Rebellion (11 page)

“Yes,” I say, but my voice is tight.

“It’s okay to be scared, you know,” he says softly. “It doesn’t make you weak. It means you care about surviving.”

He’s wrong, but he’s also right. If I were truly at peace with sacrificing myself to secure a better future for the world, I wouldn’t be afraid of Charlie or anything he might do to me.

I focus on the tiny mole on Logan’s cheek to avoid meeting his eyes. “Maybe it would be easier if I stopped caring. Sometimes I wish I could just…”

Give up.

The unspoken words hang in the air between me and Logan.

Instead of arguing with me or making me promise I won’t, he presses his mouth against mine. I bet he hopes his kiss will do what his words can’t: convince me to stay alive.

His tongue coaxes my lips apart. I lose all track of where we are and slip my hand under his shirt, trailing my fingers across his back. He is warm and strong and I want to stay with him.

I’m glad he’s coming with me.

The jolt of the ship landing makes the two of us bump into the wall, and snaps us back to reality. Logan pulls his mouth away from mine with a sigh.

The door at the side of the ship slides open. Skylar shuts the engine down as Mal and Jensen unbuckle. Logan and I move back up to the cockpit.

“Ready?” Skylar asks, removing her gun from its holster.

My own gun is lying abandoned. I’d feel better with it in my boot, but I can’t risk a real official noticing it in my possession.

“Let’s go,” Logan says.

Skylar closes her helmet visor. “Follow me,” she says, and steps through the open door.

Jensen follows after her, and Logan and I move after him, with Mal bringing up the rear.

Loading dock fourteen is silent. The only lights on are emergency lights, and there are no other transports. There’s no sign that anyone knows we’re here.

I hope Beechy managed to intercept the patrol ship in time. I hope he’s all right.

We reach the door that leads off the dock. It slides open, and Skylar holds up a hand for us to wait while she checks it out. She’s gone for almost a full minute.

When she sticks her head back in, I flinch. She looks so much like a real official.

“Hallway’s clear,” she says. “Patrols, keep a hand on your prisoners.”

Mal’s hand slips around my wrist as we walk out into the corridor. I know he’s only playing a part, but I wish he wouldn’t grip my wrist so hard.

“You sure this will work?” I ask. Not too loudly, because I’m worried the walls might make my voice echo. The boots the others are wearing clunk with every step.

“Just keep your heads down,” Skylar says, “and don’t make any trouble.”

“And if someone recognizes us?” Logan asks.

“We’ll try to convince them they’re wrong. If they don’t believe us, you need to run back to our ship. No questions asked.”

I press my lips together. Only three of us have weapons. Running won’t get us very far if we can’t even shoot the people chasing us.

“Presuming all goes well,” Skylar says as we round a corner, “when you reach the Crust camp, your orders are to stay put until you receive word from one of us. That means no stealing weapons, no sneaking around, no attack plans. Spread the word about what Charlie did with the bomb, and see if you can get some more people on our side.”

I remember what Beechy said: He wants me to be a leader. He thinks the others in the work camp will listen to me because I look like them. But if they don’t already know what Charlie did, they might think I’m a lunatic.

I’ll have to do my best to convince them otherwise.

Around another corner, a number on the wall tells me we’ve reached loading dock ten. There’s a door already open, and I glimpse steam and flashing lights beyond it. A figure in an orange mechanic suit hurries by beyond the doorway. The sound of engines squealing is loud.

Skylar enters first. Mal grips my wrist tighter, roughly pushing me ahead of him through the doorway.

This dock is much bigger than number fourteen. The steam comes from vents in the floor, and from the exhaust pipes of the three transports on the landing platforms. They are massive, the size of the hovercrafts that used to transport me and others from the Surface camp to the fields for work, and to the city for school.

Officials in armor stand here and there, patrolling the area around the platforms. There are more of them than I can count, and they all have guns. My feet stall, and Mal has to nudge my back with the butt of his gun to make me keep walking.

“Act normal,” he whispers.

There are lines of people moving up the platform steps and boarding the transports. They’re all my age or younger. I can tell by the state of their clothes—tattered, some almost ripped to shreds—that they came from the work camp.

