The Watch (The Red Series Book 1) (28 page)

“You watch us?”

He nodded. “Many a night I’ve
seen you avoiding the cameras, slipping outside of the wall. He teaches you how
to be invisible. You give him something to look forward to, after a long
frustrating day.”

It should have been good
news—he wanted to help us, and he was strong and not insane—but I
felt chilled down to my bones, violated. Those were my most private memories,
those nights spent running the dark streets with
Meritt
.
They were the closest thing to freedom I had known. They were
mine
. And he had been watching us.

“But why?” I said. “Why did you
watch us?”

Angel shrugged. “Old habits are
hard to break.”

I stared at him blankly.

He spread his hands as if
stating the obvious. “It was my job. Someone had to keep an eye on the
experiment.”

The experiment.

The word seemed to grow in my
mind, crowding out everything else.

Angel’s expression changed. “You
didn’t know,” he said, and now he sounded concerned. “Tommy didn’t tell you
that
Optica
was a research trial?”

It took a moment to find my
voice. “No.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I would
have broken it to you more gently had I realized.”

His expression turned wry. “And
I should have realized,” he said. “Of course Tommy didn’t tell you. He feels
too guilty about the part he played. He wants to be the hero. He wants to save
the city. Am I right?”

I nodded.

“Afterwards, that’s when he’s no
doubt planning to tell you. After he’s paid his debt. When you’re so grateful
to him that you’ll do anything for him, give him anything. Even forgiveness.”

I heard his words but they
didn’t penetrate. All I could focus on, at that moment, was the term
experiment
. In school we dissected small
animals, mixed chemicals in test tubes. That was what I thought of when I heard
the word. How could we be that? In my mind I pictured an entire city in a petri
dish.

“You don’t mean an actual
experiment,” I said, groping for words.

“But I do,” Angel said. “
State-of-the-art, if you find that any comfort. Cutting
edge. No expense spared.” His voice
was heavily ironic, and I didn’t
know why, and I didn’t care.

“Tommy was involved from the
beginning,” he said. “His job was security—keeping the subjects
corralled, providing back-up for those pretentious paper pushers you call the
Watchers, liaising with them and the administrators on the mainland. Now that
it’s all gone sideways Tommy’s guilt-stricken—that happens, you know,
when people discover they’ve backed a failure. They suddenly develop a
conscience.”

“What sort of experiment?” I
said.

But Angel was distracted now,
frowning and glancing to his left, toward the bank of dark trees. I followed
his gaze and saw movement. Sir Tom or
Ezzie
had blown
their cover, I supposed. Well, at least that wasn’t my fault.

“There’s no time,” Angel said,
and began to stride toward me. “Let’s go meet
Meritt
.”

I stood there and watched him
come. I was a practical joke, the Watchers had said. A subject.

An experiment.

Angel saw that I wasn’t running
and he smiled, but not at me. It was a secret smile, triumphant. He had won.

Ezzie’s
words
struck me, then, jolting me out of my stupor. Angel had paralyzed me,
hypnotized me, like a cobra hypnotizing its prey.

I turned and ran.

I was more afraid than I’d
expected to be, afraid of Angel and of myself, my uncertain ability to discern
good from ill. I was afraid of Angel and I was also afraid that I was making
the wrong decision by running from him. All I could do was stick to the
plan—I could join Angel later, after I’d thought more carefully about
what he’d said, but if I went with him now I wouldn’t be able to stop Sir Tom
from attacking him, and if Sir Tom killed him I’d never find
Meritt
—though Angel was probably lying about
that—of course he was lying. I’d seen that secret smile. How could I have
come so close to ruining our plan? I was supposed to distract Angel, but
instead he had distracted me, and not for long enough. I’d bought the others
hardly any time—only a minute or two. This had all gone wrong.

I ran for the rocky promontory,
but the dragging sand slowed me, gave my flight that helpless surreal
nightmarish quality, so that with every step I expected to feel Angel’s hand on
my shoulder. But whether Angel followed me, and how far, I don’t know. I was
afraid if I looked back I’d see him reaching for me, or else I’d trip and fall,
so I didn’t turn until I was on the cliff top, at the very edge of the sea,
escape within easy reach.

Then I did turn, and what I saw
took my breath away.

Four black-clothed wardens were
right behind me. They were close, very close—how had I not heard them?
Their faces were hard and mean and they were coming on fast.

“You’re going to pay,” the one
in front called. “No one kills a warden and gets away with it.”

Me, kill a warden? I hadn’t
killed anyone.

Angel was nowhere in sight. The
warden was almost within arm’s reach, and I wasn’t going to stop to argue with
him. I swung straight over the edge of the cliff, where the terrifying ladder
hung, and began to climb down.

The warden peered over the edge
at me, then turned and flung one leg down, felt for the rung. He was following
me—he was coming down the ladder, and it swayed as he put his weight on
it. If he fell,
he easily might take me down with
him.

Someone up above
shouted; a single shot rang out. Who was shooting? Was it Angel? Sir Tom? Or
were the wardens shooting at my friends?

The warden kept
climbing down after me. I sped up, counting aloud—one, two, three, skip
the rung, one, two, three, skip the rung. But I had two feet, not one, and I
began to be confused about which foot was on which number, plus I was waiting
for the warden to hit a bad rung, one of Sir Tom’s booby-trapped rungs, and
come down on top of me.

An indistinguishable cry rose up
above us, someone hurt, someone in pain. Who was that? I couldn’t tell, not
with other people yelling.

Then the warden did hit a weak
rung and the ladder jerked violently, slamming me against
the cliff wall. I held on tight and didn’t fall, but neither did the warden; he
caught the side rope and held on. The ladder swayed as he dangled from it, felt
for a safer rung. And then he came on again, if anything faster than before,
and now with a steady stream of curses and threats.

