Lockdown (The Fringe #4)

by Tarah Benner

  I follow his path to an open area between the solar fields and the perimeter. He dumps the pipes into a larger pile and turns back toward the compound. His face is flushed and sweaty from working out in the sun, and he’s squinting from the glare reflecting off the windows.

  It’s Eli.

  “Oh my god,” I choke.

  I zoom in to make sure I’m not imagining things, but Eli is unmistakable. He looks thin and gaunt from his time behind bars, but it’s definitely him.

  “Why is he out there?” I demand, rounding on Blaze.

  He sighs. I can tell he doesn’t want to be the one to fill me in, but there’s no way to avoid it now.

  “Shane told you he’d keep Eli off death row.”

  “Yeah . . .”

  Blaze glances at his feet. “Shane never goes back on his word, but sometimes things don’t shake out the way you’d expect.”

  “Don’t shake out the way I . . . What the fuck is going on? Why is he out there?”

  Blaze sighs and looks back at me with a pained expression. “Shane’s blackmail worked. The board forced Control to drop the treason charges and release Eli. He was court-martialed as soon as he got back to Recon. Just Jayden and a few other officers were present.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Jayden wouldn’t let Eli stay in Recon after he defied her like that,” Blaze murmurs. “You know how she is.”

  He lets out a long burst of air and looks at the floor. “She stripped Eli of his rank. He’s been demoted to ExCon.”

  thirteen

  Eli

  Miles of open desert sprawl as far as I can see. Normally, the wide expanse of sky and Fringe terrain set me on edge, but today all I feel is boredom.

  A few hours in ExCon are enough to numb me to the blazing heat and the monotonous routine. The ExCon guys work from oh-eight hundred to nineteen hundred, six days a week. We get a five-minute water break every hour and lunch inside, but apart from that, the heat is relentless. I’ve only been out here for two hours, and my undershirt and jumpsuit are already soaked with sweat.

  Normally, the men are divided into a field crew and a sky crew. The men in the field crew are tasked with examining the hundreds of solar panels for damage, repairing cracked cells, maintaining the stands, and adding new panels to the field as they’re produced. The sky crew drifts up and down the outer wall of the compound on pulleys, repairing windows and reapplying the thin lead coating that offers extra radiation protection.

  But this week the foremen announced a new crew: men whose jobs will be to erect a twelve-foot fence just inside the perimeter that carves a wide circle around compound land.

  Since I’m new, that’s where they placed me. It’s hard work, but it isn’t complicated. My training lasted all of ten minutes.

  As soon as I finish hauling the last load of metal posts out past the solar fields, I hear the man called Mike barking through my interface to join the men digging post holes. Yesterday they laid down a chalk line in the dirt and marked the ground with blue circles where the posts should go.

  “Did they say why — we’re putting up — a fence?” I pant to Marshall, the old leathery guy digging a few feet away.

  “Coyotes,” Marshall mutters through his mask.

  “Coyotes?”

  “Yee-up.” He falls silent and stabs his post-hole digger into the ground. His red face is dripping with sweat, too, and his thin old-man biceps are straining to shove the tool into the dirt.

  “Why would we need an electric fence to keep coyotes out?” I ask.

  “Boss said they was messin’ with the modules.”

  I stomp on the top of the post-hole digger with my boot, wedging it farther into the dirt.

  I’m calling bullshit on the coyote story. Coyotes don’t usually bother people, and they certainly don’t mess with solar modules.

  If I had to guess, I’d say the fence must have something to do with the drifter who broke through the perimeter.

  Ever since the ExCon strike, Recon has kept people patrolling the area just inside the land mines. There hasn’t been another breach since, but it’s limited the number of operatives who are available for deployment. I’m guessing Jayden has been pushing the board to let her devote all of Recon’s efforts to weeding out drifter leaders instead of guarding the compound.

