Three (Article 5) (36 page)

Us,
he said. Because he was one of them. One of the soldiers.

But he was helping me. At least I thought he was helping me.

He checked his watch.

“Give me your gun,” I said.

“Not this time.” But he reached into his belt, and withdrew the knife he’d used to carve into my skin. I snatched it out of his palm and paused, trying to figure him out.

“Did you really start the fire in Knoxville?”

He didn’t answer.

I swallowed. “And Chicago. There were so many people in those tunnels.”

Tucker flinched. “I didn’t have a choice.”

“You expect me to believe that.” He was probably going to tell the MM where all the bases were, too, if DeWitt hadn’t beaten him to it.

“I don’t expect you to do anything,” he said.

The rage within me swelled, but a deeper fear, too. Before me was a person capable of enormous destruction.

I followed him, and unable to help myself, reached for the gun in his holster. Before I took another breath I was pressed against the wall, his body flush against mine, his forearm against my throat.

“What are you, stupid?” he said. “You want him to make me kill you, too?”

Fear shimmered through me, lighting my skin with goose bumps. The Chief of Reformation controlled Tucker, that much was obvious. The cuts on my shoulder were only the beginning.

“Why are you letting me go?”

“I don’t know,” he said through his teeth. He shoved me against the wall again. “Why do you care?” His voice broke.

“Tucker,” I rasped, unsure what to make of the battle raging inside of him.

He pushed me harder against the wall, until my spine cracked and I scratched at his hands.

“You think we’re so different?” he asked. “You think your cause is so much better than mine?”

I stood on my tiptoes, trying not to panic as the edges of my vision went blurry.

“The FBR saved my family,” he said. “It saved my life.”

“It killed my mother,” I said, kicking his shin uselessly. “
You
killed her.”

“I followed orders,” he said.

“Stop,” I managed.

“I followed orders!” he said again, as if I didn’t understand. As if
he
didn’t understand.

“You helped us rescue Rebecca.” I didn’t know why I was disagreeing. I had my window to escape; I should have been long gone. Soon the bombs would hit—I didn’t even know how much time we had left.

“Shut up,” Tucker said.

“Whose side are you on?” I stared at him, watching a vein rise in his forehead. A sound of misery came from his throat.

“Why couldn’t he just listen, like everyone else? Why did he have to ruin everything?”

The buzzing in my ears paused as his grip loosened.

“Who? Who ruined everything?”

“He was my friend,” he said, letting me down abruptly.

“Chase,” I realized. I tried to picture them in training together. Partners, before Tucker had betrayed him.

“They would have killed him because of you.” He jabbed a thumb into his chest. “I tried to help him. I only turned in those letters he was writing you because he wasn’t listening. Those fights our officers put him through were going to kill him. And then when they took your mom, I was the one who did what had to be done. What he couldn’t do.”

Tucker’s words came fast, like a faucet he was unable to turn off, and I fought the urge to cover my ears and drown them out. The misery rolled off him, thickening the air in the room.

“He would have done it for me if our places were switched.”

“No, Tucker,” I whispered. “He wouldn’t have.”

Tucker stared at me, green eyes filled with self-loathing. “No,” he said, with a short, pitiful laugh. “Of course not.”

As if he’d forgotten, he checked his watch and threw back the door.

The hallway was empty. He broke into a run, and I followed close on his heels. At the end of the corridor was a security room surrounded by thick glass, and within a young soldier was typing rapidly behind a large black monitor.

It was a trap. I slammed to a halt, already backpedaling, but the soldier looked up and met my eyes. With his hair cropped short, I almost didn’t recognize him.

“Billy,” I whispered. “How…”

A buzzer sounded, and the door beside the station popped open. Tucker ushered me through.

“He was in the mess hall when I got back from the Red Zone,” explained Tucker, unable to meet my eyes. “He said he snuck in with an extra security detail for the chief’s party.”

I touched Billy’s arm, just to make sure he was real. He must have thought Tucker was attached to the resistance, not one of the real soldiers. I didn’t tell him differently. If he had known Tucker had been the one to start the fire in Knoxville, I doubted he’d be helping now.

