It looked like she was terrified.
“Mrs. Amicus, are you alright?” I breathed, grabbing her hands in mine.
She didn’t look at me, but I could feel her trembling. “They’ll kill Meghan if I don’t come back,” she whispered.
“What? Who’s ‘they’? How many are there? What do they want?” My words came out in an inarticulate tumble, and Mata was now at my side.
“We won’t let anything happen to you,” she told Mrs. Amicus, putting her hand on her forearm, and then she turned to talk to the policemen. “Put down your guns,” she instructed them. “This woman is a hostage, and we won’t let anything happen to her.”
With much more certainty this time, the policemen obeyed.
“Tell me their message,” Mata said.
“We are like the hydra,” she whispered again, not making eye contact with either of us as she started to shake even more violently. “Cut off one head and two more will grow. Every single Doctor in Liminis will surrender themselves by the end of 48 hours, or we will kill one hostage every hour that they do not comply.”
I felt dizzy as my brain immediately began to sort through this information. Mata took Mrs. Amicus by the elbow, but I lost track of them and everyone else as my thoughts tumbled.
Though they would be taken off guard, the Doctors would be quick to retaliate. They wouldn’t use force—the Orchard was too valuable for that—but they could spin the threat to prove their point: “Knowledge is dangerous, and those born with it are now keeping innocent people violently hostage in an attempt to further their wicked agenda.”
The “Ten Colony Council” was excellent at manipulating the mob mentality, and if the citizens of Liminis fought back, the blood of the hostages wouldn’t be on the Docs’ hands . . .
The problem was, if people started to panic, they would be unwilling to listen, even to an ethereal witness. In the face of fear, they would cling to the governing body that they knew, trusting it to take care of them, and no amount of proof or ghostly defamation would be enough to change their minds.
People stick to what they know.
So it looked like Gideon would have to come back from the dead sooner than we had anticipated.
And that was something I wasn’t quite ready for.
Chapter Nineteen
Jade
The foreman lay on the ground with four oozing bullet holes in his chest.
He had been about to notify the police when Malek panicked and shot the roke out of him, and now he would never leave the Orchard in which he had labored, living his life the only way he knew how.
He had genuinely believed that Knowledge was evil; everyone in the Colonies did.
And he would never know any better.
“Gather up the rest,” Malek barked, tucking his pistol back into its holster, “and lock them in the storeroom.”
No one moved. It was as though none of us had realized the toll this revolution would have on our souls until we had witnessed that brutal murder. All eyes were on the corpse as screams echoed in the distance.
“This isn’t over yet!” he said again, shaking Christa, who stood right next to him. “We’ve got to gather the hostages or else we’re screwed!”
His words roused a few of the others, and they shouldered their guns and disappeared into the crops.
Swallowing my instinctual reactions to the murder, I knew he was right; I would sacrifice my soul if it meant that Third children would no longer be ripped from their homes to be turned into slaves. And we were running out of time.
Before we could lose our advantage, I hurtled toward the cornfields, which is where I would have hidden if a group of gunmen had shown up out of the blue and suddenly threatened my otherwise uninteresting life.
My gun held ready, I ducked into the stocks in order to search for hostages. My palms were slick, and I ran on pure adrenaline; I was afraid that if I stopped, even for a second, I would lose my nerve.
A flash of movement up ahead catapulted my stomach into my throat.
“Stop!” I shouted, pointing my gun at the retreating back of a Third woman. “I’m armed!”
Luckily, she obeyed, her hands reaching into the air. I’m not sure what I would have done if she hadn’t. Her tattoos stood out sharply against her pale skin, and when she turned around slowly, my stomach dropped back into my gut, now harder than a rock.
Of course it was Meghan.
Blood rose into my cheeks, but I didn’t back down. “Get to the barn, and I won’t shoot you.”
My hand was surprisingly steady.
“Jade, why—”
“Shut up! I told you to go!” I marched up to her, snatched her wrist, and shoved her in the direction of the store room where we had planned to keep the hostages.
She didn’t resist, and I followed her so closely, the gun was actually pressed into her back as we walked.
“Jade, I—”
My finger was dangerously close to squeezing the trigger. “Don’t you dare talk to me,” I growled through my teeth. “I saw everything. You and Victor have blood all over your hands.”
Luckily, she didn’t try and respond. If she had, I probably would have shot her.
The wind that blew through the crops picked up its intensity, and Meghan’s braid whipped wildly behind her as I marched her back to the front of the Orchard. A few more gunshots mingled with the screams that filled the air, but that didn’t matter—Victor’s hand had gripped the handle. Victor’s hand had pulled that handle. Victor’s hand had killed Gideon, and I knew that Meghan was behind it.
Grip. Pull. Thud.
Grip. Pull. Thud.
It’s all her fault.
Once we approached the store room at the front of the complex, Malek came running from one of the small outbuildings.
“I’ve got the registry!” he shouted, waving a piece of paper in his hand. “All the people working here today. We have to make sure we get them all.”
He reached the door to the barn at the same time that Meghan and I did. Ten terrified people were already crowded inside the building, and Cece stepped out to meet us, clearly agitated.
