With the Enemy (11 page)

I
’m pretty sure that isn’t what Helen meant about showing attitude. Especially when Rosie adds, “You liar! Murderer! Traitor!” and starts hitting him with her fists.

“Whoa, Rosie, calm down,” he says. Over her head he looks at me. “Little help here?”

Somewhere between thinking,
What is Rosie doing
? and
You need to stop this!
my brain hears what he said.

“How did you know Rosie’s name?” I ask him.

“This is Ivan,” Rosie says, socking him hard in the stomach. He staggers backward. “The guy who betrayed my sister to the Alliance and got her killed.”

Ah. Well, that explains it.

“I didn’t,” Ivan the betrayer hisses, grasping his mid-section. “It’s not what you think.”

I look at him, and I’m pretty sure my expression matches Rosie’s, which is Steely in the Extreme.

“I’m not Alliance,” he says.

Rosie moves toward him and pulls back a fist. “That’s weird because you sure look —”

“Wren is alive,” he tells Rosie. That stops her like she’s been frozen in nitrogen.

“How do you know? Where is she?”

“We can’t talk here; it’s not safe. Come with me.”

Rosie makes a noise that I think is meant to be laughter but sounds like a growl. “So you can turn us in?”

“I swear. I’m here on a mission for the Resistance. Obviously I’m too old to be a student so they had me assigned as a scout supervisor so I could infiltrate.”

“Liar. The Resistance has never heard of Ivan Franks,” Rosie snarls at him.

“Of course they said that; they’re protecting me.” His eyes dart behind us, then go back to her. “You don’t think they just give out the names of their members, do you? We really need to go somewhere else.” He’s looking truly nervous now and it dawns on me that there’s something
strange about what he’s saying: it has that weird sound that only one thing has. The truth.

I make a gut decision. “Rosie, I believe him,” I say.

An expression of betrayal flashes across Rosie’s face, replaced by fury. “How can you —”

“Trust me,” I say to her. For some reason I see Alonso’s face, saying the same words to me. “Just — trust me.”

Rosie looks from me to Ivan and back to me.

“You’re sure?” she asks, her hands still clenched into fists.

I nod. “Plus, having him along will make it easier for us to be in the halls.”

And then the most amazing thing happens. She says, “Okay.”

Just like that. Just because I said it.

Ivan says, “I know a safe place we can talk.”

“We don’t have time to talk,” Rosie says. “We’re here to find our friend Maddie and you’re going to help us, traitor.”

Ivan exhales hard. “I told you —”

“She’s in the boiler,” I say. “We need to get her out.”

Ivan’s forehead furrows. “You think you are going to get someone out of here? Not likely. Especially not if she’s on boiler duty.”

“Yes, we are,” Rosie says. “And while we do it, you’re going to tell me where Wren is and when you saw her last and how I can find her.”

I am not liking Ivan’s tone or expression. “What is special about boiler duty?” I ask him.

“It’s assigned to the best cadets,” he says. “Meaning the most obedient ones. It’s an honor. No one on a boiler will want to leave.”

“Maddie will,” I say.

Ivan shakes his head. “Even if you can convince her, you can’t just walk out of here. Phoenix is heavily secured.”

“We know that, traitor,” Rosie says. I am thinking she might want to stop reminding him of the traitor part. But she’s got her Really Angry Face on and is in one of those moods where she looks like she has the power of six women, so I don’t want to antagonize her. Now she adds, “We’re going to make a ruckus and create chaos. Chaos is what Phoenix isn’t built for.”

“Sure, yeah.” Ivan nods. “And that’s why they have full lockdown capability. At the first sign of disruption, the entire facility can be sealed in ninety seconds. One person might get out. Possibly two. But not three, no way.”

“What about five?” I say.

“There are more of you?” He peers closely at us as though we might have been hiding people in our clothes. “What, did you bring a band or something?”

“That’s on a need-to-know basis,” Rosie says. She shifts her Angry Face to me. “Your friend Helen didn’t mention we had less than two minutes to get out.”

“No.” I try to sound light and unconcerned. “Maybe that’s what she meant by ‘plan to leave fast.’ “

Rosie snarls, “Let’s call her and ask.” She pulls the phone from her pocket.