“Tucker marched right in here and told the two guys working they’d been reassigned and I was taking over.” Billy smirked. “Can’t believe they went for it.”

“Focus,” said Tucker.

Billy turned back to the monitor and began typing furiously on the keyboard.

“You really don’t know when to quit, do you?” Tucker said. “There’s a radio report playing on a back channel we picked up last night. Some woman named Faye talking about reading the Statutes and fighting the FBR. She says she’s seen you herself.”

“Faye Brown,” I said. Felicity Bridewell was actually reporting on something worthwhile. Something that put her life at risk. Something about me, just like before, when we’d been on the run.

Of course that something was probably going to mean my painful death, but still. The bitterness I’d felt for her warped into appreciation.

“Yeah, well, everyone’s probably heard it by now,” said Tucker.

“The cameras in the cell are back on,” said Billy. “Hallway cameras back on … now.” As I watched, the screen before him flickered, then stabilized. A gray, grainy feed came through, and I shivered, thinking of the images of Chase and I that had been taken in the hospital in Chicago.

“Have you seen Wallace? Chase? Any of our guys?” Hurriedly, I looked from screen to screen. Every cell, including one with a metal chair tipped on its side, was empty. Even DeWitt was missing.

Billy shook his head. “I saw Marco and Polo. They didn’t look so good.”

“Do you know where they were taken?”

“To the party, I think. They went out through the recreation yard to the base.”

Guilt surged through me as I thought of Marco and Polo’s capture. Maybe New Guy had been the one to turn them in, but I still felt bad for everything I’d asked them to do.

I hoped they did not suffer long.

Billy was still typing, tongue now sticking out of the side of his mouth.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Oops,” said Billy with a grin, striking one final key with his index finger. “Looks like the locks on cell block A through D aren’t working so well anymore.”

More black and white images popped into view on the screen to my left—these of hallways, and doors tentatively being pushed open from the inside.

I ruffled a hand through Billy’s hair and he waggled his eyebrows at me.

Tucker pulled a contraption off the wall—a rope noose attached to a long pole, maybe five feet in length. I took a step back as he loosened the rope to create a larger circle.

From somewhere beyond our cell came a dull roar. The party to celebrate the Chief of Reformation’s victories over the fallen resistance posts had begun.

“Look.” Billy pointed to the central camera feed, where two soldiers armed with semi-automatic weapons opened a door.

“We’re out of time,” said Tucker.

Silently, and without delay, we followed him out of the booth to a hallway, where he stopped just before turning the corner.

“You’re my prisoner, understand?” When I nodded, he placed the rope overhead and tightened it around my neck. He stood back, gripping the length of the pole, and despite the fact that I had allowed him to do so, I felt a hot prickle of shame inch down my spine. To anyone that saw, I was no more than a rabid dog on a leash.

“Hands behind you,” Tucker said. “Head down.” He looked at Billy. “You think you can handle her?”

Reluctantly Billy took the end of the pole.

“Sorry, Ember,” he muttered.

We walked straight down the hall, Tucker holding my wrists, Billy pushing me forward from behind. My shoulder was still exposed, the cool ventilation making my new cuts feel raw and dirty. A few turns, and we came to a juncture where a guard behind a glass shield buzzed us through without question.

Night, and the heavy smell of moss greeted me, along with the roar of a crowd I could barely discern beneath the hair that fell forward over my face. Our time was nearly up. In just a short time, this place would be destroyed.

“Tucker,” I whispered. “What time is it?”

“Past your bedtime,” he said. “Now shut up.”

In silence we continued through a grass paddock—the recreation yard—toward a fence. Just beyond it waited a sea of soldiers jeering at a site beyond the scope of my vision. My limbs grew cold, and my wrists began to tremble.

“We’ll have to go around them,” said Tucker. “Once we’re out of this gate there’s an alley between the buildings that leads into the back parking lot. That’s your best shot.”

“How do I get into the party?”

