New World Order (25 page)

Was Ted out looking for me?

Sunny

Something inside me snapped. The agony of losing Jack, my anxiety over being pregnant, the exhaustion that went with it, worry over Summer’s addiction, and putting up with the tension between Reyes and me all coalesced into one giant storm. I didn’t know emotional
overload could send the human body into shock, but I trembled with it from the tips of my toes all the way up to the roots of my hair. My teeth felt ready to crack from clamping them so tight, but I couldn’t seem to loosen my jaw. I felt ready to explode.

And then I did explode. Hurling myself at Reyes, with both hands outstretched like battering rams, I hit his chest with all the blunt force
the suit could give me. He flew backward several feet, landed on his butt, and skidded to a stop. I went after him.

“Sunny,” he said, gesturing for me to stop. “Calm down.”

“
Calm down?
” I repeated. “You lied to me. You betrayed me
again
. And you’re part of a plan to start a
war. Get up!
”

He didn’t move. “Nope. I’m not going to fight you.”

“Was Doc in on this?” The thought turned the heaviness
in my chest to a crushing force. Breathing became difficult under its weight, and I felt myself starting to hyperventilate. I kicked his leg. “
Get up!
” I kicked him again and finally got a rise out of him, but Summer was pulling me back.

“Stop,” she yelled at me.

Reyes got up, and I yanked my arm out of Summer’s grasp and took another run at him. Reyes was ready for me this time.

“She’s
pregnant!” Summer shouted.

His arms snaked out toward me. I blocked his blows and struck out at him, but he backed up, and I lost my balance. He grabbed me roughly by my shoulders before I stumbled, his eyes shooting daggers. “A
baby
?
Is
that
your special cargo?”

His tone was laced with malice, his body tense with anger, but behind it all there was a glimmer of hurt in his eyes. A bit of
my rage died when I saw it—a very little bit—but enough to snap me out of my blind fury. On some level I could handle the knowledge that Reyes had been duping me. Even though I didn’t like being betrayed, it wasn’t the first time he had done it. But to know that
everyone
, Doc included, had deceived me was more than I could handle.

I was suddenly conscious that we had drawn a crowd, Jin-Sook
the only one missing. A quick check assured me she was safe by the fire, asleep. The fight drained out of me as I turned my focus back on Reyes.

Balling my hands into fists, I tried to get my trembling under control. “Why?” I asked, irritated by my shaky voice. “Why did you need me out of the way? Why was I ostracized from my own militia?” A tear slipped down my cheek, and I swiped it away with
an angry fist. God, I hated crying when I was mad. “I’ve done
everything
I can
for my people. I’ve spent every single day for ten months studying at the Academy, learning bourge ways, spending countless numbers of hours combat training, and then at the end of the day I put on
this
uniform,” I yelled, using my index finger to jab at my chest, “to teach
our
militia everything I learned—”

“You
did
not
do all that for
us
!” Reyes shouted. “You did it for your bourge husband. You did it for you. You did it because you wanted peace. But don’t you ever say it was for
us
!”

I drew my brows together, remembering our heated discussion the other night when he had accused me of walking away from my own people. Is this what he’d meant? “Who do you think I wanted peace for?”

Reyes raised his
chin and looked me in the eye. “The Pit doesn’t want peace. We want justice.”

“Oh,” I said in mock understanding. I fought the urge to hug my arms to stop my trembling and instead crossed them over my chest. “So you’re starting a war of
justice
?” I leaned in closer to him and returned his stare. “And are you declaring war on all bourge? Or do you intend to pick and choose who dies?” Reyes rolled
his eyes. “You think that’s a stupid question? Okay. Let me rephrase it. Are you going to kill everyone from the Dome who helped free the Pit? How about Zach, here?” I said, pointing to him. “Yeah, he suffered at the hands of Holt, probably even more than you and I did, but he’s a bourge and deserves to die, right? And what about Hayley?” I unholstered my gun and held it out to him. “Go ahead.
Kill them.”

