Glory

by Maureen McGowan

  “Mrs. Kalin?”

  Caroline steps away from me, her eyes widening. “President Kalin! You’re her daughter!”

  “No I’m not. She says that I am, but it’s not true. My mother’s dead.” My chest tightens. “I know who Mrs. Kalin really is. She’s evil. She’s a Deviant, like us, but she thinks she’s better than everyone else—Chosen.” And she thinks I am, too. “Mrs. Kalin can plant thoughts in other people’s minds.”

  “Really?” Caroline struggles to her feet and pulls forward as I move out of reach. Hitting the end of the rope, she yelps in pain.

  Right now, it’s hard to believe Caroline’s a Shredder. She’s coherent and sane and doesn’t seem bloodthirsty or cruel. In fact, she’s showing almost no signs of dust madness. Can I trust her enough to loosen her bindings?

  She sits again. I step toward her, trying not to show fear. When I reach her, she still hasn’t moved, and I crouch down and stare into her eyes. I’d like to hear her thoughts again. I blink. I don’t want to hurt her. Not if I don’t have to.

  “I’m sorry for keeping you captive.” I touch her hands. “But I need to know more about what Mrs. Kalin is doing.”

  “I didn’t ask for this.” She shakes her head. “I’m not a killer, but Kalin forced dust on me. She made me want to kill. She made me enjoy hurting others.” She pounds her fists on her lap.

  “You’re safe now. And I’m sorry about Arabella. I really did try to save her.”

  She nods, and her shoulders rise and fall as she takes deep breaths.

  “Here.” I reach for her hands. “I’ll loosen your ropes.”

  “Thank you.” Her voice is clearer, less scratchy.

  The knots are tight, and it takes several minutes to get her hands free. I’d been hoping only to loosen them to decrease the chafing, but she’s so patient as I work, and it seems beyond cruel to leave her tied up. I untie her legs, too.

  After reading that journal and knowing how and why people died here, it’s no comfort to claim that I’m holding her captive for her own good. And if I’m holding her prisoner, who am I to be disgusted by Shredders, or horrified by Mrs. Kalin trapping people in the Hospital?

  I carefully pull the last of the rope from her ankles. “Are you hungry?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure? The water made you feel better, right? And with less dust in your system, you might get hunger pangs again. You need food.”

  She stares at my pocket and rubs her raw wrists. “Can I have more?”

  I put my hand on the bundle in my pocket. “I thought you hated Mrs. Kalin for making you take it.”

  “I just want one tiny breathful.” Her voice breaks. “It hurts so much.” She rubs her wrists again. “Please.”

  I pull out the cloth and instantly wish I were sitting farther away. But I don’t want to crush whatever trust we’ve forged, so I tip a small amount of the dust into my palm. Closing the cloth as best I can with one hand, I stuff it back into my pocket.

  Rising up onto my knees, I reach my palm toward her. She leans and inhales through her mouth, pulling the dust in a cloud from my hand.

  Her eyes flash with light and she slams back against the bars, breathing too heavily, too quickly. “More,” she rasps.

  “No.” Standing, I put my hand in my pocket to protect the bundle of dust as I back toward the door of the cage. “That’s enough. I’ll come again. I promise.”

  She leaps to her feet and tackles me.

  My head smashes against the floor and pain radiates through my skull. My vision goes fuzzy. I can barely breathe.

  Caroline claws at my arm, my hand, her nails digging in deeply. I let go of the cloth so I can use both hands to trap her neck in a choke hold, but it’s like the fresh lungful of dust turned her from a weakling to a powerhouse. She’s not much bigger than I am, but it doesn’t matter. She has the better of me. And she’s grabbed the dust from my pocket.

  She buries her face in the cloth and draws long breaths.

  “Caroline! Stop!” I grab the rope and try to figure out a way to tie her again. If only she’d look me in the eyes I could subdue her, but she doesn’t look up. Not until she’s emptied the cloth. Her shriek fills the room and my head.

  She lunges.

