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Shelly looked back at the crowd around the fire. It was too loud for anyone to hear us.

“You’re leaving?” she asked.

“Maybe.”

“You can’t take her with you.”

“I know.”

“So you’re just saying good-bye?”

I shook my head. “I need her help. She’s smarter than me. I need your help, too, if you’re willing.”

Shelly sighed. “Okay. But she’s in the middle of something. Let her finish.”

“What’s she doing?”

“Interviewing,” Shelly said. “You know, like Birdman used to do. We do it, too. Curtis just got here, and we want to know what he saw.”

I nodded, and sat on the floor to wait.

I had so much to tell Becky. Maybe she’d hate me because of Jane. I could understand that. But sitting here, watching her, I promised myself that I was going to do everything I could to make it right.

Shelly sat across from me.

“It’s over, you know,” she said.

“What is?”

“Our escape attempts.”

“So you were trying?”

“I was. But that ended long before you got here.”

“Why?”

Shelly sighed. “Nothing worked. We’ve got these things in our heads, and we can’t cross the perimeter. We tried everything. We made a helmet, worked on it for months, trying to get the densest metal we could find—”

I chuckled. “Like Magneto.”

“Exactly,” she said. “But it didn’t do a thing. It still hurt when we went into the forest, and they could still track us—a four-wheeler was out patrolling ten minutes after we crossed the border.”

“What if it is like Harvard said?” I asked. “What if there’s a transmitter out there, and if you get too close to it, then it hurts? Couldn’t you just get past the transmitter—deal with the pain—and then it would hurt less the farther you went?”

“Tried that, too,” she said tiredly. “But you can’t just deal with the pain. You go too far into the woods and you pass out.” She crossed her arms and stood up. “Trust me. If you can think of something, we’ve done it. You know why the Basement is called the Basement? Because we have an underground bunker—a real basement that we dug, trying to tunnel out of here.”

I sat back, stunned. “Seriously?”

“So we named the thing in the fort the Basement to throw them off.”

“Why didn’t Birdman hide us in the real basement?”

“Probably because he wanted to keep an eye on you.”

“So the tunnel didn’t work?”

She shrugged. “It’s deep. I seriously doubt they can track us down there. But we got a few hundred yards and ran out of materials.”

“Materials?”

“For supporting the roof so it doesn’t cave in. We steal stuff when we can—we skimmed some of the lumber from the new barracks and told them they didn’t send enough—but we have no idea how far we have to go. A mile? Fifty? And we kept running into bedrock. Heck, we even ran into the cement ceiling of the underground complex.”

“So it’s just a big cave.”

She was annoyed. “Yeah. Not much good.”

“So you have nothing else? No secret plans? Ever thought of starting a forest fire to get attention?”

“Tried and failed.” Shelly shook her head. “We’re out of ideas, unless you know how to build a radio or something.”

“Then I’m going to go,” I said. “But I need help.”

She looked at Becky. “And you’ve come to get it from her? A lot of nerve.”

I nodded. “I know.”

Someone was shaking me. I must have fallen asleep.

It was dark. The fire was out, but moonlight streamed through the drafty windows.

“Bense.”

It took a moment for my eyes to focus, but I knew the voice. Becky was across from me, sitting up, touching my arm.

Someone was next to her. Carrie. And Curtis. Shelly was on my bed, by my feet. Lily leaned against the wall.

I looked back at Becky. “What’s going on?”

Shelly was the one who spoke. “We’re here to help.”

I didn’t take my eyes off Becky. It was hard to get her facial expression in this light. She knew about Jane. She had to hate me, and I expected to see it on her face. It had to be there—it was just too dark.

“Is it safe to talk?” I whispered.

Shelly answered again, pointing to the room behind us. “I trust everyone here. And most people are asleep. That doesn’t mean it’s safe, but it’s the best we can do.”

I turned to Lily. “I thought you weren’t involved.”

Shelly smiled. “If there’s anyone who pesters me more than you, it’s Lily. She’s in.”

“So you’re really leaving?” Becky asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“When?”

I wished it was just the two of us talking. I had things I needed to say. They would have to wait.