She snatched the paper out of his hand. “Let me see that.” Her eyes quickly ran down the list. “There are at least fifty people on here.”
“Most of them Thirds,” Malek said. “Tell the others to shoot those who resist, but they have to do everything they can to keep the Seconds alive. We need them for leverage.”
“Where are you going?”
He was already hurrying back toward the outer wall. “To keep an eye out,” he called over his shoulder.
Cece turned to me with a sigh of exasperation, but then her eyes widened. “Meghan?”
I couldn’t see Meghan’s face, but she didn’t respond to Ms. Phillips, so I assumed it was obnoxiously icy and distant.
“I’m sorry you got caught up in this,” Cece sighed.
“You’re only sorry because you know me,” she finally responded, her voice dark and dripping with unspoken accusation.
“Get in there,” I snarled, shoving her in the back with my free hand.
“Jade!”
But I ignored Cece, glowering instead into Meghan’s eyes, which were now watching me coldly. It was Victor who pulled the lever. Victor had been the one to murder Gideon, but I knew she had encouraged him. She was just as guilty as he was, and I didn’t care if either of them became collateral damage.
“She made her choice,” I said without breaking eye contact. “She’s the enemy now.”
“The only enemy is the Council.”
I flinched as Cece placed her hand on my arm.
“You have to remember that.”
Cece was wrong. Victor was the Council. And Meghan was Victor. And they both killed Gideon. For what? They told me they knew better, but they had lied. A surge of frustration and anger rushed through my arm, sending it flying through the air, and right into Meghan’s nose.
Crack!
“Meghan!”
A woman I didn’t know came running across the open field, an armed rebel chasing after her, calling for her to stop.
“Mother?” Meghan pulled her hands away from her bleeding face as the woman folded her into her arms.
“How dare you hit my daughter!” the woman screamed at me over her shoulder as she clutched Meghan to her.
“Stop!” her guard finally caught up, his gun pointing at her head as he breathed heavily. “I told you . . . to stop!”
My cheeks scorched as my thoughts tumbled into each other, unable to separate into an individual response. Your daughter? If you knew—if you cared—do you know that her boyfriend killed your son? What a rotten parent you turned out to be! My insides twisted with rage, but before it could find an outlet, the two Amicus women turned into the store room, Mrs. Amicus throwing me one last scowl as she led her daughter away.
Frustration boiled inside me with nowhere to go.
Screaming, I turned, aimed my gun at the nearest tree, and shot it three times. The whimpers of terror from the hostages doubled.
“Jade, you need to get ahold of yourself.” Cece grabbed my arm and forced me to look at her.
“She killed Gideon!” I screeched, baffled as searing tears poured down my cheeks. “I’m going to kill her!”
Wrestling the gun out of my hand, Cece wrapped her arms tightly around me, smothering me like a straitjacket.
“Shhh,” she whispered into my ear. “Shhh, it’s okay.”
It wasn’t okay. She knew that, but I couldn’t help but collapse into her arms, sobbing uncontrollably with suppressed emotion. Sounds of our siege raged on around us, but I shut my eyes tightly against her chest and allowed the darkness to swallow me.
He’s gone he’s gone he’s gone he’s gone.
“Phillips, get your girl under control! The police are here!”
I don’t know who spoke. I didn’t care. I only wanted to stop feeling—to escape the misery and abuse and heartache that were the only gifts this miserable life had ever given me. Gun shots rang through the air, but I didn’t know which side they belonged to. It didn’t matter, as long as one found its way into my brain, so I could finally escape—
“They’ve stopped!”
I’d been beaten.
“I slid the registry under the door. They know we have hostages.”
I’d been starved.
“They can’t get in. The Orchard is ours!”
Cheers.
I’d found hope, only to have it ripped away again.
“We should send out a messenger. Didn’t one of the hostages have a daughter?”
They had tried to kill me again and again, but they hadn’t succeeded. Wouldn’t succeed. Despite the darkness that had shrouded my entire existence, I still had something to fight for.
“Don’t you think that’s a bit dramatic?”
“Who cares? Isn’t that the point?”
I pulled away from Cece’s shoulder, my face stinging and numb from the tears. She watched me quietly, keeping her hands tentatively on my biceps.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Wiping my nose on the back of my hand, I nodded. I would kill every single one of those damned Doctors before I stopped fighting for my life. For the life of every Third alive, and for those who had yet to be born.
For Michael.
And for Gideon.
“Yes,” I said calmly. “Let’s go get ‘em.”
---
Twenty-four hours of arson, kidnapping, and destruction. What the Colony didn’t know was that it only took five of us to seize and hold the Orchard, and three separate pairs of rebels roamed the streets, taking prisoners, destroying resources, and spreading fear.
The Doctors had twenty-four more hours to respond to our demands, and if they didn’t—the deaths of our hostages would be on their hands, and they’d have the rest of their citizens to answer to.
Anyway, if we ran out of people to kill, they would all starve to death.