  As the posts go into the ground, I start to get an uneasy feeling in my gut. I narrowly escaped a short life in the cages, but I feel as though I’m helping the board build a larger, more luxurious prison.

  None of the other guys are asking questions, as far as I can tell. They just keep their heads down and do the work.

  No one listens to ExCon workers, anyway. They’re virtually invisible to the higher-ranking sections because they spend most of their time outside the compound. And because ExCon’s votes carry the least amount of weight in elections, the board doesn’t have to work on their behalf.

  With all the tension brewing between ExCon and Recon, I’d expected to be greeted with contempt and hostility. But as soon as I donned that orange jumpsuit, I was one of them. ExCon people may be overworked, underpaid, and subjected to constant radiation exposure, but they look after their own.

  I met Marshall at the morning meeting when the Undersecretary of Exterior Maintenance and Construction handed me off to my foreman, Mike. I quickly learned that Mike only communicates in grunts and scowls, so I latched on to Marshall to learn the ropes.

  Marshall is a polite, soft-spoken man. His wrinkly skin and ring of gray hair makes me think he’s close to fifty, which means he’s been working out on the Fringe longer than just about anyone. He’s one hell of a digger, but he doesn’t say much. The only topic that’s made him pause work all morning is boxing.

  When I let it slip that I’d been in a few illegal fights, he let me know that he didn’t approve of the way the sport had devolved within the compound. That morphed into a thirty-minute diatribe against Control and all the young thugs who’d hijacked the sweet science as part of a juvenile rebellion.

  I can’t remember a time in the compound when illegal fights didn’t include knees, elbows, and other dirty moves, but his tirade makes the repetitive work go a lot faster.

  By lunchtime, our crew has erected poles in a curved line that stretches about half a mile. The bell on the other side of the solar fields signals lunch, and we drop our tools where we’re standing and head for the compound.

  When Marshall and I reach the loading bay, a crowd of men and women are already waiting for the first set of doors to open.

  Mike scans the fields for stragglers and then touches his interface to signal the guy manning the door. There’s a high-pitched beep as the doors swing open, and we all rush inside to get to the loading bay.

  It’s hot and stuffy in the staging area, but as soon as the second set of doors opens, a welcome burst of cold air hits my face. There’s a collective moan of relief, and we all shuffle through the loading bay and out into the main tunnel.

  In my brief tour of ExCon, I learned that most of their operations take place on the ground level. That’s where the solar modules and thick lead-coated window panes are repaired.

  The other workers break off in clumps to head to lunch, and suddenly I feel very alone.

  I can’t go to the canteen — not like this. I can’t stand the thought of enduring the stares of all the Recon workers when I walk in wearing ExCon orange.

  I turn toward the emergency stairwell to head back to my compartment before remembering that it’s not my home anymore. All my shit has been moved to a storage locker, which I won’t be able to access until I receive my new housing assignment.

  I’m about to crowd onto the megalift with the other sweaty, smelly men when I see Harper standing at the end of the tunnel.

  She appears so suddenly that I wonder if she’s a mirage brought on by the heat. She’s wearing her dark hair down around her shoulders, tight black pants, and a plunging blue tank top that leaves little to the imagination
. She looks so incredibly beautiful and so, so sad.

  But then she takes a step forward, and I convince myself that she must be real. I start walking briskly toward her, and she moves to meet me halfway.

  I know I must smell disgusting, but that thought abandons my brain as she wraps her arms around me. I bury my face in her soft, silky hair and squeeze as hard as I can.

  I can’t believe she’s here. As far as I knew, she was still trapped in the cages. I never had the chance to track her down between my release and transfer to ExCon.

  “Oh my god . . .”

  She pulls back ever so slightly and starts peppering my face with soft, frantic kisses.

  I sigh into her mouth and hug her tighter, and she collapses against my chest.

  “I thought you were dead,” she whimpers into my neck. “I thought they executed you.”

  “What?”

