The Farm (15 page)

“Yes! I have the keys!”

“The keys? Seriously?”

“Yes.” I slipped my backpack off, unzipped the front pocket, and started digging around inside. “I searched all the offices right after we moved in. Clearly Professor Bajaj—whoever he was—was a total control freak. Plus, he was the head of the department.”

I found what I was looking for and held it up so Carter could see the key ring with eight keys hanging from it. Each had a little paper tag dangling from it, labeled “Master Key 1st floor,” “Master Key 2nd floor,” and so on. Like I said, control freak. You gotta love that about a man. Makes it so easy to pilfer his belongings later.

I found “Master Key 7th floor” and jammed it into the lock.

Carter looked inside. “Shit. Just more brooms.”

“What were you expecting? A door into the magical world of Narnia?”

He smirked. “Good point. I was just hoping for a solution that doesn’t involve bombing them. We’ll consider that our last resort.”

Carter backed out of the broom closet and shut the door. He let his shoulders sink into the wall in a defeated sort of way. We both looked at the row of numbers above the elevator. The Collabs had made it to four. Who knew what floor the others were on? However many of them there were, they were getting closer. And we were out of options. Unless we wanted to parachute off the top of the building, we were stuck here.

“We’ve got to hide.” He grabbed my hand and started pulling me toward the door, but he stopped short. Slowly he reached out and swung the door away from the wall. Pointing to the hatch that had been hidden behind the open door, he asked, “What’s that?”

“That’s the garbage chute.”

“The . . . what?” He shot me a look of either confusion or disbelief.

“The garbage chute. You know, you open the door and drop a bag of trash all the way down to the basement. Or, I don’t know, maybe it’s a laundry chute or something.”

“All the way down to the basement?” he asked with his eyebrows so high up his forehead they’d disappeared beneath his bangs. He looked from the hatch door in the wall to me and back again.

“Oh, no,” I muttered, the significance slowly dawning. “You can’t be serious.”

He yanked on the handle, pulling it open so the door dropped flat against the wall. He stuck his head through the opening and looked down.

“You cannot be serious!” I repeated, panic starting to gnaw at my gut. I threw out the first objection that came to mind. “That opening is only, like, two feet by two feet. We wouldn’t even fit.”

He eyed me. “You’d fit. I might.”

“It’s a seven-story drop!”

“Good point.” He grinned, not looking at all like I’d convinced him.

Behind us, the elevator cranked to life again. It had nearly reached our floor.

Carter closed the hatch to the garbage chute, then carefully opened the maintenance room door so that the hatch behind it was nearly invisible. Then he opened up the broom closet and pulled me inside.

The closet was dark, with only a thin strip of light coming from under the door. My eyes adjusted as I kept fumbling with the keys, making them rattle. Finally, I felt Carter’s fingers pry them out of mine. I let him because I was too afraid of making noise.

The room was tiny and so dark I could barely see. I felt Carter’s presence behind me. I was all the more aware of him because I was starting to feel jittery from the adrenaline. Even though we hadn’t heard the ding from the elevator—so I knew the Collabs hadn’t made it to the seventh floor yet—I felt like they’d be able to hear my pounding heart the second they stepped out of the elevator.

I took a step away from the door and felt the backpack bump into Carter. I turned and took a step to the side, only to feel it nudge something else. Mop handles slid and clattered against the door.

“Crap,” I muttered.

I tried to look over my shoulder and turned another ninety degrees, but I bumped something else.

Before I could do any more damage, Carter grabbed my shoulders and pulled me closer to him.

“Come here, before you knock anything else over. Jeez, and you were worried about me making too much noise.”

He must have been leaning his back against the shelves, because his legs were stretched out in front of him a little and I ended up standing between his legs. I gripped the straps of the backpack, waiting for my eyes to adjust. Even without seeing, I could tell my face was just a few inches from his chest.

“Hey, I’m not the one who decided to put us into the tiniest closet on this floor,” I said defensively.

“Oh, yeah, I’m sure you could have found something better—”

“Professor Estleman’s office is right around the corner. She has a storage closet almost as big as the one Mel and I lived in. And then there’s that one, too. And—”

“Okay, I get the point.”

My eyes had adjusted to the dim lighting. Our chests were maybe five inches apart and his lips were right at eye level. It was odd, standing so close to him, trying to be so perfectly still and quiet. I was too aware of the way his legs were stretched out on either side of mine. I could hear every breath he took, could feel his exhalations against my cheek.

