Rebellion (14 page)

“I don’t know why they’d go to that much trouble,” I say, “but I know something’s going on. Haven’t you been thinking it? Three days ago, the mines shut down, and Hector said that’s never happened before. Three days ago, I found out we were leaving the Surface, and that’s never happened before.”

“It could be a coincidence,” the greasy-haired boy says, but he doesn’t sound like he believes it.

“But Arthur, three days ago is when they started the inspections too,” the curly-haired girl says to him. “And we weren’t due to have them again for another week or two.”

“Exactly,” I say.

I didn’t realize the inspections were happening early, but that fits with everything, if Charlie suddenly wants all of us subdued. I need to tell these four about the submission serum, but I don’t know how.

The cam-bot’s hovering back into the room. I’m dead if the microphone picks up what we’re saying.

Leaning closer to the others, I lower my voice: “I overheard some of the officials mentioning the inspections, on my way here. They said something like, ‘It’s about time they’re all given the serum, so we won’t have to worry about them disobeying orders.’”

The greasy-haired boy, Arthur, narrows his eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“A serum … like medicine?” Hector asks.

A drug made to control us all.

“I don’t know for sure,” I say. “That’s all they said. Maybe I heard them wrong … but I’m sure something’s going on, and I have a feeling it won’t be good for us.”

“I wouldn’t believe a word she says,” a girl says, behind me. “She’s lying through her teeth.”

There’s something familiar about her voice. I tense as I look over my shoulder. She’s leaning against the wall, her arms folded and her lips puckered. Her short dark hair is spiked with something that looks like mud.

Nellie. The girl who tried to kill me the night I was picked for Extraction.

“I came from the Surface too,” she says. “The governor told us the shield turning off was a serious glitch in the system. The security tech who let it happen isn’t alive anymore.”

That night when I scaled the building to escape her, Nellie fled with Grady and the other two boys she was with. When Cadet Waller and the officials arrived to rescue me from a treacherous height, they said they’d find my attackers. They said they’d be punished, maybe even sent to quarantine. But Nellie is here, alive, with no fresh scars that I can see.

Seeing her in front of me again is no relief.

“The governor could’ve been lying,” I say, turning my face away so she won’t see it. My heart’s thrumming a beat too fast. Even with my curls bleached and my hair short like a boy’s, Nellie might recognize me. I doubt she’ll be happy to see me. “You honestly believe everything the adults say?”

There’s a pause.

“No,” Nellie says stiffly. “But why should I believe you? You’ve got no proof, just theories.”

“Maybe so,” I say. “But I know what I saw when the shield went down, and you heard what those officials said. I couldn’t make that up.”

“Not that good of a liar?”

“I have no reason to lie to you.”

“Right.” Nellie walks slowly around me, until she’s in front of me.

Turning my head away again would only make her more suspicious, so I set my jaw and meet her eyes. They are half in shadow because of the way the light from the nearest lamp falls, but I can still see her scrutinizing my features. The freckles I couldn’t wash away; the scar that runs along my jaw, a different shape from the one I had when she saw me last, but still on the same side of my face. I can practically see the gears turning in her head. “What did you say your name was?” she asks.

“I didn’t,” I say. “But it’s Brea.”

“Brea,” Nellie repeats, confusion flickering in her eyes. She must think she knows who I really am, but she also thinks she’s crazy because I’m not supposed to be here. I was picked for Extraction. I should be in the Core.

But she seems to come to a conclusion. Crossing her arms, she speaks again in a louder voice. “So let me guess, you think the Developers transferred us down here to give us some mind-control injection, so they can make us do whatever they want? And they’re gonna make us do something
bad,
right? Sounds like a load of garbage to me.”

Hector gets to his feet, glaring at Nellie. “Just leave her alone, will you?”

I say, “Hector, please—”

“Fine,” Nellie says, her mouth curving up at the side in a half smirk. She turns away haughtily and makes a big show of stepping over people’s legs to reach the room exit.

As she goes, she calls over her shoulder, “Have fun telling bedtime stories to your new boyfriend,
Brea
.”

