The Worlds We Make (17 page)

The appearance of civility didn’t comfort me. A revolver with a wooden grip lay on the desk—off to the side, as if to remind anyone approaching that he had it, and that he didn’t need to keep it in his hand to be ready to shoot you if he decided to.

It wasn’t until Connor jerked me to a halt about five feet from the desk that I registered Nathan leaning against a white metal shelving unit to our right, by the gymnasium wall. His lips were twisted into a smile that looked tightly amused. The shelves behind him were lined with thick hardcover books.

He wasn’t the only figure hovering nearby. Two men with handguns holstered on their belts stood behind the desk by one of the corners of the room, and on the opposite side leaned a young woman with what appeared to be a submachine gun slung over her shoulder.

Wardens continued to follow us in, a small crowd gathering around us. They gave us a wide berth, and no one strayed past the red gymnasium line that marked the floor in front of the desk. Not even Nathan. It was as if Michael’s “office” had invisible walls.

Leo bumped his shoulder against mine gently. When I glanced toward him, my heart nearly stopped. Beyond him, in the midst of the spectators watching our capture play out, my gaze snagged on a familiar face.

Drew.
My lips parted, but I caught the name before it slipped out, yanking my gaze away from my brother’s worried eyes. I couldn’t give away that I knew him. He’d helped us escape from the Wardens twice. If Michael found out, I couldn’t imagine what Drew’s punishment would be.

But why was he
here
? When we’d last spoken, Drew had been in Toronto. Had he spent the last ten days helping the Wardens track us down?

Michael seemed to have finished his assessment of us.

“What’s this about, Chay?” he asked. His voice was low and cool.

“This is them, Michael,” Chay said, stepping forward. “The bunch with the vaccine. We caught them down the river, like I figured we would.”

Michael regarded him steadily. “I don’t remember asking you to bring me the kids,” he said.

“Well…” Chay’s eyes flicked past us, I guessed to Marissa. Apparently getting nothing from her, he drew himself up straighter. “We haven’t been able to find the vaccine yet. They say they split up the materials, each of them only knows where part of it is, and none of them will talk. I’m not sure it’s even at the house where we caught them—Connor and I both searched the place and turned up nothing. I thought you’d want to handle things from here.”

Michael’s expression didn’t change much—a twitch of his eyebrows, a slight tensing of his mouth—but I got the feeling what he would have wanted was for Chay to figure out how to find the vaccine on his own. His gaze slid over us again.

“And even in the new world, it’s teenagers making most of the trouble,” he said. Then, to Chay, “There were only four of them?”

“We figure the sick one must have kicked the bucket somewhere along the way,” Marissa piped up. I had to suppress a bristle at her flippant mention of Gav. “No sign of the tall white guy.”

Michael tapped his lips with his thumb. “If I’m not mistaken, Huan’s team took down a ‘tall white guy’ around the place they got their tires slashed.”

I couldn’t control my reaction to that information. Tobias would have been alone, unarmed, in the woods, maybe already drugged up on sedatives—and the Wardens from the Jeep must have shot him like an animal. I cringed, trying to shut out the image, and when I opened my eyes, Michael was nodding at us.

“Do you really want to keep dragging this out?” he said. “You’ve only seen the beginning of how unpleasant I can make things for you.”

“Bring it on,” Justin said. “You’re not getting anything out of us.”

Even though Justin was the one who spoke, Michael’s attention zeroed in on me. Maybe Justin had glanced toward me. Maybe we’d tipped off Michael that I was in charge somehow before then. He leaned forward with his elbows on the desk, his eyes locked with mine.

“These are your people, aren’t they?” he said. “You brought them here. Anything I have to do to them, any way they suffer, it’ll be on your head.”

My skin felt tight. I fought to keep my voice from shaking. “It’ll be on my head if I give up, so you can just kill us,” I said. “We’re not stupid.”

“
This
is stupid,” Nathan sneered, pushing himself off the makeshift bookcase. “Why are we even standing around talking about it? Get a knife, a cigarette, some pliers, and get to work. Look at them.” He stalked past us. Up close, I could see lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth that indicated, despite his boyish features, he was several years older than any of us. He brushed his forefinger along Anika’s jaw, flicked Leo’s chin, and swept around to face Michael. “Five minutes, maybe ten, and they’ll be foaming at the mouth to spill every secret they ever had.”

“Thank you, Nathan,” Michael said evenly. “I’ll take your advice into consideration.”

“What’s there to consider?” Nathan said. “Let me at them right now, and I’ll have the vaccine before the sun’s down.”

Michael didn’t answer right away. His expression shifted from cool to cold and calculating. It occurred to me that unlike Nathan, Michael had been incredibly vague in his threats so far, as if even he wasn’t sure what he was going to do. Maybe he’d never had to arrange a torture session before. Anyone else who’d gotten in his way, who hadn’t bowed to his bribes or threats, he could have ignored or had killed. We might be the only people he’d faced who had something he couldn’t get anywhere else.

