‘Sophi, I’ll just be gone for a few minutes, okay?’ I murmur, walking back around the couch to face her. She nods, her blue eyes quietly assessing me. ‘You don’t need anything, do you?’ I’m buying time. I wanted one day, one day where I could just sit with her, talk to her, get to know her.
She shakes her head, because she doesn’t need anything, and Clarke coughs impatiently behind me and I’m pulled back into the reality of our situation.
If I ever want a chance to get to know her, I need to deal with this. Now.
I follow the others down to the room Nails gave them at the end of the corridor, right across from mine, and Kole pushes the door open to let us in. It’s empty save for the mattresses on the floor, which Kole immediately sits down on, and then Jay across from him. I sit on Clarke’s mattress and she sits beside me, and we all face Kole.
‘Nails said we have three days to get out of here,’ he starts, filling everyone in. ‘So we need to figure out exactly what we’re planning to do. Namely, we need to figure out what we’re going to do with Aaron.’
‘I say we interrogate him,’ Jay says, pulling a knife from his boot. I wonder if it keeps him focused, rolling that blade between his hands. I’ve yet to have a serious discussion with him where he hasn’t pulled that thing out.
‘That won’t work,’ Kole says, leaning forward to rest his elbows against his knees.
‘How do you know?’ Jay demands.
Kole flashes him a cold look, and Jay’s mouth snaps shut.
‘We need to use him to our advantage,’ Kole says, and he looks at me, his eyebrows knitting together.
‘What do you mean?’ I ask quietly.
‘I mean, we came here to stop the attacks. There’s only one way to do that, and Aaron’s the only way we’ll get inside.’
‘You’re suggesting we go inside? What? Inside the Celian City?’ Clarke asks, her eyes widening.
‘I’m suggesting we go after the real problem here. I’m suggesting we go after Johnson.’
‘And do what with him?’ she asks, incredulous. ‘He’s not going to be any more susceptible to torture than Aaron is.’
‘I’m not suggesting we torture him. I’m suggesting we kill him,’ Kole says, careful to leave any form of emotion from his voice.
‘Kill him? How the hell are we supposed to do that? He’s crawling with security.’
‘You’re forgetting I’m his son,’ Kole says pointedly. I repress a shiver at the coldness in his voice. ‘And more to the point, so is Aaron. We can use Aaron to get us inside, get us close to Johnson, and then we kill him. Johnson is the head of Oasis. Cut off the head …’ Kole shrugs. ‘It’s our best bet and, more importantly, it’s our only option.’
Jay sits forward, his face lighting up. ‘Could it work? Do you think it could actually work?’
Kole glances at me, and we stare at each other for a long moment.
‘It might,’ he says, his knee jumping as he stares at the floor, thinking rapidly. ‘It might.’
19
I wake up in the middle of the night, unable to get back asleep again, and find myself wandering the halls of the base, my mind foggy and confused. The shadows on the walls look like wraiths, and when Kole comes up behind me, I almost jump out of my skin.
‘Hey,’ he says, examining my face in the dark. ‘You okay?’
‘Yeah, I’m fine, I’m fine.’
After we decided to use Aaron to get to Johnson, we started planning, and we didn’t go to bed until late. I was only asleep for a few hours before my own tangled mind woke me yet again.
‘You know you’ve said you’re fine practically every time you’re not okay, right?’ His voice sounds strange, and his speech is slower than normal.
I turn away from him. I can feel the walls closing in on top of me, and thoughts start running through my mind so fast I feel dizzy, leaning out to steady myself against the wall.
What are we supposed to do with Aaron?
How am I supposed to keep Sophia safe when he’s here, lurking in that room, waiting to strike?
What if we get found out?
How are we going to get out of Oasis?
What if Sophia doesn’t want to leave?
What if we all end up dead before we even have a chance?
I tug my hair at the roots, ready to scream the entire building down.
