by Tarah Benner
Flipping on my interface, I locate the folder, encrypt the files, and beam them to Shane over the Dark Net. His interface glows briefly — indicating that he received the files — and he falls silent for a moment as he flips through the records of the patients admitted to the medical ward.
As he skims, his face grows somber. “This is very disturbing,” he murmurs. “I always knew something would bring us down, but I never imagined it would be a damned virus.”
He looks up and glances at Sawyer. “Who else knows about this?”
“I’m not sure,” I say. “Constance. The board. Me and E —” I stop, suddenly overwhelmed with grief at the thought of Eli awaiting his death somewhere in Control. “The drifters have already put a plan into motion to infect 112. The virus will be here soon . . . if it isn’t already.”
“How do you know that?”
“We spoke to the drifters. We tried to tell Walter Cunningham, but he didn’t believe us. And now Eli’s . . .” I stop.
I can’t say it out loud because vocalizing it will somehow make it more real.
“I heard about Parker’s predicament,” says Shane, feigning sympathy. “Terrible business.”
Fighting the overwhelming urge to cry, I grit my teeth and stare up at the ceiling.
“It’s bullshit,” I choke. “The Recon public defender is useless.”
“Oh, you don’t have to tell me. Wyatt Thompson is a nasty little leech. That’s why it’s always best to secure your own representation, if you can afford it.”
“Right,” I say. “Actually, I . . . I wanted to ask you for another favor.”
“You want my help keeping Parker off death row,” he says, not sounding at all surprised.
I nod, too nervous to vocalize it.
Shane clucks his tongue sympathetically. “Getting accusations of treason to go away isn’t easy.”
“But it is possible.”
It comes out as more of a question than a statement, and Shane meets my gaze with the gleam of a deal in his eyes.
“Is it likely? No. Is it possible?” Shane shrugs. “I’ll say this: The more people you know in this compound, the more things are possible.”
“Jarvis?”
Shane looks vaguely surprised.
“I heard he was on your payroll,” I say quickly.
He shakes his head. “Jarvis prefers to operate inside the law . . . occupational hazard, I’m afraid.” He pauses for dramatic effect. “Luckily for you, I have no such reservations.”
For a moment, none of us says a word. Then, feeling bold, I ask, “Could you make it all go away? The treason charge . . . the trial . . . the execution . . . everything?”
“I could . . .” says Shane. “If I were motivated to help you.”
By his indifferent tone, I can tell he doesn’t see this as a likely possibility.
“And what would motivate you?” I ask. “I don’t have very many credits.”
“I wouldn’t ask for something as pedestrian as credits,” says Shane, resuming his careful pacing around the table. “I find that personal favors tend to be worth a lot more.”
“What sort of favor?” I ask, growing impatient. It feels as though Shane is intentionally dragging this out, but Eli doesn’t have much time.
“I can’t say,” says Shane. “I have a variety of needs, but I don’t really know how you could help me.”
Sawyer squirms, and I get a flash of horror as I imagine the sort of “favors” a man like Shane might have in mind. My disgust must show on my face, because he lets out a full-body laugh and shakes his head.
“Oh, Miss Riley, don’t panic. I’m a man just like any other, but my son already thinks badly of me. I wouldn’t want to add insult to injury.”
I must look confused, because he says, “My son carries a torch for you.”
“Oh.”
“Of course you and I both know that his affection is misplaced, but having hope is always better than a broken heart.”
Shane hinting at Blaze’s feelings gives me a slight pang of discomfort, but I push that aside to focus on Eli.
“I’ll tell you what,” says Shane. “I’ll do what I can for Mr. Parker.”
“You will?” The glimmer of hope inside me is both invigorating and terrifying. I want to believe Eli has a chance, but I’d be crushed if it turned out that Shane was just playing with me.
“Don’t look so surprised. My motives are not entirely altruistic. Parker is — was — my prize fighter. I’d love to see him make a comeback after this whole mess is over.”
I pause, waiting for Shane to propose some horrible bargain: another fight between me and Marta . . . drug dealing . . . illegal smuggling . . .
“As far as payment goes, I’d like to hold off on naming my favor,” he says. “Sometimes it’s more valuable to leave your options open.”
“You want me to agree to an unknown favor in exchange for Eli’s release?”
Shane shrugs as though we’re haggling over the price of a rug in the commissary. “Do you have any better offers?”
Sawyer tugs on my arm. I look over at her. She gives me a warning look and shakes her head once.
“Oh, come now, Miss Lyang. Don’t you trust me?”
“Not for a second,” she hisses.
I swallow and look into Shane’s cold eyes. I know I’ll regret making this deal later, but right now I don’t have another choice.
I didn’t see what Sawyer saw, but I can only imagine the horrors Eli suffered in Constance. Now he’s facing treason charges, which puts him just one step away from death row. There’s no way to get him out of this without calling on someone who will do what needs to be done.
Taking a deep breath, I stick out my hand and meet Shane’s cool gaze. “Let’s make a deal.”
twelve
Harper
I awake to the sound of frantic knocking on my compartment door.
