The Ones (16 page)

Norton stared at her and then pointed down the hallway with her finger.

“Let's go have another talk.”

Cody jumped to her feet, eager to leave her cell before the offer was rescinded. Norton led her into an interrogation room much like the one at the police station. But Cody noticed that there was no camera in this one. She sat down on one side of the table and let her senses adjust to all the new stimuli. She could detect the scent of coffee from somewhere. And even though she hadn't seen a window yet, she could tell it was daytime. A few signs of normality. Cody couldn't resist a small smile.

“Beautiful morning, huh?” Norton said.

Cody nodded. “Can I go home now, please? I didn't kill Margie, I swear. I don't know what happened, but we never hurt anyone. Please, you have to believe me.”

Norton looked across at her, unmoved.

“When do I see my mother? And a lawyer?”

“Cody, you are a terrorist. We can do whatever we want to you. You will die in here.” Cody began to cry. “Unless…”

Cody looked up, desperate, clinging to any sign of hope.

Norton continued. “Unless you help us. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

Cody nodded.

“You weren't very cooperative at the police station in Shasta. I hope you've had a chance to reconsider that choice. I know this hasn't been very pleasant, but I can make things better for you,” Norton said, then paused. “And I can also make things worse.” She opened up a notepad. “So let's try this again, shall we?”

Cody listened to the same questions she had heard back in Shasta. They wanted to know about Kai, about the Weathermen, about any future operations. Cody tried to explain that she didn't know anything. It wasn't even a lie; she'd known them for only less than a week. Norton was obsessed with something called the Ark—clearly desperate for any shred of information about it—but Cody was utterly clueless and couldn't even help if she wanted to. And despite what she felt in her heart, Cody wished she had something small to tell them. She was getting the sense that it would be really bad if she didn't.

After not making any progress, Norton closed her notepad. She looked up at Cody, disappointed. “I can see why Kai picked you. You're tough. And you're his type. But we'll get it out of you, won't we?” Norton stood up and left the room.

When she returned, Cody saw the bags for the first time. The clear bag was in Norton's right hand. The black bag was in her left. Norton looked down, contemplating the two.

“Water is always messier, but I think it's the best way to get our feet wet, so to speak,” she said with a chuckle.

Norton moved quickly now, grabbing Cody's arms and handcuffing them behind the chair. Cody struggled to pull free but only managed to cut into her wrists. Then Norton grabbed the black bag—a canvas hood, really—and pulled it over Cody's head, the rough fabric scratching her face. Cody tried to shake it off, already struggling to breathe through the heavy canvas. Someone leaned her chair back.

And then the water hit her.

It fell on top of her in a heavy stream, and Cody managed to keep her mouth closed and avoid it for a moment. But the water kept coming, and Cody's shoulders were being held back and now she needed to breathe, but there was nowhere to turn for air. The water flooded the hood, making it tighter, sticking it to her face. And finally Cody had no choice but to open her mouth and try to get a gulp of air.

It was pure drowning. Even with her feet on dry land, Cody knew she was drowning. The water rushed into her lungs, filled her entire head, it seemed, and even as she gasped for air, all she got was more water. The pressure started to squeeze her brain, and her entire body began to burn, begging for oxygen. She thrashed and twisted as much as she could, but there was nowhere to hide. She felt the skin tear from her wrists and then her muscles spasm in desperation. The water kept coming. It poured into her body, and Cody knew it was killing her. She tried to scream but couldn't even make a sound.

And then, just as Cody felt like it was going to crush her, the water stopped, and someone pushed her shoulders forward. She heaved and gasped and spit and breathed all at once, finally feeling a trickle of air sneak into her body. It was the greatest feeling she'd ever experienced, this air that filled her lungs at the last possible second. She took another huge breath, ecstasy rushing through her brain with the oxygen.

The instant Cody relaxed, though, she was pushed backward again, and the water returned. As the onslaught filled her head and body, Cody began to understand the routine.

Drown, drown … breathe.

Drown, drown … breathe.

Drown, drown … breathe.

It went on like this for an hour, the waterboarding. Not torture, mind you, because the Equality Act didn't permit torture. It did, however, allow for enhanced interrogation techniques, which included waterboarding, as Agent Norton explained between dousings. Even from underneath the hood, Cody could feel her smiling.

And so it went, as Norton again and again brought Cody to the psychological edge of death, all in the name of protecting the country from a group of principled teenagers.

Hours later, after she had been dragged soaking wet along the floor back to her cell, after she had lain motionless trying to breathe normally again, after she had sobbed and cursed and yelled and begged, after she had given up … some moment after that, a thought began to take hold inside her and lift her spirits.

She had been subjected to that for a reason.

No one could do that to another person without a good reason. No government could waterboard a sixteen-year-old girl without a good reason. Kai and the New Weathermen and whatever the Ark was … it was all somehow powerful enough to justify what they just did to her.

Cody, almost smiling now, began to realize that they did, in fact, have a good reason. They were scared.

 

CHAPTER 12

DEEP IN THE
woods and many miles away from the school, James lashed out at Kai as they stared at the update on his phone.

“It says they have the suspect in custody. A sixteen-year-old student, not releasing her name.” James paused for a second. “Cody is arrested for murder because of you!”

They had reached the area near the quarry, and Kai brushed past James and began poking around for a cavern entrance. James ran after him and got in his face.

“We didn't need your help. No one asked you to come to the school. And now Cody is screwed!” His words echoed off the limestone walls. As he continued glaring at Kai, James took a moment to allow himself a tiny sense of relief that at least she wasn't dead.

“Calm down, okay?” Kai said. “Obviously, she didn't murder that teacher. When it all gets sorted out, she'll be fine.”

James stared at Kai, heart racing but unsure what to do.

