The one with the babies.”

  I’ve never been afraid of Vin, and there’s no visible reason why I should be now, but there’s something in the air that changes then. It becomes hotter. Tighter. I feel it burning and turning in my lungs, not filling the space the way it’s supposed to. It’s more like a living, angry, writhing thing threatening to strangle us all with each breath.

  A scream cuts through the air and the tension. It’s gut-wrenching, and for a brief, crazy moment I wonder if I made it. The tightness in the room and in my chest make it completely possible, almost probable. But then I hear running outside as Vin leaps from his desk and sprints for the door, and I know it wasn’t me. It’s coming from farther off in the building. Somewhere downstairs.

  We follow Vin out of the office, down the stairs, and into the open sleeping area. He stops there, his eyes scouring every corner of the room like a wolf sniffing the air for its prey. The scream sounds again and we’re on the move. I know where we’re going now.

  The showers.

  Chapter Eight

  When we reach the door to the showers we find a crowd already forming. Vin shouts once, just a bark of a noise, and the crowd immediately thins to let him through. I’m amazed by it, but the amazement is short-lived. When I enter the room behind him, my amazement turns to horror.

  The floor is bathed in blood. Vibrant red. Living. Warm. The walls are sprayed in a mist of rusty red that’s running down the gray surface, dripping onto the floor, and racing down to move toward the drain. It looks like the little rivulets are trying to get back to the source—to find their way home, but home is just a memory. The heap of red gore and white bone barely resembles a human body anymore. It’s been gutted from the center, desecrated to the very edges.

  At the edge of the mess is a woman I recognize from the sewing rooms. She’s on the floor on her knees in the corner, as far away from the body as she can get. She’s sitting silently with her hand against her mouth, her eyes watery and wide. Several people are sitting with her as she shakes uncontrollably.

  I hear someone in the hall vomit on the floor—coughs and heaves, the splash of their dinner hitting the cement. Someone else gags. Footsteps run away. It’s then that I realize just how sheltered these people are. There was a time when a sight like this was as common as bird poop; you couldn’t turn a corner without coming face to face with this stuff.

  “Who is it?
” someone asks tremulously from the corner.

  I look at the thin delicate wrist, one of the few sections of skin still intact. It’s a woman.

  “Can you tell?” I ask Vin.

  He shakes his head.

  Ryan steps up beside me. “This is the room we came in through. It was clear when we got here. Joss, Trent, and I were the last to leave it.”

  “Not exactly.”

  We all turn to look at Trent.

  “What do you mean?” Vin demands.

  “When we left there was a cannibal guard still inside the tunnel, waiting just under that drain.”

  “Bryan,” I breathe, remembering my tall creeper.

  “He was one of them?” Vin asks, pointing to the ceiling where the cannibals wait somewhere above us.

  “Sort of,” Ryan explains. “He was with them but he wasn’t exactly like them. He was more… predatory than the rest.”

  “He freaked me out,” I agree.

  “Roll call! Rec room! Now!” Vin commands, turning sharply to the crowd at the door. “No one is left alone! Buddy system goes into effect immediately! Go!”

  Everyone flies into action. Only Vin, my Lost Boys, two guards, and I stay in the showers. When we’re alone, Vin turns to the guards, his eyes bright and hot.

  “Lock this space down. That drain is a weakness. Seal it.”

  “Wait,” I tell the guards, turning to Vin. “You can’t do that. That’s how we got in. How will we get out?”

  “You’ll take the water, same way you left before. You don’t need to sneak in and out.”

  “Yes, we do. What if the other Colonies have eyes on this place? They can’t see us coming and going over the water or they’ll know something is up. This tunnel is our only way.”

  “You expect me to leave it open to the cannibals after this?” he asks angrily, pointing to the woman on the floor.

  “Guard it, but don’t seal it. We need it open.”

  “For what exactly? Where are you going?”

  “It’s not where I’m going, it’s who’s coming. Elijah, the head of the cannibals, will want to come here to talk about what we do next.”

  Vin steps up until he’s towering over me. “And what do you think is happening? You think I’m allying with them now?”

  “You need to team up with someone,” I snap, not intimidated by him. “You can’t keep this place by yourself. Word is going to get out to Marlow and the Colonies that this place is under new management, and when that happens you’ll have angry armies knocking at your door. What are you going to do then? You’ll lose this place so fast you won’t even remember it, and any chance we had of being free will be dead.”

  He chuckles. “Still reaching for that star, huh, Kitten? Freedom?”

  “Isn’t that what all of us want?”

  “It’s a dream. A stupid one.”

  “You wanna be Marlow’s stable boy forever?” I ask, aiming for the belt, or just below. “Do you want to answer to him for the rest of your life? You’re not that old, Vin. You’ve got a lot of years left and you can spend all of them under another man’s thumb or you can be your own man and live your own life free and clear of all of them—the Hive, the Colonists, even the whores.”

  Vin stares at me with hard eyes that give nothing away but I know he hears me. I know he wants that freedom because Ryan is wrong: we are alike. And deep down Vin wants it just as badly as I do.

  “We have one chance,” Ryan says, coming to stand beside me. “One shot at taking them out, but without this Colony we have nothing.”

  Vin steps back suddenly, rolling his shoulders. He glances back at the guards watching from behind him. Listening.

