Set Me Free (2 page)

I
n the van, I can tell something is still eating at Jonah. He chews his bottom lip and stares at his sneakers. Meanwhile, Ryan keeps his eyes on the road, Rosie is trying to reach Drew or Alonso on the walkie-talkie (in vain), and Evelyn and Louisa sit in silence. Louisa keeps one arm looped through mine, as if that will somehow keep me in place from now on. And somehow, it does make me feel safer.

“What’s wrong?” I ask Jonah, still gripping the honeycomb in my clammy palm. I know it’s hard for him to open up, so I give his shoulder an encouraging pat, and then he begins to talk.

“When I lived on the streets,” he explains, “even the worst thugs stayed away from Wrigley Field. They said there were mutants there. Freaks. Scary ones.”

I stare at him. Jonah’s afraid of something? I wouldn’t have expected that.

“Mutants?” says Louisa fearfully.

“Calm down,” Rosie says, glancing back at us. “If Jonah knows about these rumors, then I’m sure Helen does, too. Those
rumors
are probably exactly why she decided she, Drew, and Alonso should hide out at Wrigley Field.” She says this in that commanding and confident voice she’s so good at. “The cops never go there because of those stories, and I’m pretty sure the Alliance wouldn’t chance it, either.”

So Helen was a street kid, too
, I muse. I want to ask more about her, but then Ryan speaks up.

“Let’s just say there are mutants,” he says, taking a left onto North Racine. “What exactly are we talking about here? Webbed feet? Eyes in the backs of their heads?”

You’d think the daughter of the Hornet, one of the most important women in the country, wouldn’t get a sinking feeling in her stomach at the mention of webbed feet. But suddenly I’m petrified. Jonah doesn’t look convinced, either. I guess I don’t blame him. He doesn’t even know Drew or Alonso or Helen, so why would he risk stumbling upon mutants to help strangers?

Then again, I was a stranger and he helped me.

“Maybe we should rethink this,” I say, and Louisa nods at me. “I mean, I’m all for finding the others, but shouldn’t we formulate some kind of mutant defense plan first?”

“Okay, this is insane,” says Evelyn, rolling her eyes. She looks right at me. “Maddie, don’t tell me you actually think there’s a band of violent humanoids living at Wrigley Field. Seriously? Do you really believe that?”

I’m stunned. “You
don’t
?” I ask. “You’re always insisting that sinister stuff is lurking behind the shadows.”

“I know,” Evelyn admits, and gives me a funny smile — it’s sheepish, mixed with a little bit of pride.
“And I do still believe that the Alliance is more powerful than we realize, that they’re likely slipping subliminal messages into music lyrics and secretly poisoning our air supply.” She shrugs. “But the whole mutant thing just sounds silly to me.”

Louisa cocks her head at Evelyn. “So … you think deadly mutants are silly, but a
music
threat makes perfect sense to you?”

“I’m just saying,” says Evelyn, “we’ve got enough scary reality to worry about, so why waste time on fairy tales?”

She’s got a point. I begin to relax a little.

“And besides,” says Rosie, “let’s say, for argument’s sake, there
are
mutants living in Wrigley. We aren’t just going to let Alonso, Drew, and Helen face them alone, are we? I mean, if we don’t have their backs, who will?”

I nod. I
want
to be brave. I figure going ahead with this plan is a good start.

As we head the few miles up North Racine Avenue, I see a boarded-up old bookstore, out of use forever. It reminds me of Phoenix School. Since the building was formerly a public library, there were plenty of books in
storage. My chore was to burn them as a symbol of “heralding in a new world order, getting rid of the dangerous old ideas.” But those books hadn’t felt dangerous to me. They’d felt important. On my ultralightweight titanium e-reader (long since abandoned at CMS), you’d hit “delete” when you finished a story and it all just disappeared. But these leather-bound books had a real sense of permanence about them. I picture the books and their titles in my mind:
Tom Sawyer, The Hunger Games, Little Women
,
The Odyssey
… Gone now, because of me.

Ryan stops to let a car go ahead of him. It’s an older model, an electronic-petroleum hybrid. The advertisement on the side door is a splashy red one for Jumpy Juice, a pomegranate-flavored energy drink. According to the ad, not only does the beverage effect a chemical reaction in the brain to provide forty-eight hours of pure vigor but it can also, oddly enough, make your hair more manageable.