Then, somewhere in the building, the heater cycled on. The silence in the room wasn’t quite so deafening.

“Could you really build a bomb?” he asked.

“Don’t get too excited,” I quipped. “I mean, I couldn’t build, like, a nuclear missile or anything. But when Mel and I first started planning our escape, I figured out how to build a Molotov cocktail.”

“And . .
 
.”

“And, it’s doable. There are all kinds of chemicals locked in the chem lab’s safety cabinet. I could come up with something.”

“Are we talking a lot of fire and noise?”

“Yeah,” I whispered. “Something to distract people, if that’s what you want.”

“I’m impressed.”

“I’ve lived in a science building for the past six months with almost nothing to do except read and explore,” I blurted out. “I’d be pretty stupid if I couldn’t come up with something that would explode after all this time.”

“Good point.” Again there was that humor in his voice.

Was he making fun of me? I took an instinctive step back.

Before I could bump into anything else, he reached out and grabbed my arms, pulling me toward him. He released my arms, dropping his hands to my hips. “Hey, don’t go too far,” he murmured.

“Um, just out of curiosity. Couldn’t we just stay here until they leave to go look for me somewhere else?”

His hands seemed to tighten infinitesimally on my hips. “That does sound nice, doesn’t it?” His voice was low and intimate. I squeezed my eyes closed. “But I don’t think so. We need to get you out of here and across campus in less than an hour.”

Then he shifted his legs, straightening. I opened my eyes to see him dipping his head. He reached his hand up and traced his thumb down my cheek. “Lily . .
 
.”

Then he stilled when the elevator door finally dinged. The Collabs had made it to our floor. Carter’s gaze sharpened and he cocked his head to listen toward the door.

“. . . why we’re looking here,” one of them was grumbling.

“Who knows? The Dean’s a jackass for dragging all of our asses out of bed to search for one stupid Green.”

Their footfalls were heavy and dull. The sound of the door opening. Then the first guy said, “Hey, do you think the Dean will let us play with her a bit first?”

“Dude, she’s not a Breeder.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t matter if he’s just going to feed her to the Ticks anyway.”

The second guy let out a bark of laughter, like what his buddy had said was actually funny or something.

The voices faded as the Collabs left the room.

Suddenly the air in the tiny broom closet felt heavy. Sure, I’d known the Collabs had to have been searching for me, but hearing them say it was something else entirely. I felt a jolt of panic as suddenly the danger I was in became all too real.

For a long moment, Carter was as silent as I was, and for some reason I didn’t understand, I wasn’t looking at him anymore but was staring at one of the stupid mop handles. I forced myself to look at him. I could barely see him in the dark, but I could feel the tension in his body.

“So . . .” I started, wanting to change the topic away from the Collabs and what they planned to do to me if they found me, “. . . what are you going to do with this bomb I’m supposed to build?”

“I’m going to get you out of this building.”

Before I could ask what exactly his plan was, he edged around me and used my key to unlock the door. “Stay here. I’ll be back to get you in a few minutes.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Lily

Since the staff room was at the end of the back hallway, there was only one direction Carter could have gone to follow the Collabs. I crept down the hall, practically holding my breath, my ears straining for the sounds of Carter getting his ass kicked. Or worse, his ass knocked out.

Yeah, he was tough—I knew that better than anyone—but there were at least two Collabs. And his tranq rifle was out of darts. I would never forgive myself if he ended up hurt just because I hadn’t trusted him enough not to shoot me in the back again. Of course, I also wouldn’t have been able to forgive myself if I’d missed the chance to take the dart and then he’d shot me later, so I guess it balanced out.

I reached the spot where the maintenance hall met the building’s main hall and stopped just shy of the intersection, listening. Still nothing. Back pressed to the wall, I crouched low and peered around the corner, fully expecting to see the Collabs and maybe Carter, too, but the hall was empty. Where were they?

I cursed Carter as I tiptoed down the hall. Suddenly, a thud came from one of the rooms on my right, followed quickly by a yelp and a scuffle.

I broke into a run and skidded into the room only a few seconds later to see Carter leaning over the two Collabs, both of whom were knocked out on the floor.

“Wow,” I said.

Carter looked up at me. The angle made his bangs hang over his eyes and for a second he looked so much more like the boy I’d known back in the Before, it almost made my heart catch. He quirked an eyebrow; either he was surprised to see me standing there or it was some sort of commentary on my reaction.

“That was fast!” I said.

He stood. “Yeah. Mili—”

“Military school,” I finished for him.