I want to go back. We should never have come in the first place. I should have left the Officers alone. We should have just run away when Kole told us to.
‘Quincy.’ Kole comes over to me. ‘Quincy, stop.’
‘What? Stop what?’
‘Stop panicking. I can tell when you’re panicking.’
‘I’m not panicking. I’m fine.’
‘Hey, don’t lie to me,’ he says softly, reaching out and grabbing my hand. ‘What is it? What’s going on in your head?’
I stare down at his hands, wrapped around mine, and I should pull away, but I can’t. He’s warm, and I didn’t realise how cold this hallway was until he took my hands.
‘I don’t know how much more of this we’re going to be able to take,’ I say slowly, the honesty sticking in my throat.
‘We’re going to get through this.’
‘You already told me you don’t believe that, that you only say it for other people’s benefit. Don’t lie to me.’
‘I’m not.’ He shakes his head, looking directly at me. ‘I think now, because of you, we have a chance.’
‘I didn’t do anything,’ I say, pulling my hands from his and turning away.
‘Yes, you did,’ he insists. ‘You made them believe in something better. Made me believe in something better. That’s why we’re here.’
‘No, it’s not. We’re here because of Johnson, because he won’t stop until we stop him.’
‘And you don’t think I knew that?’ he says, turning me to face him, forcing my chin up to look at him. He looks so like Aaron, and so unlike him at the same time. His hair is dark, not blonde, and his eyes are the colour of wet earth, like all the real, solid things of the world, instead of the brittle crystal blue of Aaron’s, but I see the resemblance in his square jaw, in the lines of his cheekbones, the way his eyes tighten at the corners. ‘I knew Johnson wouldn’t stop, but I didn’t want to have to face him. But I’m not afraid anymore.’ His hand slips to the side of my face, and I feel myself go still. ‘If you can face everything this place did to you, I can face my father.’
He’s so close now that I can feel his breath on my cheek, see each individual eyelash, like black ink strokes against his skin.
‘What are you doing?’ I whisper, and my heart is a wild thing.
‘I don’t know,’ he breathes, and presses his lips to mine. For a moment I am frozen. This is bad. This is weakness. This is the spaces between your ribs where the knife gets in.
But his hands are on my back, his palms burning holes into my spine, and it’s as if I can feel his energy pouring into me with every touch, wave after wave of warmth and calm and it’s-going-to-be-alright, something no one ever cared enough to say before him. My heart is trying to pound its way out of my chest, and I’m not sure if I can feel the ground underneath me.
I feel dizzy and upside-down, and there are stars exploding in my bloodstream, and I’m not sure if this is what it was supposed to feel like all along.
Maybe this is what it’s supposed to feel like, like your heart can’t take it and you can’t breathe but you’d give it all up, give everything in the world up for this feeling, like dying and coming back to life over and over again.
Kole kisses me like the world is ending, because it is.
I pull away, just far enough to take a breath, and I’m glad for the low light, like a blanket covering us.
‘What was that?’ I ask, putting my forehead against his chest because I don’t know if I can look at him, but I don’t want to pull away.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers, but he wraps his arms around me, and I can hear his heart
beating in his chest, and he doesn’t sound sorry. He sounds like he can’t breathe. He sounds like what I feel like.
‘Don’t apologise.’ I sound too breathless, too uncontrolled. I want to step away from him, to find some semblance of sanity where he can’t touch me, where his fingerprints can’t set my blood on fire.
But I can’t bring myself to walk away.
Instead I press closer, and he kisses the top of my head, and my feet are bare on the cold stone floor and so are his, and it’s only then that I realise I must have woken him.
‘You were asleep.’ There is this muted kind of surprise in my voice as I look up and finally notice his ruffled hair, which stands up on his head, and the softness in the lines of his face, like he’s been blurred by sleep.
‘I was asleep,’ he confirms, and he smiles. His real smiles are so rare that when they appear, I can’t help staring at him. There is always that moment of uncertainty as it unfolds, like the full moon, when you’re not really sure if it’s really full, or if it’s just your imagination tricking you.