Dizzy, I clung to
the swinging ladder, though it swung and scraped my knuckles against the rocks.
As soon as the vertigo passed I started down again, unsure of the count,
testing each rung but with no time, and eventually plunging on and trusting to
dumb luck.

Finally I made it to
the bottom, and the rock felt hard and unyielding after the rope, and the waves
hissed and snapped. Since I didn’t know how to swim and didn’t know how deep
the water was beyond the ledge, I wanted to cautiously edge my way along the
wet shelf of rock, but with the warden hard on my heels, I had no choice but to
rush forward. I had never stepped on anything so slick. I went down on the
second stride, and waves washed over my arms and legs, tried to pull me into
the sea. Warden or no warden, I would have to move carefully, testing each step
and digging my toes into the rocks.

I heard the warden
drop onto the shelf behind me, and willed myself not to whip around and lose
precious seconds. I cleared the outer edge of the little peninsula and there
was Farrell Dean in the tiny cove, watching for me. When he caught sight of me
he began easing the little boat further into the water. Then he saw the warden.

“Get in the boat!”
he yelled and began pushing through the waist-deep water, trying to get to the
warden before the warden got to me. But the warden was too close—only a
couple of yards away. He lunged at me and I jerked away from his hands, losing
my footing on the slippery rocks, falling with a splash into water so icy I
gasped and swallowed a mouthful of salty sea.

As I came up,
gagging and gasping for air, I caught a glimpse of Farrell Dean grabbing the
warden around the neck, hauling him down into the water, and then something
else caught my eye.

The boat was
drifting.

Swaying gently in
the waves, bobbing slightly, it was edging away from us, toward the open sea. I
hurried after it as fast as I could, but the water clung heavily to my legs,
soaked into my clothes, dragged at me. What if I lost the boat? We’d be
trapped—more wardens could follow this
one down—and the rocks
were sheer, there was no escape from here but by sea.

I took a deep breath, bent my
knees, and launched myself out toward the boat. I came down hard and water went
up my nose, set me spluttering and coughing again. My fingertips touched the
edge of the boat but as I scrabbled at it, it moved away, out of reach again.

Frantically I got my feet under
me and lunged again. This time I caught the boat solidly with both
hands—so solidly that it tipped up toward me and things fell out. I stood
up—the water was only up to my chest—and when I did the boat
leveled. Keeping one hand on it, I grabbed an oar floating nearby and flung it
back into the boat. What else had fallen? It didn’t matter. I had to get back
to Farrell Dean.

Getting in front of the boat I
started tugging it after me, back toward shore.
It
was maddeningly slow-going, like moving through honey. Where were Farrell Dean
and the warden? There they were—oh, this was bad—the warden was on
top of Farrell Dean. As I watched he shoved Farrell
Dean further under,
held his head under water.

I pulled with all my might,
gasping with the effort. Farrell Dean’s hands were around the warden’s neck,
but the warden was bigger, heavier.

 
Finally the boat wedged on the sandy
bottom. I let go of it and grabbed the loose oar. Taking three steps, I swung
hard at the warden’s head.

My aim was bad and the oar
caught his shoulder, jolted out of my hands. He staggered and Farrell Dean came
up in a rush, tackling him, knocking him off his feet. But
t
he
warden came back up
again, fast, and he came up swinging.

Farrell Dean ducked under the
blow and then warden saw me, lunged at me. He was too close—I couldn’t
get away—and he grabbed me by the shoulders, shook me so hard my teeth
rattled, and then shoved me backward, hooking my feet out from under me. I
struggled and kicked, managed to keep my head out of water, but then he was
reaching for my throat, he was going to drown me—

Then he froze. His mouth came
open in surprise; his grip on me loosened. His eyes rolled back in his head and
he fell with a splash into the shallow water near the rocky cove.

Panting, Farrell Dean dropped
the rock he was holding and grabbed the floating oar.
He hurried to the head of the peninsula to see if there were other pursuers. Satisfied,
he turned back to the fallen warden.

“Help me get him
out,” he said, bending over the man and catching him under one arm. It was
awkward work, he was heavy, I was trying to bear the brunt of it to spare
Farrell Dean’s injuries more trauma, but finally between the two of us we got
him up on to the shore, high enough that he was beyond the tide line, and
wedged him against a rock so he wouldn’t roll back in and drown.

“Let’s go,” Farrell
Dean said.

 
I clambered gracelessly into the boat,
feeling it sway and tilt beneath me, and Farrell Dean pushed us into deeper
water, leaning hard against the wooden front, finally heaving himself over the
side and then shoving with an oar, sending us into the arms of a tide that
pulled us away from beneath the rocky cliff and
shot us out toward the open sea.

“You okay?” he said, breathing
hard.

“They have guns,” I
said. “Up above. Someone was shooting.”

“I heard.” He slid
his oar into a notch on the side of the boat and stroked it through the water.
The boat jerked, slewed sideways. Farrell Dean reached for the other oar and
slid it into place, slammed both oarlocks shut, then tried again. This time we
moved smoothly, shooting out further, faster. It was windier out here on the
water and my hair tangled in my face, blinding me.

Were the wardens on
the cliff top pointing guns at us? We couldn’t possibly be a safe distance out,
not so quickly.

Farrell Dean was
facing me, sitting on the wider middle bench rowing hard
,
his back toward the open sea,
his eyes on the jumble
of things in the bottom of the boat.

“Where’s the gun?” he said.
“Find the gun and if they start shooting at us, shoot back.”

I crouched down and dug through
the things in the bottom of the boat.

“It’s not here,” I said finally.
“The boat tipped when I grabbed it. The gun must have fallen out.”