“I told you to wait in the closet for me to come get you,” he said as he dug something out of his back pocket.

“Right. Next time you want me to stay in a closet while you go out to face the bad guys by yourself, you’d better lock me in. ’Cause I’m not just going to hide while—”

He pulled a couple of cable tie handcuffs out of his back pocket. “I left you behind for a reason. I—”

“I can handle myself.”

“I know you can handle yourself.” He gave a little rub at his neck to remind me exactly how well he knew it. “But I also knew I could handle these guys alone. And I knew I had to do it quietly, because we don’t want anyone else coming up here.”

“Oh.” I stood there for a moment watching as he rolled the first Collab onto his stomach and fastened the cable tie around his wrists. “Why can’t anything ever be easy with you, Carter?”

He barely glanced up at me. “It was easy. I told you to stay put. If you’d stayed put, that would have been easy.”

“No, that would have been stupid.”

“Look, it’s my job to keep you safe and—”

“It’s my own job to keep myself safe. I’ve been doing that quite well for the past six months. So don’t treat me like I can’t take care of myself. Next time you’re planning on rushing off to save the day, tell me your plan first.”

“Fine.” By now he’d bound the wrists of the second Collab and had moved on to binding their feet, too. “Next time I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. Now can you tell me where the nearest closet is that I can lock these guys up in?”

“Right across the hall.”

I rushed across to make sure it was unlocked. By the time I made it back, he had his arms hooked under the armpits of the first Collab and was dragging him to the closet. I went back and grabbed the second. The guy was heavier than I would have thought. Or I was weaker.

Carter came up behind me. “Hey, let me get him.”

I stood up, sucking in a deep breath as I did, but my head still swirled a bit.

Carter grabbed the other guy and dragged him across the hall. I must have looked as newborn-deerish as I felt, because he asked, “When was the last time you donated?”

It took me a second to remember. The days tended to blend together without weekends to divide up the time. “Five days ago. Maybe four.”

He cursed under his breath. “I shouldn’t have tranqed you.”

“No, you shouldn’t have.”

“Yeah. Sorry about that.” He got Collab number two into place beside his partner. “You should take it easy until the rest of the tranq wears off.”

I nudged my foot toward one of the Collabs. “Are they going to be okay?”

“They’ll be fine. Someone will realize they’re missing. Either tonight when they don’t report back or tomorrow when they don’t report for duty. Their supervisor will activate their chips and send someone to look for them.” He grabbed my hand and started walking down the hall. “How long will it take you to make a couple of those things?”

“Maybe twenty or thirty minutes. I think I’ve got everything I need back in the room Mel and I lived in.”

Thankfully anything I could possibly need had once been stored there. I was as familiar with the contents of that room as I’d once been with my bedroom at home. Of course, since Mel had worked her magic, things were not where I’d left them. But most of the bottles of chemicals were the same color, so finding them shouldn’t be too hard.

A few minutes later, we were back in the storage closet, and I was rounding up ingredients. The sooner Carter and I were out of here, the sooner I’d be back with Mel.

After helping me carry a tray of bottles out to the lab, Carter asked, “You good here, or do you need me to stay?”

I glanced up from a bottle of benzene. “Where are you going?”

His evasions might have annoyed me, but I didn’t really like the idea of being in here alone when there were still four Collabs prowling around the building looking for me.

“I was going to search this floor. Try to find some rope.”

“No need.” I nodded toward the backpack as I continued to sort through the items I needed to make the bombs. “I’ve got some in there. Check the middle pocket.”

A minute later, he’d found it and was stretching it out in arm lengths to estimate how long it was.

“About thirty feet,” he said, shaking his head. “Not long enough. Where did you get this? Was there more of it?”

I’d covered a bottle brush with a paper towel and was using it to clear out the bottles I’d selected. I didn’t want anything in there that I didn’t put in. So I didn’t look up at him as I answered. “One of the geology professors had a bunch of rappelling gear. I guess she took students—”

“Where’s her office?”

“Down on the third floor.”

“Damn,” he muttered.

I smiled as I moved on to the next bottle. “But I brought all the rappelling gear up to the storage closet as soon as I found it.”

His face broke into a smile. “You’re a genius.”

“Thanks,” I quipped, without letting his compliment go to my head. “But you’ll have to search the storage closet to find it. The last time I saw it, it was in a gray and blue backpack. I have no idea if Mel took it out of the pack or not.”