I’ve never tasted a pomegranate, but I’m pretty sure Jumpy Juice isn’t worth the risk. And my unmanageable hair is the least of my problems right now.

Not too long ago, Louisa and I would have laughed
about that ad, but things are so different now. I look at Louisa, and I wonder if she’s remembering how things were tense between us before I was taken. I’m also wondering how I’ll ever find my mom in what seems like an increasingly big and dangerous Chicago … if she’s even
in
Chicago at all.

Trying to get my mind off my mother, I turn to Louisa. “So … who’s Helen?” I finally ask.

All talking over one another, Rosie, Ryan, Louisa, and Evelyn explain that Helen was a runaway from Phoenix — a “flier,” we’d called those who’d broken out — and she, as well as her brother, Troy, had stumbled upon the group not long after I’d been taken. Helen was wild and tough, but she’d proven helpful — she was the one who’d given my friends the inside knowledge of Phoenix’s rules so that they could infiltrate the school and get to me. I feel a rush of gratitude toward this girl I’ve never met.

“So in some ways it’s thanks to Helen that I’m even here with all of you again,” I muse out loud, still trying to come to grips with everything that’s happened.

“And to Ivan,” Rosie points out from the passenger seat. Ivan is the boyfriend of Rosie’s sister, Wren. I know she’s worrying about him — and Wren, too. According to Ivan, Wren is stationed with the Hornet — my mom. And I know Rosie is as desperate to find her sister as I am to find my mother.

“And all of you,” I add, looking from Louisa to Evelyn and feeling a tightening in my throat. “And you,” I add, turning to Jonah.

“Maddie, you said something about Jonah saving your life at Phoenix,” Evelyn speaks up. “What happened?”

Jonah’s looking straight ahead. He seems embarrassed, but I think maybe if I tell my friends about his heroic act, he’ll feel more comfortable with us.

“It was the first night I was there,” I say. “After they grabbed me from the mall parking lot.”

“Right,” says Rosie, softly. “We remember that part.”

“I was so scared,” I tell them, recalling the heart-pounding terror, the sense of dread and bewilderment as the van drove through the darkness and I was powerless to stop it. “More scared than I’d ever been in my life.” I
hesitate, unable to speak for a moment. Louisa squeezes my elbow.

I’m surprised to hear Jonah pick up the story. “I saw Maddie when they first brought her in,” he says quietly but evenly. “She didn’t have the look.”

“What look?” Ryan asks.

“The look of a street kid. That crazy, desperate look in the eyes that comes from being afraid and forgotten.”

I shiver; was that how Jonah had looked when the Alliance found him on the street and dragged him into the Phoenix School?

I find my voice again and continue. “The Superior showed me around the school. Her name was Miss Castle.”

Jonah shudders at the mention of her name.

“I remember her,” says Rosie in a voice of dread.

“Me, too,” says Evelyn. “She’s that old lady who Ivan said could maim you with her knitting needles.”

“It was kill you with her pinkie,” Louisa clarifies.

I twist the honeycomb in my hands again. “Miss Castle made it sound like some cool museum tour, like at
the end I could buy souvenirs or something. Then I noticed this older girl following us — Brianna, her name was — and she kept giving me these really mean, cold looks.”

“Brianna was on the streets a long time,” says Jonah. “By the time she got to Phoenix, she wasn’t all there in the head. The Alliance recognized that right off, which is why they were training her in the most dangerous stuff.”

“Like what?” asks Ryan from behind the wheel, sounding as though he’d rather not know the answer.

“Explosives. She spent a lot of time in the pyrotechnics lab.” Jonah actually smiles, but there is no humor in it. “Otherwise known as the Boom Room.”

My friends are looking a little pale now, I guess because they’re really beginning to understand the true nature of the Phoenix Center. They’d been on the inside, but only briefly.

Jonah continues. “I noticed Brianna shadowing Maddie when the Superior was showing her the kitchen. I was there helping unload the daily three-o’clock food
delivery. When I saw Brianna following Maddie, it was like I snapped out of my haze for a second. I decided to follow them.”

I give him a look of gratitude. “The last stop on the tour was the boiler room,” I say, “with those roaring fires. I actually found myself thinking that it might be nice to have such a warm place to be on a cold night.” I shake my head, remembering the burning books. “Brianna followed me along the upper catwalk.” Even with the fires blazing I could feel my blood chilling.

