The Ones (25 page)

James didn't understand it—that was the honest truth. But he tried to convince himself again. Maybe his father's compromise was the best solution to an impossible problem. A generation was coming of age that would turn everyone else into second-class citizens. But those people still had all the power, and they weren't going to be made obsolete without a fight. Something had to give, and maybe his father had the best answer. In James's heart, that is truly what he believed. So maybe he could answer Michael's question.

“You're right. He didn't deserve to die,” James said.

Michael nodded, relieved. He reached out to James and slapped him on the thigh. It was the closest thing to a hug that they could muster right now and their first physical contact since the fight. They sat like that for a while, their uncomfortable tension put aside for the moment, just two brothers mourning a father.

Michael finally stood up and moved to the door. He shook his head, a pained expression on his face. “I still don't understand how they knew, though. Dad said it was completely top secret. How could they have found out about the lab?”

James tensed up, but his brother was lost in his own world and walked out of the bedroom, still muttering to himself. James shut the door, then leaned against it and grabbed his head with both hands, trying to relieve the tremendous pressure that was building.

How did they know to bomb the lab?

James couldn't bring himself to answer that. It was too simple. The real question was more complicated: Who was truly to blame for his father's death?

James knew how he wanted to answer that question. Kai was clearly a maniac. He wanted to create chaos, sow fear, let the streets run red with the blood of his enemies—or whatever crazy way he would phrase it. It was inevitable that he would lash out in such a destructive manner, with no regard for what he was actually accomplishing or who was getting hurt. He was a zealot, and even though James agreed with his broad points, Kai had become a delusional, violent madman.

Then there was Cody. She had seen that his father was in the office after they planted the bomb. She'd had the power to stop it. And she should have known better than to indict his father without knowing all the facts. Arthur had saved her. And she watched him die.

Of course there was his dad, too: a respected professor, a father, a man who agreed to work on a vaccine that would dismantle the identities of hundreds of thousands of people. He walked into that lab willingly every day, and the night of the bombing was no different.

Michael couldn't hide, either. He had pushed his father into this project—not overtly, but in the bitter, selfish manner that he had handled growing up with James. He had practically begged their father to find a solution to keep the peace in their family.

For that matter, maybe it was the long-deceased Thomas who set this tragedy in motion. Had he not fallen off that ledge in the quarry, James wouldn't exist. Michael wouldn't be bitter. Arthur wouldn't be desperate. The bomb wouldn't have touched them.

Yes, James concluded, they were all to blame for his father's death. They and everyone else around the country who were too stupid to handle this issue in a reasonable way. The assholes who painted equal signs. The politicians who groveled for votes. The masses of citizens who knew something immoral was taking place but refused to speak up. They didn't detonate the bomb, but they watched every step of the way as the Ones were stripped of their rights and backed into a corner. Sure, the Ones were different, and their existence was unfamiliar. But the Ones were people—kids, really—first and foremost. The accommodators, the collaborators, the silent cowards, and the naked perpetrators: They were all the same now.

That was who shouldered the blame. Kai. Cody. Arthur. Michael. Thomas. Ms. Bixley. Marco. Taryn. The whole country. Everyone who wasn't James.

Not James.

It wasn't James.

It wasn't his fault.

He didn't murder his dad.

James paced the room frantically now, saying it over and over in his own head.

It wasn't my fault.

The faster he moved, the louder he shouted in his mind.

It wasn't my fault. It wasn't my fault.

The pressure in his head was excruciating. He felt like it was about to explode.

It wasn't my fault. It wasn't my fault. It wasn't my fault.

And then James couldn't take it any longer. He let out a wail and collapsed to the floor.

He started sobbing, finally accepting the truth that he had tried so hard to deny over the past few days: He was to blame for his father's death. James, more than anyone else. He had let him walk blindly into an assassination. He had known exactly what Kai would do with the memo, and he still said nothing.

All he'd needed to do was warn him. A simple explanation that James had lost the memo to the New Weathermen and his dad would be alive right now. Maybe he'd be overseeing his version of the Vaccine at the internment camps. Maybe he'd be saving the Ones from the more gruesome fate that awaited them.

But James hadn't said a word. He'd killed his father.

As James lay on the floor, coming to terms with this sin, his thoughts turned to Cody. He had excoriated her for the very crime that he now knew was his own. He had wanted to blame someone else so badly that he said whatever he could to support his delusion. He had been mean and abusive.

And worst of all, he had lied about loving her.

Now Cody was probably going to die tomorrow, up in the mines. He knew that was where they were, and if Michael had mentioned it, then the Equality Teams knew, too. The Weathermen versus the military was hardly a fair fight. The Ones would lose, no matter how passionately they wanted to avoid being herded into a camp. The Equality agents had guns and trucks and drones and endless reinforcements. James had watched them being used all night long on the news.

He had to see Cody again. Yes, she had run off with Kai, and she had been there at the bombing, and James's ever logical mind knew that was unforgivable. But his heart told him differently, and he couldn't stand the thought of never seeing her again, of never holding her, never laughing with her, never trailing his fingertips down the curve of her back. She was the only person who truly knew him, who appreciated him for his imperfections instead of all the other surface-level things that made him seem perfect. And now James saw that their bond was even deeper: Both had been prevented from forging their own identity. Cody had been tricked, she would never know how much perfection she could have achieved without the original lie. And James had been sculpted as a replacement, he would never know if that was the person he was meant to become. But together, maybe, they could discover their own path.

James had to see her one last time. It was all that mattered to him now. Joining her fight at the mine probably wouldn't help them beat the Equality Team, but at least he could try. And he could apologize to her. He could shout it to the heavens. He could admit that what she believed was, in fact, true: Their love was real.

