Breathe (29 page)

Quinn clears his throat and his microphone crackles to life. “My name is Quinn Caffrey, and first of all I want to thank you for coming here today. Thank you for listening to me. I promise to tell the truth. I am a Premium, but I hope you will see that I represent you all.” He puts a thumb to his mouth and chews on the nail momentarily. He has none of the Pod Minister’s showmanship, but his tone is so sincere and humble there is an audible murmur of sympathy from the crowd. I feel so proud of him, and afraid for him, that I have an urge to jump up and race to the Justice Building despite Old Watson’s warning. I want to be with him. I wrap my arms around my body and lean forward in the chair.

“We have no doubt you’ll be truthful,” the Pod Minister says, slapping Quinn on the back. “And what you want to tell us is that you were kidnapped by the RATS, is that right?”

“I was with them for several days and I saw how fervently they believe in their cause. It’s actually scary how passionate they are.”

“Yes! Ha!” the Pod Minister hoots.

Without being prompted, Quinn gets to his feet and straightens his tie. Behind him, a row of stewards are standing with their arms behind their backs, visors covering their eyes. They don’t look real. But they look ready.

“During my time on the outside, I learned so much more about the war on terrorism than I ever could have learned here inside the pod. I was living in blissful ignorance while others were dying on my behalf. And what I have to say may be terrifying to many of you.” His voice has found some volume and clarity. He is more the Quinn I know.

The Pod Minister squints as Quinn edges his way out from behind the desk and moves closer to the crowd. “I tell you all now, in sincerest truth, that you
cannot
trust Breathe or the Ministry.” I cover my face with my hands and peer through the spaces between my fingers. The stewards do not move.

Cain Knavery takes another swig from his silver bottle and says, “Son—”

“We are prisoners here!” Quinn shouts. All of a sudden he sounds breathless. “They are overfeeding us oxygen. Outside many of us
could
breathe, if we knew how. I’ve seen it. The RATS want to save us.”

“You see what they’ve done to him?” The Pod Minister stands up, pushes his way past the other officials, and moves to the center of the stage. When he gets to Quinn, he throws an arm around his shoulder. Quinn flinches. And so do I. “He’s been delirious since we found him. I had hoped he would be able to address you, but … A terrible shame.” The Justice Minister, his eyelids heavy, nods in agreement.

For a moment, no one moves, and then a voice from the crowd calls out. “
So you
aren’t
overfeeding us oxygen?
” Then another calls, “
Yeah, what did he mean by that? We’re paying for extra oxygen we don’t even need?
”

“Overfeeding you oxygen? What do
you
think? Ha!” the Pod Minister asks. The crowd murmurs as Quinn manages to squirm his way out of the Pod Minister’s hold and rushes to the very front of the stage.

The Pod Minister takes one step forward and stops. “Turn off his microphone,” he yells to no one in particular.

“I have no reason to lie. And they are killing the trees. We’ll never escape.”

“They kill trees? What’s he talking about?”

“We are trapped here. Forever!” Quinn continues.

The Pod Minister rubs his mouth with the back of his hand and glares at the crowd. “If you want to leave the pod, you are all free to go. No one is stopping you. Leave!” the Pod Minister shouts. “Open the doors! Let everyone out!”

The camera closes in on Quinn and he seems to look right into the lens. Right at me. “We can’t leave, and he knows it. They have us addicted to their air.”

“The interview is over. Quinn Caffrey is clearly mad,” the Pod Minister says. He nods at the stewards who are lined up in front of the stage, and on cue, they begin to move, pushing the crowd back in an effort to force them to disperse.

“Don’t be prisoners!” Quinn shouts.

“The microphone!” the Pod Minister calls out again. His face has turned pink and his lips are wet with saliva. “I said we are done here. It’s time for the march.”

“What are you afraid of?” Quinn yells. The Pod Minister smiles and comes right to the edge of the stage. I move away from the screen.

