Taken (13 page)

In a mirror above the sink, I see my new haircut for the first time. My forehead now appears too large, and I look dull, my gray eyes no longer able to hide behind long bangs. My neck still hurts and the uniform isn’t helping. I tug the top off and leave it on the floor. Then I crawl back in bed and sleep easily, pressed into the bedsheets as if they could massage away the pain.

The next time I wake, the sun is just rising. I sit up in bed, my limbs still tight and sore, and pull on my boots before retrieving the other half of my uniform from the bathroom floor. I should find Emma. I still need to tell her what Frank told me about Harvey and his project. We could get breakfast together, talk over our meals, and attempt to block out all of Union Central around us. If we try hard enough, maybe it will be like we are back in Claysoot, where things were easy. Maybe.

As I approach my door, I hear voices on the other side: Marco and Frank.

“He’s still out?” Frank asks. I feel a surge of gratitude, knowing he’s checking in on me.

“It’s been roughly twenty-four hours, but that’s pretty standard,” Marco says. “He should be up soon.”

“I want to know the moment he is. In the meantime, get me answers. I’m too busy with Harvey to deal with this right now, and, so help me, I do not want all this hard work crumbling because of one missed Heist.”

“I understand, sir.”

“Good,” Frank says. His footsteps click down the hallway, but then they pause. “Are you coming?”

“I haven’t slept in a while. First the boy, then that meeting you called yesterday. I thought maybe I could take a break.”

“You don’t deserve one,” Frank says. His voice is still as buttery and smooth as ever, but it makes the obvious authority in his words that much more powerful. “We’re receiving an update from Evan’s team before they head out to the forest. I want you there.”

Marco sighs. “Yes, sir.”

I listen to their footsteps trail off, and then open my door a crack. The hallway is empty. I try to comprehend what this means.

Yesterday Frank told me I was a miracle, a mystery, the potential key to saving our town, but while talking to Marco just now, he hadn’t seemed nearly as pleased with this possibility. If I’m honest with myself, he sounded terrified by the idea.

I realize my hands are shaking. Frank is upset because he hasn’t been able to free the people of Claysoot or make sense of my escaping the Heist yet. That’s all. That must be it. I’m being irrational and suspicious because everything is so new here and I’m still trying to adjust.

I repeat this to myself as I leave my room in search of Emma.

The door at the end of my hallway is locked. I halfheartedly wave my wrist in front of the silver box as I saw Frank do when he led me to the dining hall, and to my surprise, the door slides open.

I walk through, staring at my hand. There is the faintest purple bruise on the inside of my wrist. I must have been granted access to these doors during my Cleansing. How, I’m not sure, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.

I wander the hallways until I come across a stairwell. I take it to the main level, again using my wrist to gain access, and walk to the dining hall by memory. I grab some food and find Emma eating oatmeal and sipping a hot cup of tea. After she reacts to my haircut, running her hand over my scalp and teasing me endlessly, I fill her in. I tell her about Harvey and the Laicos Project, Frank and his goals, the curious conversation I just overheard. Her fists ball up the way mine had when I tell her about Harvey’s experiment.

“I’m being paranoid, right?” I ask when I recount Frank’s tone outside my bedroom, how he sounded upset that the Heist failed to take me on my eighteenth birthday.

“I don’t know,” Emma says. “If he’s trying to solve the Heist and free Claysoot, he should be happy you weren’t Heisted, not worried.”

“Exactly what I thought.” I touch Ma’s letter in my pocket. The answer Frank seeks is written on that parchment, but I suddenly feel that sharing the note would be a terrible idea.

Emma looks down at her tray. “They think we’re dead, don’t they?” Her voice is dull and flat.

“Who?”

“My mother. Maude. All of them. Blaine told you they planted replacements. If he’s right, bodies went back, like they always do, and they think we’re dead.”

I picture Carter, collapsed and sobbing on a bed in the Clinic. She’d had a baby girl. She wasn’t supposed to lose her child. I don’t answer Emma’s question, but we both know the answer is yes.

“Let’s go for a walk,” I say. “We could use some fresh air. And maybe we can dig up some details on this place in the process.”

“What exactly are you looking for?”

