Set Me Free (11 page)

I
t wasn’t a meteor or a freight train that took me down.

It was Miss Castle.

My kneecaps feel like they’re shattered from the force with which they hit the floor, and my shoulder is throbbing where her birdlike body made impact with mine.

I am now certain that the rumor about Miss Castle killing a person with her pinkie finger is no rumor.

She studies me sprawled there on the floor — my short blond hair, the thick glasses — and frowns, puzzled as to who I am. But this disguise was only intended to work from a distance and it just takes her a minute to see through it.

“Well, if it isn’t Madeleine Frye,” Miss Castle says in a wicked singsong. “The one who got away.”

I attempt to stand but she plants one scrawny foot on my already aching shoulder, pushing me back to the floor. I can see that she is now in possession of the detonator.

Her voice is shrill and her pale eyes are filled with fury. “The Alliance shall triumph! We and we alone will usher in the new order. The Alliance is the absolute power of the future, and I am a conduit of that power.”

“No …” comes a strangled voice from behind her. Brianna lunges for her, but Castle dodges the attack, freeing me from where I was clamped beneath her foot. Fighting the pain in my knees and my shoulder, I struggle to my feet and hobble toward the Alliance star hanging on the wall. The lockdown alarm
has
to be behind it. It just has to.

“I knew you were trouble,” Miss Castle snarls at Brianna, reaching for her. Brianna retaliates by lashing out with a strong kick and Miss Castle topples backward. The detonator skids across the carpet.

I reach the Alliance star and start tugging. It is affixed firmly to the wall.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Miss Castle shake off her daze; she is slithering like a snake toward the detonator….

At the last second, I manage to pry off the star. And then I’m staring at it: a lever. I flip it.

Suddenly, the building is filled with the earsplitting wail of the lockdown alarm. It pulses through the room, and into my already pounding head.

“The Alliance will triumph!” Miss Castle screams, and to my horror, she snatches up the detonator.

Brianna seems to move at light speed and in slow motion at the same time. She throws herself at Miss Castle.

But it’s too late.

Miss Castle’s finger is about to connect with the red button.

I race toward her, trip, and find myself flying.

“No!”

The scream that rips from my throat seems to drown out all sound — the stomping of Resistance boots as they storm into the room; the harsh metallic chorus of weapons preparing to fire; Miss Castle bleating about certain Alliance victories to come; Evelyn, Louisa, and Rosie calling my name, asking if I’m all right.

I hear nothing but my own voice, desperately roaring that word —
Nooooooo
.

And if there is an explosion, I don’t hear that, either.

I don’t feel the building shudder with the force of Brianna’s bomb, and I don’t smell the smoke or hear screams.

What I do feel is a sense of falling.

Then my forehead connects with the hard floor.

And the world goes black.

When I open my eyes, I don’t know where I am.

I blink a few times to clear my vision and realize that I’m lying on a cot in the Phoenix School infirmary. This realization gets my heart pounding fast. I’ve got to get
out! They’ll drug me again, or worse. I’ve got to run, I’ve got to —

“Maddie. It’s all right. You’re safe.”

I turn to see Dr. Ballinger sitting beside me. Her face seems to swim before my eyes. I attempt to sit up, but my head feels as though it’s splitting in two.

“Easy,” she says, gently guiding me back down to the cot. “No sudden movements just yet. You’ve got a pretty nasty bump. You fell when you were trying to stop the Superior.”

What is she talking about? I close my eyes to let the aching subside. Then I force myself to remember:
soldiers in boxes, the lockdown alarm, Brianna, Miss Castle …

The detonator!

This time I ignore the pain and sit bolt upright. “The bomb!” I cry.

“Maddie, relax,” says Dr. Ballinger. “It’s okay.”

“But … but …” I stammer. “Brianna’s bomb. I saw Miss Castle press the button.”

“Yeah,” comes Louisa’s voice from across the infirmary. “Funny thing about that.”

I turn my head — cautiously — to see her, along with Rosie and Evelyn, smiling at me.

“Miss Castle did hit a button….” says Rosie. “But apparently, Brianna is as smart as she is spooky. She rigged the remote to require two separate but consecutive button sequences in order to detonate the bomb.”

I actually manage to smile. “Another code.”

“Yeah,” says Evelyn. “I’m just glad that was one code nobody was able to crack.”

“So our plan …” I begin, sitting up again, slowly. “Did it work? Did the soldiers capture the faculty in lockdown? Did they get the kids out?”

“It all went off like clockwork,” says Rosie. “Thanks to you.”