Trapped inside the walls of the Orchard, I didn’t know what the battle looked like on the outside, but we certainly weren’t winning people over from within. Malek and Christa were particularly hostile toward our prisoners, and it was clear the hostages both hated and feared us. I knew Gideon would be furious with me if he knew how I treated them, too, but I tried never to think about him.
Besides, his non-violent philosophies had been concocted when circumstances were much more promising, and things had changed. We couldn’t win, so all we could hope to do was crack the foundation on which the authority of the Council resided.
“But you can’t build a better world on the bones of murder,” he would say.
“We haven’t killed anyone yet!” I would argue back.
“What about the foreman? He was one of my coworkers!”
“It’s the Docs’ fault. His death is on them.”
“All I know is that man will never get to go home to his family again. They will hate you and everything you stand for.”
But those rebels outside the walls had promised that they would do more than destroy; they would tell everyone that Knowledge wasn’t evil, and they would do everything they could to discredit and demonize the Doctors while they were at it. I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but there wasn’t anything else I could do about it. I was trapped inside the Orchard walls just as much as the hostages were.
So it was without hesitation that I volunteered to go out with Malek and meet the Doctors who were sent to negotiate with us the next day.
“You’ve seen what Malek is like.” Cece took me aside, whispering earnestly in my ear as she gripped my arm tightly. “Make sure to keep things calm. That’s the point of these types of discussions.”
I nodded, though I didn’t know what she expected me to do if he refused to cooperate with the Docs. While most of the other rebels were open to the idea of negotiations, Malek had found allies in the shape of Christa and Tipene (Xander’s ex-Third who, it turned out, had also survived the blitz). They would accept nothing less than total surrender by the Doctors, and the rest of us only half-heartedly disagreed.
We would just have to see how the meeting went.
Armed with two pistols on my hips and a shotgun slung across my back, I felt extremely badass as I stepped up next to Malek, who looked at me approvingly.
“Not bad, Little Girl.”
He had taken to calling me that. It wasn’t my favorite nickname.
“You actually look like a soldier.”
I tried not to smile as I stood a little straighter. My hair—short and dark now—was just long enough to tuck behind my ears, and I had swapped my Second’s tunic for a dark green one I had found in the Orchard locker rooms. My boots were heavy, and in homage to Michael’s flair for the dramatic, I had smudged a little bit of dirt on each of my cheeks.
“In town, the Doctors are the law; in here, it’s us,” I said smugly. “They aren’t hunting me—I’m hunting them.”
Malek snorted. “What the hell?”
I shrugged as my face warmed a little bit. “I don’t know. Just something I read once.”
He laughed again, and pulled out his gun. “Whatever, Little Girl. Let’s go meet those motherhawkers and find out what the hell they want.”
With a last glance back at Cece (who nodded encouragingly), I stepped out of the Orchard with Malek at my side.
The scene that met us was harrowing. The few policemen left to guard the Orchard were filthy and clearly exhausted. Several woman and children were gathered around them, as though the only safe place in all of Liminis was at their sides. A thick layer of smoke hung in the air, and far off buildings still glowed orange with the fires lit by our allies. I wondered what the rest of the colony looked like. Was there any place safer than outside of the captured rebel base?
The two Doctors waited for us, toward the back of the crowd, and I felt the now-commonplace surge of fury that made me need to hit something as soon as I saw them.
Victor.
And Mata.
The last time I had seen her, she had thrown a grenade in my general direction, after betraying us to the Doctors and bringing about the mass murder of my friends and partners.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I growled as they approached, feeling my hands move automatically to the butts of my pistols.
Each of the policemen who still guarded the entrance snapped into position, ready to shoot me if I moved another muscle.
“If you kill either of us,” Malek reminded them coldly, “we’ll eliminate the hostages.”
“We’ve come to negotiate,” Victor said loudly, answering my first question, and the tension eased an infinitesimal amount.
“Not you,” I spat. I was used to Victor showing up at the most inopportune times, and the feeling of wanting to kill him wasn’t new. But if I wasn’t careful, it would be me making the rash decisions, instead of Malek—Bang. Bang. Negotiations over.
“Hello, Jade,” Mata said, but her voice was much less fairy-like than I remembered. “It’s nice to see you.”
Malek put a warning hand on my arm before I could rush at her.
Still, every nerve in my body was posed to attack. “It’s nice to see me?” I growled. “The last time I saw you, you tried to kill me.”
“Yes, I am sorry about that. But I thought you were one of Cameron’s posse, and once I arrived and found how Seconds and Firsts were being treated by his leadership, obviously that kind of behavior couldn’t continue.” It was very subtle, but her voice was now just low enough that the policemen behind her couldn’t hear.
“You told them where we were!”
With a tiny tilt of her head, she widened her eyes, urging me to lower my voice. “That is simply not true. They already knew. I was there to warn you all.”
“Bullroke!”
“Jade, please,” Victor’s voice was as quiet as Mata’s. “We need to talk to you, and we can’t be overheard.”
“Why do you think there were so many survivors?” she said, lowering her voice a fraction more. “I warned as many as I could, after Cameron was out of the way.”
“You told the Docs where to look for them after the attack! There was a list!”
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