“Why Harvey even started the Laicos Project. What kills climbers in the Outer Ring. Why the Heisted boys appear here in Union Central.”

She smirks at me. “And you think you’ll find those answers on a walk?”

“Who knows. Walls talk sometimes. Think of how much we learned from Harvey’s wanted poster the day we arrived in Taem.”

The dining hall begins to empty out, Order members returning to their duties.

“Will you always be obsessed with the truth?” Emma looks at me, her brows raised.

I shrug. “Until I see it with my own eyes, I guess. And you said you wanted answers just as badly, back when you followed me over the Wall.”

“I did. But now look where we are. I want it to be like it was before we left. If I could do it over, I’d stop searching and just be with you, Gray. You weren’t Heisted and so maybe we could have been together in Claysoot. Forever. Like the birds.”

“I would have been Heisted when I turned nineteen,” I point out. “And we’re not birds.”

“I know. But I wish we were. We could fly away. Right now.”

She stares at her tray again, and for a second, I’m afraid she might start crying. I reach out and take her hand in mine. “We can’t do that. Not yet. But some more answers, the truth, and then I promise we can fly anywhere you want.”

Her customary half smile comes first, the one I can never fully read. And then she leans across the table and kisses me, a quick, tempting thing that leaves me hungry for more. As we leave the dining hall, my heart races, and not because of answers waiting to be discovered.

It’s Emma. It’s always been Emma.

SIXTEEN

OUR WALK FROM UNION CENTRAL,
through the corridor littered with Harvey’s wanted posters, and to the public square downtown is much longer than we anticipate. Emma and I find a small piece of shade blanketing a bench and sit. I face the golden statue, but Emma leans her back against my arm, swings her feet up onto the seat, and gazes off in the opposite direction. Her hair no longer smells like Claysoot soap—that scent is long gone, replaced with something foreign—but I kiss her head anyway. We sit there, in a comfortable silence, for quite a while.

“You know, I haven’t found any answers yet,” she jokes. “It’s very disappointing. I’m starting to think you just wanted an excuse to spend time with me.”

I smile as she twists around to sit properly. “Maybe I did.”

The square has steadily filled with civilians since our arrival. Now, their numbers border on crowded. They shuffle in, forming a line leading up to the platform and pushing each other aggressively as they jockey for position. A wall illuminates with a familiar message:
Water distribution today. Segments 1 & 2 only. Must present ration card.

The Order members come next, filing from between various buildings, cars bringing up the rear. Those on foot take their place on the raised platform, weapons ready. The instruments are the same as the ones I saw during our initial drive into Taem, and again, the Order points them at the growing crowd. Taem’s citizens are a steady pulse, filtering by our bench and surging toward the stage. They all hold red slips in their hands, papers that must be their ration cards. A middle-aged man, looking desperately nervous, races by us, crushing my feet as he does.

“Watch it,” I say.

He looks back at me, eyes livid, and mumbles something. Then he runs off, disregarding the line and pushing his way through people. The bag slung across his back swings wildly, hitting anyone standing too close. Up ahead, the distribution begins, a single jug of water handed to each civilian in turn.

Emma and I decide to leave—it’s getting far too crowded—but our progress is slow. We are fish going upstream, an unyielding current of bodies pressing against us. Just when we have reached the outer perimeter of the square, I hear the shouts.

“Stop him! Stop that man.”

Behind us, things remain relatively calm, the crowd still moving toward the stage. And then a ripple, a small steady thing in the center, which grows larger and larger, people parting in its wake. The voices keep yelling. “Stop him! Thief!”

And then I can see him, the same man that trampled over my feet. He is sprinting from the crowd, pushing over anyone in his path. He clings to not one jug of water but two.

The Order members on the stage are frantic, fighting their way into the crowd and after the thief. I look back to Emma and see the man barreling toward her. She is blocking the alley he approaches.

She attempts to jump out of his way but is too slow. The thief throws his shoulder into her and she crumples. As the thief rushes by me, I stick my leg out and trip him. Water jugs tumble from his arms, contents spill from his bag. He stumbles to his feet and takes off down the alley, but I am quicker. I lunge at him, seize the back of his shirt, throw him against the wall.

