“Give me the knife, little girl!” she screeches. “I’ll tear the hair from your scalp piece by piece!”
Koi takes her down, and the three of us run.
“What’s the point?” Zephyr asks. The night is pitch-black, and the steam is thick. “They live in a trash pile. Why do they need more stuff?”
“Because all the good stuff is with the living,” Koi says. People push past us, running in all directions. We are like ants trapped inside of a crumbling mound. “Most people that come here to hide are weak. They hope it’s safer than the city.”
We skid around a corner. A Graver is trying to rip a tooth out of an elderly man’s mouth. I swipe the Graver with my dagger, slicing his back. Koi shoves him into the trash mountain, and we keep running.
We’ve almost circled back to Kansas’s house when one of the Gravers points at us, and shouts, “It’s them! Bounty’s five thousand Creds! Get them!”
He blows three loud bleats on a whistle.
Gravers come out of nowhere, hooting and hollering like they are hunting animals.
We take off. Zephyr is just ahead of me. He grabs my hand. My foot catches on an old coil of wire, and I tumble to the ground, hard. Zephyr turns to help me up, but a Graver grabs him by the shoulders and whirls him around. More come for me, but Koi is there. He pushes me into the shadows, then takes down two using only his fists, and snaps a third’s neck with effortless grace. Their comrades scream. They want my brother now.
“This way, you Leech Lovers! Come and get me!” Koi starts throwing trash and rubble at the Gravers. “Take Zephyr and hide,” he says, loud enough for me to hear. “Don’t go to the shack.”
“We’ll fight them together!” I say. “There’s too many.”
“There’s never enough for me, little sis!” He smiles. “Better run.”
I turn to Zephyr. He’s rolling in the dirt with a Graver, trying to get the upper hand. But then Zephyr’s face contorts, and he looks furious. He shoves the man away with a twisting move only a trained fighter would know.
“Come on!” I scream, and as we run, I hear radios chirping in the distance.
“They’re this way!” a Graver woman shouts. “This way!”
A spotlight bounces along in the darkness behind us.
The Initiative is here.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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CHAPTER 64
ZEPHYR
Meadow and I make it to Kansas’s shack a second too late.
The Leeches are already outside the door. They’ve got spotlights lighting it up. This isn’t good.
Meadow pulls out her dagger and starts to run for them, but I grab her and hold her back. “Are you insane? It’s a trap!”
“My . . . .my sister!” Meadow gasps. A pack of Leeches come out of the shack.
There’s Meadow’s dad, holding Peri in his arms, and five Leeches with guns pointed right at their heads.
Gravers come down a passageway, hauling a body along with them. “We got the boy! We got him!”
My heart sinks. It’s Koi. His hair is all covered in blood. He gave himself up so Meadow and I could run.
Meadow struggles in my arms and I clamp my hand over her mouth. Let her bite me, I don’t give a skitz. Meadow’s dad is screaming, whirling in circles, telling the Leeches to stay the hell away from his daughter and his son.
He looks in our direction, like he knows Meadow is there.
“The stars!” he screams. I think maybe he’s gone crazy, but his face is angry. Not afraid. “Trust the stars! Find them where the darkness is safe!”
I pull Meadow deeper into the shadows, and she stomps on my foot. Hard.
“Meadow, do you want to die? Stop fighting me!”
The Leeches tie up Meadow’s dad. His arms, his feet. They gag his mouth with a rag. Peri starts crying, and it’s the worst sound I’ve ever heard. Koi is passed out on the ground in front of her, and I don’t even know if he’s alive or dead, and now Meadow’s sobbing. I pull her to my chest.
I see Kansas come out of his shack. A Leech guy hands him a bag of rations, and a brand new rifle, shiny and new. “Nice doing business with you, friends,” Kansas says.
Traitor. He’s a traitor.
“Hey! Where’s our pay?” a Graver asks, stepping out of the shadows.
The Leech leader turns his rifle on him. “You didn’t deliver the girl or the boy. You told me you could deliver them within the hour.”
“They were here! We saw the girl! Jackson almost got the boy! Swear!”
“But you didn’t,” the Leech snarls at him. “And Trackers can’t find them. I owe you nothing, you fool.”