She knows who I am. The question is whether or not she will tell.

13

That night, I lie awake beneath a flickering lamp, listening to the snores coming from Arthur. He lies a few feet away from me, between Hector and the cave wall. The girls, curly-haired Evie and dimpled Lucy, sleep near us too.

The main gate is visible through the short passageway leading to the first room I saw in the camp. The same two guards have been stationed outside the gate since the last meal rations were passed out.

Mal hasn’t come yet, and neither has Skylar, or Beechy. I don’t know what to think. They didn’t say how long it might take them to get a message to me. They didn’t say how long I should wait until I start worrying.

But I’m worried already. I still don’t know for sure if Logan made it here. And the others could’ve had trouble getting onto the transports. Even if they made it here, any one of them could’ve been recognized sometime in the last twenty-four hours. I have no way of knowing.

I might be the only one of us left.

No, I can’t think like that. There could be other reasons why no one’s come to talk to me yet. The simplest is that they haven’t figured out the safest way to send me a message—there are a lot of cam-bots around the camp. They have to be careful and smart about this, because even the slightest slipup could mean the worst for us. And I have to be patient.

I did what Beechy said—I spread the word that we are in danger to other people, but only four listened and believed me. There’s little four of us can do in a camp this size, especially with no way out of it. We will likely be taken for the health inspection soon. Evie said the officials and cam-bots work together to track everyone down, so there’s no way to hide from them.

We can fight the nurses who administer our medicine, so they won’t be able to give us the submission serum, but I don’t know how well that’ll work. I don’t know if it’s worth fighting them, if I’ll be caught because of it. I already know the serum won’t work on me. I’m allergic to the main ingredient, the pollen from the genetically modified aster flower. The serum sets my body on fire with fever, making me so weak, I can barely protect myself. It’s brought me close to death before. But it won’t make me calm or easy to control.

Unless Charlie’s scientists have somehow created a serum with a different core ingredient in the past eight days. It’s a slim chance, but one that does make me nervous. I understand the old serum—I know that an energy injection can reverse the effects in some people, even if they aren’t allergic. But a new serum, I wouldn’t know how to fight.

Beside me, Hector’s clothing rustles as he turns over. “Brea?” he whispers.

“Yeah?”

His smile lights up his eyes, even in the dark. “Thought you might be awake.”

“It’s hard to fall asleep in a new place.” Especially without Logan.

“Are you cold?” Hector asks, scooting closer.

I tense instinctively. The comment Nellie said earlier flashes through my head:
your new boyfriend
. Maybe I’m stupid and he’s just being nice, but I’m worried Hector might be getting the wrong idea.

I roll over so I’m facing away from him. “It’s not too bad,” I say, my voice a pitch higher than usual.

The truth is, my whole body is numb, and I’ve been shivering so much, it’s become like second nature. I don’t know how everyone doesn’t get sick all the time here, with the temperature so low. I suppose their bodies become acclimated to the cold.

Silence passes between us. I almost want to look at Hector’s face to make sure he’s okay, but I’m afraid that might make it worse. He’s only known me for a day. I’m sure he’ll get over it, whatever it is
.

“Listen,” he says. “There’s something I want to show you.”

His voice sounds firmer, more deliberate. Like he means this is something really important, unrelated to my rejection.

“What is it?” I ask, not turning my head.

“Can’t tell you, but I can show you. It’s a bit of a walk. We’ll have to be quiet.”

I tease the inside of my cheek with my teeth. We could get caught, and he makes it sound like this is something we shouldn’t be caught doing. And maybe it isn’t smart for me to go with him after what just happened.

But I’m too curious to say no.

I roll back over. “I can be quiet.”

Hector lifts his head, probably checking the location of the nearest cam-bot. There’s one hovering in the passageway to the room with the gate, but its red lights are facing the opposite direction. It’s far enough away that its motion sensors shouldn’t pick us up if we’re careful, at least for now.

“Come on.” Hector pushes off the ground.