“You should really watch where you’re going,” I snarl.

“Please,” he says. “You don’t understand. My wife. My kids. They’re sick.”

His eyes no longer look livid. They look broken. They look moments away from hopeless. I peer down the alley to where Emma is climbing to her feet. Her white pants are torn, blood dripping from her knees. I shove the man into the wall again. The Order is coming. I can hear their shouts.

“Please,” the thief begs. “We need the water.”

“It seems like everyone needs it.”

“What would you know?” he says, eyeing my uniform. “Living in that place, following the orders of a corrupt man.”

The first Order member rounds the corner, and the man wriggles in my grasp.

“Please. My son, he’s just five. There’s still time. Just let go. Tell them I stabbed you. Or kicked you. Or spit in your eye.”

I almost do it. I almost let his shirt slip from my fingers—his words sound so sincere—but Emma falling is replaying in my mind, her body being thrown to the side by the thief’s frame. I hold his shirt just a second longer, and then an Order member arrives. He presses the thief into the wall. I watch his cheek scrape the brick while his hands are bound with not rope but an odd chain of metal links, two of which are snapped closed around his wrists.

“Turn around,” the Order member says. When the thief doesn’t, he is shoved. Hard. He hits his head on the wall and with fresh blood trickling into his eyebrows, he continues to beg.

“Please. We need it. You don’t understand.”

“Turn around.”

“I’ll do anything. Just let me bring the water to my family first.”

“Now!”

The thief puts his back to the wall. He is crying, blood mixing with tears. The Order member steps back and repositions his weapon.

And then there is an explosion, a noise so loud it rattles the space between my ears, echoing for an eternity. I blink, and when I open my eyes, the thief is on the ground, dead. There is no arrow, no spear, no knife. Nothing. Just a gaping hole. I stare at his bleeding skull until I turn to dry heave against the wall.

Emma shakes the entire way back. She doesn’t cry, but at least her reaction is better than mine. She’s showing fear or remorse or nerves or
something
. I do nothing but look blankly ahead, wondering what on earth happened, wondering if I’m somehow responsible. Everyone wanted water. Everyone was waiting in line. He stole something. He was a thief. But did he deserve to die over a jug of water?

I keep the thoughts to myself because I fear that if I speak them aloud, Emma might collapse right beside me. We walk to Union Central, my arm wrapped around her and the blood drying on her pants. I take her to her room, which happens to be on the same floor as mine, just in a different wing, and then march straight to Frank’s office. I pound on the door until someone comes and tells me Frank doesn’t have time to talk to me. I demand to see him. They tell me to leave. I demand some more.

I end up sitting on the floor outside his office, arms folded across my chest. I doze off momentarily and wake to a foot prodding my side.

“Gray.” Frank stands above me, a pile of documents in hand.

I scramble to my feet. “I need to talk to you.”

“I’ve heard. I only have a moment, but, please, come in.”

We sit at his desk, and when he puts the papers on them, everything suddenly looks out of place, that one disorganized pile throwing the entirely methodical room out of orbit. Frank leans back in his chair, places his fingertips together in a calming wave, and says, “So, Gray. What can I help you with?”

“There was a man today, in town. He was—”

“Shot,” Frank finishes.

“But there was no arrow.”

“This is true. You carry a bow in Claysoot, correct? You shoot arrows?”

I nod.

“In the Order, we carry guns. We shoot bullets.” He lifts his shirt, and removes something from a belt at his waist. It is much smaller than the weapons the other men had carried in the public square. Frank points it away from us and slides a slender box from its base before pulling back on the weapon’s top. He fishes something from the gun, gold and glinting, and hands it to me.

It is small in my palm. So small I wonder how it killed the thief. But it had also traveled unbelievably fast, erupting from the gun and hitting its mark so swiftly I couldn’t even see it happen. Small and powerful. Quick and deadly. It makes my bow and arrows look laughable.

I let the bullet roll from my palm and onto the desk. “He didn’t deserve to die,” I say.

Frank smiles, a kind one, the way my mother used to when Blaine or I was acting up and she had to scold us but didn’t really want to. “Sometimes we have to do things that are not completely agreeable.”