For such a big guy, it takes almost no time for all the color to drain from Ivan’s face. “You can’t use that in here,” he croaks. “Cadets aren’t allowed to have phones, and they’ll trace any signal instantly. They could even be tracking it now.”

Rosie eyes him speculatively. “So that’s the line you’re going to use when they find us.”

Ivan throws up his hands. “Fine. Don’t listen to me.” To me he says, “The lockdown procedure is new in the last week. They’ve been upgrading security for the past month. Something is going on, something big. That’s why the Resistance planted me.”

I feel better knowing Helen is (probably) not a liar but that doesn’t help with our exit strategy.

He goes on. “My mission here is extremely important. I can’t do anything that might blow my cover. It’s great you want to get your friend Maxie but —”

Rosie reaches up, grabs Ivan by the collar, and pulls his face down so they are standing eye to eye. “Maddie,” she pronounces carefully. “Her name is Madeleine Frye. And there is no ‘but.’ We’re going to get her. And you are going to help us.”

Either Maddie’s name or Rosie’s tone has a strange effect on Ivan. Everything about him seems more alert and engaged. “Madeleine Frye is on boiler duty,” he says, and it’s not clear if it’s a question or a statement.

Rosie releases him. “For now. Until she’s moved to Bright Spa.”

“Do you know Maddie?” I ask, trying to puzzle out the change in him.

“No,” Ivan says, and again I think he’s telling the truth. So why does he suddenly care?

“What is the meaning of this noise, Supervisor?” A gray-haired woman in a floral dress pokes her head into the hallway from a classroom. She looks like a grandma from an old TV show, small and frail with bright eyes that dart around like a tiny bird. “We are trying to do real work in here.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Castle.” Ivan speaks deferentially. “I’m taking these two cadets to the boiler.”

“Then take them, young man,” Miss Castle says with a wave of her hand, and ducks her head back into her classroom.

“What does she teach?” I ask as Ivan walks us to the staircase.

“Hand-to-hand combat. She can kill you with her pinkie.”

I look at him to see if he is joking, but he isn’t.

“Where is Wren?” Rosie demands as we run down another set of stairs.

“I don’t know,” Ivan says. “I really don’t know.”

“Liar.”

“It’s true, although even if I did, I might not tell you.”

“Why?”

“Wren is working for the Resistance. She’s doing what she wants. She knew the price of it was that she’d have to cut off contact with her family.”

Rosie’s jaw tightens. “She didn’t know.”

“Yes, Rosie. She did.”

Rosie’s hand starts to make a fist again. “She wouldn’t have done that. You’re a liar.”

“This is a war. Sometimes you have to make hard choices to do what’s right.”

“I don’t need you to tell me about hard choices, traitor,” Rosie growls at him.

We have reached Subbasement 2 now and I hear a strange, windy noise.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“We’re getting close to the boiler,” Ivan says. “Two more levels.”

At the next set of stairs the sound has changed. It’s louder but it sounds more … human. And I smell something. Something burning.

“Are they incinerating their garbage?” I ask. That’s strictly forbidden by the Environmental Statutes, but it’s the kind of dirty thing the Alliance would do.

“They would describe it as garbage, yes. You might have a different opinion,” Ivan replies cryptically. We’re on Subbasement 3 now, but instead of continuing down he takes us onto a metal catwalk. It rings a vast open space, the size of a sports stadium.

“Oh, man,” Rosie breathes.

In rows stretching as far as we can see are round metal tanks, fifty or sixty of them, spewing fire. Next to each of them is a trolley filled with books. As I watch, the cadet below us opens a big, clothbound volume that looks like the old dictionary Alonso found. The cadet rips off
the cover. There’s a strange noise like the sound of the wind whistling through tall grass as she drops it in the fire. An orange flame leaps up with a
whoosh
when she throws in the pages. She smiles as she watches them burn.

I feel like I’m going to be sick.

“Welcome to the boiler,” Ivan says.

M
y knuckles on the railing are white from gripping it so hard.

“Books?” Rosie asks. “They’re burning books for fuel? They couldn’t find anything else?”