“A couple days,” I said. “I’ve got some things to do first.”

Curtis leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “That’s what we’re here for. We want to help.”

“Tell us what you need us to do,” Shelly said. “We could create a distraction or something. And I’ve been stockpiling supplies.”

I took a breath. It was time to stop being scared.

“Not the forest,” I said. “I don’t even know which direction to run to get to civilization, and they’ve got too many cameras to hide from.”

“How else are you planning to get out of here?” Shelly asked, exasperated. “A hot-air balloon?”

“No,” I said. “I’ve only got one chance. What are the odds I actually make it out of the forest alive? And if I do, what are the odds I will have made it out of there undetected? And if Maxfield knows I’m gone, then what are the odds that they’ll just sit here and wait for the SWAT teams to move in?

“Maxfield would evacuate you,” I continued. “Or kill you, so my escape wouldn’t mean anything.”

“Maxfield might just escape and leave us here.” Carrie’s voice was full of nervous hope.

“Or they might burn the whole place to the ground,” Lily said.

“If I escape, then I’m getting the rest of you out of here.” I met Becky’s eyes. “Everyone.”

Curtis scoffed. “How? You’re going to do surgery and take these things out of our heads?”

“Nope,” I said. “I’m going to turn them off.”

No one said anything.

“Birdman has been keeping records of every little thing that happens in the underground complex,” I said.

Becky finally spoke. “No. You can’t.”

“I’m not going into the forest, because I can’t save the rest of you that way. I’m going down the elevator in the commissary. They won’t see it coming. I’ve gone over the maps and I’ve read the notes. They don’t have a lot of guards down there, because—”

“Dude,” Curtis said, cutting me off. “We’ve been there. You can’t just walk around.”

“You’ve been there when they’re ready for you,” I said. “They wait for you at the bottom of the detention elevator, and they take you to a cell, and you never go anywhere unescorted. And you’re not armed.”

Carrie’s voice was almost pleading. “But you’ve seen what they can do. They’re too strong.”

“I’ve killed dupes,” I said, trying to sound confident. “I killed Joel’s dupe with a pair of garden shears. Becky got Mason with a Taser. I took that guard out a couple days ago with Shelly’s hatchet.”

“But could you fight more than one at the same time?” Curtis asked.

“How many have we ever seen at once?” I asked. “The other day there were three guards on four-wheelers.”

“There could be a hundred,” Shelly said.

“No one has ever seen more than two Icemans and one Ms. Vaughn at one time.”

“That’s optimistic,” Shelly said sarcastically.

Curtis shook his head, his voice rising slightly over our hushed tones. “That’s not optimism. That’s stupidity.”

“No,” Becky said, her eyes fixed on mine. “I think he’s right.”

Now it was my turn to be surprised.

“I think it’s genius.” She turned to the others. “You guys have an implant in your heads so you can’t cross into the forest, right? Well, that implant didn’t hurt you when you were down in the complex, did it? You can’t go out, but you can go in.”

I hadn’t thought about that, and my heart jumped; I was suddenly anxious. I didn’t want to lead another revolt.

But she was right.

Shelly was smiling now, too, and Curtis. Only Carrie looked scared, and she gripped Curtis’s hand. She’d just gotten Curtis back and now he could die.

I looked at Becky and sighed. “I come to you with a plan to sneak in alone and you suggest a war.”

She just grinned.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

W
e agreed to meet in the morning, somewhere more private, to make the real plans. I wanted to stay and talk to Becky alone, but we were all together and there wasn’t a chance. We looked at each other for a few seconds before she turned and went back to her bed. I lay down in front of the fire and thought about the mess I’d created until I fell asleep.

I got up just before dawn and left the barrack. There were things I needed to do before the town woke up.

When I reached the stream, much of the water was crusted over with ice. That seemed to come and go almost every day.

I stepped across. I’d gotten used to it now, knowing exactly where to step to move quickly and stay dry. I hadn’t thought I’d be here long enough to learn those kinds of things about this town.

