Exposure (The Fringe Book 2)

by Tarah Benner

  The thought of a Recon operative giving information to the drifters is ridiculous, so that only leaves the possibility that they’ve been watching us for a while.

  “They did this, didn’t they?” Harper asks finally.

  I nod, unable to form the words. Fury is building inside of me, mixing with the panic and helplessness I always feel on the Fringe.

  “Is there another checkpoint?”

  “Not near here,” I sigh. “The closest one is five miles away.”

  Harper reaches into her rucksack, hefting the water bag in her hands. She’s almost out, and I’m on empty. It’s possible we could make it to the next checkpoint, but if it’s been compromised, we could be in a lot of trouble.

  “We need to go back,” I say. “Let’s check out the restaurant one more time and then head back to the compound.”

  Jayden won’t be happy when we return early, but I’m not about to risk our lives on a gamble. I’ll gladly take whatever punishment she doles out.

  Harper gets to her feet and replaces her water bag. Her hands and knees are covered in dust, adding to her unkempt appearance, but her brow is still set in an expression of absolute faith. You wouldn’t think I just led her a mile out into the desert without any water to show for it.

  We march back to the town at a much slower pace, both of us trying to conserve our energy. By the time the buildings emerge from the heat haze, we’re both exhausted and defeated.

  I squint up at the manufacturing plant, wondering if my eyes are playing tricks on me. There’s something sticking out over the top of the sloped roof. It could be a vent or a piece of debris, but it doesn’t look right.

  Then it moves, and I realize it’s a person.

  I freeze and grab Harper’s arm. Someone is watching us from the roof, and I’d bet he’s got us in the crosshairs of his rifle.

  Hot fear surges through me like molten steel.

  “What is it?”

  I stiffen for a second — caught on the edge of indecision — and then shove Harper out of the line of fire.

  She can’t see what I see, but she hears the gunshot. The bullet hits the ground next to her, emitting a small cloud of dust exactly where she was just standing.

  “Run,” I breathe.

  For once, Harper doesn’t put up a fight. We take off at a sprint toward the nearest structure, the mounting panic constricting my lungs.

  The drifters couldn’t have caught us in a worse place. Running for the houses puts us right out in the open, and on the other side of the plant, there’s a long stretch of road with nothing but an old warehouse and an abandoned carwash for cover.

  My legs are burning, but I force them to go harder.

  Harper is panting alongside me, and I swing her around the corner of the warehouse.

  We’re out of the sniper’s range for now, but the smooth-sided structure doesn’t provide much protection. I don’t know where else they might have snipers stationed, so I tighten my grip on her hand and make a break for the run-down old carwash.

  The broken blue “EZ Wash” sign is only thirty yards down the road, but it might as well be a mile. I don’t know if we’re going to reach it.

  The sniper shoots and misses again, but my entire body seizes as I imagine hot lead ripping through my back.

  The sound of our feet slapping against the bone-dry concrete floor of the carwash is a welcome relief. Somebody tore out the hoses and pipes long ago, but it provides good overhead cover and gives me the ability to scope out our surroundings.

  I stick my head around the corner and try to line up a shot, but I can no longer see the sniper.

  “Where are they?” Harper gasps. “I didn’t see anyone.”

  “On the roof of that huge building,” I groan. “He barely moved. I almost didn’t see him.”

  I don’t want to think about what would have happened if I hadn’t.

  “What do we do?” Harper huffs.

  I don’t answer her right away. I’m still trying to calm down enough to formulate a plan.

  “Stick to the edge of town,” I say finally. “We’ll have to go around to get back to the compound.”

  Harper’s brow crinkles in confusion. “The compound? I thought we were going back to the restaurant . . .”

  “Not anymore. They could have shooters anywhere. We’ll never make it in and out of there alive.”

  I know we have to move. It’s only a matter of time before they find us. Everything inside me is screaming to stay put, but sometimes you have to fight your natural instincts to survive.