Bleary-eyed and disoriented, I fall out of bed and stumble to the door in my tank top and sleep shorts. I throw it open without looking through the peephole, expecting to see Celdon or Sawyer.
Instead, I nearly collide with Miles as he storms into my compartment.
“What the hell is going on?” he yells, looking around as though he might find the answer hiding in my rumpled bed sheets or sitting on my desk.
“What?”
Miles rounds on me, filling my compartment with his massive frame. “What’s happened to him?”
If I didn’t know Miles, I would be terrified. His face is screwed up in fear, but his eyes are flashing with the wrath of a man hell-bent on getting answers.
“What do you mean?”
Miles can only be talking about Eli, but his questions don’t make sense.
“Eli! Goddamnit! What have they done with him?”
I shake my head in confusion. I have no idea what Miles is yelling about.
Exasperated, he grabs me by the arm and pulls me out into the tunnel. He’s so focused and scary that I don’t fight it. I just go along with it as he drags me down the cadet wing toward the officer’s tunnel in my pajamas.
My bare feet slap the cold tile, and the officers we pass stare at me with concern, but I’m too perplexed to pay them any attention.
Finally, Miles comes to a halt outside Eli’s compartment. Except it doesn’t look like Eli’s compartment. The door is wide open, and I see at once why Miles is so worried.
Eli is a compulsive neat freak, but this is not normal. All of his clothes and personal belongings are gone. His closet is empty, his desk is bare, and the bed has been stripped of its linens.
Stunned into silence, I stagger into the room and look around. I’m searching for some shred of evidence that we’re standing in the right compartment, because something is seriously wrong with this picture.
“Why did they take his things?” I ask, unable to contain the tremble of panic and fury in my voice.
“I don’t know!” snaps Miles.
His voice sounds husky and d
esperate. Like me, he’s fighting to accept the only likely explanation: Eli is dead.
Helplessness hits me like a moving train. Eli is gone, and they’re erasing him from the compound.
It isn’t right. No one even told me. He was supposed to have a month. I never even got to say goodbye.
Head spinning, I stumble backwards out of the room and nearly bang into the wall across the tunnel. Breathing hard, I feel my way down to the emergency stairwell and throw the door open with all the strength I have left.
My bare feet stick to the filthy concrete floor as I take the stairs down to Neverland. I throw myself against the door as hard as I can and burst out onto the dark dance floor looking lost and deranged.
There are a few dozen people still swaying to subdued techno music, but they don’t pay any attention to the crazy girl standing in the doorway.
I go straight for the stairs leading up to Shane’s office. There’s a new guard on duty who has no idea who I am, but I lunge past him and pound on the door with my fist.
“Open up!” I yell.
“Hey! You can’t do that!” splutters the guard.
Sausage-y hands grip me under the arms and pull me back, but I throw my foot out in a wild kick that makes the door shudder on its hinges. The force of it causes the guard to fall back against the railing, and for a split second I worry that we both might tumble off the landing.
Then the door swings open. I leap out of the guard’s grip, careen into the room, and nearly tackle a bewildered-looking Shane.
“This wasn’t our deal!” I yell, grabbing him by his silky black lapels and pushing him back into his office. “He was supposed to be released alive!”
“Jameson!”
“This wasn’t our deal!” I scream again.
Jameson grabs on to me again and subdues me in a headlock.
“You bastard!” I spit.
By now, tears are streaming down my cheeks. My brain has completely abandoned my body, and I’m running on pure insanity.
Shane turns away from me and speaks into his interface in a rapid tone. He glances over his shoulder once and then lowers his voice. I’m so confused about what’s going on, but I’m too devastated to care about anything other than Eli.
After a few seconds, I stop fighting and collapse in Jameson’s fat hairy arms. His heavy breathing drowns out Shane’s low murmurs, and I focus on the amber liquid sparkling in the glass bottle across from me.
Shane’s probably going to kill me for barging in here and threatening him, but I don’t even care. I’ve completely resigned myself to whatever I have coming.
I’ve already lost everything.
I’m not really sure how long it takes for Shane to breach the strained silence, but when he does, his voice sounds very far away. “Next time, you may want to get your facts straight before you barge in here and throw a tantrum,” he says in a cold, detached voice.
“Fuck you.”
“I really don’t know why you’re angry with me,” he continues. “I held up my end of the bargain. And I’m still deciding how you will hold up yours.”
“You were supposed to keep him alive,” I say, fighting the murderous urges rising up in my chest.
“He is alive,” says a surprised voice from behind me.
I twist in Jameson’s death grip, but I can’t quite get loose.
“Let her go,” says Shane with a wave of his hand. “She isn’t going to do anything stupid.”
Jameson releases me, and I wheel around to face the newcomer. Blaze is standing in the doorway, looking lethargic and a little weary.
“What?”
All I heard is that Eli is alive. I wouldn’t believe those words coming out of Shane’s foul mouth, but hearing them from Blaze makes me think they could be true.
“Eli’s alive,” Blaze repeats.
“Where is he, then?” I splutter. “I went down into the officer’s tunnel and saw them cleaning out his compartment. It was like they were trying to erase him.”