The van rocks gently as Ryan takes a corner, and I take a breath.

“Right then, Miss Castle got a call on her communication device. She told me to wait for her. The minute she was gone, Brianna came up behind me. She grabbed me by the shoulders and kept shaking me, pushing me closer and closer to the railing of the catwalk.” I can feel the heat of the flames on the back of my neck even now.

Louisa gasps. Rosie’s eyes are huge. Evelyn is shaking her head in horror.

“And then Jonah was there and he was talking to Brianna, very quietly, and very, very calmly.”

“Calmly?” says Ryan, impressed. “I would have been freaking out!”

“I
was
freaking out,” I assure him. “But Jonah kept it together. He said things like, ‘You don’t want to do this, Brianna. You know you don’t want to get in more trouble.’ “

I’m remembering the easy, relaxed cadence of his words. Underneath them there was also this firmness that left no room for argument. Luckily, Brianna had recognized that, too.

Evelyn is wringing her hands, breathless with the suspense of it. “What happened?”

“Well, she’s
here
,” Rosie points out, “so I’m thinking his little pep talk was successful.”

I nod. “Brianna just let go of me,” I say, feeling the shock and relief all over again. “She just let go and backed away. Then she took off running.”

“Did you go after her?” Louisa asks Jonah.

“Well …” Jonah shoots me a look. “I couldn’t.”

“Why not?” Louisa demands to know.

“Because he had his hands full,” I explain, blushing. “See, after Brianna let go of me, I kind of, well, um …”

“She fainted,” says Jonah, simply.

“Yeah, I fainted. And I guess Jonah caught me.”

“Good thing,” quips Ryan, “considering you were hovering above an enormous fiery pit at the time.”

“Miss Castle came back and told me to bring her to the medical facility,” says Jonah.

This was where things grew dim and fuzzy for me. So I listen intently as Jonah describes how he helped me down the rickety steps of the catwalk, and through the corridors to the infirmary. He explains that two nurses in Phoenix-issue lab coats instructed him to place me on a cot. He offered to stay with me, but they said absolutely not, that this was a restricted zone, patients only.

“So I left, but I hid and watched them,” Jonah tells us. “I was hoping they wouldn’t do it, but they did.”

“Do what?” Louisa asks.

I bite my lip, looking at him nervously. This part of the story is news to me. My heart bangs against my ribs and I grip the honeycomb so hard I worry I’ll break it.

“Phoenix uses all different methods of mind control,” he says, “which they help along by feeding us food laced with low doses of slow-acting drugs.”

“How do you know this?” Evelyn asks, looking both suspicious and deeply curious.

“It’s pretty obvious,” says Jonah, clearly growing more comfortable. “No one’s ever said it out loud, but since they don’t give us pills or anything, the smarter ones have figured out that it’s the food that’s doing it.”

“The NutriCorp food we found,” says Rosie. “Now it all makes sense.”

“And you can’t just
not
eat,” says Ryan.

“But Maddie was only at Phoenix for three days,” Rosie points out. “And I’ve seen her eat. She’s not exactly a chowhound … like some people I know.” She jabs Ryan in the side.

“It’s true,” I say, frowning. “And if the drugs in the food are slow-acting, how did I get so dopey so quickly?”

Jonah is about to answer but is cut off by the shriek of rubber skidding on cement. Ryan has slammed on the van’s brakes to avoid hitting a stray dog that has appeared in the street. My first instinct is to hop out of the van and help the animal, but even as I am reaching for the door, Jonah’s hand clamps down on my wrist to stop me. In the next second, I understand why: four more mutts have joined the one in the street. They are all lean with dull, matted coats and wild eyes. They stand there, like a canine blockade, panting and pawing the asphalt.

“Ooh, look,” says Ryan in a deadpan tone. “Fluffy and Rover want to play.”

One of the dogs, a German shepherd–pit bull mix I think, actually sits up on his hind legs and howls at the van before they all scamper off together into an alley on the opposite side of the street. I watch them go, wondering if they ever had homes, and feeling an odd empathy toward them.

Ryan drives on, and Jonah continues.

“I watched one nurse roll up your sleeve,” he tells me, his big eyes serious. “The other one was at the counter with her back to me but I could tell she was preparing something. I saw that they were talking but I couldn’t hear them.”

“I could,” I blurt out, only realizing it now. “I mean, I think I could.”