“I. Am afraid. Of
nothing
,” he whispers. What looks like a bottle is hurled on stage and barely misses him. For several seconds nothing moves. The next sound I hear is Quinn’s voice.

“Well, maybe you should be,” he says.

“Turn off his MICROPHONE!” the Pod Minister yells again, pointing at Quinn as another object hurtles toward the stage, and then another. Soon the Pod Minister is forced to dodge the missiles coming from the crowd. He looks as though he intends to leap in among the people and personally take care of them, when he sees Quinn about to jump off the stage and make his escape. Suddenly the Pod Minister charges at Quinn and wrestles him to the ground.

Then many voices can be heard clamoring for attention:
“Let him go!” “We want the truth! Can we breathe outside?” “The PM’s strangling him. Someone do something!” “He’s just a boy! Help him!
” The stewards, a human wall at the front of the stage, hold out their batons.

“I’m coming!” I say aloud. But I can’t take my eyes off the screen.

The Pod Minister pummels Quinn until several stewards bundle forward and pull Quinn to his feet. The Pod Minister brushes himself off and looks right into the camera.

“All
lies
,” he wheezes. “Quinn Caffrey will be punished for public disorder, as will anyone else who is caught inciting violence.”

But the crowd is enraged, and when the Pod Minister opens his mouth to address them again, his composure restored, they chant and hurl things onto the stage.
“Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!”

That’s when my parents appear. “Get out of there! What are you doing?” I yell. The stewards are trying to subdue the protesters who are still throwing things, and my parents manage to rush past them and clamber up onto the stage along with several others.

As soon as my father is close to the Pod Minister, he launches himself forward, punching the Pod Minister square in the jaw and knocking him to the ground. The crowd, for a brief instant, gasps collectively, and then everyone is hollering, shaking their fists, and catcalling. What my father has done feels like a victory, especially to auxiliaries who’ve spent their lives complying.

But the Pod Minister will not be beaten this easily. Lying prostrate, a trickle of blood running from his nose, he raises a finger and within seconds more stewards emerge from the recesses of the stage, spread themselves among the crowd, and begin to flail their batons. A steward strikes a young woman on the side of the head and she crumples to the ground like a rag. People begin to scatter, but even more stay exactly where they are, my parents included.

No one has figured out how to turn off his microphone, and Quinn is yelling again. “Fight for the right to air! There is life outside the pod. And there are
trees
. We could live out there! We—” He stops, his attention distracted. The Pod Minister is back on his feet. And he has a gun pointed at the crowd. Though not at the crowd, exactly. He is smiling. My stomach flips and I lunge at the screen.

“NO!” I scream. A shot breaks the momentary silence and then my mother is on the ground in a flowering pool of blood. My father looks at her aghast and turns to the Pod Minister when another crack swallows all hope and my father too is on the ground bleeding.

Quinn flails, but the stewards keep a tight hold on him and eventually drag him off the stage and out of sight.

And now no one can stop the crowd. The people are advancing on the Pod Minister and the thrashing stewards are unable to do anything to stop them.

I can no longer see my parents. I drop to my knees, as every noise in the world disappears and in my ears instead is a shrill scream, which, only after several seconds, do I realize is my own.

The soldiers are advancing on The Grove from all directions. And behind them, around twenty armored tanks are grinding their way through the debris of the city. My instinct is to run, not fight. “What are you waiting for?” Silas shouts, his gun firing off a round of bullets.

I peer through the scope and pick off my first soldier. My first murder. My stomach turns and if I had anything in it, I’m sure I would be sick again. Silas is next to me, relentlessly firing his gun, and as he fires, he roars—guttural, primal. Maude is here too, along with about twenty drifters with sniper skills, and Dorian is on Silas’s other side. On any other day I am sure we would make a formidable team. Today, we are too few.

Occasionally soldiers drop as our sniper wounds them and a few troops in the rear fall out of line in an attempt to dodge the bullets, but most are sprinting in our direction. Suddenly their tanks fire, splitting open whole sections of the stadium, and the soldiers run right through the openings.

