Enemy Inside (Defectors Trilogy) (7 page)

But my determination had already taken over. “If you can’t walk, I’ll drag you myself.”

“I don’t know what I’ll do. I could hurt you.”

“You won’t.” I was already back in the atrium, and Greyson appeared on Amory’s left side. Gripping Amory by the upper arms, we pulled him forward toward the threshold. He dug in his heels like an ox, but Greyson helped me heave him through the doorway.

Amory yelled out in pain, and I saw beads of sweat glistening on his forehead. He was out of the atrium, but the pain had not stopped. If anything, it seemed to have gotten worse.
 

“Come on,” I said, threading an arm under his shoulders and pulling him forward. He dragged his feet, and I pushed against him. His face was screwed up in agony, and his bright eyes had disappeared into the creases of his face.

He yelled again, but Greyson clapped a hand over his mouth. I heard a sound like knuckles cracking, and Greyson swore under his breath.

“He bit me!”

Thinking fast, I undid the cloth belt of my uniform and tied it around Amory’s mouth.
 

“Sorry,” I whispered, but he did not seem to hear me. He was clutching his head, his knuckles white as though he was trying to split his skull in two. He groaned into the fabric around his mouth, but Greyson continued yanking him forward.
 

Then Amory did something I had not expected. He swung out a fist, almost connecting with Greyson’s jaw, but he was too slow. He wailed through the fabric, lashing out again, but I dug my fingernails into his arm to hold him back. He jerked out of my grip, lunging toward me instead, but the pain was making him weak. Greyson yanked him back, shoving him down the corridor.

Amory looked back over his shoulder, and the look in his eyes pierced my heart like a dull blade — the look of a cornered animal about to die. I averted my eyes and took his other arm, focusing instead on inching him forward. Greyson and I were getting him out of here.

It was slow progress down the passage leading away from the atrium. Godfrey’s eyes were darting all around, searching for hidden cameras. It was against his better judgment that he stayed.
 

When we made it halfway down the hallway, Amory collapsed onto one knee, his face red and his shoulders shaking. Tears were streaming silently down Logan’s face. She could not look at him writhing in agony, and for the first time since we’d met, I was angry with her — angry that she wanted to leave Amory. She was weak — too weak to do what had to be done. She would rather have let Amory rot down here as the PMC’s guinea pig than watch him suffer like this.

But after a few horrible moments, I almost had to agree. As we rounded the corner, Amory’s pain seemed to escalate. The fight went out of him, but it wasn’t because the pain was subsiding. He was giving up. I saw tears in the corners of his eyes, and his yells through the cloth were desperate, pleading. We had broken him.

“It’s not too much farther,” I said. My voice hitched, but I would not let the tears come. If I gave up, there would be no one left to fight for him.

“We have to get him out of the building and hope that takes him out of range,” said Godfrey.

Amory was doubled over now. Greyson and I were half dragging, half carrying him down the hallway. His whole body was shaking, and he yanked down the gag.

“Please,” he whispered. “Please don’t, Haven. Leave me, please.”

He broke off, falling to his knees and retching on the floor. I bit back my tears.
 

“Just a little farther,” I said, trying to pull him up. My voice hitched. “I’m sorry. We’re almost there.”

Greyson heaved Amory’s arm over his shoulder and dragged him the few yards to the elevator. I saw the rover quivering, searching for CIDs.

“Get him out of the way,” said Godfrey.

Reluctantly, Greyson pulled Amory back a step.

The rover settled on Godfrey, Logan, and Greyson, and the elevator doors swung open.

Godfrey raised his rifle and shot at the rover once. The black dome shattered. “Get in. Quick.”
 

Greyson and I dragged Amory into the elevator, and Godfrey punched the button for the parking structure.

“I don’t know if we are going to be able to get out,” he said. “Any time a rover goes down, the officers all throughout the city are alerted. It’s the middle of the night, so that buys us some time, but —”

I wasn’t listening; I was too busy holding on to Amory. He was doubled over in pain, dry heaving, his face wet with tears. My heart tore in two, and I worried whether he would be all right. What if the pain was too much and it killed him? The farther we got from the room, the more it seemed to amplify.