But as sick as Nathan’s proposal made me feel, it seemed like the obvious answer. And Nathan’s words had held a challenge. If Michael rejected the suggestion without another plan, he was going to look weak, indecisive. As he stood up, still matching glares with Nathan, I braced myself to hear him agree.

I never found out what Michael would have said right then. Because before he could speak, a childish shriek carried in from the hall outside. Every head in the gym turned, including mine, in time to see a tabby cat scamper past the open door. As it darted along the wall, a gangly girl with a pale bushy ponytail burst in after it. She skidded to a halt when she saw the crowd gathered in front of the desk, her cheeks flushing. A gray-haired man came running after her, panting for breath. The cat paused by the shelving unit to peer back at them. Its tail whipped back and forth, fur bristled.

The girl walked carefully toward it, but her eyes were fixed on Michael. She pushed a curl that had escaped from her ponytail behind her ear. “Sorry, Dad,” she said, in a voice that sounded too calmly mature for her age, considering she looked only nine or ten years old. “I know you’re working. I didn’t mean for her to get out of the room—she’s really fast.”

Dad.
I found myself staring at Michael, as if there was any doubt about who she meant. His lips had curved into a crooked smile.

“I’m in the middle of something right now, Samantha,” he said with a gentleness that surprised me even more. “The cat won’t go anywhere. Why don’t you go back to your room with Nikolas, and I’ll come get you when it’s a better time?”

Samantha edged a little closer to the cat. “She might get out of the building,” she said. “What if she runs into the parking lot? Someone will hit her.”

“It’s my fault,” said the gray-haired man, who I assumed was Nikolas. “Camille found the cat on the grounds and brought it in for Sam. We weren’t expecting it to bolt like that.”

Samantha took one more step, and the cat dashed away. It squeezed under a rack of basketballs. The girl crouched down, gazing at it longingly. “I’m not going to hurt her,” she said. Her voice quavered. “Why won’t she let me look after her?”

For the first time since Chay and the others had burst into the house, I saw a problem I could fix.

“Get her some food,” I said, before I could second-guess the impulse. “A can of tuna or salmon, if you have it. But you’ll have to let her come to you if you want her to trust you.”

Samantha straightened up, regarding me with large brown eyes. I felt her take in our handcuffs, the awkward way Justin was standing, Leo’s bruised face. Her brow knit.

“Who are they?” she asked her dad.

“Some people it’s very important I talk to,” Michael said as Nikolas rested his hand on Samantha’s shoulder. “Go check the storeroom—we’ve got to have some canned tuna. And then
wait
, until I say it’s a good time. The animal must be even more scared now, with all these people around.”

She bowed her head. “Okay.”

When Nikolas had ushered the girl out of the room, Michael turned not toward us, but to Nathan. Mr. Slick had visibly deflated with the appearance of a child in the room. He raised his sharp chin.

“So? Are you going to deal with them?” he demanded.

“I’m going to let them cool their heels and consider their options for a while,” Michael said. Nathan opened his mouth to argue, but Michael cut him off. “You know what you get with the kind of torture you’re talking about? Unreliable rambling from people who can’t even think, they’re so desperate for you to stop. We’ve waited weeks to get our hands on the vaccine—I’m not going to lose it because of your impatience. We’ll find out what we need to know.

“Chay, Marissa, Connor, take them to the jail room,” he went on. “I want a rotating guard, two at a time, switching off every four hours. If one of them decides they want to chat, radio me immediately. Otherwise, I’ll be by when I’m ready.” He swept his arm toward our audience. “The rest of you, get back to work. I know you’ve all got something to do.”

I’d hardly comprehended that our interrogation was over before Connor started tugging me away. He pushed me and Leo ahead of him, Chay stalking along beside Anika, and Marissa resuming her grip on Justin’s arm. I had the urge to glance back, to find Drew again amid the crowd, but I squashed it as quickly as it rose up. I didn’t know why he was here, I didn’t know what he’d been doing since we last spoke, but he was the best chance we had of finding a way out. I couldn’t jeopardize that.

Chay’s group marched us down a flight of stairs, into a drab beige basement hallway even more dimly lit than the hall above. We turned a corner to face a row of three barred cells, each of which held nothing but a plastic wastebucket.

“The girls in one, the boys in the other,” Chay said. Marissa and Connor hustled us forward.

“Should we leave the cuffs on them?” Connor asked.

“Cuff ’em to the bars,” Chay said. “One at a time!”

My arms were so numb I couldn’t have put up much of a fight anyway. Connor detached the cuff from my right wrist and snapped it against one of the vertical bars that formed a wall between the cells. When we were all similarly restrained, Chay locked the cell doors with a key he then shoved into his pocket.

“You and I’ll take the first shift,” he said to Connor. “Marissa, you grab one of your friends and be down here in four hours.”

They all stepped back into the hall. Marissa’s shoes tapped against the concrete floor as she strode away. But I could see the edge of Chay’s shoulder through the doorway. They were giving us the illusion of privacy while staying within hearing range.

