Authors: Sarah Crossan

Breathe (31 page)

BOOK: Breathe

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55
QUINN

The door buzzes and a tall figure bursts into the room. I cower against the wall, and when I look up, I see my father, his uniform dusty and torn in places. “They sent me to deal with you.
Me!
�� he shouts. “Do you realize what you’ve done?”

“Do you know what
you’ve
done?” I shout right back. “Do you know what you’ve spent half your life doing?” He takes off his cap, folds it, and pushes it into the pocket of his coat. When he speaks, he is surprisingly quiet.

“I’ve been protecting your way of life. Do you think it’s easy to keep the Premiums in power? It isn’t. And you have the audacity to judge me? You enjoy all the pleasures of my work and now you question the way in which those pleasures have been secured. Every fine piece of clothing you’ve worn in your life and every gourmet meal, all the air you breathe has been possible because of what I do.”

“I don’t want that. I want—” I pause.

“What? What is it you could possibly want that I haven’t given you?”

“I want to be free,” I say. My father squints as though I’m speaking a language he barely understands. He stares down at the floor and sighs.

“The Pod Minister has been killed. You’ll be tried for that and executed.” I nod. It’s no worse than I thought. “Can you breathe without supplemental air?” he asks. I shake my head.

“I’m getting there,” I tell him. He raises his eyebrows. He probably never thought I had it in me to be good at anything.

“So you trained,” he says, and I nod. It feels like we are having “A Moment,” the first one of our lives. Eventually he says, “You can never come back here, you know. Follow me.”

“What are you going to do to him, General?” the steward who first questioned me asks, scurrying after us as we proceed down an unlit, tapering tunnel. My father turns and glares at him.

“We are treating him as we would treat any other terrorist. Now get back to your damn post!” he barks. The steward shuffles to his place by the cell door and watches as my father drags me along. We stop at the end, when we cannot go any farther. We are in front of a door marked with a black and yellow sign:
CAUTION
—
AIRTANKS REQUIRED
. “Good luck out there,” my father says.

“Out there?”

“When I push you outside you’ll have to scream and shout. Knock hard. Beg to be let back in. I know you can act.” He half smiles and I realize he is only pretending to punish me; really, he is saving me. I clench my teeth to stop myself from crying. I know it would only annoy him. “I’ve left a few airtanks outside for you. They’re full,” he whispers.

“Say good-bye to Mother and Lennon and Keane. And my new brother.”

“Drama, even at the end,” he says, unlocking the door and opening it. With a heavy sucking sound, white light fills the tunnel. And then he says, “In another world I think we would have been friends, son.” I nod and hold out my hand for him to shake it. He sniffs and pats my shoulder. Then he pushes me outside.

PART V
THE ASHES
56
ALINA

The water is forcing the rickety boat to smash against the dock with such force it’s possible the old thing will turn into a wreck before we’ve even hauled up the anchor. The sails flap and huff. No one is speaking. We all look back one more time to take a mental picture of the land we are leaving behind. Buildings glimmer in the distance like small crystals, light glinting against their windows. I have an urge to go back. Now that we are here next to the winding gray river, I want to go home.

Maude and Bruce are sitting on the dock, their feet dangling above the freezing water. A couple of members made it along with us and they are standing in a quivering huddle waiting for instructions, as though Dorian, Silas, and I are their new leaders. I want to reassure them, but there isn’t much I can say. We are sailing into the unknown, where we will all be at the mercy of strangers.

It is still snowing, and in a few hours the land will be covered again. The smog in the east is no longer threading its way into the sky. The Grove died a long time ago.

Dorian has a hand on my shoulder. “Maybe we should have surrendered,” he says.

“Let’s go,” Silas says, glancing at him. “Our tanks won’t last forever.” He’s right. We should go. We are taking the boat as far along the river as we can and from there walking to Sequoia. Dorian claims to know its location. And Silas has a map.

“We’ve lost everything,” Dorian says, looking up at me, his eyes still bloodshot from the foam. I nod. We’ve lost everything. And what have we gained?

“We’re alive,” I tell him.

Just about.

57
BEA

The Grove is gone and in its place is a pile of black rubble and thick blankets of foam, suds, and withered trees. The debris is still smoking. It took me a couple of days to get here, using the underground stations as markers. I slept a lot, finding shelter among icy ruins. I wasn’t scared. What did I have to be scared of? I walked for two days and didn’t see another living soul.

And now I am at The Grove, the place I came to find refuge, and I am completely alone, with little hope of finding anyone alive.

I allow myself to cry. I have no idea where to go.

The sun rises and the black wreckage remains unchanged. I find a place to sit, where I open my flask and drink. Then I hear a voice.

“Bea.”

It is so quiet, I close my eyes, afraid.

“Bea.”

I turn and drop the flask.

And then he is holding me and crying into my shoulder and pulling at our masks so he can kiss me.

“Quinn,” I whisper. He holds my face in his hands.

“Your parents—”

“I know,” I say, and Quinn holds me again, wrapping me up in his thick coat to protect me from the snow. He rocks me back and forth.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

Later we walk the perimeter of The Grove together, trying not to notice the bodies. And then a face, set deep into the rubble, blinks at me. I look away, sure my mind is playing some gruesome trick, but a moan follows and the black tree crushing the body shifts slightly. “Someone’s alive!” Quinn shouts, and jumps into the debris. When he emerges, a small, soiled figure is holding his hand and stumbling toward me.

“They’re heading west. Sequoia,” she whispers. It’s Jazz. She’s alive. She’s covered from head to toe in dirt, but she’s alive. And so are we.

“Then that’s where we’re going, too,” I say.

Quinn looks at me and nods. “Yes,” he says.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It takes a whole heap of people to get a book ready. Rarely can a writer work in isolation.

Sincerest thanks are due to Julia Churchill and Sarah Davies, my glorious agents, and the whole team at Greenwillow, with a special mention to Martha Mihalick, who spent countless hours working on the manuscript to get it just right.

Many thanks to Lisa Wu and Felicity Williams, who helped me create a world that works, scientifically.

Thank you to my friends and family, and especially my husband.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

SARAH CROSSAN
first had the idea for
Breathe
when traveling in Washington State. Seeing the logging, she thought, “Don’t people understand that we need trees to breathe?” And so began a book about how awful life would be if access to one of our most basic needs—air—were restricted.

Before becoming a full-time writer, Sarah Crossan taught high school English and creative writing. She lives in New Jersey.

www.sarahcrossan.com

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CREDITS

COVER DESIGN BY CHRISTIAN FUENFHAUSEN

COPYRIGHT

This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used to advance the fictional narrative. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

Breathe

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

www.epicreads.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Crossan, Sarah.

Breathe / Sarah Crossan.—1st ed.

p. cm.

“Greenwillow Books.”

Summary: “In a barren land, a shimmering glass dome houses the survivors of the Switch, the period when oxygen levels plunged and the green world withered. A state lottery meant a lucky few won safety, while the rest suffocated in the thin air. And now Alina, Quinn, and Bea—an unlikely trio, each with their own agendas, their own longings and fears—walk straight into the heart of danger. With two days’ worth of oxygen in their tanks, they leave the dome. What will happen on the third day?”—Provided by publisher.

ISBN 978-0-06-211869-1 (hardback)

EPub Edition © JULY 2012 ISBN: 9780062118714

[1. Science fiction. 2. Survival—Fiction. 3. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 4. Insurgency—Fiction. 5. Environmental degradation—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.C88277Bre 2012

[Fic]—dc23 2012017496

12 13 14 15 16 LP/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Edition

Greenwillow Books