I stand and follow him, wondering what’s so important he has to show it to me in the middle of the night.

*   *   *

The stench of human waste stings my nostrils as we approach the flimsy doors of the latrine station. It’s even worse than the smell of the latrines in the Surface camp—probably since those weren’t enclosed underground—and those were bad enough. I pinch the bridge of my nose. This had better be worth it.

Hector leads the way into the station. There are ten stalls on either side with a high partition between them. He pauses to listen. But the place seems empty. The only sounds I hear are the coughs and snores and whimpers of the people sleeping behind us, in the nearest cave room.

Hector gestures for me to follow him to the right, to the boys’ side of the station. Our bare feet squelch in the muddy ground. Water drips from the eaves overhead, through cracks in the limestone where some blackish-green fungus grows.

We stop outside the last latrine stall. Hector carefully pushes open the door to the last stall, checking to make sure no one’s inside.

“Are you going to tell me what we’re looking for?” I ask.

“It’s something I found a while back.” He gestures for me to follow him into the cramped stall. “I don’t think anyone else knows about it. I’ve only used it twice, and I’m always careful to make sure no one notices when I do.”

The only thing in the stall is a latrine: a hole in the ground with a metal covering. There’s nothing special about it, as far as I can tell. I’m about to decide Hector is officially crazy when he says, “There,” and I realize he’s pointing at the ceiling.

I look up. The light cast by the lone lamp in the room doesn’t reach all the way over here, but if I squint, I can see the ridges formed by the limestone. Water or some man-made machine must’ve eroded it away over time. In some places, the stone hangs in the shape of icicles; in others, it looks like someone cut it into thick slices, but didn’t break the slices away.

The stone is brushed with a wash of colors—yellows and whites and pale browns. But directly above the latrine stall, there’s a darker spot in the rock, where the ridges slope upward but leave a space between them that almost looks like a hole. I twist my mouth as I stare at it, until my eyes adjust enough that I catch the outline of the handle attached to the hole. It’s not a hole; it’s a square piece of steel.

A steel door.

I step all the way into the stall, trying not to choke from the smell, though there’s barely room for both me and Hector to fit. He closes the door behind us.

“Where does it lead?” I ask.

But I know before he answers. I remember the water dripping from the cave eaves, and the wet spot on the floor last night when I nearly stepped on the croachers.

“The pipes,” Hector says. “There’s a maintenance corridor up there, but I don’t think anyone uses it anymore. The door was all rusted when I tried it the first time. I almost couldn’t get it open.”

“A maintenance corridor?”

“I think so. It leads all the way to the security hub. I couldn’t find a way in, but I heard monitors buzzing and guards talking. The things they were saying…” Hector hesitates. “They were waiting for some signal to ditch this sector and head for the Core. Like an evacuation. It was a couple weeks ago, and obviously nothing happened. But that’s why I believe what you said earlier, about Charlie planning something bad for us.”

My mind races. The guards must’ve been talking about evacuating to the Core because of the KIMO bomb. A couple weeks ago, preparations were under way. I still wish I could explain all that to Hector, but I can’t, because he can’t know I came from the Core. Maybe in a few more days I’ll trust him enough, but not yet.

But this maintenance corridor could definitely be useful. If I could get to the security hub, I might be able to find Mal or Skylar. I might be able to talk to one of them. Depending on where else the corridor leads, I might even be able to reach Logan.

“Is the corridor connected to the other camp?” I ask, hopeful.

Hector shakes his head. “I couldn’t find a way in. The only way into Camp B is through the quarantine facility and the front gate.”

There’s something odd about the way he paused before he answered, and part of me wonders if he’s lying. But it doesn’t matter; I can see for myself once I get up there.

I run my hands over the wooden wall on the right side of the stall. It leans almost against the wall of the cave, with a couple inches of space in between. The wall is a few feet higher than my head, but if I could pull myself to the top of it, the ridges in the cave wall could serve as handholds and footholds to reach the door. The problem is pulling myself up into the passage once I get the door open. The way the ceiling ridges slope, I don’t know if I can reach.