The Leech lifts the gun and shoots the Graver in the head. Then he turns it on Kansas and does the same.
The Leeches grab the rations and gun from Kansas’s dead body. They start hauling Meadow’s family away. One of them picks up Peri and tosses her over his shoulder.
Meadow writhes against me. We’ve got her bracelet, so they can’t track us. But they can still see her. No one, not even her, can take on a group of gun-toting Leeches alone.
So I do the only thing I can do to keep her safe.
I reach behind me and grab an old metal pipe sticking out of the trash. She starts to run, and I grit my teeth and slam the thing as hard as I can over her head.
She drops like a swatted fly.
“Sorry,” I whisper, as I bend down and scoop her into my arms.
Then I haul her into the darkness to hide and wait.
When morning comes, I’ve got Meadow tied up tight against one of the steam vents.
“Let . . . me . . . go!” She thrashes against her bindings. She slams her head backward against the metal and I watch her eyes glaze over from the pain.
“I’m sorry,” I say. My voice is hoarse. “Not until you calm down.”
She looks so small and terrified right now. I lean forward to wipe the sweat from her brow and smooth her tangled hair from her forehead. But when I try to wipe the dried blood from her lip, she recoils and a warm glob of spit hits my face.
“Skitz, Meadow! Would you calm down?” I stumble backward, shattering an old burned-out light bulb. “What do you want me to do? It’s your fault they’re gone! Can’t you see that? You had to go snooping around, and you got them into this mess!”
The second I say it, I know I’ve screwed up.
I watch her face twist with rage. Her gray eyes smolder back at me, and her bottom lip starts trembling.
Ah, stars. I know what’s about to happen. “Nope. No way Meadow, don’t even think about it.”
“I. Hate. You,” she says. And then she bursts into tears.
I turn around and leave her there to cry herself dry.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
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CHAPTER 65
MEADOW
“If you don’t let me go, I’ll kill you.”
“You’ll kill me regardless of what I do, Meadow. Drink.”
Zephyr shoves an old bottle of water to my mouth. I have no choice but to tilt my head back and let the cool relief slide down my throat.
“You have to calm down,” he says after he takes a sip for himself. I sit here, watching him, as the sun dances across the tops of the huge trash mountains. I stare at his jaw. I imagine what it would feel like to have it crack beneath the force of my fist. I imagine the satisfaction of knowing that he paid for keeping me from my family.
I think of what my father would say to me, what he would do, were he in my place at this moment.
He would breathe until his heart became steady. Force himself to push his emotions aside and focus on what matters. So I do what I have always been trained to do. I channel my father’s strength and reign myself in.
I am emotionless. I am
strong.
The Initiative will pay.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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CHAPTER 66
ZEPHYR
By the time late afternoon comes, Meadow’s breathing has slowed down. She stares unblinking up at the sky. She looks like a ghost.
“I have to find the Resistance now,” she says. Her voice is hers again, calm and steady. “It’s what my father wanted.”
I settle down in front of her, but she doesn’t take her eyes from the sky. “If I cut you loose, you have to promise me that we’ll fight for this together,” I say.
Silence.
“Meadow.” She tilts her chin up even further. Refusing to look at me.
“You’re being a baby,” I say. “What happened to the girl who gave me her own blood?”
“She’s right here,” she says. “And if you don’t cut me loose, the Initiative will kill my family. They might already be dead.”
I swallow hard. She’s right. But if something happens to her, I’ll never forgive myself. “Then I’ll let you go,” I say, and lean forward to cut the bindings. “But . . . you owe me something first.”
“And that is?” She’s still staring up at the sky.
“A kiss,” I say.
Her eyes never meet mine.
“Well?” I ask.
She swallows hard and smiles, finally throwing me a stare that’s as deadly as poison. “You can kiss my ass, Zephyr James.”
I cut her bindings loose anyway.
In the distance, the Pulse flashes blue to purple and back again.
There are no nanites in our Pins.
We’ve already got them in our blood, and the Pins are trackers.
When the Night Siren wails, I know what needs to happen.
“Meadow,” I whisper. We’re leaning up against another steam vent, back to back, keeping watch in both directions. Waiting for dark.