Hayley and her soldiers drew their weapons. Admittedly, it was a gutsy move, and the only reason I made it was because I didn’t believe Reyes would hurt them. Especially Hayley. Something was going on between them, and he confirmed that suspicion when he shot a quick glance in her direction.

Ignoring my proffered gun, he said, “You know that’s not our intention.”

I remembered
Doc had said something about assassinations. Is that what they had planned? “It may not be your intention, but the outcome will be the same. War. And in war, no one gets to choose who lives or dies.”

Reyes snorted derisively, stepped forward, and pointed a finger at me. “For almost three hundred years, the bourge happily chose who lived or died in the Pit.
Or are you so wrapped up in your new
life that you’ve forgotten your old one?”

Our eyes locked as we silently acknowledged our shared past. Not the bickering or the failed romance, but our
history
together. Cleaning up a bloody nose, kissing bruises that never seemed to go away, bandaging broken ribs, and our constant reassurances that our lives were not worthless. That
we
were not worthless. It was always our worst days when we
dreamed the hardest and talked the longest about a life outside the Pit, and the idea of a better future was enough to keep us going from one day to the next.

Until it wasn’t.

At some point Reyes had stopped dreaming. He’d stopped hoping for a better future and concentrated on hating the one he had. That’s when he turned mean.

“I remember every single day, Reyes. So I very much resent your
accusation that I walked away from the Pit after the doors were opened. I’m doing everything within my power to build a better future for all of us because, unlike you, I haven’t stopped dreaming. I’m still filled with hope.” I thought of my little guy.
I have to be.

He huffed a curt laugh. “I haven’t stopped dreaming, Sunny. I’m not a hundred percent cynical… yet. But
unlike you
,” he said mockingly,
“I’ve realized that sitting around
hoping
doesn’t get me anywhere. Sometimes you have to destroy whatever’s in the way of your dreams in order to make room for them.”

He finished our conversation by walking away.

Everybody was up and breaking camp before the sun even made an appearance. Hayley had scheduled her soldiers to take shifts throughout the night to keep watch, and I was willing
to bet she’d given them special instructions to watch us in particular. We kept our own watch as well. It’s not that I was afraid of Hayley killing us in our sleep, but more like a fear of being thrown to the wolves if they happened to surround our camp. It had made for an uncomfortable, tense night made worse by Reyes’ brooding, my sulkiness, and our goal to avoid each other.

Yet the night
before we had all managed—urchin, bourge and heathens—to overcome our unease with each other long enough to work out a plan. With Alex and Sims gone, there were two extra bikes. Eli said that he was beginning to worry that we would end up passing the recruiters if we continued traveling on the river, so we made the decision to switch to land, which elicited a whoop of joy from Summer. It would also
give us the opportunity to pick up their trail in case they were still in the vicinity. Our search party was about to get smaller since Hayley was sending two soldiers to escort Wilcox back to the Dome. She said it was because he needed to be reported for his crimes, but I was pretty sure that was just a ruse to send word back to the Dome about an urchin uprising. Although from what Reyes said last
night, a confrontation was most likely already underway. I thought of my mother and prayed it wasn’t.

In the morning we were a somber group once again, although some of the tension was gone since we each had a task to focus on. Reyes and Eli deflated the raft, Summer tended to Jin-Sook, and I filled the water flasks. I felt a little guilty for not being the one to help Jin, since she and I were
good friends. But Summer had sensed that I didn’t feel like being with people and had volunteered. She was acting sheepish around me, and I was pretty sure it was because she was feeling bad about blurting out my secret. I didn’t blame her, though. She’d acted out of genuine concern and, to be honest, might have done me a favor. I hadn’t realized how much of my energy was being consumed with anxiety
over what other people would think or the fear of my secret being exposed. Now that it wasn’t a secret, I had nothing to fear. And somehow the acknowledgement of his existence had made my little guy seem more real. It had given him
presence
.

