New World Order (19 page)

I paused in my shoveling to take in the landscape. A mile of barren plain edged by a lake and healthy forest. “You mean you didn’t clear cut around this compound?”

“It’s not a
compound
, Jack. It’s a city. And we found this area already bare of plant life. Only
the hardiest of plants, like devil’s blood, grow in this soil.”

I churned over a shovelful of dirt and poked through it with the tip of the spade, wondering what had happened to this area to leave it sterile. An old mine? Chemical spill? Nuclear fallout? What exactly was I shoveling and breathing in?

Raised voices at the gate distracted us, and I looked up to see Hollywood standing there.
Ryder beckoned to him to come forward.

“Forgive me, Father Ryder, but it was urgent that I talk to you,” Hollywood said. He shot a malicious glance my way, but softened his expression when he turned back to the good Father. “I’ve been told that one of my best men, Phillip, will be castrated today.”

I almost dropped my shovel.
Castrated?
Not that he didn’t deserve it.

Ryder’s easy smile
remained fixed. “Yes.”

Hollywood shifted uncomfortably. “May I ask why?”

Ryder looked at me when he spoke, and I went back to shoveling. “Several missionaries have confirmed that Phillip gave in to temptation. You know the rules, Ralph. When someone’s blood is too thick with poison, we can’t allow him to reproduce. There have been allegations of cannibalism too, which have yet to be confirmed.”

Covertly, I glanced at them out of the corner of my eye. Hollywood’s face was getting red, a familiar sign that he was losing his temper. Ryder was looking up at the sky.

“In fact, it’s probably just about time,” he said and stood up. “I have to go, Jack. They’ll be expecting me to say a few words.”

He walked back toward the gate, and the little girl and the men he’d arrived with followed
closely behind. Hollywood didn’t follow right away. Instead, he waited until Ryder was out of hearing distance.

Before he had a chance to tell me off, I pursed my lips and drew in an exaggerated hiss. “Castration, eh?”

His lips curled into a sneer, and he pointed a stubby finger at me. “This is your doing, you little scorchedlander freak! I should’ve killed you and left you for the tigers
when I had the chance.”

“Or put a stick in me and roasted me over a fire. Maybe I should tell Father Ryder about that too. What do you think? Maybe it’ll get your name shortened to
Holly
. You know,” I said, my eyes traveling down to his crotch, “because you’ll have a little less wood.”

Fadi and Amos snorted, and Hollywood’s face went so red he was almost smoking. “That
was
rodent
! You little
asshole, if you tell one more
lie
—”

“Ralph!” one of the sentries called. “Father Ryder wants you at the sterilization.”

Hollywood made some unintelligible sound, turned on his heel, and ran to catch up.

“Get back to work,” Amos said, still laughing.

Fed up with digging a hole, I drove the shovel as far into the earth as it would go and flung the dirt as hard as I could. Some of it fell
into a hole six feet away, and I swore I heard someone cough.

Sunny

I stared at Sims as my brain slowly made the connection between Senator Kenner and my husband Jack.

Jack wasn’t supposed to make it home?
An icy-cold fear gripped me.

“Why?” I asked with a calmness I wasn’t feeling.

“I don’t know,” Sims said.

I drew my gun, intent on getting answers.
“Tell me, or I swear to God I’ll shoot you.”

Reyes raised an eyebrow. “What happened to ‘you can’t get answers from a dead man’?”

“Dead men can’t hurt my husband.” I pressed the trigger enough to let Sims see it without actually firing.

“I told you that’s all I know. I swear!”

Reyes picked him up off the ground by the throat, shook him a couple of times, and set him back down.

I extended
the barrel of my pistol toward him. “Last chance.”

Alex looked at Sims. “Shut up.” His voice was hoarse, but the tone of command was unmistakable.

I looked down at Alex. “Then you tell me.” He was still coughing but not as much. I squatted down in front of him. “Why don’t you want Jack to make it home?”

“What the hell are you wearing?” he rasped. He looked from me, to Reyes, to Summer,
and back to me. “Where did you get those suits?”

“Answer the question,” I said.

“And where did you get that raft? Who’s supplying you?” He swallowed and coughed. “What are you, some kind of subversive army for the Alliance?”

