inDIVISIBLE (8 page)

He shrugged and sat beside me. “Maybe. Maybe not, but the second shock, I’d almost guarantee came from them.”

I didn’t want to think about my grandmother—couldn’t even remember how we’d gotten onto the subject. “What does this have to do with anything?” I asked.

T turned my arm over and stared at the rash on the underside.
“They killed your grandmother just like they tried to kill you today.”

The fears I’d felt while waiting for the nurse returned
, and I knew it was time to trust my gut. The Alliance wanted me dead.

I wanted to live.

“How do they get away with it?”

T
shifted. “We gave them the power to get away with anything. The question is, how do we take that power back?”

I scratched my head, my hair tangling around my fingers. “It’s getting worse, T. My throat—”

“You need a doctor,” he said.

I shook my head. “No doctors.”

T shoved his hands through his hair. “How long can you wait?”

“
It’s not acting too quickly. I’m okay for a few minutes.”

“I need to get my bag then we’re leaving. We’ll find a way to help you.”

I nodded and slid to the ground beside the rock.

“Stay there,” T ordered. “And be quiet. I’ll be back as fast as I can.”

I heard only his first few footsteps before he blended with the trees, then vanished altogether.

CHAPTER 9

A twig snapped and I flinched.
Had T returned already? I searched the trees but saw no one. Minutes later, I heard voices, several men whose conversation rose and fell over the sound of their footsteps, controlled and quiet enough that even straining to hear brought no clarity to their words. Their footsteps halted as their voices rose. Based strictly on their tones, I figured there must be at least four men. Were they Alliance Security? Terrorists? A search party?

I thought of my mother and how she must have cried to find me gone, how
devastated and despondent she’d have become. Had she contacted the Alliance and demanded a search party? I wanted to contact her to tell her I was okay, that I was saving her by leaving. Besides, they monitored our communication, and with me disappearing the way I had, they’d be paying special attention to any communication surrounding my mother.

I wondered if there may have been a way to explain things that
wouldn’t have put her in danger—that would have told her why I was leaving. My hand cramped. I knew it didn’t matter now anyway.

One man shouted at the rest, his voice angry and the others responded by fanning out, their footsteps working out in several directions.

A tickle ran along my spine, the itching returning not only to my back but along my arms, my thighs and attacking my stomach. I sank lower behind the rock, ducking my head as what felt like a thousand ants clambered over my body. I looked down, half-expecting an ant pile and didn’t know whether to feel relieved or anxious because there was none.

I clenched my teeth to fight back a groan and folded my arms over my chest so tightly my shoulders ached.

The men shuffled all around me, close enough that I feared even to breathe. My throat burned now, tight and warm as it caught my breath for me and made it nearly impossible to suck in any oxygen.

The trees swayed
, and I wondered where T was. Did he know about the men out searching? Had he seen them?

A voice called out in code directly to my right and I tensed.
I could have hit his back with a rock if I’d wanted, and I was a terrible aim … He spoke into a little microphone on his collar and must have received a response through a transmitter because I couldn’t hear the reply but his response caught me off guard with the raised voice, the anger and determination.

A second man yelled and the officer beside me stalked through the brush, heading back to the trail.
When he stopped again I could barely make out his outline beyond the mangled scrub oaks.

“Nothing?” someone asked.

“Not a sign,” he said.

“She’s lost enough blood that she won’t go far,” the first said. “Even if she does, the cats’ll get her.”

“I hope it happens in the next forty-eight hours.”

“Forty-eight hours?”

“If we don’t get her by then, we’re being reassigned.” The Officer spat. “They’ve already promoted Prusa to take the lead here.”

The other Officer swore. “He’s still in diapers.”

The first silenced the other and I leaned to my left to see them better. One officer raised his left hand and motioned toward the trail, but higher as if pointing out something in the sky or the tops of the trees.

I
swallowed and pulled enough oxygen through my swollen throat to ease the burning in my lungs, hoping they wouldn’t hear. Where was T? I knew he wouldn’t abandon me, but where had he gone?

The angry man yelled again and the men reconvened on the trail before heading deeper into the woods. I rolled onto my back and rubbed
it into the ground, the hives only getting itchier, the bumps larger and painful. I jumped as a shadow fell over my face, T’s silhouette reaching down to help pull me to my feet.

“How are you doing?” he asked, slinging my backpack over his shoulder with his own.

I sucked air into my lungs and breathed, “Alive,” before remembering one Officer silencing the other. I gave T the sign for silence and pointed to the same spot as the Officer had just moments before.

T motioned for me to stay and inched through the dead brush on the ground, his footsteps crackling as he eased his weight forward. Minutes felt like hours as my throat tightened and the itching turned to a dull burn. 

I didn’t see him return so I jumped when he whispered, “Surveillance camera—that’s how they knew where to find us.”

“What do we do?” I asked, barely even whispering the words as T took my hand and pulled me to my feet.

“First—we get you help.” The camera disappeared behind us but T scanned the trees for others as he picked out our route.

“We can’t go to a clinic,” I said, stumbling. “They want me dead. Besides, we’re terrorists now, remember? No sensors.”