His fingers dug into my forearm. “Forget the party. This isn’t the Knoxville holding cells. This place has real security. And it’s tripled because the chief’s here. Even if you find him, you’ll never get out of here alive if you don’t go now.”

“Let me worry about that.”

He made a noise of disgust. “I don’t understand you.”

But I wasn’t sure that was right, because locked in one fist was a knife he’d given me.

“You should go,” I told him, though everything in me screamed that it was wrong. “Get out of here. You’re better than this.”

He stared at me for one long moment. Finally he shook his head.

“I’m really not.”

The noise of the crowd grew louder as we approached, and made my bones turn to slush. So many soldiers—their voices snide and condemning. I did not know what I would do should they turn and attack. The rope pressed against my throat, as dictated by Billy’s firm hold on my leash.

We came to a high metal fence where an armed guard looked down from atop a watchtower.

“You’re late,” he said. “They just took the last one through.”

“Doesn’t look like it,” said Tucker condescendingly. He released my wrists to flash the gold star on his chest up at the soldier, who immediately turned to a control panel to his right.

“Sorry, captain. Gate’s opening now, sir.”

The back row in the crowd turned as the gate rolled back on its wheeled track. Some of the men, drunk with excitement, smiled slickly.

“All right,” one said. “I didn’t know there’d be a girl mixed in.”

“Out of the way,” said Tucker.

“Yes, captain,” they responded. He lifted his chin while I lowered mine. If it wasn’t for the cold sweat making his grip on my wrists slippery, I would have thought Tucker was enjoying his newly earned status.

The majority of the crowd was still focused on something happening beyond them though, and as I looked on I saw what had drawn their jeers.

A line of prisoners, their faces covered by black bags and hands bound behind them, waited to get into the building. Some were badly injured and barely upright but were forced into motion by the chains that bound each man’s ankles to the person before him. The soldiers threw handfuls of dirt and rocks on them from across the last barrier of fence. Some were attempting to spit on them; a few succeeded in hitting their mark.

“Wallace?” Billy said behind me.

I lifted on my toes, trying to see over the others, but I could only catch glimpses through the churning sea of uniforms and flying dust.

A second later the pole fell behind me, choking me, and my hand flew to my throat.

Billy was gone.

CHAPTER

24

TUCKER
wasted no time snatching up the fallen pole. He gave me a sharp jerk, one which made the air lock in my lungs and my eyes nearly pop out of my head, and I fell to my knees. In a hurry, I lunged up, gasping, searching for Billy, but he had disappeared into the sea of blue.

More soldiers began to turn around, pointing and laughing at me. I couldn’t escape it. To them I was a freak; I felt like a freak. I was exactly what they had made me.

At that moment, the front of the group erupted into cheers. The door to the building had opened, and the guards watching the line began to order the prisoners through. With all the attention directed back on the door, Tucker pushed me to the right, leading me against the fence to a narrow juncture between two gates. If I hadn’t already been told an alley was there, I never would have seen it.

“No,” I said. I had to go with the others. I had to reach Chase. Tucker didn’t understand—none of this mattered if Chase died tonight.

Tucker twisted the pole, tightening the noose even further. As we approached the entrance, he pushed me within, and the weight on my neck grew heavy once again as the metal pole was finally released. I turned around, but he was facing the crowd.

Giving me a chance to escape.

Quickly, I shed the leash, and flung it to the ground.

“You have to go,” I said. “By midnight this place will be flattened.”

“Get out of here,” he hissed over his shoulder.

I stared at his back for one final moment. A feeling close to what I’d felt before Harper had tried to kill Chase in that hospital in Chicago came over me. An unfilled well of potential. An inability to stop a train wreck.

I turned and ran.

As I neared the end of the alley I saw the parking lot Tucker had mentioned. A hundred cruisers, navy vans, and buses filled the lot, with soldiers in groups crossing to an entrance on the other side. I looked for anyplace I might sneak in but found none.

A caravan of government cars stopped one by one at the gate before being allowed inside. As I watched, three soldiers emerged from a check station and began to search a van. One examined the undercarriage with a mirror attached to a long handle.