Blaze’s face falls, and he shifts his feet uncomfortably. “I don’t know what to tell you . . . but he is alive.”
“Is he out of the cages?”
“Yeah.”
Something about Blaze’s tone makes me panic. He doesn’t want to tell me what’s really going on, which can only mean bad news.
“Where is he now?” I repeat, more desperately this time. “If he’s alive, then I want to see him.”
Blaze sighs and throws his father a look that’s steeped in regret and exasperation. But then he turns to me and nods. “I’ll take you to see him.”
I don’t look back at Shane or Jameson. They don’t matter right now.
I follow Blaze straight out of the conductor’s office, down the loud metal stairs, and back up to Recon. I half expect him to take me to the training center, but Blaze leads me toward the megalift instead.
“How did Shane get Eli out of the cages?” I ask.
“How does Shane ever get anything done?”
His voice is laced with bitterness, but I’m too preoccupied with what’s going on with Eli to care about Blaze’s daddy issues. He stabs a button for the middle tunnels, and the doors slide shut.
“Did he make a deal for Eli?” I ask.
“Not exactly.”
“Then how —”
“As far as I know, he sent some files to Jayden and the board anonymously . . . saying that if they didn’t want everybody in the compound to know that a virus had completely wiped out 119, they needed to release Eli.”
“He blackmailed them?”
“Don’t sound so impressed,” says Blaze. His voice is uncharacteristically cold, and he’s looking at me with revolt.
“What’s wrong with you?”
On the one hand, using the deaths of thousands of innocent people as leverage against the board was wrong, but I’m sort of angry I didn’t think of that myself.
“What’s wrong with me?” Blaze splutters. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Wh —”
“Shane told me you gave him the files.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“It’s bullshit, Harper.”
“Why? I used that information as leverage to find out about my parents. Do you know what Shane would have done to me if I hadn’t handed it over?”
“I don’t care. That’s not the sort of information that you bargain with in secret. That’s the sort of information you share with the world. If what you say about the drifters is true . . . people’s lives are at risk.”
“Are you crazy?” I snap. “If I shared those files with Information, I’d be dead before they ever got to the news feeds.”
Blaze doesn’t say anything, so I continue.
“And anyway, what good would it do to start a panic? We still have no idea how the virus is spread or how to stop it.”
He sighs. “I guess.”
I can tell he’s still pissed at me, but I’m having a hard time caring. Blaze might be Shane’s son, but it’s not as though he’s had to deal with the shit Eli and I have been through. He doesn’t really understand what Constance is capable of or what they’ve already done to us.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“EnComm.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see.”
The megalift doors slide open, and I follow Blaze out into the bustling commissary.
Even though it’s early, the floor is already packed with merchants and shoppers. Their light, happy voices echo off the high ceiling, and the large windows give the impression that they’re out shopping in the sunshine.
As we pass under a flashing LED banner advertising weight-loss supplements, the canned voice gives me a vivid flashback to 119. I shudder and quicken my pace, looking around for Eli.
We pass several clothing kiosks and an electronics store, but there’s no one from Recon in sight. My panic is morphing into confusion. I’m starting to think that Eli isn’t here at all.
Finally, we break
away from the main area and reach an open tunnel running along the perimeter of the commissary. Vending machines and benches are spaced at uneven intervals between the enormous windows, and a few kids are chasing after each other, laughing and screaming.
Blaze leads me over to the nearest bench and hops up so he’s looking out onto the Fringe.
“Why are we here?” I ask. I’d trust Blaze with my life, but right now I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being tricked.
“Come up here,” he murmurs, holding out a hand.
Thinking of Shane’s comment about Blaze’s feelings for me, I ignore the gesture and climb up onto the bench next to him.
“I just needed to find a place where we could get a good view of the Fringe,” he explains, scanning the horizon. He touches his interface, and I hear a faint whirring noise as the view finder focuses in on something in the distance.
Looking out on the burnt-orange terrain, a dark cloud of unease settles over me. There’s no good reason why Blaze would be looking for Eli out in the desert.
Fear flashes through me. If he was released from the cages, Jayden must have deployed him again as punishment for disobeying her.
“There,” Blaze murmurs. He reaches out and touches his finger to the thick lead-coated glass, but I can’t see the telltale Recon uniform anywhere.
“I don’t have —”
Before I can even finish the sentence, Blaze pulls off his interface and places it over my ear.
For a moment, all I see is the zoomed-in view of the glass with its microscopic lead dots along the outer surface. Then the interface adjusts to my gaze and focuses on a point near the solar fields.
At first I think the view must be off. All I see are men and women in orange ExCon jumpsuits moving between the neat rows of solar panels. One guy in my field of vision is busy repairing the apparatus that moves the panel to face the sun.
Then my eyes drift to another man hauling what looks like thin metal pipes over his shoulder. I can see his muscles working beneath the bright-orange uniform. He’s tall and lean and strong, but something about him seems off.
His shoulders are stiff, and his back is ramrod straight. But most unusual is how uncomfortable he looks in his own skin.