Three (Article 5) (16 page)

“No,” I murmured. Part of me had accepted it would come to this, but had been denying it all the same. Hearing it out loud made it so much worse.

Jack rose, red in the face, and shoved away through the crowd. One of the other survivors followed him. I wanted to as well, but my boots were stuck in place.

I pictured the musclehead carrier with the missing tooth. I remembered how he’d fought us just to see which side we were on, and driven us and the other survivors from Chicago’s tunnel explosion to the coast.
My name’s Truck
, came a weak voice in the back of my mind,
because I drive the truck
.

I looked at Chase, horrified. A muscle in his jaw ticked.

The Chief of Reformation’s voice came on again.

“Despite our efforts to rehabilitate, these terrorists are determined to bring our country to ruin. They admit to being directly responsible for the deaths of good, honest people in Tennessee, in Kansas, Missouri, Indiana, and Virginia. Though they don’t call themselves insurgents, make no mistake that they are terrorists, and before they can do the same damage as that of their predecessors, they will be stopped, expunged, as a demonstration of the power of Reformation. The safety of our people is too important to take any chances.”

He was speaking to us. To Three. I could almost feel the MM’s cold watch slide over Endurance.

The female reporter returned to the broadcast.

“Citizens are, as always, encouraged to contact the FBR with information on any suspicious activity, and reminded that assisting the noncompliant is in direct violation of the Moral Statutes. With more to come on this story, I’m Felicity Bridewell.”

The line went dead.

I remembered where I’d heard her voice then: in a farmhouse in Virginia, where a couple had tried to turn us in as fugitives after she’d reported our flight. We’d barely escaped.

Nice to hear she was still the MM’s mouthpiece.

“Maybe Reinhardt’s bluffing,” said Sean, but we all knew he wasn’t. Truck was gone, and we didn’t know who would be next.

“The chief’s a dead man,” said one of the fighters behind us.

“How many times you going to say that?” asked another. “Not like we haven’t been trying.”

At the Wayland Inn we’d heard a radio report that someone had nearly succeeded in assassinating the Chief of Reformation. We’d suspected Three’s involvement, little that we knew about them. We’d been right.

“Shut it off.”

We turned, finding Dr. DeWitt, chin lifted, gaze cold. Those around him cleared a space, as if at any moment he might erupt, like he presumably had when he’d killed those soldiers before going on the run.

“You shut it off.” Billy swung the radio at the doctor, but Chase, between them, snagged it from the air. He pressed the top button, and the red light above the speaker went dark.

Truck was gone, not killed in an attack, but murdered by the FBR as a message to the resistance. Tucker could be next. A strange sense of numbness filled me as I considered the possibility of my mother’s killer dying in the same manner that she had.

“Are you aware there are children around?” DeWitt said evenly.

Billy scoffed and tossed back his hair. “I’d heard worse by the time I was their age.”

“Then it was a shame there was no one there to protect you,” DeWitt said.

Billy stuffed his hands in his pockets, glancing away. There
had
been someone who’d looked out for Billy—Wallace. And now he was gone.

“What about the other thirteen?” said Chase, but we both knew that number meant nothing. The MM executed who they wanted, when they wanted. This was just the first time they chose to acknowledge it.

“We’re dealing with it,” said DeWitt.

“Doesn’t look like it,” muttered Billy. “If I hadn’t lifted this radio none of us would even know this was happening.”

To my left, Sarah hugged a bowl of soup tightly to her chest. We’d been pretending everything was fine while Felicity Bridewell had been broadcasting Truck’s death across the country.

“Billy could find them,” said Sean. “Get him on the mainframe. He can find anyone.”

Billy puffed up.

“They can’t access the mainframe here,” I said, remembering what the woman in the north wing had said. We were out of range. All we could infiltrate were the radio signals. Since the safe house’s destruction, we didn’t even have the reports of the surviving carriers.

When DeWitt glanced at me, I remembered that no one from our party knew that Chase and I had been to the radio room and added, “I mean, that’s what I heard from someone.”

Billy turned on me. “So we’re just going to sit here and do
nothing
?”

