Enemy Inside (Defectors Trilogy) (2 page)

Logan and Greyson looked surprised but did not argue. Rulon didn’t like us much, but he was the only person I knew for sure would be able to get us into the city if he wanted to.

The rest of the day passed in a blur. I restocked the firewood near the mess tent, the massive bonfire in the center of camp, and the supply tent. On my last trip, I doubled back into the woods to find Logan in the clearing where we sparred. It was far enough from the edge of camp that no one could hear my yells when we practiced throws, and most of the snow had been packed down to a deathtrap of ice and mud from our constant scuffling.

That afternoon, I was hitting the ground a lot more than I should have been. When Logan flipped me onto my back for what seemed like the hundredth time, she let out an exasperated cry, holding me to the ground with her forearm pressing down on my windpipe.

“What’s your deal?”

“Sorry,” I panted. “Just distracted.”

“You’re a mess.”

I bit back the urge to remind her she was the one who tried to strangle me in my sleep.

“Just working out what I’m going to say to Rulon.”

“I don’t
care
,” she growled. “Don’t bring that in here. Your head needs to be in the fight.” She shoved off me, looking annoyed, and I fought back a grin.
 

Logan was a stickler for focus when we sparred — a rule that was in place as much for her as for me. Here, she didn’t have to be the sad girl who’d lost Max. She was in her element.

We went again, and this time she didn’t hold back her fury. I blocked her first few hits but stumbled when she lurched, and she seized the opportunity to grab me and aim a knee jab into my gut at full force. I doubled over, fighting the urge to puke, and she sighed.

“We’re done for the day. Come on.”

She already had towels and a change of clothes for both of us, so I followed her down to the creek to wash up for dinner. It was a miserable ritual that involved breaking a thin layer of ice and splashing ourselves with the frigid water until most of the sweat and grime was gone. We changed, shivering, and I contemplated dunking my whole head in the water. It was guaranteed hypothermia, but my hair was filthy. I desperately needed a real shower.

I had purposely waited until dinnertime to broach the subject of breaking into Sector X with Rulon because the rebels were more relaxed when they had plenty of beans, bread, and whisky in their bellies. If Rulon’s guards were inebriated, they’d be less likely to bother me. I wandered around the mess tent, pretending to look for a place to sit, scanning the crowd for Rulon.

I didn’t have to look far. He was sitting close to the fire, wrapped in an enormous fur coat. The firelight was dancing in his cold eyes, and his dark skin was glowing with heat. He had an intricate dragon design shaved into his short hair that wound around the back of his head, making him look even more intimidating.

“What do you want, runaway?” he asked, taking a swig from the cup in his hand. The smell of whisky made my stomach turn.

“I need your help.”

“You’ll have to be more specific.”

“I want to break into Sector X and rescue my friend Amory. He’s been there for three weeks now.”

He nodded. “Captain Elwood’s boy. We’ve already had this conversation.”

“Yes, but I know they’re torturing him to find out what he knows. He’s much more of a liability in their hands.”

Rulon looked at me with those hard eyes. “That may be true, but we cannot risk infiltrating the facility where he is being held. I know what he means to you, and I’m sorry. But I must lead in a way that is best for the group as a whole. One person does not outweigh the needs of many.”

“We can’t leave someone behind just because it’s dangerous!”

“We can.” Rulon’s tone was short and clipped. “And we have. I was lenient with you and your friends after the riots, but I have not forgotten that you disobeyed my orders . . . twice.”

“It won’t happen again,” I said. Even I could hear the desperation in my voice. “Please. I’ll do it alone, and I’ll do it on your terms. But I have to try to save him.”

“It’s a suicide mission,” he said. “And it’s not an option. I won’t discuss this again with you.”
 

“But I know you’re breaking into Sector X!” I felt my voice wavering with anger despite my best efforts.

“You know nothing,” snapped Rulon. “Do
not
make the mistake of believing I overestimate your capabilities the way your friends do. The others may mistake your recklessness for courage, but I don’t.”