“Well, fuck,” Justin said, slumping down on the rough floor. His cuffs clanged against the horizontal bar at waist height, forcing him to keep one hand raised. He propped his elbow on his knee. I rolled my shoulders, trying to work the pins and needles out of the muscles. Trying to focus on that rather than the possible horrors Michael might be planning for us right now.

Leo was cuffed to the opposite side of the same wall as me. He leaned his head against the bars, his bruised cheek tipped away. I could reach just far enough to brush my fingers over his.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I guess nothing’s broken,” he said. “I can still breathe all right. So it could be a lot worse. Hurts, though.” He raised his free hand to his cheek. “I’ll have to avoid smiling for a while.”

“There isn’t much to smile about anyway,” I said.

“I don’t know. I’m pretty happy to have that Nathan guy nowhere near us. And…with what I saw in the gym…”

Drew.

Leo looked up at me, and lowered his voice. “We all just have to wait for the right moment.”

“Yeah,” I said, even as I started to choke up. The right moment? Even with Drew on our side, this situation seemed hopeless. We were restrained and behind bars, surrounded by dozens of people who’d have gleefully watched us die if not for the information they believed we had. It wasn’t just one chance we needed; it was several. All in a neat row. And we needed them before Michael broke us down.

I blinked hard, clutching at the forced calm that had kept me going so far. “Hey,” Leo said. He shifted closer to me, crossing one arm over the other so he could clasp my hand. “It’s not all on you. We’re in this together.”

A hysterical laugh bubbled up my throat. “That doesn’t make me feel much better. You must wish you’d stayed back on the island.”

“No,” he said quietly. “I’m glad I came.”

“How can you say that?”

He paused. “You know I was in a bad place when I got home. I was so caught up in feeling guilty about the crap I’d had to do to make it back.…But I’ve had a lot of time to think now; a lot of time for things to sink in.” His grip on my hand tightened. “I saved a kid’s life this morning. Just like that. Maybe that starts to balance out all the awful things we’ve been through. We have chances to do something like that, something good, all the time. You got one when you talked to Michael’s daughter. We’re going to get more. I’m not giving up yet.”

“Right,” I said, my despair receding a few inches. Drew had come through for us before. I had to believe he could again. Or that we could find a way to get ourselves out of this disaster like we had so many already. If we weren’t going to believe there was a chance, we might as well give up right now.

“What do you think Michael’s going to do?” Justin asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. Although my imagination had come up with lots of unpleasant possibilities. Across from me, Anika sank down with her back against the bars, pulling her knees up in front of her. “Do you have any idea?” I asked her.

“Only that it won’t be good,” she said. “Look at this place—look at how many people he’s brought on board. I told you, he knows how to get what he wants.” She shuddered. “And I’m with Leo about Nathan. I wish someone would shoot
him
.”

“Michael kind of looked like he wanted to,” Justin remarked.

“Maybe,” Leo said. “But if you get rid of all the people who want to do the dirty work, you have to start doing it yourself.”

I wasn’t convinced that Michael planned to keep his hands clean. He’d pursued us across an entire continent to get the vaccine—there was no way he was backing down now.

I settled onto the cold concrete and tried to let go of those thoughts. To relax, as much as I could, so I’d be stronger when Michael did appear.

As time slipped past, the light in the basement didn’t change. I had no concept of how long we’d been down there until footsteps tapped along the hall and our guards exchanged a few words before switching off. Four hours. My stomach pinched and gurgled, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten since the sandwich that morning. Anika licked her lips.

“Hey,” she called through the doorway. “I need to talk to someone, just for a second.”

Marissa poked her head into the room, scowling. “What?”

Anika got to her feet, stepping as close as she could to the front of the cell, but keeping her head low, her shoulders slumped, unthreatening. “I just wondered if we could get a little water?”

“You’re asking for favors now?”

“I get that we’re not supposed to be comfortable,” Anika said, in the same appeasing tone she’d used on me when we first met, after she’d stalked us back to our apartment in Toronto. “And obviously you’re going to do your job. I just thought it might be better for Michael too if we’re not completely dehydrated.”

Marissa’s scowl didn’t budge. She pulled back into the hall without another word. I thought Anika’s gambit hadn’t worked, until a minute later a crackle of radio static carried through the wall. A new set of footsteps joined our two guards, and Marissa ducked back in with a small bottle of water.

“This is all you get until tomorrow,” she said. “For all of you. I hope you know how to share.”

She smacked the bottle down just inside the bars and marched out of the room. Anika groped, and then resorted to using her foot to slide the bottle into reach. She opened it and took a long gulp that made me feel just how parched my own mouth was. When she twisted the cap back on and passed it over to me, still mostly full, she was smiling.

“Thanks,” I said with honest gratitude.

“Thank you,” she said, meeting my eyes and then looking away. “I mean, for jumping in, when they started in on me at the house…I don’t know what I would have done.”

It sounded like an admission of guilt. I sipped the water, but my gut had clenched.

The only thing keeping her and the rest of us alive was staying quiet. I could only hope she’d remember that, no matter what Michael had in store.