  “We’ll go that way,” I say, pointing at another warehouse two hundred yards away. “Stay right with me, okay?”

  She nods, and we take off at a crouched run. I don’t hear any more shots, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t another shooter just waiting for us to cross his path.

  Once we leave the town, it will be open season for the drifters, but I don’t see another option. We can’t risk staying here.

  We take off again, and when we reach the warehouse, Harper collapses onto one knee to catch her breath.

  “We have to keep moving,” I pant, trying not to sound unsympathetic.

  “I know, I know.”

  She takes a couple beats to recover and then gets to her feet.

  Harper may talk back, but she’s a perfect soldier in the field. She takes orders without question and can keep pace with me despite my longer stride. She must be tired, but she won’t admit it, let alone whine.

  Our next sprint is slightly farther — from the warehouse to a filling station. All I can hear is my feet hitting the dry earth and the sound of our labored breathing.

  Then a bullet whizzes past my head and shatters the window of a car six yards in front of me.

  “Go! Go! Go!” I yell.

  We’re both already sprinting, but Harper picks up the pace. My body is running on empty, but all I feel is my heart hammering against my ribcage.

  I tear around the corner of the building just as another bullet ricochets off the sandstone-colored brick.

  My heart falters. I lost my grip on Harper.

  I yell her name, but it only comes out as a croak. I yell again, my stomach filling with dread.

  Then she stumbles around the corner, clutching the stitch in her side.

  “Shit!” I breathe, dragging a hand through my hair. Relief and fear are competing for my attention, and I don’t even give her a chance to catch her breath before pulling her toward the opposite corner of the building.

  My body is completely spent, which means hers must be, too. I point around the corner to the diner we passed on the way into town. There are two lonely cars rusting along the side of the road, which could provide a bit of cover if the sniper starts shooting again.

  I squeeze Harper’s arm once and take off.

  It’s this leg that really gets me. Before, the adrenalin was powerful enough to stave off the weakness in my legs and the fire in my chest, but I can feel my body slowing down, as though I’m wading through mud.

  Harper manages to stay right behind me, but I know she can’t possibly maintain this pace.

  Miraculously, we reach the cover of the diner, and I nearly collapse against the rough brick in relief.

  Harper’s face is bright red under her mask, and I can hear her heavy intake of air coming through the mic. I let out a relieved laugh, but she’s still too winded to join in.

  This time, I set a sixty-second timer on my interface to give us time to recover. It runs out too quickly, and I signal Harper to move again.

  I let my interface guide us straight toward the compound, trying not to think about the rifles pointed at our retreating backs.

  Once we leave the cover of the buildings, the uneasy itch between my shoulder blades intensifies.

  It’s supernatural — crazy even — but I know they’re watching us. I can sense the eyes on us from some lofty position on the edge of town, a drifter’s dirty finger poised over a trigger. I wonder why he doesn’t
shoot.

  Maybe they’re going to let us go home after all, I think. Maybe we’re the messengers and they want us to tell the compound to back the fuck off.

  It seems like a plausible scenario, at least. I’ve almost convinced myself that we’re home free. But then a new rock formation comes into view, and another gunshot shatters the silence.

  seven

  Harper

  The shot reverberates through the air, and every muscle in my body seizes violently.

  For a second, I’m frozen in place. Eli and I are still standing, but we’re about halfway between the town and the cleared zone with no cover.

  We don’t need to speak. We just run.

  Another shot fires — cutting cleanly between us. Eli crouches down automatically and then pitches forward and takes off again at a sprint.

  My feet move without any direction from my brain, which is good because my mind is paralyzed with indecision.

  Should we keep running or hit the deck? We’re completely exposed out here, and the only reason the shooter hasn’t hit us yet is because we’re moving targets.

  Eli flips on his interface to get a read on the perimeter, but I just focus on his back.