The fort was quiet. There was no fire in the pit, or even lingering smoke or embers. One of the rooms on the far side of the courtyard had a small sliver of light escaping through a crack in the door. Other than that, the entire place was still.

I didn’t walk on the boardwalk. It was too loud. I crept along the dirt and weeds of the courtyard, choosing each step with care and pausing at every slight sound. Finally, I had to step up onto the boards—one, two, three quick steps—and I was at the door of the meeting room.

It hung half-open. I stepped inside, peering through the darkness. No one was there.

It didn’t take me long to gather up every scrap of the cloth maps. Some were still rolled, and others were tossed carelessly on the floor. I spread out the largest and laid the others on top. There were around twenty or twenty-five, and when I finally rolled them all up together it was as thick as a bedroll. I slung the heavy cloth over my shoulder and stepped back outside.

There was a little more light, but not much. The fort was still quiet, a mass of shadows.

Three steps across the creaky boards and I was back down on the ground. I darted across the courtyard to Carrie’s room. In less than a minute I was in and out, the maps over one shoulder.

I hadn’t gone two feet when I heard another footstep on the boards. It was close.

I didn’t turn to look. I ran.

“Benson,” a voice called in a loud whisper.

Jane.

I turned back. In the darkness her silhouette made it look like she was wearing a dress, but as she got closer I could see it was her apron. She was heading out to milk the cows.

“What are you doing?” she asked as she reached me.

“Getting blankets,” I lied. Whether she believed me or not, I had no idea.

“Come on,” she whispered, and started toward the gate.

I should have stopped her right there, but I was too worried about the noise. I didn’t want to talk in the fort.

We walked down the road. Frost crunched under my feet, and every breath let out a cloud of silvery ice. Even the cloth maps were cold.

I didn’t know what to tell her. I could say that I shouldn’t have kissed her, that it was a moment of weakness, that I didn’t even realize what I was doing. But that wasn’t true. It didn’t take a moment of weakness to kiss Jane—it took a moment of daring.

I could tell her that it was because she and I couldn’t agree. Because we had no future. Because even if I had Jane and we could be together here, it wouldn’t be enough for me. I needed freedom.

But that was a lie, too, or only part of the truth. Yes, I wanted freedom, and I could never be what Jane wanted—I could never enjoy staying here, not for a year or a month or a week. But that wasn’t it.

It was because I loved someone else more. That didn’t even sound right—that made it sound like I gave Jane three stars and Becky four. It wasn’t like that. It was that, despite everything wonderful about Jane—everything I loved about Jane—I was still
in
love with Becky.

I was in love with Becky.

“I’m leaving,” I said.

Jane stopped. We were standing at the stream, its water murmuring beside us as it fought its way through the ice and rocks.

She faced me.

“Yesterday …” I stammered. “I shouldn’t have … I—”

Her whispered words were so quiet I could barely hear them. “I know. I knew yesterday.”

I stared back at her, wishing I could see her face, her eyes, and not just the dim blur in front of me.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” I said, knowing immediately how stupid it sounded.

Her head moved. I couldn’t even be sure whether she shook it or nodded.

“I’ll be here,” she said weakly. “When you come back for us.”

I wanted her to scream. I wanted her to call me a liar and a player and a bastard. I wanted her to slap me.

“Good luck,” she said. Her hand reached up to my face, and her lips touched my cheek. “Please be safe.”

Jane pulled back her hand, paused, and then hopped quickly across the stream, darting from rock to rock in the darkness.

We met in the barn, after Jane had finished with the cows and left. Gabby was with us now, too, which made seven. Of that seven, three were wounded. It wasn’t exactly the best revolutionary army.

We sat just inside the open door, with Gabby perched on the threshold to watch for trouble. I’d laid the largest, most detailed map out on the floor in front of us, and we gathered around it on our knees.

“It looks accurate,” Shelly said, “from what I remember. It’s been a long time.”

“It looks good to me, too,” Curtis agreed. “This is where the detention elevator goes down, and this is that first hall.” He traced his finger along a corridor. “They took us to this waiting area, and from there I went to a surgery room.” He studied the map for a moment, closing his eyes to think, and then tapped the map again. “I think it’s this.”