I returned my attention to the task at hand. By the time I was screwing the lid onto the second jar, Carter came out of the storage closet holding a single harness. His expression was grim.

I picked up a towel and began wrapping the first of the bottles in it. “I’m guessing it’s not what you wanted.”

He held up the harness. “There’s only one.”

Dread wormed through my stomach. While I was concentrating on making the bombs, it was easy not to think about what Carter was planning, but staring at the harness in his hand, it was harder to ignore. “I thought you wanted rope.”

“A couple hundred feet of rope would have worked in a pinch. This is better.”

And here I’d been hoping he was just going to use it to tie up the Collabs.

“Why exactly is this better?” I carefully wrapped the next jar in a towel. I tried to keep my voice lighthearted, to hide my fear of heights. “We’re not actually going to be repelling out any of the windows, are we?”

Carter ignored me and tapped a fingertip on the jar. “How’s this work anyway?”

I let him distract me for a few minutes, partly because he’d need to know how this was going to work and partly because I wanted to be distracted.

“The jar contains mostly methanol thickened with benzene. But I added in a pyrophoric compound that will ignite the fuel when it’s exposed to air. So basically, you throw the jar and run. The jar breaks, there’s fire, fumes, bad stuff.”

“A pyro what kind of compound?”

“Pyrophoric,” I said, feeling a little . . . well, maybe not smug, but at least pleased with myself. Since coming back into my life, Carter had one-upped me over and over again and he’d been so damn competent and calm while doing it. But I’d made mistake after mistake. I felt like I’d been twisted inside out and turned upside down. But this, this was stuff I knew and liked. In this one small arena, I had an edge over Carter. I liked feeling like I brought something to the party, too. And for once, my geekiness was useful.

He looked at the jars as if baffled. “If it ignites when it’s exposed to air, how did you get it in the jars?”

“Since I didn’t have a glove box or a Schlenk Line, I flushed a syringe with inert gas—” Carter’s eyes were starting to glaze over, so I cut straight to the point. “Very carefully. I did it very carefully.”

“In the movies, when someone makes a Molotov cocktail, they just light a rag on fire. Why not do that?”

I snorted. “You think they let us Greens have matches?”

“I have matches.”

“Oh.” And just like that, my geekiness was no longer useful.

Then Carter grinned broadly. “But this is much cooler. Perfect, actually.” Carter picked up the first jar and set it just outside the door to the closet Mel and I had shared. Then he carried the second one over to the door leading out into the hall. He stood there a moment, seeming to gauge the distance.

I realized what he was thinking and had to swallow past a lump in my throat. He was going to throw one jar at the other. Either he’d hit the second jar and the explosion would be bigger or he’d miss, but the fire would blow up the second jar a few seconds later. “You think you can throw it and hit the door frame?”

He nodded. “Yep. I figure between the books and the mattress, there’re plenty of things that will burn.” He turned to me. “I want you to wait by the fire stairs. Will you do that for me?”

My heart was suddenly racing. I wanted to argue with him about who was going to throw the actual bomb. This was my idea; I should be the one to take the risk.

Yeah, I was . . . oh, eighty percent sure this would work. But it wasn’t like I’d actually tried it before. I had no actual experience in demolition. And if I was wrong . . .

“Carter, I don’t know. Maybe this is a bad idea.”

He flashed me a smile. “No. It’s a great idea. It’s gonna work.”

“I could do it.”

“Naw.” He eyed the corner again. “I can throw farther than you can. Just go wait by the stairs and I’ll be there in a minute.”

I felt my throat closing up. “Okay. Be safe.”

I couldn’t stay and watch, even if I wasn’t supposed to be heading for the stairs. I ran all the way there, my adrenaline fueling my speed. And then I waited, heart pounding, back pressed to the wall beside the door.

I heard the explosion a second before Carter turned the corner and I saw him running down the hall. I’d already opened the door and he ran in behind me, slamming the door shut. He pulled me against his chest, just as the second explosion rumbled down the hall.

“Perfect timing,” he said softly. “I thought you said the explosions would be small.”

“I thought they would be. It’s not like I took Blowin’ Shit Up 101 last year as an elective. I tried to—”

“Shh.”

Carter pushed me away from him and opened the door just a crack. I leaned forward, straining to hear whatever had caught his attention. It was footsteps. At least a couple of people thundering down the hall.

We waited. Listening. And in those few moments, it hit me. I’d just blown up the room where Mel and I had lived for the past six months.

Everything I’d known was gone. There was truly no going back.