His words felt like a sharp slap. Three weeks of cold helplessness and fear turned to molten hatred in my gut, and I felt my tongue sting with the toxic accusations I longed to hurl at him. My hands curled into fists.

“What would you know about courage?” I spat. “You get people to run this camp and do whatever you want, but that’s only because everyone thinks you have a plan. They think this is part of something bigger — for the greater good — but people go off, and you won’t tell anyone what’s happening out there. The riots in the city killed hundreds of officers, and the PMC has already rebounded twice as strong. I came here because I thought we would actually be
doing
something, but you all just
sit
here getting drunk every night in the PMC’s backyard.” I stood up. “This revolution is pathetic.”

Several nearby rebels had turned to stare at me, but I didn’t care.
Somebody
ought to call Rulon on his bullshit. Godfrey was watching me out of the corner of his eye, too. It was hard to tell in the dancing firelight, but I thought I caught the flash of a grin.
 

Rulon’s face looked as though it was carved from stone. He betrayed no emotion, but I knew my words had touched a nerve. I wanted to knock the whisky out of his hand, but instead, I stormed off into the woods.

I heard two pairs of feet crunching over the frozen underbrush behind me and felt Greyson’s worry hovering in the darkness before he even spoke. He and Logan had been sitting nearby, and I knew they had heard everything.
 

“What the hell was that?” Greyson hissed. “Are you trying to get us all killed?”

Feeling the anger ripple through me again, I refused to look in his direction. “I know you like these people, but the whole point of joining forces with them was to rescue Amory. They were
never
going to help us. It’s time to try something else. I don’t need Rulon or his men.”

He stopped, grabbing my arm and spinning me around. “You think I
like
these people? I was in that closet when they were torturing you, remember?”

In the darkness, I could just make out the whites of his eyes. I swallowed. How could I forget? The three rectangular chemical burn marks on my arm were a constant reminder. They wouldn’t heal like regular burns.
 

Miles, the rebel who tortured me, had been killed on the bridge by the PMC. The man who had stood by and watched had gone AWOL. Nobody at the camp ever talked about the rebels’ interrogation methods, but I could never pretend it hadn’t happened under Rulon’s command.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I just can’t sit here doing nothing if there’s even a chance of saving Amory.”

Greyson’s smile stood out in the darkness. “When do we leave?”

I sighed. No matter what had happened to him in prison, at least the important things about Greyson hadn’t changed. He was still my most loyal friend. “Whenever we can find out how they’re breaking into the city and where the PMC might be keeping Amory.”

We stopped walking. Greyson fidgeted, chewing on his words. The silence hung between him and Logan, and I knew they were both dancing around something they did not want to say to me. That wasn’t like Greyson.
 

He took a deep breath. “Haven . . . if they think he has information about the rebels, he’s not going to be in good shape when we get him out.” He swallowed, as if trying to keep his next words down. “If he’s still alive.”

My stomach clenched. Even though the horrible thoughts of what the PMC might be doing to Amory were on a constant loop in my head, hearing Greyson say it made it real.

“I know. But I won’t leave him.”
 

“I wouldn’t expect you to.”

I paused, mulling over Rulon’s words. “Rulon said ‘facility,’ not prison.”

“What?”

“I don’t think they’re holding Amory in prison.”

Greyson snorted. “Well, the rebels destroyed all the prisons. They’ve just been killing all the illegals they find.”

“Why would they hold on to Amory, then? The other rebels left in the city would have more information.”

“His father doesn’t want him killed.”

“No. His father wouldn’t want people thinking he was being soft on his son. How would that look? Amory defected. He’s a traitor.”

“What does Amory have that the other defectors don’t?”

I thought back to something Amory had said in the rebel bunker — how his father used him as one of the first test subjects for the CID.
 

“There was something different about his CID,” I said. “They tried to modify his behavior. It obviously didn’t work very well, because they haven’t tried that with anyone else.”

“That we know of.”

I shivered.
 

“I know where he is,” said Logan, startling me. She looked pale in the anemic glow of the moonlight filtering through the bare trees, and the dead look in her eyes gave me a chill. “They’ve got him in Isador.”