  “We’ll have a meeting,” he says curtly. “We’ll let the people decide what we do, both with the building and the cannibals.”

  “Are you going to kill them?” I ask anxiously.

  He shrugs. “We’ll see, won’t we?”

  ***

  It only takes ten minutes to round up everyone in the entire building—two hundred people plus the cannibal prisoners and three reluctant outsiders rallied into one location in under ten minutes. Vin runs a tight ship.

  Ryan, Trent, and I stand against the wall in the common room watching people chat quietly as we wait for Vin to break the news. With how quickly gossip flies in this place, I assume everyone already knows. But do they know who they’ve lost?

  Vin stands in a huddle with six other people—four men, two women. I don’t recognize any of them. They’re talking in hushed tones, the men and women holding pieces of paper that they were all pointing to at first, but now dangle limp and useless in each of their hands. Vin is standing in front of them, his arms crossed over his chest and his handsome face patiently serious.

  “Did you know her?” Ryan whispers to me.

  I shrug. “I don’t know. I couldn’t recognize her. I doubt it, though. I see most of the people I was even a little bit close to.” I jut my chin toward the southern corner of the room where a big man stands next to an older redhead and a young brunette. “That’s the kitchen staff over there. Aside from Vin and Nats they were my only real friends. They’re the ones who first told me about the rebellion.”

  Ryan follows my gaze. I think Trent was already looking.

  “They made the pie?” Ryan asks, his face very, very serious.

  I laugh. “Yeah, they made a pumpkin pie to bribe me. It worked. It was delicious.”

  “What are their names?” Trent asks.

  “Oh, um,” I stutter, thrown by the question. It’s personal and it’s coming from Trent. I expect battle stat questions from him: How much can they lift? What’s their dominant kill hand? Weapon of choice? “The big guy is Steven. The redhead next to him is Crystal, and the brown-haired girl is Amber. The other ones I’m not sure about. I think one of the other guys is named John? Don? Dan? I don’t remember. We didn’t talk much.”

  “Where’s Nats?” Ryan asks.

  I scan the room but I don’t find her. My blood goes cold. “I don’t see her.”

  “They might not have everyone here yet.”

  “Vin would have recognized her,” I say, voicing the fear coursing through my veins. “If it was her in that room, he would have known her.”

  Ryan only nods and I wonder who exactly I’m trying to convince—him or me?

  Suddenly Vin steps into the center of the room. Without a word from him, without a gesture, the entire room falls into silent expectation.

  “Whoa,” I breathe.

  “No doubt who the boss is here,” Ryan mutters.

  “As you all probably know by now, there’s been a breach,” Vin begins. He isn’t even trying to raise his voice. He’s speaking in a normal tone, just daring people to make a sound above him. “It’s been contained. The intruders have been captured. Their intentions are still up for debate, but we’ll get to that in a minute. The most important thing that has to be addressed immediately is one I’m sure you all know about by now. We’ve had a fatality in the building.”

  There’s a scattering of gasps. Maybe a few people were somehow out of the loop, but for the most part the room is unaffected. They already knew the what. They want to know who.

  “I’ve spoken to the Mayors,” Vin continues, looking over his shoulder at the men and women he had been talking to, “and through roll call and head counts we’ve been able to find out who we’ve lost. It was Rebecca, from the gardens.”

  A wider-spread gasp runs through the ranks. There are tears immediately being shed and quiet sobs are peppered through the room.

  “I know we’re all very sad to hear about what happened to her. We’re also very angry because her death could have been avoided.”

  “I heard it was a Risen attack,” a man calls out.

  “Are there Risen in the building?” someone else cries out fearfully.

  Vin shakes his head solemnly. “It looked like a Risen attack but we’re sure it wasn’t.”

  “Then what was it?”


  “Who was it?”

  Vin glances at me for the briefest of seconds. Just long enough to make me sweat.

  “It was a cannibal,” he tells the room.

  Chaos. Absolute freak out chaos. People seriously scream in fear. I haven’t seen anything like it since the early days, and the sight of it now makes me shift on my feet nervously, eyeing the exits.

  “Calm down, calm down,” Vin says loudly, his voice bizarrely soothing. “The Guard is sweeping the building right now. If any other outsiders are still here, they won’t be for long.”

  “Are these them?” a woman shouts, pointing angrily at the cannibals held prisoner.

  “Yes,” Vin confirms. “They’re cannibals.”

  More chaos. There are curses mixed inside angry shouts. Some people move farther away from the prisoners, eyeing them cautiously. For their part, the cannibals stay perfectly still. None of them make a sound or move a muscle as a room full of people is whipped into an angry frenzy around them.

  “Stop!” Vin commands sternly.

  The Colonists quiet almost immediately.

  “It’s being taken care of. You’re safe. I promise you. From what I’ve been able to find out so far, these are not the people responsible for what happened to Rebecca, though we are still looking into it and they will remain in custody.”

  “They should be killed!”

  “Put them outside the gates! Let the Risen have them!”

  Movement from the cannibals catches my eye. I glance over to find Macy looking right at me, her eyes pleading and watery. She looks terrified.

  “Wait!” I shout. I’ve stepped forward into the center of the room with Vin before I even realize what I’m doing. When I do realize it, when every eye in the entire place is on me, I wish I could sink into the floor and disappear. “I—we have—”