“Subversive,” I repeated, letting it resonate. “It’s an interesting choice of words. It leads me to believe you think the Alliance is trying to overthrow our government.”

Alex huffed, but it turned into a coughing fit. He composed himself and wiped spittle from the corner of his mouth. “I see your year at our Academy is paying off. You know all the big words now.”

I ignored the jab. “So—and I’m just trying to work through this—you think Jack is the head of the Alliance and he’s leading a subversive army into revolting against the government?”

“I didn’t say
Jack had anything to do with the Alliance. I was just making an observation,” Alex said. I glared at him, waiting for him to answer me. He glared back. “Where Jack is concerned, I already told you, I was just following orders.”

“Whose orders?”

“Head of our military, General Powell.”

“And Powell
ordered
you to make sure Jack didn’t make it home?”

“Like I said, I was just following orders.”

I could tell he was lying. It was probably more like he was in league with Powell. I remembered how close he and the general were back before the Pit had been freed and the doors to the Dome opened. The memory of Alex on the range, patting his pistol while he told Jack that, “shooting a moving target was a great way to hone his skills,” came back to me. Alex was bourge through and through.

And then it hit me.

Alex was a bourge. He was a Holt supporter. “This has something to do with Leisel taking Jack’s seat in the Senate, doesn’t it?”

He looked at me with enough surprise to confirm I was right. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

An arrow hit the ground a few feet from us. I looked up at Reyes, who still had a hold of Sims. Reyes looked in the direction the arrow had
traveled from and held up his hand as if to ask,
what?
I turned back to Alex.

“Oh, yes you do,” I said with absolute certainty. I narrowed my eyes, studying him. He shifted nervously. “That’s exactly what it is. So what’s the plan, Alex? Make sure Jack doesn’t come back to claim his seat in an attempt to stack the Senate with the old regime?”

“Sunny!” Summer said with some urgency.

Alex
sneered. “If you’re as smart as you
think
you are, you’ll know we’re doing it this way to avoid fighting.”

My eyes widened in shock. I stood up so I could look down at him, but he scrambled to his feet. “You think putting
Leisel Holt
on the Senate isn’t going to start a fight?” I leveled a glare at him. “It’s going to start a
war
!”

Reyes swatted me on the arm and pointed to something. I looked
to find Hayley and four soldiers riding up to us on their bikes. Jin’s arrow must have been a warning.

Alex leaned a little a closer to me and whispered, “A war we intend to win. Once a slave, always a slave, O’Donnell.”

I punched him square in the face, felt his nose break under my knuckles, and relished the satisfaction it gave me. He landed on his backside with an unceremonious thump and
cupped his nose with both hands. “That’s
Mrs. Kenner
to you,” I said.

“What is going on?” Hayley demanded as she dismounted her bike. She strode toward us, pointing at Reyes. “Unhand him!”

Reyes made no move to let Sims go. Alex was on the ground, trying to stop the blood flow with his hands.

I turned to face Hayley, letting my hand rest on my gun. “You won’t get away with it.” She stopped
when she saw where my hand was. Her eyes traveled up to find mine. The soldiers behind her dismounted their bikes and drew their rifles. “I
will
bring Jack home.”

The angry set of her expression turned to part confusion. “Okay…” she said, nodding her head. Her eyes grew round as she looked at me like a mother looks at a wayward child. “We don’t need to get crazy about it though. We all care
about Jack. We all want to find him and bring him home. This isn’t a competition.”

“What?” It was my turn to be confused. Was she just keeping up the pretense? “
We’re
the crazy ones? We didn’t ask for any of this! And before you say anything—”

“Sergeant Wilcox told me you ambushed them,” she said loudly, drowning out my voice. She thumbed behind her at one of the soldiers. I recognized Wilcox
as the one who’d gotten away.

“
We
ambushed
them
? They’re the ones who came to the beach looking for us. We watched them from up on a ridge— wait a minute.” The realization dawned on me that Hayley wasn’t a part of the conspiracy. I eyed Alex suspiciously, slowly putting the pieces together. I addressed my next words to him. “You didn’t even know we were planning on coming out here, which means
Powell sent you to stop
Hayley
from finding Jack.”

Alex dropped his gaze toward the ground, still holding his nose.

“What’s she talking about, Alex?” Hayley asked.