As we walk closer, I recognize some of their faces. Which means they might recognize my face too.

I drop my eyes to the ground.
Don’t look at me. Don’t call my name.

I should never have come here. I should never have agreed to this. All I’m going to do is get captured; there’s no way around it.

After several more steps, I lift my eyes and notice one of the officials walking toward us from the back of the boarding line.

Dropping my eyes again, I start a slow count to one hundred in my head, because I don’t know how else to stay calm. Skylar and the others know what to say to him, I hope.

If they don’t—if he figures out I’m a wanted person—I’m ready to run as fast as I possibly can.

His boots come to a stop in front of us.

“Why aren’t these two with the group?” he asks. His helmet warps his voice, making it low and mechanized.

“We don’t know,” Skylar says. “We caught them out in the hallway. Tell your guys to be more careful about who they let run off.” She looks over her shoulder at Mal and Jensen and waves them on with two fingers. “Take them over to the line.”

“Yes, sir,” Mal says, nudging me forward again. Jensen follows with Logan.

The official takes a short step forward, and I’m sure he’s going to stop us. He’s going to signal all the other guards, and I’m going to have to run.

But then he steps back and waves us on. “Better hurry and get ’em on board,” he says.

The line for the first ship is almost to the end when we reach it. I start up the platform. I can do this; I can fool people into thinking I’m someone other than myself.

On the second step from the top, Mal shoves me forward—so hard, I trip. My knee hits the edge of the next step, and a sharp pain shoots my leg.

“You’re a clumsy one, eh?” he says, laughing.

My cheeks burn as he pulls me back to my feet by my shirtsleeve. Everyone at the top of the platform is staring. Is he
trying
to draw attention to us?

“Is this everyone?” a voice says, not far behind me. It sounds familiar. It makes me pause, even as I straighten and walk up the last step onto the platform.

“Aye, Lieutenant, sir.”

“Good. Tell the pilots they’re free to depart as soon as the last passengers are aboard.”

Every inch of my body goes rigid. I know where I’ve heard that voice: the Core.

His hands all over me in the elevator, his tongue in my mouth.

It can’t be him. Not here.

I turn my head a little, enough to see him out of the corner of my eye. He isn’t in full-body armor like the others, but a uniform: a gray suit and knee-high black boots. A flash of gold on his chest must be a lapel pin in the shape of a moon. His hair is short and blond, and his smile is fashioned in the shape of a smirk.

Sam.

He’s not looking my way, not yet. But he will any second. I’m sure he’s going to see me.

I realize Mal’s talking. “Make sure these two get on board,” he’s saying to the guards stationed before the transport entrance.

One of the guards steps forward, and I do my best to stay calm. I pray the sweat beading on my forehead isn’t obvious.

“Give me your arm,” he says.

I hold it out to him, letting my teeth graze my bottom lip. He grabs my wrist and turns it over. My new ID tag is there for everyone to see. The skin is still a bit red, but hopefully not enough to make him suspicious.

It seems to take a million years for his scan reading to pop up. I glance at Sam again. He’s walking past our platform, one hand on the gun in his belt holster, an eye moving in my direction.

Mal shifts his position a little, blocking Sam from view. I turn my head away, hoping, hoping he didn’t see me.

Mal was trying to help me when he tripped me, I realize. Sam must’ve been walking in and looking our way, and Mal knew he wouldn’t bat an eye at an official pushing a girl like that; he’d smirk and go on about his business.

“Brea,” says the guard, still holding my wrist. That must be the name Beechy used for me in my fake citizen file.

“Yes?” I say.

“You’re free to board,” he says, and reaches to grab Logan’s wrist to scan his ID tag.

“I’ll accompany her, if you don’t mind,” Mal says. “I’d like to keep an eye on her.”

“Of course,” the guard says. “We’re gonna put this boy on the other ship. I think there’s more room over there.”

“I can take him,” Jensen says.

Panic stumbles up my throat.

I open my mouth to tell Jensen he can’t, but I stop at the look on Logan’s face.
Don’t fight,
his eyes are saying.

I want to ignore him; I want to scream. I won’t let the guards separate us. I’ve lost him too many times, and I won’t lose him again.