I lifted my hands in surrender, trying to tell him I was on the same side.

Truck was dead. The fact hit me again like a ton of bricks.

“You want to do something?” DeWitt’s voice grew soft. “Come with me.”

For a second I thought I saw a flicker of fear flash in Billy’s eyes. I almost stopped him as he stalked past me to Three’s leader.

“The rest of you, back to your posts,” said DeWitt. He snatched the radio from Chase’s hand and removed the batteries. “And the next man I catch stealing from our supply closet wins a permanent placement on latrine duty.”

It was a punishment I’d heard before—Wallace had given it to Billy back at the Wayland Inn. I saw in the way Billy’s shoulders hunched that he was remembering the same thing.

“Wait,” I said. “The team you sent after our people, are they back yet?”

DeWitt paused, turning to face all those close by who were now awaiting his response.

“If they were, you would know,” he said.

I stared at his back as he walked away. Waiting, trusting a man I barely knew to take care of something we should have been dealing with ourselves left me unsettled.

“Keep your ears open,” Chase said. “I’ll find you as soon as I can.”

He left with the other fighters before I could tell him about the fallen post.

*   *   *

CHASE
did not return to the dorms that evening, and neither did Billy nor Jesse. They might have been sent out to rescue the thirteen remaining prisoners, or back to the safe house wreckage to gather our injured. They might be doing a hundred different things helpful to the cause, while the rest of us were told there was nothing more we could do tonight.

The top bunk was no wider than a cot, but without Chase it seemed too big and empty. It was the first night I’d spent without him since I’d been in the holding cells in Knoxville, a reminder that just made things worse. When I grew tired of staring at the door, I stared at the ceiling. But one by one the candles went out, and the conversations went quiet.

The dreams were coming; I could feel their black, slippery fingers wrapping around the edges of my mind. Without Chase’s arms around me, there’d be nothing to stop them. So I pinched myself awake.

My thoughts weren’t much better.

I made myself sick wondering who of Tucker’s team had survived the attack on the post, and who had been tortured alongside Truck—or who was being tortured right now—but it was useless.

The thought of Tucker dying for the resistance had me tossing and turning.

In the bunk below me, Sean and Rebecca were talking in hushed tones. I hung my head over the side.

“What do you know about the Chief of Reformation?” I demanded.

Sean was lying on his back, Rebecca curled against his side. She didn’t look up at me, but tightened her grip around Sean’s waist.

“Chancellor Reinhardt,” said Sean. “I know he’s hard to get to. People have been trying to take him out since the Reformation. He keeps a security detail around him all the time.”

I rested my cheek against the side rail, feeling the cool metal against my skin.

“He’s evil. He used to call for patients at the hospital to be brought to the base.” Rebecca paused. “When you came for me, I thought you might be with him. Before I saw that it was you, I mean.” Her voice was barely above a breath.

The circus,
Truck had called it in Chicago. Where they paraded the injured around to deter others from breaking the rules. A sour taste formed in the back of my mouth. That Rebecca had ever been subjected to that fear made me hate Chancellor Reinhardt even more.

“Do you think the prisoners are back in Chicago?” I asked. But they must not have heard me, because Sean had turned on his side and was whispering something I couldn’t make out. I drew back, feeling distinctly like I was intruding on something private.

After a while I heard Rebecca giggle, a sound that pulled me momentarily from my thoughts. Then her breath caught and hitched, and the mattress groaned as their weight shifted.

I covered my ears.

Time seemed to stall. Each minute felt like an hour. After a while even Rebecca and Sean grew quiet. Too restless to wait for news any longer, I decided to take my chances with Rocklin.

Carefully, I climbed down the ladder, placing my feet, still in their boots, on the floor. The creak of the frame made me cringe, but no one around me moved.

On the bottom bunk Rebecca slept with her head on Sean’s shoulder, and I was reminded of a long time ago when she’d been the one sneaking out of the reformatory, and I’d been trying to follow.

