Breathe (17 page)

“I’ll try to come for you, or I’ll send someone.”

“When?”

“Until we know what’s happening at The Grove, I can’t know for sure,” Silas says.

“I’ll starve,” I tell them.

“You can survive on water for weeks,” Inger informs me.

“I don’t have any.” I know I sound scared, and I no longer have any desire to hide it.

“It’s going to snow for days. There are containers up here,” Silas says. He points at some buckets and bins scattered across the rooftop. “You can fill them with snow and eat it.”

“If a Ministry vehicle rolls by, throw something down to attract its attention. Or wave at the zips. You’re Premium. You’ll be safe. Tell them we kidnapped you or something,” Inger says.

I want to promise not to betray the Resistance, but I can’t. I want to promise to die for the cause, but who knows what I’ll do at the end if I’m starving and desperate?

“I hope you find them,” I say. “If you come across Bea, tell her—” I stop.

“We’ll come back for you,” Inger says.

“If it was true what you said, about saving Alina … well, thank you,” Silas adds, speaking softly. Then, before I can think how to say good-bye, they’ve turned away and disappeared through the rooftop door, leaving me alone.

I am almost blinded by the sun reflecting off the glass panels and have to shield my eyes with my arm as we trudge up the seemingly endless stairs. If aliens ever land on Earth, I imagine they will arrive in a vessel shaped much like this building: it stretches out, seeming to have devoured everything beneath it in one clean gulp. On the side of the building is a large red crest with a picture of what looks like an old cannon.

“What was this place?” I ask.

“I told you. It’s the stadium where they played soccer. There are colossal places like this all over the country.”

“I didn’t imagine it would be so big.”

“Before The Switch, soccer was everyone’s game. Thousands of people would go watch and teams were bigger back then, too.”

“I can’t imagine a time when auxiliaries had the same chances as Premiums. I wish we were that free.” I stretch both my arms toward the stadium.

“Free? Ha!” Maude shouts. “What’s free? Oh, we could breathe all right, yes, but there weren’t never a time when we was free. Free don’t mean nothing. Look back in history and all you’ll see will be Elysian Fields. It weren’t that way. It ain’t never that way. People is people and greed is greed. There weren’t never a time of true equality. Women didn’t play in that stadium and get the same crowds as the men: no one cared how many goals a woman scored. Freedom and equality is myths, girls. Yous should learn that now. Freedom? Ha!”

“Are you finished?” Alina asks. Maude sticks out her tongue. It strikes me that Alina wouldn’t want to know if the world as it existed before The Switch were ugly: the idea of a world with breathable air in it is the paradise she’s fighting to rebuild. If that world were anything but perfect, it would make Alina’s struggle less important somehow.

We trudge up the last few steps, but rather than heading for what looks like the entrance, we stop at a concrete wall. Alina turns to check that no one is watching, that we haven’t been tailed, and gestures for us to follow. We make our way around the perimeter and along the concrete wall that is intermittently interrupted by steel doors. An old railroad comes into view, many of the train carriages windowless and lying on their sides.

Alina stops, approaches a door, and knocks. Three knocks, a pause, two knocks, another pause, and a final knock. Nothing happens. Alina glances at me, then tries the code again: three knocks, a pause, two knocks, a pause, a final knock. Still nothing happens.

I look down at the valve on my tank and take a liberal lungful of air. I only have a minute or two before it runs out. As though she’s read my mind, Alina reaches over and tightens the valve. Instantly I feel lightheaded and have to lean against the wall to stay on my feet. Alina tries knocking again.

“Is there another way in? Maybe we’re at the wrong door,” I manage to say, finding my balance.

“We’re at the right door.”

“Maybe you should call out. Maybe you forgot the code.”

“I didn’t forget the code. It’s an easy code.” Alina stands frowning with her hands on her hips.

“Did they
change
the code?” I ask.

“They never change it!” Alina glares at the handle as though it might turn and the door magically open simply because she wills it to.