Ivan gives a bitter laugh. “These fires don’t generate power or even heat for the building. They’re burning these books just to destroy them.”

My eyes sting and I don’t know whether from the smoke or from outrage. “But why? And why is this assigned to top cadets?”

Ivan turns his back on the boiler and faces us. “Because they’re the ones heralding in a new world order. Getting rid of the dangerous old ideas. Some of it is just symbolic until they can destroy the digi-files. But many of these
are from the rare book collections and haven’t been uploaded.”

I can’t believe I heard him right. “These are — these are things people spent lifetimes learning, going up in smoke. For — nothing. It’s barbaric. It’s —” I don’t even have the words.

“I see her.” Rosie leans over the railing. She points far ahead to the left. “Down there. I see Maddie.”

My heart leaps. “We’ve got to get her out of here,” I say. “Now.”

“This way.” Ivan leads us around the edge of the catwalk to a ladder. There must have been some kind of ventilation around the catwalk because even though heat rises, it seems to get hotter as we go down. The sides of the ladder are coated but it’s still hot under my touch, and I pull my sleeves up over my hands to keep from getting burned. Breathing the overheated air leaves my nose and throat raw.

When we get to the bottom, Ivan says, “I have to go check on something,” and vanishes before Rosie can object.

The heat on the floor makes the air shimmer. Then I see her.

Even with the familiar messy brown ponytail on top of her head and the name FRYE stenciled on her jacket, it takes me a moment to believe that the girl with her back to us is really Maddie. That we really found her.

It’s much louder down here so she doesn’t hear us rush to her, and Rosie is hugging her before Maddie even knows what’s happening. She’s so surprised that she narrows her brown eyes and glares at us. But when Rosie lets her go, Maddie doesn’t stop glaring.

Then the glare softens to confusion. “What are you doing here?” she asks.

“We came to rescue you,” I say.

Rosie reaches for Maddie’s arm. “Come on.”

“Rescue me?” Maddie looks from one to the other of us. There’s something different about her. Like something is missing. “From what?”

“From this place,” I say. “From —” I look down and I see that Maddie is holding the leather cover of a book. It was once beautiful, nubby red leather with gold swirls
making a border. On the spine I can still read the words
Collected Works of P. Virgilius
. But the pages are gone.

Maddie’s eyes follow mine and she tosses the cover into the boiler. Down here, the sound it makes when it burns isn’t like whistling; it’s higher-pitched. I know now what Troy meant when he said they shriek like you’re stealing their souls.

Maddie reaches to take another book from her trolley, and without thinking I go to stand in front of it.

“Please move. I have a task to accomplish,” she says.

My brows come together in a frown. “That’s what you call this? A task?”

“Making way for the new. We have to return to basics. Start fresh. These books just hold a lot of old ideas that don’t work. The same way the phoenix rose from the ashes of its former self, the new world will rise from the ashes of the old.”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” I say. I’m sure she can’t really believe what she’s saying. “For one thing, the phoenix is a myth, and for another —”

Maddie nods her head like I am making her point for her. “That is all learning is good for: arguing. We don’t need arguments and questions. We need consensus and answers. Questions make us weak. Agreement makes us strong.”

I feel like my ears are playing tricks on me. I can’t really be hearing what I seem to be hearing. “But what about the freedom to think what you want?”

Maddie blinks at me with her strange, dead eyes. “Where has always questioning everything gotten you, Evelyn? Did it make you happy?”

“It helped us find you,” I say. I’ve curled my fingers into fists to keep my hands from shaking. This is impossible. She’s been here less than a week. How could they have taken over her mind so completely?

Maddie shrugs. “Maybe you shouldn’t have bothered.”

Rosie says, “We have to go, Maddie.”

Now Maddie shifts her empty gaze to Rosie. “I don’t want to go. This is the first place I’ve really felt like I belong. In here I don’t need to lie about who I am or
what my name is or who my parents are. They treat me like
I’m
important. Like I, Madeleine Frye, can make a difference. This is where I’m supposed to be.”

A tall, very skinny boy materializes through the smoke to stand next to Maddie. He’s got unruly longish brown hair and his eyes are only halfway open.