  I spin and kick her, landing a blow to her midsection, but it doesn’t faze her. Her ragged fingernails reach forward. I duck, hoping to flip her over me, but one of her hands catches my face and rakes down my cheek. I falter and miss the chance to take advantage.

  She wraps her arms around my waist, lifts me up, and throws me sideways against the bars. I drop to the floor. My wrists scream in pain as they take the weight of my fall, but I stand, ready to attack.

  Her eyes glowing, she stares at something behind me.

  I look over my shoulder—and see Burn.

  Chapter Thirteen

  BURN GRABS CAROLINE, trapping her arms against her body.

  “Don’t kill her,” I say.

  He frowns. “Get the rope.”

  I secure her ankles. She kicks, but I dodge, and she misses my face by an inch.

  Burn leans toward her ear. “Try that again, I’ll break your neck.”

  I quickly wrap the rope around her lower legs, tying off the knot, and Burn forces her hands forward so I can bind her wrists. She’s snarling, snapping, and shows no hint of the sane woman I was speaking to earlier. Once her hands are tied, he drops her feet.

  She tries to walk but topples forward. I grab her to keep her from crashing. She rewards me by biting my shoulder.

  Burn grabs her, forces her to sit against the bars of the cage, and binds her there, wrapping the end of the rope around her chest and through the bars. She twists and turns but can’t move.

  Veins pop out on Burn’s forehead. I put my hand on his arm, and he spins toward me sharply.

  “Calm down,” I say. “It’s okay.”

  “I am calm,” he says gruffly. “You don’t need to be frightened. Not of me. Not right now.”

  “I’m not afraid of you.” I draw my hand up to the bite on my shoulder. It’s going to bruise, but I don’t think she broke the skin.

  “What’s going on here?” he asks.

  “I—she had too much dust. It’s my fault. We were having a perfectly normal conversation just minutes ago.”

  “I heard.” He steps out from the metal cage and clangs the door shut. “How do you keep her from getting out?”

  I hand him the lock.

  “That’s it?” He looks at the device as if it’s easy to break.

  “She’s tied up.” I lift my chin. “And I store the key over there.” I nod to the shelves.

  He grunts. “It wasn’t tied up when I got here.”

  “I . . . That was a mistake.”

  “No kidding.” He glances back at Caroline who’s still wailing and straining against her bindings, her eyes casting an eerie glow, illuminating the skeletons.

  “Let’s get out of here.” He gestures toward the stairs. “This place gives me the creeps.”

  Tied the way she is, Caroline can’t get to what’s left of her water, but she’s so mad on dust that I doubt she’ll be wanting any soon. I’ll come back tomorrow night or the next day, once she’s less dangerous. Once she’s back to the way she was when I got here today.

  After storing the key, I start up the stairs. Burn follows, and I’m acutely aware of his presence behind me as we climb.

  The sky’s dotted with stars, but the ground’s dry, so I assume the clouds blew away without dropping any water. In the shadows, Burn’s an imposing silhouette, and I step forward, hoping to see his eyes, but he turns and strides toward one of the walls.

  “What were you thinking?” His voice is low but booming.

  I open my mouth to respond but don’t get the opportunity.

  “You’re holding a Shredder prisoner?” He raises his hands to his head, then drops them. “Do you know how stupid that is?”

  “It’s not stupid. I have questions, and
—”

  “You think that thing has answers?” He looks at me. “Even if you get it to talk coherently, Shredders can’t be trusted.”

  “It is a she,” I say, “and she already has talked to me coherently. When she was off the dust, she was different.”

  “Different?” The word drips with skepticism. He steps forward, and the moonlight catches his face as he rolls his eyes. “Once a Shredder, always a Shredder. There’s no ‘different’ for Shredders.”

  “How do you know?” I ask. “How does anyone know? Mrs. Kalin turned that woman—her name is Caroline, by the way—Mrs. Kalin made her into a Shredder. By force. She forced her to breathe dust through a mask in a lab. How can you possibly know what will happen if I can get her to stop breathing dust? If Shredders can be made, how do we know they can’t be unmade?”