Maude eventually speaks up. “They’re hiding. And they could be hiding for hours. Do you have a bunker?”

Alina looks at Maude and nods. I realize what it is they’re saying: the Resistance had to hide from the thermo-detectors when the zips flew overhead and that means no one is aboveground to hear us knocking.

Alina leans her head against the sealed steel door and screams. Then she starts to pound on the door, first with her fists, but eventually with her head, too. She bangs her head again and again and again, until a thick streak of blood appears on her forehead. I grab her and pull her away. “It’s me! It’s Alina! If you don’t want us to die out here, open the door!”

“They … can’t … hear … you!” Maude shouts. She slides down onto the walkway, picks at a festering scab on her neck, and laughs.

“Open the door!” Alina hollers, my arms still wrapped around her. “OPEN THE DOOR!” Eventually she collapses against me. “I’m sorry I involved you in all this, Bea,” she whispers. “You didn’t want to be a part of it. You were a tourist. If I die, at least I’ll have died for something.”

“You did what you could to save us,” I say, and squeeze Alina into me.

“But what does your death mean? It has to
mean
something,” she says.

I should have an answer. Because though I didn’t have to follow anyone, I did. So what
was
it for? Love? That was part of it. But it wasn’t just Quinn I followed in the end, it was Alina, too. And Maude. I could have turned around at any moment, slipped back through Border Control and taken the tram home to my parents who will now never know what really happened. I want to cry, not for myself, but for my parents and what I am about to make them suffer.

I look into Alina’s green eyes and say, “I will die because I knew there had to be a better way to live.”

“You didn’t find it,” Alina says. “I wish you could’ve found it. I’m sorry.”

“I did, Alina. I breathed freely for two days.” This makes Alina hug me even tighter. Maude, who is staring at us, whispers something I can’t hear.

“What did you say?” I want Maude to know that her last words are important, that she is important to someone. She pushes me away and starts to rub her scab again.

Even though Alina’s fist is already rubbed raw, she tries again: three knocks, a pause, two knocks, a pause, one final knock. I try to take over, but she waves me away. “Save your energy,” she says. I am about to turn the valve on my tank again when I realize it’s too late; the air thins.

I tap my tank, trying to release any dregs of oxygen remaining in it, and the sound is diluted by a hollow thrumming in my ears and Alina’s knocking.

My chest tightens and a blazing heat makes my lungs shrivel up. I try not to inhale. I try to exist on whatever air is already in me. But I’m dizzy, everything around me dipping and diving as though I’ve just stepped off a merry-go-round. I think I’m going to pass out. Instead I feel a thick, sweet liquid in my throat and I let it dribble out of my mouth and onto the gray concrete.

I pull off my facemask to breathe in again, fighting for whatever oxygen remains in the atmosphere. Flames lick at my throat and in my lungs there’s an explosion of fire.

I can hardly see. Maude and Alina appear like ghosts. Completely silent.

I hiss. I wheeze.

And I am out.

I lean out over the edge of the roof and make out Silas and Inger on the street below. From this distance, and with all the snow everywhere, it looks like they are holding hands, and I can’t quite tell them apart. One of them gestures wildly up the street in the direction we came from. Within a few seconds, they’ve set off, walking at a sharp pace without looking back. I want to call out, but what could I say?
Don’t forget about me!
And if there are soldiers around, making noise will simply draw attention to them and put them in danger.

I slump down onto the wet rooftop, not caring that I’m sitting in a puddle of snow. Scattered around me are snow-coated chairs and upended tables and loads of buckets, most of them within reach. The tube connecting my facemask to the solar respirator is about four feet long, in no way long enough to allow me to take any leisurely strolls around the rooftop.

How did this happen? I’ve gone from rarely thinking about the air I breathe to spending most of my waking moments worrying about whether or not I’ll have enough. This is how auxiliaries must feel all the time. This is how Bea feels. Until today I’ve never really understood what it must be like to crave air so desperately. I understand now, though.