  “Jayden told me you’d been transferred to Control. She said you had less than a month. And then I saw them emptying your compartment, and I thought . . . I thought . . .”

  Hearing the distress in her voice makes my heart hurt, so I pull her in and cradle her head between my chin and shoulder. “Shh. It’s okay. Everything’s okay. I’m here. I’m all right.”

  Finally, Harper pulls back to look at me, eyes glistening with unshed tears. That’s when I notice her shiner and the swelling around her nose.

  “What the hell happened to you?” I ask, lifting her chin to examine the damage.

  “Long story,” she breathes.

  I want to hear all about that later, but something else she said intrigues me more.

  “If Jayden told you I had a month, why did you think they’d executed me?” I ask, smoothing down her hair and holding her head in my palm.

  We’re catching a few disgusted looks from the people squeezing around us in the tunnel, but I’m so absorbed with Harper that I don’t care.

  “I-I went to see Shane the other night.” She drags in a hard little breath. “He told me he could keep you off death row. But when I saw all your stuff gone, I thought I’d somehow made things worse.”

  “Wait, wait, wait. Shane got me out of the cages?”

  Harper shushes me and glances from side to side to make sure we weren’t overheard. “Nobody can prove it was him. But he blackmailed the board and Jayden to get you released. He sent them the records from 119 that I owed him from before.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  This is completely new information to me, and the thought of Harper wandering down to Neverland after Shane tried to have her assassinated makes me panic.

  “You went to Shane?”

  “I’ll explain later,” she says dismissively.

  “Are you crazy?”

  Harper opens her mouth, but I cut her off.

  “Shane tried to have you killed, Harper. What part of that don’t you understand?”

  Now she’s annoyed. “Don’t talk to me like that,” she snaps. “I understood the risks, okay? And I had to visit Shane to give him information on 119. I owed him that for telling me about the Fringe Program. I asked him to get you cleared, and he agreed.”

  Harper dumping all this information on me at once is making her story difficult to follow. And by her hurried tone, I get the feeling she’s rushing me toward the conclusion in the hope that I’ll ignore a few crucial details. But there’s something she isn’t telling me.

  “Shane doesn’t hand out favors for free, Harper. Those files were payment from before. So what did you offer him this time?”

  Harper swallows, and a look of intense distress flickers across her face. Part of me doesn’t want to know what she had to promise, but I already asked.

  “I said I’d do him a favor,” she murmurs. “He didn’t say what.”

  “And you agreed to that?” I snap. “Harper! You just wrote the most dangerous man in the compound a blank check.”

  “I realize that, okay?”

  “Why would you —” I break off, dragging a hand through my hair in frustration.

  “What would you have done?” she splutters. “You were going to be executed, Eli. I was out of options!”

  I can sense our discussion morphing into an argument, but after spending days being tortured by Constance and thinking I was going to die, the last thing I want to do is fight with Harper.

  “Okay, okay,” I murmur, taking her wrist gently in one hand and drawing her into my chest with the other. “I understand.”

  Harper gives in to my embrace more easily than I expected. I suppose she’s just as exhausted as I am.

  Everything is so messed up, and right now, I’m just grateful to be alive and have her in my arms.

  “It’s all right,” I whisper, stroking her hair. “I wish you hadn’t made a deal with Shane, but it’s done now.”

  “I’d do it all over again,” she says.

  Her voice comes out muffled with her mouth smashed against my chest. And despite my worry, I find myself grinning at the stubborn, impossible girl in my arms. “I know.”

  fourteen

  Celdon

  It happens so quickly, I almost don’t believe it. As soon as I open up a pinhole in the firewall, a drifter slithers on through.

  It’s not some amateur performing a vanilla scan on all the thousands of ports in our network; it’s systematic, careful — stealthy. This guy knows exactly which ports to target, and he’s done a pretty good job of covering his tracks. I wasn’t able to get a read on his location the first time he slipped in, but I just have to be patient and wait for him to make a mistake.