“Cadet Frye, is everything okay?” he asks. He brushes a hair off Maddie’s forehead protectively.

Rosie and I both tense.

“Yes.” Maddie smiles up at him, but even that seems somehow tepid. “Hi, Jonah, um, Cadet Carson. These are my friends. From that other school.”

“The rich kids,” Jonah says, nodding. He hooks his thumbs through the belt holes of his pants, which at least is not near his whistle. “Yeah, I heard about your crew. What are you doing here?”

“We, um, came to, um —” I find I’m having trouble forming the words.

“They came to rescue me,” Maddie says.

The Jonah guy gives Maddie a half-bemused smile. “You don’t need rescuing, do you, Cadet?” he asks.

Maddie slowly shakes her head, kind of like she’s mesmerized. “No. I am proud to be a Phoenix cadet,” she says in a weird, impersonal voice.

Jonah looks from her to us, and his expression is almost pitying. “That’s how it always is with
them
. They think everyone wants what they do.”

“We’re not the ones who make everyone recite weird mottos,” Rosie points out. “We’re not the ones doing the brainwashing.”

“Brainwashing?” Jonah looks confused.

By the curl in her lip, it’s clear that Rosie likes Jonah even less than I do. She turns from him back to Maddie. “I thought friendship was about trust and helping each other out. If this place is so friendly, why is everyone always trying to turn everyone else in?”

In that same weird voice, Maddie says, “We are being trained to spot threats and neutralize them. To serve our country.”

“How? By spying on your neighbors?” Rosie challenges.

This is going horribly wrong. “We’re not here to make you do anything,” I say fast. My lip is quivering and I feel
like I might cry. “We — Maddie, you’re our friend. We were worried about you.”

Maddie makes a big gesture with her arms. “Well, look around. I’m fine. So you don’t have to worry.”

“But —” I don’t know what else to say.

There’s a thunderous running and out of nowhere Louisa appears, with Ryan close behind her. Louisa throws her arms around Maddie’s neck.

“Maddie oh my god I thought we’d lost you and we almost died and then just now a scout almost caught us and we ran down the first stairs and they led here and thank god, thank god, let’s go.” She starts pulling her back toward the catwalk.

“This one must be Louisa,” Jonah says. And not in a nice way. In a way that kind of makes me want to hit him. He doesn’t even glance at Ryan, standing next to her.

I sense Maddie hesitate. She stares at Louisa, and I think we might be getting through to her. But then she says, “Yeah,” and pushes Louisa away, toward Ryan. “I was just telling the rest of your friends that I’m not coming with you. This is where I belong. I’m happy here.”

Louisa is gaping and her eyes are big blue saucers. “
My
friends? They’re your friends, too. You have no idea how hard we all worked to find you.”

Maddie’s chin goes into the air. “I have new friends now.”

Louisa’s normally happy face goes slack, and it looks like she is going to sob. Ryan moves toward her but she shakes her head and says, “Maddie — it’s … me. It’s Louisa. You can’t be happy here. Everyone is so mean.”

“Yeah, not like at CMS, where even you were mean to me.”

Louisa takes an unsteady step backward and cups her hand around the place where her locket had been. Maddie’s expression wavers and for a split second I see the girl I remember. I decide to take advantage of it.

I say, “Maddie, these people aren’t your friends and this isn’t your home. It’s run by the Alliance.”

She shifts her eyes to me and there’s a small, sarcastic smile on her lips. “Coming from you, Evelyn, that’s not exactly a fact. I think I would know.”

I feel like I’ve been slapped. Maddie was one of the only people who listened to me before. She was my favorite thing about CMS. And now the way she’s looking at me is like … we’re enemies.

Louisa is standing to one side, lost in her own world, and I’m having trouble speaking. So it’s up to Rosie to say, “We met a brother and sister named Helen and Troy who escaped from here, and they told us all about it. About it being an Alliance place and the motto and the Recitations. ‘Submission is strength.’ ‘I must follow to lead.’ That’s not you, Maddie.”

Maddie’s eyes flicker from Rosie to Jonah.

“I heard about a brother and sister like that,” Jonah says with a shrug. “But they were bad cadets and got expelled.”