As the elevator dinged, Amory yelled out. He crumbled onto the floor, and I lost my hold on him. He collapsed onto his hands and knees, gasping for air.

“We have to get him out,” whimpered Logan.

The doors to the elevator flew open, and my stomach dropped. Four PMC officers stood blocking our exit, their helmets glinting in the artificial light.

“What is going on here?”

Logan and Godfrey fired. The officers looked surprised, and then two collapsed onto the ground. One officer shot at me, barely missing my left ear, but Godfrey landed a bullet in her chest. Greyson looked stunned. He was holding my rifle as well, and I realized at some point in the struggle with Amory I had handed mine off.

Logan dropped the last officer, and Godfrey stepped out of the elevator into the small room off the parking structure. The glass door slid open, and he jumped out to secure the dimly lit garage, rifle raised.

“Hurry. There will be more.”

Amory was still writhing in pain, seemingly unaware of the four dying PMC officers outside the elevator.

I tried to pull him to his feet, but either he had finally succumbed to the pain, or it had intensified once again. I grasped him under the shoulders, trying to move him, but he was too heavy.

Greyson appeared at my elbow with both guns slung over his shoulder and yanked Amory to his feet. He was much stronger than I remembered.

As we pulled Amory toward the car, he let out another yell of pain. I wanted to curl up inside myself and die. His suffering was almost too much to bear.

“Get the stuff out of the truck,” Godfrey barked at Logan. “We have to switch vehicles.”

Godfrey grabbed his rucksack and turned to the PMC cruiser next to ours. It was unlocked.
 

Greyson helped me push Amory into the backseat, but as soon as he was inside, he began clawing at the door, trying to get out. I slid in behind him, pulling him against me, and Greyson followed.

Logan threw our bags into the cargo area and then climbed into the front seat, looking ashen.
 

Godfrey pressed the ignition button on the dashboard, and the engine hummed to life. One of the perks of top security clearance seemed to be an all-access pass in Sector X. He peeled out of the parking spot and flew toward the ramp.

“If they warned the others, we won’t be able to get past the checkpoint,” he said. “Haven, take him and go through the tunnel. If you can’t, hide out at the safe house. If we’re not back in three days . . . you’ll have to figure it out.”

My stomach lurched. I’d forgotten about this part.
What if Amory still wasn’t himself when we left the building?
We couldn’t get past the PMC with him like this. We wouldn’t make it out of the city.

As we approached the exit, Amory began to shake uncontrollably in the backseat. He yelled, and it reverberated inside the small space. I wondered at what point the pain would become too much for him.
 

We entered the main exit ramp, and I grasped his sweaty hand. It was now or never. It had to stop.

Godfrey seemed to be thinking the same thing. He floored it. We’d only made it halfway to the exit when a horrible screeching alarm sounded. An urgent feminine voice echoed through the tunnel.

Intruder. Intruder. Intruder.
 

I could see the sliding glass door up ahead. Amory was flailing next to me on the seat. I looked at Greyson in horror.
 

At the speed we were approaching, the door should have opened by now. Godfrey wasn’t slowing down.

As we crashed through the door, the shattering of glass drowned out the screech of the alarm, but it wasn’t enough to cover Amory’s horrible scream.

I looked down at him. He had gone limp against the door. He was unconscious.

For several seconds, all I could hear was the purr of the engine and the heavy breathing of Logan and Greyson. They sat bolt upright, frozen in shock.

“Well, they know we’re here now,” Godfrey mumbled.

I checked Amory again, confusion and fear welling up inside me. He wasn’t moving.
 

“Is he —” Greyson asked, unable to finish.

I shook my head, tears clouding my vision. But truthfully, I did not know.

Terrified, I bent my head to his face, listening for the sound of his breathing.

Without warning, he gasped in sharply. His eyes flew open, and his hand went to his chest. My heart stuttered, and I held on to him as he took several labored breaths. He lay there for a moment, shell-shocked.

Logan let out a quiet sob, putting her hand over her mouth.

Godfrey sighed audibly.

Amory turned his head, eyes focusing on me.

“Are you okay?” I whispered.