“And everyone’s okay? No one got hurt?”

“The only injury is that bump on your head,” says Louisa, walking over and slinging an arm around her mother. She’s finally able to see her again, and this makes the pain even fainter. “Good thing we gave you bangs,” Louisa adds with a small smile. “They’ll cover it perfectly.”

“And that’s fortunate,” says Evelyn with a sly grin, “because you’re going to want to look your best.”

“Huh?” I wonder if while I was unconscious they’ve all gone a little nuts.

Dr. Ballinger helps me off the cot. “Try not to let her get overly excited,” she warns, and my friends laugh as they assist me out of the infirmary.

I don’t know what they’re laughing about until they guide me into the hallway. And then I see him, walking around the corner.

“Jonah!”

I rush over to him, not letting myself stop and think before I can give him a hug. I am so happy and relieved to see him that I forget all about the pain. “I was so worried about you!” I say.

He smiles, and I realize I’ve never seen him do that before. It’s the best smile I’ve ever seen.

“I was fine,” he assures me. “I’d been on the streets before. I knew where to hide, where to sleep for the night. And I knew I’d find you again.” He studies me a moment, then smiles again, shyly. “Great haircut.”

I blush. “Thanks.”

Jonah explains how he was able to outrun the Alliance spies, but he didn’t dare come back to Wrigley, in case any other spies had spotted him. “So I hid out near the Phoenix Center. I figured if you guys weren’t able to decipher the flash drive, you might come back here to find Ivan.”

“Ivan!” I gasp. “Is he all right? Did anyone find him?”

As if in answer to my question, a very happy Wren appears at the opposite end of the hallway. She’s escorting Ivan, who’s got some bruises and is limping slightly, but all in all, he seems okay.

“They had him locked up in the basement,” Jonah explains.

When Wren and Ivan reach us, Ivan surprises me with a salute. “Nice work.”

“Back at you,” I say. “We couldn’t have done it without your flash drive in the first place.”

As Wren helps him to the infirmary, to be seen by Dr. Ballinger, I turn to my friends.

“Where’s my mom?” I ask. “And what about Alonso,
Drew, and Ryan? Is Alonso mad that you guys pushed his box off the truck?”

“Nah, he’s very forgiving,” Evelyn says with a small smile.

“Follow us,” says Louisa.

We go downstairs; the place is eerily quiet. Several soldiers are moving about, performing thorough checks of all the computers, collecting weapons, and seeing to other details. There are no zombie cadets in the halls now.

“The students all have been transported to the hospital,” Evelyn explains. “They’ll need to get the drugs out of their systems. Some have to be treated for burns from the boilers, but other than that, they’re all going to be fine.”

“What about the faculty?” I ask.

“They were
removed,”
says Rosie, jerking her fingers into air quotes around that last word. “I don’t know where they were taken or what’s going to happen to them. I suppose I could ask, but I don’t think I really want to know.”

I shake my head. “Neither do I.”

We find the boys in the lobby with my mother, who looks horrified at the sight of the bump on my head. Hornet or not, she’s still my mom, and she makes a huge, embarrassing fuss over it.

“Does it hurt?” she asks, kissing it gently.

“Mom!” I protest. “I’m fine.”

Louisa and Ryan exchange grins. Drew is looking at me as though he knows what I’m going through.

“Are you nauseous at all?” My mother is looking at me closely, her forehead wrinkled with concern. “Maybe you should ice that bump.”

“Mom!” I sigh, exasperated. “Okay … I’ll ice it, I’ll ice it.”

“Good.” She nods, appeased. “All right, then, I’m just going to head down to the tunnel to confiscate the rest of the Taser wands and nerve gas canisters. Then we can go home and snuggle up on the sofa with some non-dairy Rocky Road. Oh, and your dad will be home tonight, too!” She kisses me again and marches off.

Rosie is pressing her lips together, trying not to giggle.

“Nerve gas and Rocky Road,” notes Alonso. “Now, there’s a combination you don’t encounter every day.”

“I think it’s cute,” says Evelyn, her eyes filled with longing. “I can’t wait to see my mom.”

“You don’t have to!” says Ryan.

With that, the boys excitedly explain that my mother has already put people in charge of contacting everyone’s families; their moms and dads are on the way here as we speak.

“We’re going back home!” says Alonso.

At first, we all cheer, hugging one another from sheer joy. But then the reality sets in, and we get quiet. I sneak a look at Jonah, and my heart sinks, wondering where exactly he’ll be going back to. Nobody speaks for a long moment.