James's desire to reunite with Cody prompted another desire. If he did find her, he didn't want tomorrow to be their last day together. He didn't want only a moment to redeem himself; he wanted a lifetime. James was spared from going to the camps, and Cody—no longer a One—wouldn't have to go, either. But James knew he'd never persuade her to abandon the other Ones.

That meant the only way to save her was to win the fight.

James channeled his newfound energy into figuring out how they could slay Goliath. The Equality Team would be in Shasta by dawn. Before then, he needed to find a sling.

And just like that, midstride in a frantic race back and forth across his room, it hit him. James turned on his heel and headed straight for the garage.

*   *   *

Five hours later, James finally stopped deep in the foothills below Mount Shasta and leaned against a dry old pine tree to catch his breath. He had been at a dead run since he'd left his house, stopping only to check his map and his old Boy Scout compass by flashlight. This was his last stop: a deep, windless gully several miles north of the town. Everything else had been set up, and James had to trust in his plan now. He took off his backpack, which was much lighter now that the container of gasoline was almost empty. He poured out what was left and tossed it aside.

Then, as the first shades of dawn kissed the night sky, James knelt down and struck a match.

 

CHAPTER 19

THE FIRST HUMVEE
rolled into the basin of the mine right after dawn. Cody watched from the edge of a small tunnel high up on the hillside, an old shotgun at her side. A line of vehicles followed along the only road that led into the mining area. It was exactly how they had planned it: The Ones had made sure that their presence in the mine wasn't a secret anymore—they knew people in town would direct the Equality Team there. Right into their trap.

The New Weathermen and several more Ones who had joined them had been busy in the four days since the announcement about the internment camps. Their plan was to make their stand in the area around the mine and the quarry. It gave them the advantages of cover, knowing the terrain, and escape routes in the tunnels. They had rigged various areas with explosives—a mishmash of rudimentary pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails—and had gathered together all the firearms they could muster.

In the best-case scenario, they could lure all the Equality agents into the basin of the mine and have snipers shoot them from concealed positions above. When the agents inevitably fought their way into the tunnels, the Ones knew which passageways were safe and which ones were rigged to collapse. Perhaps they could wipe out all the agents. Perhaps every last One would die there. What was certain, though, is that no Ones were surrendering peacefully to be dragged into a camp.

Kai made that clear when he addressed all of them in the last quiet moments before the sun came up. They had gathered in a giant cavern deep underground, and Kai waited until the only sounds were the eerie, unending reverberations of the mine.

“You hear that?” Kai asked, staring into the darkness. “Those are the echoes of every fight for freedom the world has ever known. They never die. They sink into the bones of the earth, and they hum softly, they vibrate, they rumble. And then these echoes get into
us
. They inspire us, challenge us, compel us to add our voices to their chorus.” Then Kai paused, still straining to listen. “Today will be the loudest day of our lives.”

He turned back to meet everyone's eyes. “A free country, right? That's always what we've been told? But the people coming here today are trying to lock us in a camp. Trying to change the way we think. Trying to change who we are. I, for one, am not going to let that happen. But more important, no one should ever live in fear of this threat. That's the rule we live by and that's what we fight for today—the right of every person on this earth to be who they are, to live as they were born. We fight for freedom! And when we fight for freedom, we can't lose. We either win the day or we become echoes.”

Kai's eyes finally landed on Cody, and she held his gaze, chills running down her spine. Whichever path the day took, she was ready to join him.

As all the Ones rushed to their assigned posts, Cody ran through her mental checklist of what she was supposed to do. Unlike everyone else, she had heard the plan only the day before. For the two days prior, while the Ones had worked to set up their defense of the mine, Cody had been unconscious.

The blast from the bomb had thrown her backward thirty feet through the air. This was according to Kai and Taryn, who scooped her limp body off the pavement, threw her into the van, and sped away from the campus. Cody didn't remember much from that night. They said her clothes were on fire, but Cody had basically survived in one piece. She woke up in the mine two days later with a horrible headache, sore all over, and with bits of gravel still embedded wherever she'd had exposed skin. It was obvious to her as she gathered her senses that she hadn't stopped the bombing. And she hadn't saved James's father.

That was why the first thing she did was find James at the cemetery. Of course, that hadn't gone exactly as planned, and now Cody was recovering from that second detonation: James didn't want to see her again. He claimed he never loved her. It was a bitter moment that very well might be their last.

Cody was devastated by what James said, and she took her anger out on Kai after she made it back to the mine yesterday.

“Some promise, huh?” she said with a withering look.

“I'm sorry he died, Cody. And I'm sorry you got hurt. But I did what I had to do.”

“So your word means nothing, then?”

“My word isn't more important than our fight. The lab is gone now. We don't have to talk about it, but I know you agree with what I did,” Kai said.

Cody looked at him with disgust. “You think I agree with what happened that night?”

“If you didn't, you wouldn't have come back here.”

Kai said it softly, not to score a point but to let her know he understood. Even as Cody fumed, she knew he was right. And even more infuriating, she liked him more for standing up to her about it.

Despite her anger over being deceived, Cody did agree with him, and she had spent the rest of day coming to terms with that. The Equality Team was on its way, and Cody needed to prepare herself. The people who had imprisoned and tortured her were coming for all the Ones now. Innocent people were about to be forced into camps and vaccinated. Cody had to do everything she could to stop this. It may have seemed like a decision that Cody had made when she was released from her detention, but the truth was that she had always been ready to take this stand. From the moment she first saw someone being persecuted for how they were born, Cody was unwavering. She would fight against it until her last breath. She would join Kai in becoming an echo.