He breathed out slowly. “I am now, I think.”

I sighed, gripping his hand tightly. He managed a weak squeeze in return.

“Holy shit,” said Greyson. “What the hell happened to you in there?”

I shot him a look. He hadn’t seen what was on that screen. He didn’t know what the PMC had been using to brainwash him.

But Amory’s sharp eyes flickered, uncharacteristically uncertain. “I . . . I don’t really remember,” he faltered. “I remember . . . the simulations. Carriers . . .”

I exchanged a look with Greyson.
 

“How long was I there for?”

“Three weeks,” I said.

“Oh, wow.” He shook his head. “The bridge, my dad . . . They took me to another place. It was a hospital. That’s the last thing I remember before . . . wherever I was.”

“His CID,” I said, grabbing his arm.

“Fucking hell,” said Godfrey.

I turned Amory’s arm over, searching for another incision near his old, jagged scar.

“They wouldn’t insert it there again,” said Godfrey. He was watching me in the rearview mirror. “Not after he cut out the last one. I don’t know if we’ll be able to extract the new one. They’re much more . . . sophisticated.”

“What about the rovers?” I asked.

“Doing my best to avoid them.”
 

I looked around. Sure enough, we were driving down a dark side street. Before we reached the intersection, Godfrey made a sharp turn down and alley and pulled out onto another street.

“If any of those gets a reading on him, there’s a chance they could activate whatever that was again.”

“Is that new?” Greyson asked. “Or can all the CIDs do that?”

Godfrey shook his head. “I’ve known for a while that they were experimenting with behavior control, but if they’re still testing it on Amory, that means they’re working out the bugs. If they were near the final stages of development, there would be a hundred test subjects walking around with those things.”

“They were controlling me?” Amory asked. His face had gone ashen.

I met his gaze, uncertain what to say. I didn’t want to voice aloud my concern that he had been brainwashed. But if he didn’t remember anything, maybe none of the PMC’s experiments worked.

“We don’t know for sure,” I said.

“How are we going to get his CID out?” Greyson asked. “He can’t be walking around with that thing.”

“Stay out of range until we get out of the city,” said Godfrey. “We’ll have to see if anyone on the outside knows how to remove those.”

“Where are we going?” asked Logan.

Godfrey didn’t answer. Looking up ahead, I could see why.
 

At the end of the road was a PMC blockade. Lights flashed all around, illuminating the ruined buildings and casting dark shadows over the wreckage.

“This is your stop, kid,” said Godfrey.

“How are you going to get out?” I asked.
 

“Don’t worry about us. You’re going to have your work cut out for you. If you make it through the tunnel, rendezvous past the bridge where you came ashore after the riots. If not, go to the safe house.”

I nodded.
 

Godfrey looked serious. “Don’t forget: three days. If we’re not back by then . . .”

I glanced at Logan, who was biting her lip.

He waved a dismissive hand. “We’ll be back. Just keep him away from the rovers,” he said, nodding at Amory.

I smiled. “Thanks, Godfrey.”

I turned, and Greyson grabbed me roughly and pulled me into a hug. I let the warmth and comforting familiarity of him wash over me and tried not to think that it could be the last time I would see him.
 

“Don’t get caught,” I whispered into his jacket. “I just got you back.”
 

He nodded, his chin bouncing on my shoulder. Pulling away, I exchanged a look with Logan:
Take care of him.

Greyson rummaged in his rucksack and pulled out an extra jacket. He tossed it to Amory, who was still wearing his thin white scrubs.

“You’ll need this,” he said.

Amory took it and forced his arms clumsily into the sleeves. “Thanks.”

Nodding at Godfrey, I grabbed my rifle and opened the car door. Amory emerged slowly, rubbing the back of his neck and still in a daze from his episode. Strapping the gun over my shoulder, I grabbed his arm and pulled him into the cascading pile of rubble between two demolished buildings. The truck pulled away toward the flashing lights, and I forced myself not to watch them go.

“Where are we going?” asked Amory. He was still very pale, but it was encouraging that he was aware enough to inquire about our plan.

“We can’t go through the main checkpoint with the others, so we’re going to try to get through one of the old tunnels.”