“Keep calm, Quinn,” I say aloud. “Chill out.” But talking to myself doesn’t help. It only makes me freak out even more. Doesn’t talking to myself prove I’m on the road to madness?

The worst-case scenario is that Silas and Inger get killed before they ever have a chance to tell anyone where I am, and I die slowly and painfully of exposure, starvation, and dehydration. Or maybe not. The actual worst-case scenario is that Bea dies this way—alone and afraid. No. She’s too clever to let something like this happen to her, and even if she were in my shoes, she’d stay calm and come up with a plan.

I pull a nutrient bar from my backpack and tear off the wrapping. Then I stuff the entire thing into my mouth and start chewing. It’s the last one I’ve got, and maybe I should’ve taken a small nibble from it, but if I’m going to figure out a way to escape, I need to feed my brain.

I stand and take a look out across the city again. A convoy of about twenty armored tanks is rolling down the buckled roads from the east—from the pod—in pairs. The tanks advance at some speed through the snow and rubble, crushing any obstacle along the road. I can see there are foot soldiers as well, hundreds of them. And they aren’t marching in a troop but dividing, fanning out in small groups. They’re looking for something. Or someone.

I can still see the tiny figures of Silas and Inger, heading straight for the soldiers. “Silas! Inger! Silas!” I holler. For a moment one of them stops and holds the other back. But then they are off again. “The Ministry’s coming!” I shout. “SILAS! INGER!” Both of them seem to hear something this time and look in my direction. “It isn’t safe! They’re coming! SILAS!”

The soldiers are closing in on Silas and Inger, who have remained where they are, facing each other. “RUN!” I scream, not caring who else hears me. “RUN!” And they do. In opposite directions. Inger is coming my way, back toward this building. The soldiers must have heard or seen something because they are running now, too, darting down roads and alleyways. Inger is sprinting, weaving his way between buildings and leaping over mounds of rubble.

He slips in the snow and falls. He struggles to stand and starts to limp forward. The soldiers are very close to him and they aren’t slowing down. I hold my breath. I don’t call out. He is right beneath me. He is so close I can see him rub his leg. He limps and limps and, just as the soldiers round the corner, he ducks into the building across the street for cover. Too late.

The soldiers stop outside the building. One of them pulls out a radio. Within a minute all the tanks and soldiers are speeding this way. The soldiers on foot merge into one troop again, and before long the entire unit is positioned below me. The tank engines shut down and instantly it is silent.

When Silas discarded my portable airtank, there was still a shred of oxygen left. I retrieve it from the ground, wipe away the snow, and refit it. Then I’m on my way downstairs. At the bottom, I crouch behind an old filing cabinet near a broken window where I can hear and see everything. If it looks like they plan to hurt him, I’ll show myself. I’m a Premium. I must have some power. Surely they wouldn’t hurt me.

Another soldier, tall and with perfect composure, emerges from a tank and climbs down. He is wearing the same hefty black helmet as the rest of them, but a different uniform. “Go in there and get him,” he says, waving his hand casually as though retrieving Inger from the building is nothing but an inconvenience. “And bring him out alive,” he adds. A team of twenty soldiers file into the building. I can hear their boots.

He approaches a soldier standing frighteningly close to the window I’m peering through. “How many did you see, Captain?” the general asks. His voice is chilling and flat.

“Two, General. Two men, we think, sir,” the captain responds.

“And are these the same men responsible for stealing our tank?”

“I doubt it, sir. The tank went missing five miles from here. We have zips looking for it, sir.”

“I want that tank found, Captain. And the culprits, too.”

“I understand, sir. We
are
going to find them.”

“You’d better,” the general says, moving away from the captain and talking into a radio. The general’s voice, muffled though it is, is strangely familiar. My father is always bringing high-ranking ministers and officials to the house. Is it possible I’ve met this man before?