I wasn’t proud of my blowup, but I felt lighter and more in control in its aftermath. I hadn’t realized what an emotional bomb I was until Reyes detonated
me. A lot of pent-up emotions were released last night, and with my emotional load lightened I had gained clarity. My anger didn’t seem so frustratingly pointless anymore. It had direction now: Doc, Leisel Holt, Malcolm West, General Powell. Me. I understood why Reyes would think that I had walked away from the Pit. Through my own self-deprecating assumptions, I hadn’t recognized that I was part
of the power struggle. But as one of the founding members of the Alliance, the wife of a prominent senator, and now the head of the Pit militia, I was very much involved. I was finally realizing that I had influence.

The thing that frustrated me the most was why there even had to be a power struggle. We were no longer stuck inside the Dome, constrained by limited resources. Even with our need
to protect ourselves against the elevated levels of radiation in water and food supplies, there was still more than enough to go around. So this power struggle wasn’t about controlling limited resources; it was just about control. Although it rubbed me the wrong way to admit it, Reyes had another point about the need to get rid of obstacles in order to make way for the future. Maybe democracy wasn’t
the answer, because our current government was beginning to act too much like the old.

Footsteps sounded behind me, snapping me out of my thoughts. I didn’t need to turn around to see who it was. Between his familiar gait and hulking shadow, I knew it was Reyes.

“Everything’s packed and ready to go,” Reyes said in a flat voice.

I was still squatting at the river’s edge, filling our water
flasks. “You don’t have to come. You can go back and join your war,” I said without turning around to look at him. The water finished percolating through the last flask, and I capped it. Gathering up the other flasks, I stood and faced him.

His sunglasses were already covering his eyes against the morning sun, so it was difficult to read him. He shrugged one shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

Those two
words surprised me. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard them come out of Reyes Crowe’s mouth before. Now I really did wish his eyes weren’t covered so I could see if the sentiment was genuine.

A flask started to slip, and I had to shift to keep it from falling. “For what exactly? Do you even know?”

Reyes took a couple of the flasks from my arms. “Look, you know how much I hate talking about touchy-feely
crap, so I’ll just say this: when you offered me a gun to just point-blank shoot someone in the head, it made me think.”

I couldn’t help it, but a corner of my mouth jerked up into a lopsided smile.

“For the record, I didn’t say anything about shooting them in the head,” I said and handed him the rest of the flasks to carry. We walked toward the bikes. “I’ll admit you had a point too. If
the old regime remains in government, then moving toward a new future isn’t going to come without a fight. But there has to be a better way than starting another war. Too many people have already died, Reyes.”

He stopped walking to look at me. “If you find a better way, you’ll have my support, but make no mistake, Sunny, I will
never
be a slave again. And if I do have to pick up a gun to fight
for that, I will.”

I nodded in understanding—and total agreement.

We made our way to where the others were loading the bikes with gear. I volunteered to take Jin-Sook, but Reyes insisted he take her. She was on painkillers and her midsection was bound with bandages, so it was going to be difficult for her to remain upright on the bike. Reyes made a broader, stronger backrest. She sat on the
bike in front of him, bow slung in front of her and quiver hanging to the side. We stowed her leather food pouch and water skin in Reyes’ pack.

Summer and I shared a bike, and Hayley insisted that Eli, our skilled guide, ride with her. Of course, she assumed the lead. Zach and the other soldier, whose name badge said Jonas, took up the rear. The ride up the ridge was bumpy, steep, and uncomfortable
with two people on a bike, but the path smoothed out at the top. With our vehicles set to solar, we rode through the woods in relative silence.

Hayley led us back to where she had lost the recruiters’ trail the day before. The ground was marred by a lot of tracks seemingly going in three different directions, so I understood how they had become confused. However, Eli showed us the difference
between tracks gouged by the full, heavier carts and those shallower ones left by empty carts. He explained that the shallower tracks were made by hunting parties breaking away from the main group to go in search of stragglers and would wind back around to rejoin the main group. Hayley cursed herself when she realized just how much time she had wasted on the maze.

Once we’d established the
main trail, we ignored the breakaways. It was a long day of travel, but at least we made excellent time.

The trail eventually descended down the mountain and took us into the foothills. It was there that we found Ryan.