“That’s not true,” I tell them. “They both worked a boiler.”

“Anyone can
say
that,” Maddie points out.

“They didn’t say it. I saw it: The front of their hair was ragged and short. Because it got singed by the fire.”

Maddie reaches up unconsciously and runs her finger over her hairline, where a few shorter pieces are already poking up. I can tell she’s starting to at least hear what I’m saying, but she still looks cold. Shuttered. I glance at Louisa to see if she can help but she’s staring at the ground. Ryan is next to her, leaning close like he’s trying to comfort her.

“I can’t take this,” I hear Rosie say, and when I turn toward her I see she’s covering her face with her hands. She takes a long, ragged breath.

“What’s wrong with her?” Maddie asks. Her tone is abrupt but her eyes look concerned.

Rosie lowers her hands and there are tears streaking her face. I’m shocked. Her expression holds such genuine misery that my heart hurts.

“We’ve done nothing but look for you, and then when we find you — you — you hate us. It’s like my sister, Wren. She chose not to see us anymore. She
chose
that. She left me. I can’t face losing anyone else.” Now Rosie starts to cry for real and I move to hug her.

But Maddie is there first.

She puts her arms around Rosie, and in that moment she looks like our Maddie again. “I’m sorry about your sister,” Maddie says. “I’m sure she had a good reason.”

“For the War. To fight,” Rosie says into Maddie’s shoulder. “And I understand but it’s just, I miss her. I miss her so much. You know what it’s like. You’re the only one who understands that.”

Maddie stiffens and starts to pull away and I see the curtain start to fall back into place.

Rosie must sense it, too, because she grabs Maddie by the shoulders and pleads. “Please come with us. Everything Evelyn has said is true. This is an evil place. Do you really want to work for the Alliance? Work against your parents?”

Maddie pulls all the way back but Rosie seems to have struck a chord. Whatever was masking Maddie’s emotions is gone, but it’s been replaced by confusion so intense it looks like fear.

“Don’t say that!” Maddie cries, shaking her head. Her tone is different, more like the old Maddie and I see
Louisa look up as Maddie goes on. “It’s a lie. This isn’t an Alliance school. I’m not working against my parents. My parents
want
me here. The headmistress told me when I arrived. If I pass cadet training at the top of my class, I’ll get to see them.”

That’s why she was so eager to believe, I realize. That’s why she went along with everything.

Ivan steps out from between two of the boilers. “They may have said that but it’s not true.” I wonder how long he’s been lurking there and what he had to “check.”

Maddie’s hand flies to her whistle and she takes a step backward. “Who’s this?”

“Who’s that?” Louisa asks as she and Ryan move closer to us.

“He’s with us,” I tell her.

“But how —” Ryan begins.

Ivan interrupts him. “We have to go.”

Maddie is gripping her whistle. “Is this a test? Are you — Is this a trap?” She has it halfway to her lips.

“No.” I try hard to hold her eyes. “He’s helping us.”

“He’s a scout supervisor. He trains scouts.” Maddie’s
voice rises with panic. “If this is an Alliance school, why are you working with one of the teachers?”

“He’s not a teacher; he’s —”

Ivan steps in front of Maddie. “I know your parents. I know one of them very well. They talk about you all the time. I know they call you ‘Sparrow.’ And I know they would not want you here.”

The numbness completely drops from Maddie’s face and is replaced with a combination of shock and hope and disbelief. “Where did you see them?” she asks.

“That doesn’t matter. We have to go.”

“Who are you?”

“Later,” Ivan says. “Something is happening. We have to —”

“I don’t think so,” a high, girlish voice says.

The shy-looking girl with the dark hair that I smiled at in the hallway appears from between two boilers.

“I’ve been following you all morning,” she says in a soft voice. Her eyes are dancing merrily and you can tell she is really enjoying herself. “I’ve heard
everything
. And now, for capturing four fliers and one Resistance double
agent, I am going to be the most famous cadet in Phoenix history.” She gives me that same shy smile again and puts the whistle to her lips.

Rosie leaps at her a fraction of a second too late. The whistle shrills and three Phoenix security guards close in on us.