I continue shooting as our stolen tank emerges and fires at the running soldiers. But the Ministry has twenty tanks, and we have only one, and within minutes, ours is forced to retreat as more vehicles bombard The Grove. I scream and fire off another round.

A zip flies overhead and at once The Grove is filled with choking foam, dust, and debris. We duck our heads. “Shout when you’re ready to make a run for it,” Silas says. Many of the drifters are already dashing for the lower levels.

“How many have we got sniping?” I shout.

“One hundred and fifty, give or take. I’ve positioned them at every side.” That may be true, but if the other teams are as scared as this one, that number has just halved as our troops disband to save themselves.

“Let’s go!” I shout.

“Follow me!” Silas yells. I reach for Maude, but Bruce already has her safely by the hand.

As we move down the back stairs we are forced to step across bodies to escape. Some are only injured, some clearly dead. The foot soldiers must have already entered the building. If we stop to help we may never make it out alive, so we keep moving.

We run as best we can along a wide corridor when another bomb hits. Through the shattered glass paneling we see a sight that makes each one of us stop running and gasp aloud: the forest we’ve spent our lives cultivating is shriveling up before our eyes. Black foam swells along the columns of trees and eats its way from branch to branch.

A small figure hurtles toward us. “Petra won’t come out!” It’s Jazz. She’s hysterical. “Make her come out!”

“Where is she?” I shout.

“She says she won’t let the trees die alone.” Jazz tears away and gestures for us to follow. We scramble back down to the lower level where the roaring battle is muffled by the sound of the shivering, dying trees.

“Come out. Come out, please!” Jazz screams, her voice like sharpened metal. Petra is sitting on a low branch of an oak. Her hair is loose and her feet are bare. She was the one who made us prepare for war, who insisted we fight, and now here she is meditating her way to defeat.

“What in hell’s name you doin’ up there, you fruitcake?” Maude screams, shaking a fist at Petra.

“Get down here. Cut the crap, Petra!” I shout. I’ve nothing to lose and someone needs to bring her to her senses.

“What have they ever done?” she asks. She strokes a branch and rests her head against it. “All I ever wanted was to protect them. I failed. I won’t desert them.”

“You didn’t fail. Get down and fight for them. Fight for yourself. The foam will eat through that tree in a couple of minutes and you’ll be gobbled up along with it.”

“It’s too late. You all know it’s too late. The zips are coming back. Another bomb and we’ll all be dead.”

She’s right. It was crazy to think we could win. “We’re leaving. Come with us,” I say.

“Take Jazz,” she says, and with that begins to climb the tree, moving closer to the foam. Two zips roar overhead.

“I’m going!” Silas shouts. When I grab Jazz’s elbow and start to drag her away, she sticks her feet into the soil and becomes immovable.

“Help me get Petra down,” she pleads. Her dirty face is lined with tears.

“We have to go. We are going to try to get down the river. We’re heading for Sequoia. Petra wants to die here, Jazz. Let her,” I say. There’s no point in lying to the child. She deserves the truth. But Jazz won’t hear the truth, or doesn’t like it. She pulls herself from my grip and starts to climb Petra’s tree. “JAZZ!” I scream. She doesn’t turn back. She scurries up the trunk like a little insect and is gone.

Silas is behind me. “She’s made her choice,” he shouts. “We have to go!”

“But she’s a child,” I say to no one in particular.

We dash across the smoldering field to the west end of the stadium where we raid the airtank stockpile, grabbing as many as we can carry. Dorian will be fine—and though Silas and I have spent the last two weeks in intense training, we will need it along the road. Maude and Bruce certainly will. No one seems to have made it to this side of the building yet and the potent gunfire in the northeast section of the building sounds horrific.

Dorian puts down his weapon and begins to unbolt the heavy door while Silas and I fit ourselves with airtanks and then ensure that Maude and Bruce have theirs, too.