Holding my breath, I tiptoed down the row, freezing every time someone shifted or murmured in their sleep. When I reached the door, I glanced out quickly, expecting to find Rocklin posted outside, but the entryway was clear. The torches on the path had been extinguished, and with only the moon to guide me, I sprinted around the back of the building. The trees were a quarter mile away, glowing a pale silver and swaying ever so slightly in the breeze. From beneath their curtain, a gravel road emerged, connecting to the cafeteria.

My heart was pounding. I didn’t know where I was going, and if I did find the fighters, I didn’t know how to find Chase among them.

A shadow crawled over the moon, and without further delay I carved through the untamed grass toward the trees. It would have been easier to take the road, but I didn’t want to get caught—which was stupid, of course. It wasn’t like I was doing anything wrong. They wouldn’t stop me from seeing Chase.

I slowed, then stopped, and stared up at the sky.

Things were supposed to make sense once we got here. We’d finally stopped running. This was a place where we were protected, where we could dig in and fight back. Instead I was dodging guards while people I’d fought beside died at the MM’s hand.

I crossed the tree line; the branches formed a canopy overhead, and the dried leaves crunched beneath each step. The way opened suddenly into a clearing where the moonlight, unobstructed by the trees, highlighted small wooden crosses jutting up from the ground in neat lines.

I’d stumbled upon a cemetery. My skin began to crawl, and instinctively I took a few steps back.

Beyond the cemetery, down a long hill, flickered the flames from half a dozen bonfires. As I crept around the perimeter toward them, people became visible, moving to and from a row of storage units. To the right was a tall wooden fence, and as I squinted to where it disappeared into the dark distance I could barely make out what looked like a dozen FBR cruisers and several more military vans and trucks. Enough to transport a hundred soldiers or more.

I turned back to the storage units, surmising from the lack of other options that this was where the soldiers slept. There were enough people moving around that I thought I might be able to blend in without much notice. I was just about to exit the trees when a noise to my right made me freeze.

To my right was a rickety wooden toolshed slightly removed from the graveyard that I hadn’t seen earlier. A guard stood outside, a rifle held ready across his chest. The twitch in his shoulder and nervous toss of his hair was too familiar. What Billy could possibly be doing out here in the middle of the night triggered my curiosity.

As I watched, another figure appeared in the doorway. The lean hips and straight shoulders identified him as male, but the fires were on the opposite side of the camp, and the shadows hid his face. He disappeared within, and then reappeared, and without a word to Billy headed straight toward me, cutting through the cemetery. He stopped at the last cross in the line and placed one hand gently on the wood.

I ducked as low as I could and held my breath. If I ran now I’d be seen.

A few seconds later another man came from the woods, moving quietly, but with purpose. More imposing with his height and muscular chest, he stopped at the edge of the woods, out of view from the shed. For a moment I felt a sharp need to call out a warning, but then the first man turned away from the grave marker and joined him, clearly having expected his arrival.

It was as good a time as any to make a quick exit, but something inside urged me to follow, and soon I was stooping behind a thicket of brush, ten feet away. The crosses watched over silently, the only witness to my eavesdropping.

“It’s not going to jeopardize the mission. We’ve already verified what the girl said. A quick extraction, that’s all we’re talking about.”

The slighter man had to be DeWitt; I recognized his voice but not the anxiety behind it. The second man responded with something I couldn’t make out, though I strained my ears to catch it. As far as I could tell there were only two people, not the whole council that Three’s leader had spoken of earlier.

I felt sure he was talking about sending a team out to rescue the prisoners. Still, I didn’t know what other mission he spoke of, or what girl had given him information that would need to be verified. My mind raced through everything I’d told him, just in case.

“The injuries could be substantial,” argued DeWitt.

I was reminded of our injured, left at the mini-mart miles up the coast. Hopefully they could hold on until we could reach them.

“There’s still time. Please. I thought you of all people would understand.” I held my breath as DeWitt’s voice rose. A shadow paced in front of the door and I ducked lower, the sharp leaves of the bush cutting into my hands.

This wasn’t the DeWitt I recognized from the radio room, or the one who had addressed his people this morning. Something had scared him. I wondered again who he was speaking to that had such control, and why anything he did required asking permission.