“And by the way, someone did ask me to come,” Kai said. “Cody did. I know she said she didn't, but she was lying.”

Taryn turned to Kai with a look of disgust. “Dude, what's the point of sharing that? Now you're just being an asshole.”

“Oh, you too now? You're going to blame me for this also?” Kai said.

“No. But maybe we should be figuring out what to do instead of getting in a pissing contest.”

“I thought you'd be happy. You clearly never trusted her,” Kai said.

“Yeah, and now she's sitting in the room with God knows how many federal agents asking questions about us. I'd rather have her dead than in custody.”

James looked at Taryn, taken aback. “What is wrong with you two? Seriously. Your answer to everything is to kill someone. As much as you want to believe it, that doesn't actually help our cause.”

Kai shook his head condescendingly. “That right there is why we approached Cody, not you. No one asked you to get involved. In fact, why are you following us around? We don't need you.”

James knew there was some truth to this, but he also knew there was a part of him that Kai and Taryn hadn't seen yet. And now that Cody was gone, he was just as invested in this fight as they were.

“I'm not going anywhere until we figure out how to get Cody back. Shouldn't you have some brilliant contingency plan for that?”

“Who said we even want to get her back? If we couldn't trust her before, we definitely can't now that she may be cutting a deal with the feds,” Taryn said, then turned to Kai. “Remember, she's not one of us.”

“Cody will always be a One,” James snapped. “You don't know her at all.”

“Fine, let's say you're right and she tries to hold out. Everyone breaks eventually. They make sure of that,” Taryn said.

James looked at Kai beseechingly. Even if they hated each other, James knew they at least agreed on one thing: Both of them had faith in Cody. They both knew how strong she was. Kai thought for a moment, clearly frustrated.

“There's not much we can do right now. I can talk to some lawyers we know, but if she's charged with murder, they're not going to let her out on bail. And if they think she's involved with the Weathermen…” Kai trailed off instead of painting a picture of what that would mean.

“That's exactly why you owe it to her to do something!” James exclaimed.

“We can't. It's too risky, and it's a distraction from our real objectives,” Kai said. “One person is not worth putting everything else on hold. We all know there are risks involved in the choices we make. Cody knew that, too. We move forward without her.”

And then to top it off, Taryn looked at James and chimed in to trap him. “That's what Cody would want, right?”

James couldn't believe how easily Kai and Taryn could rationalize this decision. They were colder than he had even suspected. It should have given him faith in their leadership, but at the moment it just guaranteed the miserable fate of the girl he loved. James couldn't stand it.

“If you're not going to help her, then I will.”

James turned around, walked into a cavern, and disappeared into the mine.

*   *   *

He spent the night trying to sleep uncomfortably on the hard, damp ground. He had climbed as far from Kai and Taryn as he could, using the light from his phone, until the walls of the old mining tunnel narrowed too sharply. When faint traces of morning light trickled in from odd angles, James roused himself, found an exit hole, and re-emerged into the piney world of Mount Shasta. It seemed crazy to him how anxious he had felt being at the quarry just a week earlier. The stuff he was worried about then seemed so insignificant now. A little hazing from Marco was nothing compared with what Cody must be enduring. Without saying good-bye to Kai or Taryn, he started downhill and began the long trek home.

James needed the time to consider something serious. A nagging thought had kept him awake most of the night, but he still wasn't ready to accept it. The realization came at the end of one of James's typical logic sequences. He started with the basic problem: Cody was in jail, charged with a murder she didn't commit. James needed to get her out of jail. The Weathermen were of no help. James couldn't do it alone. It could probably be accomplished only by someone with more authority than the people detaining her. James needed the help of a government big shot. He didn't know any government big shots.

Unless …

This is where James hesitated. His gut told him that he did, in fact, know someone who fit this description, however much he didn't want to believe it. Still, James knew it might be Cody's only chance: He had to figure out what the hell was going on with his father.

What James had seen at the Cal State lab—a package from the NIH delivered by an armed guard—was enough to make him suspicious. His father was a normal college professor. He taught classes in the agriculture department. Sometimes he did research for the farming companies. But none of that should have connected him with the NIH. James had seen it with his own eyes, though, and had noticed how jumpy the package had made his dad. The NIH was the agency in charge of the Ones. Someone there might be exactly the type of person with the authority to help Cody. If his dad was doing something important enough, maybe he could call in a favor.

Something told James that this was a knot he didn't want to untangle. And as it stood now, he wasn't even sure of anything. He needed more information before he asked his father for help. He needed to go home and find out what kind of man his father really was.

*   *   *

When James got back to his house, there was a police officer in the living room waiting to talk to him. He looked exactly like the one who had chased him and Kai and Taryn across the campus. Even though he felt guilty, James tried to stay calm. With his parents looking on, the cop asked what James knew about Cody's plan.

“When did you know she was going to kill Ms. Morris?”

James tried not to laugh. He didn't want to antagonize the cop, so he explained it the best he could. “The
plan
was to have a peaceful protest and not harm a single person. You've got it all wrong. Cody didn't kill her.”

James saw his mother shake her head in disappointment. “James, she's not worth protecting anymore. Just tell the officer what he needs to know,” Helen said.

“Mom, stop it! She didn't do anything!”

“So you were there? You saw how she died?” The cop stared at him.

“Answer the question, James,” his father said.

James wanted to protect Cody, but he knew lying and saying he was there would just make things worse. “No,” he answered reluctantly, “I was in the library with everyone else.”

The cop wrote something down. He asked a few more pointless questions, but James kept insisting he was just blindly following the crowd. The cop finally closed his notebook. “Every student who participated has been suspended from school indefinitely. And I've already explained to your parents: Don't go skipping town while we're still sorting this out, you understand?”