‘What now?’ I breathe, and I can feel something coming undone inside me, something so dangerously raw and real and solid that I fear I’ll never be able to let go of it.
‘Now,’ he says, pulling me close again, ‘we rebuild the world.’
And that’s not what I meant, but maybe it should have been.
20
Every spare second that I’m not helping prepare for our mission into the Celian City, I spend with Sophia. I want to know everything about her, but she doesn’t seem ready to open up to me about more than the basics of how she got here, so instead I ask about Bea.
I see an array of competing emotions pass over her face – first joy, then pain, sadness, anger, and finally, solemnity. It’s rarer to see this look on Sophi than it was on Bea, but it’s strange when I see her doing things so similarly. Sometimes when she smiles I can’t help staring at her, wondering if that’s what Bea’s smile would have looked like.
I never got to see Bea’s smile.
‘She was sick,’ she says, looking down at the floor. We’re sitting upstairs in the bedroom, and I shouldn’t be here. Aaron is being held downstairs, but I’m desperate to spend as much time with her as I can, because I don’t know what’s coming next.
‘What?’ I feel my heart thudding in my chest, and I feel slightly dizzy. ‘What did you say?’
‘She was just sick. Mom and Dad were sick, and then Bea was sick. I don’t know why. Some days she couldn’t get out of bed. She puked a lot. She went to the hospital many times, but they couldn’t help her. It was one of the old sicknesses, cancer they called it, but different. They didn’t have any medicine for it.’ Her voice, usually strong and clear, starts to quiver. ‘I don’t think they really cared if she got better.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, pulling her into a hug. I’m finding it hard to stay calm, but I don’t want her to know what I’m feeling.
I don’t even know what I’m feeling.
‘Nobody knew. She didn’t like people knowing.’
I hold onto her like a life-raft, trying desperately to breathe around the lump in my throat.
Bea’s bones sticking out from beneath her shirt at the Dorms click into focus in my mind. She wasn’t like the other girls, simply abused and undernourished. She was sick, and I was too caught up in what was happening to me to notice it while she was still alive.
I wonder how many things I can regret at one time.
21
The night before the mission, I go to see Aaron. I don’t know why I think it’s a good idea, but something in me needs to do this.
I push open the door to the room we’re holding him in, and he looks up at me immediately. His eyes are a dangerous shade of blue as he watches me, and I know him well enough to know he is just about ready to snap.
I stand in front of him, a few feet away, and stare. I stare at the sweat on his brow, the way his shirt is rumpled and torn, the mess of hair on top of his head, and something in me revels in the mundanity of it, the humanness of dirt and sweat and anger that I have never seen on him before.
‘What are you doing here?’ he says, and it is a sad attempt at his usual charm.
‘I’m here to look at you,’ I say carefully, quietly, and I feel strong as I look at him. ‘I am here to look at what you have become.’
‘I haven’t changed,’ he replies, and there is a sharp note in his voice. ‘But I see you have. You have friends now. People you care about, people who care about you.’
‘I do,’ I say, raising my chin.
‘I thought I taught you better than that.’
‘They are not my weakness, Aaron.’
I want to say
you are,
you were,
you are not anymore.
‘That is what they’ve convinced you of. You’re weak now. A bullet in the head of someone who is not you shouldn’t kill you, Quincy. That’s what I always said.’
‘But it never applied to you,’ I say, taking a step towards him. ‘You never wanted it to apply to you. I would have died for you.’
‘Exactly.’ He smiles.
‘But you don’t matter anymore,’ I whisper, taking another measured step towards him. ‘That’s what you were always afraid of, wasn’t it? That you would cease to matter.’
His smile turns sour.
‘You can pretend all you want—’ he starts, but I cut him off.
‘I’m not pretending,’ I say coolly. ‘Tomorrow we are going to use you to get to your father, and we’re going to take him out. We’re going to pull your world apart, and you’re going to be nothing.’