But I force reason into my mind: I remind myself that any fight I give now could blow our cover and ruin everything. It could put Logan in even worse danger.

Mal pushes me up the boarding ramp. My eyes cling to Logan, to his cheeks tanned from the Surface sun and his thin lips and his chest rising and falling. He stares right back at me every second until I have to turn away to walk into the ship.

“Are you sure the other ship’s headed for Crust?” I ask Mal.

“Yes. We’ll find him again, don’t worry.”

He’d better be right. Otherwise, I won’t forgive myself for not fighting the guards.

I buckle into one of the last empty passenger seats. Mal heads up to the cockpit, no doubt to smooth-talk his way in.

I keep my head down, so I can’t make eye contact with anyone in the seats around me. All the passengers aboard this ship are from the camp where I grew up, and I’m sure I know some of them. But I’ll be safer if they don’t recognize me, not until we’re far away from Sam.

Behind me, the entrance ramp slides up. There’s a hiss as the door closes. My seat rumbles as the engine picks up.

Relief floods my body. I survived the hardest part of the mission; I made it on board without discovery. Hiding will be easier in the camp among so many people. I won’t give Sam another opportunity to catch me. I grip the armrests of my seat as the hovercraft lifts off the ground. With every rise and fall of my chest, my heartbeat steadies, but keeps a fast rhythm. No longer out of panic, but driven with purpose.

I survived in a work camp for sixteen years of my life, and I can do it again. This time I know exactly who I’m up against. So far, I have the advantage because Commander Charlie has no idea where I am, or even that I’m alive.

He wanted me to be a weapon for him, someone who killed on demand. But his serum couldn’t break me, and neither could the tortures I endured in Karum. Maybe I’ve let him control me from far away by giving in to my fear of him. But no longer. I won’t give him any more power over me.

Soon he will be the one who is afraid.

11

There are no windows in the transport, so I don’t know we’ve landed until the engine dies.

The door at the back of the ship opens, and floodlights stream in. Two officials move up the ramp, carrying pulse rifles. One of them shouts, “Everybody off!”

I unbuckle my belt straps and stand up, along with everyone else. The dark-skinned, pale-eyed girl next to me, maybe eleven years old, looks terrified. So do many of the others around me, at least the younger kids. I don’t know what they were told about why they’re being transferred. Maybe they weren’t given a reason.

Down the ramp, we step off the ship into what must be a flight hangar. It’s barely half the size of the one back on the Surface. The floor, walls, and ceiling are made of compacted dirt and rock rather than steel. The floodlights—two of them, mounted on the wall—are the only light source except for the faint glow from the passageway to the Pipeline, to my left. The only other ships are a few small oval-shaped hov-pods that are sleek and black, and seem big enough for only one or two people. My guess is the officials use them to navigate Crust’s tunnels. I remember Oliver said even the city streets aren’t big enough for real ships.

I keep my eyes on the Pipeline entrance while everyone disembarks from the transport. The other ship shouldn’t be far behind us. Logan shouldn’t be far, unless the patrolman’s information was wrong, and Mal was wrong, and it isn’t headed to Crust.

I ball my hands into fists. Mal wasn’t wrong. The ship will be here soon, and Logan will be on it. He has to be.

“We’re moving out,” an official says. “Follow me.”

I don’t want to leave yet, not until the other transport arrives. But Mal’s standing nearby and he catches my eye. He gives me a look that says,
Don’t.

It’s not worth it, anyway. There are too many officials around, and the only ways I can think of stalling the group involve drawing too much attention to myself.

So I follow everyone through a set of sliding doors into a tunnel passageway. Every official I pass looks like he’s staring at me, though I can’t really tell, because most of them have their helmet visors closed. I’m sure I’m going crazy. But I keep my head down anyway, and push into a denser part of the group as smoothly as I can. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Mal moving closer to me, gripping his gun a bit tighter. The sight of him eases some of the tension in my arms and hands.

I still don’t trust him completely, but I’m glad he’s here with me.

The passageway bends and curves. The ice-cold air makes me shiver. Mal and the other officials have their armor to keep them warm, but we have nothing.