  He picks up the pace, glancing over his shoulder every few steps to make sure I’m right behind him.

  My back is still tense, waiting for a bullet to tear into my shoulder blades, but the feeling is returning to other parts of my body.

  My legs are slow and rubbery, and my skin is giving off an alarming amount of heat. My chest is burning from the lack of oxygen, but I know we can’t stop.

  I have no idea how far we are from the cleared zone. Half a mile? A mile? Eli doesn’t seem to have slowed his pace, but I can tell by his form that he’s exhausted.

  Then another shot pierces my eardrums, making my heart go haywire. I push my legs harder — telling my body to speed up — but then Eli lets out a strangled yell.

  He stumbles, slowing considerably, and I almost careen right into him. He’s still moving, but he’s clutching his thigh, where a dark pool of blood is seeping through his uniform.

  Suddenly I’m thrust back into my nightmares, with Eli dying right in front of me. My panic seems to have reached its upper limit, though, because instead of freezing, my mind sharpens.

  “How bad?” I pant. My voice doesn’t sound like my own. Nothing seems to be connected to my body anymore.

  “They just grazed me,” he growls. Eli is gritting his teeth in pain, but he clamps his palm over the wound and staggers forward. “Come on.”

  To my amazement, he keeps limping toward the perimeter at a good clip. Hands shaking, I flip on my interface and feel a surge of relief when I see we’re only a hundred yards away from the mines.

  I brace myself for another shot — this one meant for me — but apart from Eli’s ragged breathing, the desert is painfully silent.

  I lead the way through the mines, navigating with more confidence this time. Eli’s still going strong, and he’s coherent enough to force me to walk ahead of him — presumably so he can protect me from any stray bullets.

  We clear the mines, and I loop an arm under his shoulders to help him limp the last two miles to the compound. The sun beating down on us is somehow hotter than before, and Eli’s face grows paler with each step he takes.

  He’s losing too much blood.

  After a few minutes, I stop and kneel down on the ground in front of him.

  “What are you doing?”

  “We need to stop the bleeding,” I say, giving the hem of my overshirt a sharp tug. A rip starts, and I keep pulling until a section of it tears free. It’s a crappy bandage, but there’s no time to fish around in the pack for the first aid kit.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “No, you won’t. You’re losing too much —”

  Eli stiffens and draws his gun so fast, I think he’s about to shoot me.

  Instead, he aims over my shoulder and fires.

  I whip around just in time to see a figure in dark clothing collapse onto the ground.

  “What the hell? Is that . . .?”

  “It’s not possible,” Eli murmurs. His face has gone stark white.

  Before I can even process the fact that Eli shot a drifter in the cleared zone, he takes off toward the body. I follow him at a jog, marveling at how fast he moves for a guy who was just shot in the leg.

  The man is lying facedown on the cracked earth, but Eli yanks him onto his back and starts fishing in his pockets.

  His face is too tan for his complexion, tight and rough from a lifetime spent in the sun. He’s wearing a black T-shirt and a pair of camo utility pants, and there’s a rifle lying beside him in the dirt.

  “Nothing,” Eli mutters, having finished his search of the man’s pockets. “How the hell did he get past the mines?”

  “They removed some, didn’t they? That equipment they have must be able to read the signals the mines emit.”

  “But if they figured out how to breach the perimeter, where are the rest of them?”

  “Maybe it’s just him.”

  “No way. If they’re using the setup we found, this is an organized effort. This guy was the canary.” Eli’s eyes darken. “They’re doing recon of their own.”

  That thought gives me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. There’s only one reason the drifters would be performing recon on the compound: to prepare to launch an attack.

  “We have to get back,” says Eli. “We have to report this.”

  He sets off toward the compound at his normal speed, but after a few paces, he bends at the waist and clutches his leg again.

  Without a word, I kneel down and wrap the piece of my shirt around his thigh. The blood soaks it instantly, but I tie it off anyway.