‘You can’t touch me!’ he growls, pulling against his ties. ‘Oasis is invincible.’
And it’s as if he thinks they are one and the same thing, him and Oasis, but as I watch him unravel I realise there is an end to this. Because Oasis is not invincible. It never was. The imagined Oasis in our heads was, but once that falls, so will everything else.
‘From now on, you fear me,’ I say, and slam the door behind me as I leave.
22
The next morning I say goodbye to Sophi, and in my head I make a wish: that I will never have to do this again, never leave her behind again.
I promise her a million things, that I will come back, that I will be safe, that once this is over, everything is going to be okay, and she holds me too tight, and I never want to let her go. The tears streaming down my face make me out to be the liar I am.
Because I don’t know if I’ll come back, or if I’ll be safe, or if everything will be okay after this. I don’t know anything anymore but the fire in the pit of my stomach that won’t let me stop until I’ve fixed this.
I swear to her that I will build her a better world and that – though just as impossible to guarantee – is not a lie.
I will build her a world where she can be safe, or I will die trying.
23
We untie Aaron and give him a change of clothes, the best clothes Nails has available, because we can’t have him walking into the Celian City looking like he’s been held hostage for two days. Once he’s ready, Kole presses a gun to his back and forces him up the stairs and out the door, into the Outer Sector.
Jay left late last night and returned early this morning with three Officer uniforms for us to change into. No one asks where he got them, so neither do I, but there’s a stain on the collar that looks too much like blood to think about for too long.
When I put it on this morning, I couldn’t help shivering. The fabric is different from the stuff I wore in the Dorms, but it still feels wrong. The weight of the belt on my hips feels traitorous, and I had to swallow the feelings bubbling up in my chest before they made me do something stupid.
Kole walks past Nails in the hall, pushing Aaron ahead of him, and nods at Nails as he passes.
‘One more day,’ he says, and Nails just shakes his head, walking away.
We are taking as few people as pos
sible, so Kole, Jay and I are the only ones going in with Aaron. It took a lot of convincing to get Clarke to stay, but Kole said we were already risking it with the three of us and Aaron, and she eventually agreed.
As we come towards the gates separating the Outer Sector from the Inner Sector, several guards step forward, and my heart starts beating too fast, so fast I’m afraid they’ll hear it, or see my pulse at my throat and realise something is going on.
‘ID,’ the first Officer says, but he sounds bored, and my breath comes a little easier.
‘I don’t have my ID with me, but I’m Aaron Johnson, and they’re all with me,’ he says, gesturing towards us.
The Officer’s eyes widen, and he murmurs something to the second Officer, who hasn’t yet said anything. The second Officer jogs back to the guard-post by the gate, and returns a moment later, slightly pale, and nods to the first.
‘Okay, Sir,’ he says. ‘We can get you transport, if you’d like?’ There’s a slight warble to his voice, but other than that he’s been trained out of showing fear, and his face is expressionless.
‘A vehicle into the Celian City, Officer,’ Aaron replies, smiling, patting the Officer on the shoulder patronisingly. ‘Everything’s under control.’
A moment later a transport vehicle pulls up beside us, and we are loaded on.
And I think, it can’t be this easy.
And I think, it shouldn’t be this easy.
And I think, it’s not going to be this easy.
24
The Founding Towers are even more beautiful up close. We are dropped off in the very centre of Oasis, and I stare at the world I’ve spent my whole life dreaming about. The Towers shoot up into the sky like shafts of light, so bright I shouldn’t be able to look directly at them, but I can. That’s the magic of the Celian City. It looks like it’s made of glass, but it’s not; it looks like it should be transparent, but it’s not. Aaron told me that you can see everything from inside the Towers, but no one can see you.
Kole and Jay walk so close to Aaron they’re practically standing on his heels, waiting for him to bolt, for him to do something.
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