  Burn folds his arms over his chest. “And what do you expect to learn from her?”

  “What Mrs. Kalin is doing. How the Shredders found us. Whether more will come. Why they came in the first place.”

  To bring you back, is what she said, but I can’t tell Burn that. Not if I want Caroline to live.

  “You think she knows any of that?” He raises an eyebrow. “Even if she’s coherent, she’s just a pawn. She doesn’t know anything useful.”

  “But what if I can help her? What if I can cure her?”

  “Cure her?”

  “How can you be sure it’s not possible? I’d think you of all people—”

  “Why me?” He frowns.

  “Because you want better control over your Deviance. Because you don’t want to hurt people. And because . . .” I chew on my lip.

  “Yes? What else?”

  “Because of where you were born.” I put my hand on his arm, softly, like touching him might trip a wire. “You told me that you were born in a Shredder camp.”

  He doesn’t respond, doesn’t move. I’m not sure if he’s breathing.

  “This is about what Zina said, isn’t it?” he whispers. “She told you I was a Shredder.”

  “Zina said a lot of crazy things when she was pretending to be you. Not to mention tonight. Burn, I know you’re not a Shredder.” He told me about the Shredder camp. Has he forgotten?

  He looks toward the sky.

  Suddenly cold, I wrap my arms around myself. I stare up at him for what feels like ages, but he doesn’t say a thing and won’t look me in the eyes. As uncomfortable as the subject is, I need him to understand the potential I see in Caroline. “Burn, if you were born in a Shredder camp, then your parents—”

  He holds up his hand to stop me. He breathes like he’s been holding his breath for days and his lungs are making up for lost time. It’s clear that he doesn’t want to talk about this, and I get that. I’ve got my fair share of parental issues.

  “Burn.” I rest my hand on his arm again. “The fact that you’re not a Shredder, that you’re not addicted to the dust . . . doesn’t that prove that it’s possible to recover from dust madness?”

  He stands very still, and the heat from his arm spreads from my hand through my whole body. His face is hard and impenetrable, his emotions shrouded. I want to know what he’s thinking, what he’s feeling.

  I wish I could help him.

  I was thirteen when I killed my mom, and I lost my memories of that day. Burn was just a baby when he was in the Shredder camp. He probably doesn’t remember his parents.

  He leans against the wall, and unless it’s a trick of the moonlight, his eyes are glassy. My eyes fill with tears, too, and I move a few inches closer, feeling the pull between our bodies, the magnetic connection I always feel around him.

  But then he bolts away, leaping over a six-foot wall to leave the ruins. By the time I’m outside, he’s at the edge of the woods.

  “Burn, wait!” I race after him.

  He stops but doesn’t turn back.

  “Please.” I slow down as I approach.

  His shoulders slump. “I don’t have parents. And I was never a Shredder.”

  My fingers ache to make contact. I slide my hand onto his back and his muscles react. “I never said that you were a Shredder.” I walk around to face him. “Talk to me.” I reach for him, but he puts his hands in his pockets.

  “My parents weren’t Shredders, either. They escaped from Shredders and then ditched me when they figured out what I was.”

  “You never told me that. What else do you remember?”

  “Nothing.” He kicks a rock. “I don’t really know what happened, okay? But that’s the way it must have been. I know they weren’t Shredders, because I’m not a Shredder.”

  “How do you know they abandoned you? How do you know they weren’t killed? How do you know they didn’t choke on dust, only leaving you alone because they died?”

  “No one wants a kid like me.”

  “But Burn.” I touch his coat sleeve. “The first time your Gift kicked in you were thirteen or fourteen.” That’s what he told me. It was the day he killed Zina’s brother.

  “That was the first time I know of,” he says. “You used your Deviance without remembering.”

  I swallow the prickles that rise in my throat. I have no interest in playing the who’s-done-worse-things game with Burn. Especially not now.

  I take a tiny step forward. “Let’s change the subject.”

  “To what?”

  “The dance.”

  “Zina?” He shakes his head. “Rolph will take care of it.”

  “No,” I say. “Before that. When you were watching me dance with Cal.”