Finally, I break the silence.

“It’s going to be weird to be apart from you guys.”

“Yeah,” says Drew. “How am I gonna sleep tonight without Alonso snoring like a freight train in the next sleeping bag?”

“Wow.” Louisa frowns. “So I guess we’ll all be going back to our regular schools.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Rosie drapes her arm around Evelyn’s shoulders. “I’m going to miss being challenged by you every time I open my mouth,” she teases.

I have a million things to say, but I can’t seem to bring myself to say them. I think of Jonah, with nowhere to go, and of all the cadets who believed they were being rescued from a life in the street when the Alliance picked them up, posing as the benevolent Phoenix organization.

The sadness is nearly overwhelming.

But then I look around at the handsome old library lobby. My eyes go to the stairs, and I picture all that empty space on the upper floors. I remember the pantry stocked with healthy, non-drugged faculty food, and I think of Dizzy, with all the knowledge he has to share.

“Uh-oh,” says Louisa, pointing at me, her eyes twinkling. “She’s got that ironing-board look on her face again!”

She’s right, of course. I do.

And suddenly, I’m smiling.

I
am back at the Phoenix Center.

Not as a prisoner this time, nor an undercover soldier.

But as a volunteer.

It’s been weeks since the final showdown at the Phoenix Center. Between the data Ivan collected, and Evelyn’s stolen documents, the Resistance has made great strides toward eliminating the Alliance presence in Chicago. I wish I could say the same for the rest of the country. There’ve been reports of mysterious fires and other kinds of destruction and sabotage from places all along the Canadian border. The Resistance is working as diligently as ever, but they’ve still got a long way to go.

We won a major battle here at the Phoenix Center. But there is still a war going on. It’s important that we don’t forget that.

It’s also important that we don’t forget what our country is fighting for, which is why Rosie, Evelyn, Louisa, and I are here at the former library today. My friends and I volunteered to reorganize the books the Alliance left behind. I’m so glad they weren’t all burned in those awful boilers. I look forward to reading as many of them as I possibly can (even if it will be strange not to be reading them on my e-reader).

And thanks to the idea I had in the library lobby, there is a lot more to look forward to than that. This library is going to be turned into a school — the Harold Washington Academy — and it’s going to include a military training program for any kids who are interested. The army is a part of all our lives, like it or not, and since we have no idea how long this War is going to last, we’re going to need as many good soldiers as we can get. Dizzy, Wren, and Ivan are going to be teachers here, and most of the former Phoenix cadets are already enrolled as
students. Some were reunited with their families; others were old enough to enlist in the regular army. None of them —
none of them
— had to go back to the street.

As for us — Louisa, Alonso, Evelyn, Drew, and I are going to finish our regular schooling right here at the academy. Jonah, Ryan, and Rosie are also sticking around, but they’ve opted for military training. They’ve already signed up for special courses for officer candidates. Evelyn is also taking an accelerated military technology course.

Of course, we’ll all have to enlist two years from now when we turn fifteen. Unless something changes, and the major conflicts are resolved.

Who knows? It could happen. That is what I hope for. What we all hope for.

My friends and I have been working here in the library for the last few days, and in the evenings, we ride out with my mom, searching the city for our friends — Helen, Troy, the Daggers. So far, we haven’t found them. But I hope that if they ever need us, they’ll know where we are.

Looking across the room now, I see Evelyn and Louisa whispering and I’m sure it has something to do with a big, important thing we’ve been planning for a while now.

Not a mission, or an escape, or an invasion.

Something totally normal. Something fun.

A slumber party.

It was Evelyn’s idea, and the boys even joked about sneaking in through the window to crash the party. Then I reminded them my mother was the leader of the Resistance army, and they decided sneaking in probably wasn’t the best idea.

We’re going to get all the soychips and tofu ice cream we can get our hands on, and maybe we’ll try giving Louisa a haircut this time, just to see how it turns out. But we haven’t picked a date yet.

Now Wren calls to us that it’s time to quit for the day. As we make our way down the stairs and through the main lobby of the library, Louisa says, “Okay. Evelyn and I were discussing when to have this slumber party. We need to get it on the calendar.”

I nod, feeling determined. If we could help the Resistance infiltrate the Phoenix School and win a battle in the War, then we can certainly do
this
.

“Okay, so let’s have it as soon as possible,” I say, linking my arm through Louisa’s. She links hers through Evelyn’s, who links hers through Rosie’s.

“How soon?” Louisa asks.

As we head for the doors, I smile. “Tomorrow, girls.”