He moved forward without responding, stopping only once to place
his fingers on either side of my neck. I pushed his hand away, scared by the tightening in my throat. “Your breathing is getting worse and you’re swelling from the hives. It’s definitely an allergic reaction. That, combined with the blood you lost from cutting out that sensor, is sending your body into shock. We need a doctor or an epinephrine injection, and I don’t know where to get the latter.”

“
They’re standard issue for a lot of people with allergies.”

“But not for you.”

I shook my head.

“What are you allergic to, Brynn?” He’d lost patience now and I searched my foggy brain.

“Penicillin, but I haven’t had any—”

He looke
d up in the sky, gauging the sun. “I’ll bet that’s what they put in your booster. It could easily be passed off as an accident.”

They’d really drugged me, the knowledge made me angry but that anger brought on deeper breathing so I struggled to calm my reaction.

“No doctors, T, please.”

T placed his
hands on either side of my face and breathed deeply. “I know it’s risky, but if we don’t—”

I plopped back on a boulder and rested my forehead in my
left hand. “They’ll send me away to one of those factories—or kill me.”

He sat beside me, far enough
that we didn’t touch, yet close enough I could feel his heat. “I’m worried about you, Brynn. If you don’t get something to counter the reaction and infection in your hand, either could be fatal.”

I flexed my fingers again, pain ripping through my hand
.

“Good news is I’ve stopped puking
,” I half-joked.

He managed a smile. “That is good news. I think that means you’ve
gotten over the shock of cutting your own hand apart, and you’ve flushed out most of the penicillin in the process. If you hadn’t gotten most of it out of your system right after you took it—”

I knew what he was thinking because t
he same thoughts had crossed my mind. I wiggled my fingers again, the tear between thumb and forefinger stabbing with pain. I cringed. “So all we need is a drug to counteract my allergy and an antibiotic I’m not allergic to, without the help of a doctor’s office.”

He felt my forehead again and briefly caught his bottom lip between his teeth before le
tting it slip free. “Something like that.”

The sun shone high now, directly overhead and
the sweat at my temples irritated the hives. I couldn’t figure out where we’d get the epinephrine shot, but there had to be a way. So many people carried the shot with them for emergencies … then a face emerged and I said, “I’ve got an idea.”

We started through the trees again, slower so I could breathe.
We checked behind us often, afraid the officers would reappear and take us into custody. “How close did you get to them?” I asked.

“
The officers?”

I nodded and swatted at a fly that buzzed around my forehead.

“Four Alliance Security Officers. Two guns apiece …”

“All for me …”

He shrugged and grabbed my hand, pulling me through the woods one tiny step at a time. I followed his lead, looking for stones or barren dirt so as to not make a sound. “They know you removed your sensor. They’ve been sent to kill you, make it look like an accident.”

“Why me?”

“You must pose more of a threat than we realized.”

“I’m nobody.”
I tucked my hair behind my ear, trying to contain the rage building in my chest. “I haven’t done anything worth dying for, not really,” I whispered, my eyebrows drawing together. “All I’ve done is had an opinion, T, an opinion that doesn’t match theirs, but isn’t that the way life works?”

T stopped. “There’s got to be something else, something more.
”

I shook my head.

“What about your father? Did he tell you anything, leave you anything that they might want to silence?”

I pointed to my backpack. “My father left journals.”

“On paper?” T asked. We stepped from the shade of the trees onto the foothills behind my home. Neighborhoods stretched out for miles in front of us, culminating at the City Center. I pointed to my left.

“I know this girl
who had an allergy attack last fall during lunch,” I said. “She lives this way.”

T grabbed my hand to keep me from scratching. “If this doesn’t work, we find a doctor.”

I wanted to let go of his hand and leave him but it hurt so badly to breathe that I could hardly walk a straight line anymore. I clutched his hand and cursed him instead. “I won’t go to work in the factories.” I inhaled. “They’re prisons. You know that, don’t you?”

“
I don’t want you to go to the factories either, but if you don’t get help, you could die.”

“No doctors.”

“Do you have any other ideas?”

             
I shook my head but the image of a dark haired boy popped into my mind.
He couldn’t help.

“You thought of something,” T said.

We scraped through a hedge and across a yard just like mine before we merged onto a narrow street, just blocks from the house we needed. “It won’t work.”

“Why not?”

“His dad was the doctor, not him.” I blinked rapidly while pulling as much air into my lungs as I could manage. “His dad is dead too.”

“Killed the same way your father was killed?”

I nodded.

“They were probably working together.”

“Obviously—they were in the same building.”

H
e grabbed my hand. “No, I mean …”

I shook his hand away and stopped to rest. My
right hand burned, feeling sweaty and stiff. I pulled the bandage off and cringed at the red circling the wound, the white and yellow puss filling the gap I’d torn free. I gagged and T took my hand, wrapped the wound again carefully. “What’s his name?”

“
Cray Carmichal,” I mumbled, facing away from the wound. “But I don’t know where he lives … his contact code … anything.”

T tucked the end of the rag in place and p
atted the back of my hand. “We can find out.”

A droplet of sweat trickled from my hairline, tickling my cheek. I swiped it away, surprised at the
heat this early in the day. “I’m tired.”

             
He helped me to my feet. “I know, but we can’t rest yet. We’ve got to find Cray, see if his father left any medical supplies behind, because even if this girl has that epinephrine, you’re going to need an antibiotic you’re
not
allergic to.”