  Jayden sent me the file from Eli’s torture session, but I trashed it and destroyed all traces of it from my hard drive. I’ve done a lot of shit for Constance, but I’m not going to help Jayden lure Owen into harm’s way.

  Swiftly, effortlessly, the hacker accesses compound public records. I know I should shut him down, but I’m curious what he’s looking for.

  I watch, frozen with intrigue, as he pulls up the placement data for my class. Then he hacks into Operations’ encrypted housing records and starts snooping through compartment leases.

  I scramble to kick him off the network, but just before I do, I see something that both disturbs and excites me: The hacker is video messaging me.

  A blank avatar fills my screen, and suddenly the ringing is all I hear. It’s maddeningly loud and tinny in my tiny glass cube.

  I know I should ignore the call and get the hacker the fuck off our network, but I’m overcome by a perverse sense of curiosity.

  Before I come to my senses, I click the green button to accept the call. I keep my camera off, but within a few seconds, a grainy video feed replaces the hacker’s avatar, and I’m staring into a pair of light-blue eyes.

  The room on the other end of the call is completely dark except for the muted glow of the hacker’s monitor. I can’t make out a face, but there’s a feminine softness to the hacker’s eyes that makes me think she’s a woman. I can just discern the whitish glow of fair hair and friendly-looking crow’s-feet in the corners of her eyes.

  “Hello?” says the voice — definitely female.

  I don’t say anything.

  “I know you’re there,” she says. “Even if I can’t see you.”

  There’s something oddly familiar about that voice. I know I’ve heard it before, but my brain is struggling to place it.

  “You don’t have to speak,” says the woman. “Just listen.”

  She glances from side to side as though she’s afraid of being overheard. I still have no idea where she is. The background is pitch black. She could be snooping from a cave, for all I know.

  “The compound isn’t safe,” she whispers.

  “What?”

  “I’m sure it seems very safe right now, but —”

  “Who are you?” I blurt.

  The woman’s eyes dart around again. She looks conflicted, as though she knows she shouldn’t be talking to me. “Someone who knows what’s happening on
the outside.”

  “The outside?”

  “Yes.”

  “Outside where?”

  She lowers her voice until it’s barely discernible and whispers, “Outside the compound.”

  My mind is racing. My heart is beating so hard I can almost hear it thumping in my chest.

  Jayden knew the drifters were trying to access our network, and she was right. They played right into our hands. But it makes no sense that a drifter would hack in to warn us.

  “How can you be outside the compound?” I ask in a low voice. “No human could survive out there.”

  She rolls her eyes in frustration and lets out a burst of air. “That’s what I thought, too.”

  I wait a beat. “Who are you?”

  “I was just like you once,” says the woman. “I was in Systems, too.”

  “What?” I splutter. “How do you know I’m in Systems? And how the fuck were you in Systems?”

  She glances behind her and lowers her voice. “I used to live in compound 112.”

  “Bullshit.” This has to be a trap.

  “I know what you must be thinking,” she says. “Trust me. I was taught all the same things: Death Storm annihilated the human race. Anyone who survived initially died from the radiation.”

  “Yeah . . .” I say, playing along just to keep her talking.

  “Some people did die. But lots did not.”

  “How? How is that possible?”

  “I — don’t — know,” she says, placing careful emphasis on each word. “I’m still not sure how I’m alive, most days.”

  “Why did you leave?” I ask. I don’t really believe that she used to live in the compound, but I want to keep her on the line to see if I can trace her location.

  “I’m sorry. I know you must have a lot of questions, but I don’t have much time to explain. All you need to know is that your leaders have been lying to you. The board is plagued by corruption, and there are others — people in the compound who control the board — who would do anything to preserve the human race. Even if it means sacrificing those they deem less worthy . . .”

  For the first time, I get an odd feeling that there may be some truth to her story. She knows about Constance, and it sounds as though she knows about the VocAps tests.