“I don’t know,” he said in a muffled voice. “Like you said, she’s crazy.”

“Do you agree with that, Sims?” I called over my shoulder. I knew Reyes still had him by the throat, and I was hoping Reyes might give him a little more
airtime to coax the truth out of him.

I heard a strangling noise behind me but didn’t have time to turn around because Wilcox took a step forward, aimed his rifle, and pulled the trigger. The bullet hit me in the chest, and I watched in horrific fascination as it crumpled to a stub and dropped harmlessly to the ground.

“What the—” Hayley said, eyes wide and mouth hanging open.

The commotion
behind me drew my attention, and I spun around to see Alex on his feet, a rock in hand, aiming at Reyes’ head. Reyes didn’t have his hood up so I knew the impact would knock him out, maybe even kill him. I threw myself at Alex, reaching for the arm that held the rock. Somewhere in my peripheral vision I saw Summer move too. Reyes dropped Sims as he shifted to evade Alex, and Sims pulled his gun.
I was in mid-jump when I made contact with Alex and took him down with me, the two of us tumbling with the force of our landing. I lost my hold on him, but Reyes was already barreling down on us.

I heard shots being fired and arrows whizz through the air, but I couldn’t react. My body was in an uncontrollable roll, heading toward the river. In my knee-jerk reaction to stop Alex from clobbering
Reyes, I had thrown myself at him not even thinking about the fortified strength my suit gave me. Terrified of plunging into the water, I clawed at the ground to halt my tumble. I finally rolled to a stop with my legs submerged in the river.

I let out the breath I had been holding and sucked fresh air into my lungs.

Reyes ran into the water, and I looked up in time to see Alex get swept into
the current. Reyes was halfheartedly attempting to reach him, but the current was strong and fast. Alex’s arms wildly clawed at air as the river carried him away. Hayley waded in with a hand outstretched but quickly backed up when the current threatened to take her too.

I looked for Summer and found her surrounded by soldiers. She had her hood pulled up and was holding the wrong end of a rifle.
Wilcox was on the ground at her feet, one side of his head bloodied.

Pushing myself up off the wet ground, I pulled up my own hood to protect my head from bullets and walked toward her. As I went, I noticed Sims on the ground with an arrow sticking out of his chest.

“Let her go,” I said to the soldiers. I didn’t bother to draw my gun. My confidence in the exoskeleton had grown tenfold in
the last few minutes. Hayley looked furious. She dragged herself out of the river and marched toward me with both hands on her rifle.

“Go ahead, shoot,” I said.

“What the hell are you wearing!” She stood looking at me, panting from her exertion. “Who made it? Where did you get it?
And what the hell is going on?
”

If Hayley didn’t know what Alex was up to, I could only imagine how all this
appeared to her—we’d just killed Alex and Sims. “I know how this looks, but you have to believe me, we were defending ourselves against Alex. He came here to stop us from continuing our search.”

She snorted. “Liar!”

“I’m not lying. Alex told me that General Powell ordered him to make sure Jack doesn’t make it home.”

“
Really
,” Hayley said, fury mottling her face. “And why the
hell
would he
do that?”

“So Leisel can take Jack’s seat in the Senate.”

Hayley’s brows drew together, and her mouth twisted derisively. “Please!
Nobody
takes that seriously. West is just pacifying her like the spoiled brat she is, and Alex knows that.”

I looked over at Wilcox lying on the ground, the only possible witness left. I directed my next question at Summer. “Is he still alive?”

Of the four
soldiers surrounding her, three of them had their rifles pointed at her. The fourth held his rifle turned downward, loosely hanging in his hand. I noted he was the same one who had smiled at her back at the recruiter camp.

Summer nudged Wilcox with her foot. He moaned. She took her sunglasses off and looked at me. Only then did I realize the sun was almost down. “Yep,” she said with disinterest.

She threw the rifle she was holding on the ground and sauntered out of the circle. One of them threatened to shoot her if she didn’t stop. She didn’t pay any attention. A shot rang out. Summer kept walking. The shooter swore in disbelief.

“Maybe he can confirm everything about Alex when he wakes up. Until then,” I said, motioning toward the brush where our raft was hidden, “we have a raft
and can try to save Alex, but we have to move fast.”