  Gripping him under the shoulders, I stumble toward the compound with Eli in tow. My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat, and Eli’s entire body is tight and alert.

  “I wonder if anyone saw anything.”

  “I doubt it,” groans Eli. “Most people aren’t really looking for anything out here.” He winces from the pain. “To them, it’s all just backdrop. The Fringe doesn’t even feel like a real place.”

  I shudder. If they only knew.

  The farther we walk, the heavier Eli gets. I know it isn’t a good sign that he’s leaning on me more, but I don’t look down.

  I don’t want to see how bad his leg is because I won’t accept the possibility that I might not be able to get him back to the compound.

  His breath is coming in short gasps now. His face is tinged with pain and sunburn. Deep creases are forming in the corners of his eyes, and every time he cringes from the pain, it feels like a swift kick to the gut.

  I glance up at the dizzying sky — the sun that’s cooking us alive — and gain a new appreciation for how much I hate the Fringe.

  Eli takes another step, and his leg gives out. I push against him with everything I have left, but my back screams in protest. I’m not strong enough.

  Just as I’m about to collapse onto the uneven ground, I catch a flash of light in the distance. It’s only sunlight reflecting off the compound’s windows, but it dominates the horizon like a gigantic beacon, calling us home.

  “We’re almost there,” I croak, unsure if Eli can hear me. My voice sounds very far away.

  “Uh-huh.”

  I chance a look at Eli. His jaw is locked in a pained expression, and his eyelids are drooping closed.

  “Come on!” I yell at him.

  His weight is staggering. He’s still moving his feet, but his injured leg is limp and weak. It reminds me of the time I had to drag a drunk Celdon up to his compartment from Neverland.

  We’re so close, but I doubt anyone can even see us approaching. No one is looking for us. If I stopped and lay down right here beside Eli, we’d both bake in the sun until we were eaten by vultures.

  No one would see us. No one would care.

  But the image of Celdon in his stupid mes
h shirt languishing in Neverland wakes me up.

  It’s not just me and Eli out here. There are people in there — people I left behind. I can’t just give up. Not when we’re this close.

  I force my feet to keep pulling us toward the compound. I can see the airlock doors, and I’m sure we’re close enough now for the ExCon man on duty to spot us on the security feed.

  Our reflections in the brushed-steel doors stare hopelessly back at us, and I almost don’t recognize myself.

  I’ve become a wild creature with tangled hair and the face of a killer. Eli is a shell of the guy I knew. The Eli I trained with was indestructible, but the Eli draped around me looks like someone on the verge of death.

  Suddenly his weight seems to double. My legs wobble, and I realize he’s passed out. As much as I want to keep holding him up, his weight is too much for me.

  My legs buckle, and for three paces, my momentum is the only thing keeping us both upright.

  Just as I’m about to collapse, the airlock doors open, and two ExCon men in masks and hazmat suits jump out. They grab Eli under the arms, and when his weight disappears, I feel as though I could float away.

  I’m dizzy, and when someone pulls me forward, my vision goes all spotty.

  Voices echo in the chamber around me, and I hear the loud hiss of the airlock doors as we’re sealed in the radiation chamber. The voices instantly grow louder — reverberating in the small space — and my eyes strain to adjust to the sudden darkness.

  “Help him!” I meant to shout, but my voice comes out scratchy and weak.

  Hands grip my arms, forcing me into a tiny side chamber lit with a sickening blue light. The door slides shut, but I can still see the men holding Eli upright through the tiny window. His face is way too pale.

  “Somebody help him!” I yell again, banging my palm against the window. I need them to understand, but no one can hear me.

  Then I feel a gentle gloved hand grip my upper arm. “Harper! It’s all right.”

  I recognize that voice. But before I can make out the person in the hazmat suit, the old plumbing creaks, and I’m pelted with freezing water.

  For some reason, that sends me over the edge, and I start to panic.