  He raises his hands, palms toward me. “No need. Not a problem. I get it. I’ll stay out of your way.”

  He turns and sets off at a run. I yell after him, but this time he doesn’t stop.

  Chapter Fourteen

  HOW DID YOU get those scratches on your face?” Drake asks as we take our seats in the Assembly Hall the next day.

  “I ran into a tree.” I touch the marks Caroline left. They’re tender.

  “You should take some dust,” Drake says. “They’ll heal faster.” The cuts on his face and neck from that Shredder are almost gone. And seeing Jayma, you’d never know she was shot.

  “Quiet,” I say. “Rolph’s starting.”

  The FA Commander takes a wide stance on the platform and the room falls silent. He looks older than he did when we met, not four months ago. Lines are prominent on his freckled forehead, and his reddish hair is flecked with gray.

  “As most of you know,” he says, “because of our alliance with Fort Huron, we have enough soldiers and weapons to mount another mission to Haven. But we can still use more volunteers. Anyone here who would like to join us, please stay after the meeting to receive your training schedules.”

  “When will we leave?” a man dressed in one of the Fort Huron uniforms asks.

  “As soon as we train the new recruits,” Rolph replies. “Current target is four days. Maybe five. We can’t leave it longer than that. Our people inside need our help. All the employees of Haven need our help.”

  Cal stands a few rows ahead of me. I haven’t seen him since the dance. “What are the reports from inside?”

  The lines on Rolph’s forehead deepen. “We haven’t had any reports for nearly two weeks. The Comps must have compromised our communication equipment.”

  Gwen stands. “With even more people going on this mission, who’s going to protect Concord?”

  “You will,” Rolph answers. “You, Terry, Alastair, and Greggor. The four of you will do twelve-hour shifts on the guard towers until further notice.”

  He’s not leaving anyone else? Those are the same ones who were here while he was in Fort Huron.

  “And if more Shredders come?” she asks.

  “Let’s worry about known risks, not remote ones,” he says. “Let’s worry about freeing all those people in Haven.”

  I stand. “You can’t leave Concord undefended again. The Shredders who attacked came here from Haven.”

  “So you
claim.” Rolph shakes his head. “But even if you can hear Shredder thoughts—”

  “I can!”

  He holds up a hand. “Even if I accept that you can, and even if I accept that the Shredder you killed was once in the Haven Hospital, it doesn’t mean more will come.”

  “But they had Comp uniforms and weapons. They used combat strategy we learned in COT. They were sent here.”

  Rolph frowns. “We can’t leave an FA unit behind on the off chance you’re right. You have no evidence to back up your claim.”

  “I agree,” Burn says. I glare at him, but he looks away quickly as if he doesn’t want to make eye contact.

  I bite my lip. I don’t want to tell anyone about Caroline. Not yet. I’ll talk to Rolph in private after the meeting and figure out a way to convince him. Once she’s recovered from the dust I gave her, I’ll get her to tell him what she told me.

  “Will someone shut up that girl?”

  Who said that?

  Scanning the room, I spot Zina standing on the far side. “Rolph, there aren’t any Shredders within twenty miles of here. If there were, they’d be spotted. A few wandering in the other day was a fluke. And they must have been weak and starved for dust, considering they were taken down by a bunch of kids.”

  “You can’t know that there aren’t more,” I say. “You can’t be sure more won’t come.”

  “And you can’t be sure they came from Haven.” Zina smirks.

  “Sit down!” Rolph commands. “Both of you.” He pauses for a moment as Zina and I take our seats. The entire room’s so quiet I’m not certain anyone’s breathing. At least Burn stayed calm. He’s wrong about which of us has more control.

  “Zina”—Rolph strides across the platform—“you’ve proved once again that you’re incapable of being a team player. I’m giving you a separate mission. I’ll brief you later.”

  My nerves stay on edge for the rest of the meeting. At the end, I rush up to be the first one to speak to Rolph.

  “You need to be careful about Mrs. Kalin,” I remind him. “She can get into people’s heads.”