Greyson and I exchanged blank looks, and she continued.

“I never thought it was a real place, but they sometimes talked about it when I was in training.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“No place you want to be. It’s off the books, but it’s where the PMC runs tests on people to develop new technology. At least that’s what I’ve heard.”

“How do we get there?”

“I don’t know where it is. Just that it’s somewhere in Sector X.”

“Rulon knows,” I said through gritted teeth, feeling the hatred boiling in my veins. He had the information we needed to rescue Amory, and still he did nothing. He would let him die.

“We need those maps,” I said, thinking of the ones Rulon had shown me in the leaders’ tent. “They had all the safe routes marked.”

“Tomorrow,” said Greyson. “We’ll wait until Rulon and his guards leave camp, and then we’ll sneak in and steal them.”

The thought of letting yet another night pass while Amory was in the hands of the PMC made me sick, but we couldn’t go running into Sector X without a solid plan again. That was what got us into this mess.

We felt our way back through the trees, stumbling occasionally over exposed roots and underbrush hidden in the snow. I began to wonder how far we had walked into the woods. I could no longer hear the sounds of laughter and slurred conversations.
 

Finally, I saw the flickering light of the fire through the trees, but something was wrong. It was too quiet.

Someone shouted, and I heard the sounds of heavy footfalls crashing toward us. A hulking shape emerged in the darkness, and I took an automatic step backward, bumping into Greyson. An enormous hand closed over my arm, jerking me forward and almost yanking my arm from its socket.

“Found her!” the man shouted.

I twisted reflexively, bringing my elbow up to knock the man on the side of the face just as Logan had taught me, but he was too fast. A huge, muscular arm twisted around my throat, pressing down against my windpipe. I choked as I was lifted off my feet and dragged through the trees. I smelled sweat and alcohol on his breath, and I started to panic.

We emerged into the clearing where the fire was still burning, but no one was drinking or laughing. They were all staring at me with anger and distrust. Rulon stood alone in the middle, looking smug.

“We have a traitor among us,” he said loudly to the watching crowd. “And traitors must be punished.”
 

A hiss rippled through the crowd. Rulon took a step toward me, wearing an expression of cold disgust. “Take her in.”

I tried to look for Logan and Greyson, but I couldn’t move my head. My captor’s arm was still wrapped around my throat too tightly, and he continued to drag me through the camp as all the rebels watched. Whatever was happening, no one was going to stop it.

We passed down the rows of tents, and I felt the dread burning in the pit of my stomach. We were heading to the large black tent at the end of the block. It stood apart from the others in shadow, as if no one wanted to be that close to it.
 

The man tossed me inside as if I were a bag of trash. Caught off guard, I fell forward, knocking my head against something hard as I hit the ground. The pain radiated through my skull, and I squinted through the darkness to the man who had grabbed me. I didn’t know his name, but I recognized him as one of Rulon’s closest guards. He followed him everywhere.

Light fell across the trees outside, throwing shadows over Rulon standing in the entrance to the tent, his face unreadable. Someone muttered behind him, but he didn’t turn his head to the speaker.

I recognized that voice.

As Rulon and his companion crowded into the tent after the guard, I felt the sharp smack of betrayal.

Godfrey met my eyes, and there was no remorse in his expression. Although I knew he was a rebel through and through, I’d always thought I could trust him. Godfrey was the only rebel who had seen what happened on the bridge. He watched Amory throw me into the water and sacrifice himself to the PMC. He knew why I had to go back.

Rulon hung the lantern on the ceiling and looked down at me with an expression of pure loathing.

“I’m sure you know why you are here.”

Rulon edged closer to me, and I could see the snow melting on his boots. “You’ve been busy, I hear.”

I said nothing. If this was what happened to rebels who spoke out against Rulon, I would have a better chance of walking away unscathed if I did not argue. I took my time rising into a sitting position, trying to decide what I should say.

How had he heard me talking to Greyson and Logan? Did he have spies in the woods?