“This will make you happy,” I say. “It’s my turn to be tied up now.”
She turns to look at me. I think she’s going to make some crack, but instead, she just nods. I know she understands. If I hurt this girl somehow, or actually kill her . . .
We find some thick wire. I sit back against the vent and Meadow winds it round and round, as tight as she can get it.
“If I get free, I want you to stop me,” I tell her. “I don’t care what it takes. Do you understand?”
She nods her head. “I know.”
“If I . . . if I say anything to you, Meadow, you have to know that it isn’t me. Not really.”
“It’s my mother.” Meadow nods. The bindings tighten around my chest, my arms, and my waist.
I shift my weight. “Tighter,” I say, and suck in my breath while Meadow pulls the wiring hard against my body. When she’s done, she sits down across from me and pokes at the ground with her dagger.
“Come here,” I whisper. She settles down next to me, leans her head against my shoulder. “Meadow, I . . . ”
“Don’t speak. Not now.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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CHAPTER 67
MEADOW
In the morning I wake to the sound of a woman wailing.
I do not have to wonder why she is crying. There must be hundreds of dead bodies lying in pools of blood on the concrete, hundreds of Catalogue Numbers that will soon appear on screens in the Dome.
But I smile as I stand up and stretch. Because Zephyr is still tied up, sound asleep. He did not hurt anyone last night.
We decide today will be our last day in in the Graveyard. We will hide out until sunset. I scavenge through the garbage and make a bolo weapon with what I find. When a seagull lands and picks up a cricket, I throw the bolo.
It ensnares the bird, and Zephyr whistles as he starts up a fire.
“You’re making me look bad, Woodson.”
“It’s okay. All women should know how to cook. You’re doing great,” I say, and his laugh is so musical and sweet it reminds me of Peri’s.
At sunset, when the sky is bleeding red, we walk to the edge of the Graveyard and stand in its shadow.
Find them where the darkness is safe. The stars will show you the way.
My entire life, I have been taught that darkness is death. Darkness is horror, and blood, and now, darkness is when my mother sets her monsters loose.
Darkness is the furthest thing from safe.
“It must have something to do with the Resistance,” Zephyr whispers. We have found an old pair of pre-Fall binoculars. One lens is broken, but the other still works, so we take turns watching the city. “What do you think they’re going to do with us?” Zephyr asks.
“They said they want to shut you down manually,” I say. “Maybe they’ll reboot your system or something. I don’t want to think about what they’ll do to me.”
”Don’t worry,” Zephyr says. He slips his arm around my waist. It feels strange to be held, but I let him.
“What if I lose my bracelet? It could fall off, or we could get separated, and then it will only work for me.”
“You want to cut our Pins out,” he says. I can feel him sigh. “You know we can’t do that. Everyone says that you die if you try to take them out. Like . . . from a shockwave or something. It’s the same thing that happens when you try to leave the Perimeter. Only worse.”
“We have to risk it,” I say. I run my thumb over the bump in my forearm. My entire life I thought it kept me safe from diseases, helped my wounds heal faster, helped my heart beat steady and true.
We are living in hell. The Pulse has always been the only piece of heaven we have ever had. Now even that is a lie. I want it out of me. “And we’ll probably die as soon as we leave this place, anyway,” I say.
“I wish I was more positive, like you,” Zephyr jokes. But then he thinks for a moment, and his smile turns to a frown.
“We could die right now,” he hisses. I feel his hand on my arm, closing over the spot where my Pin lies just under my skin. “We could die the second we cut these things out, and we’ll never know what could have become of this.”
“What do you mean . . . this?” I ask.
Zephyr shakes his head. He runs his fingers through his hair, and he groans. “I’ve been trying to get the courage to tell you how I feel about you ever since I met you, Meadow. But I can’t put it into words. So don’t kill me, because I’m just going to show you.”
He leans forward, his eyes smoldering like coals, and takes my face gently in his hands.
Then he presses his lips to mine.
The moment is fast. A single second in time, and I try to tell myself that this is what he wants, that I am doing this for him and not myself. But my heart slams against my ribs and I am suddenly more alive than I have ever been.
I pull away, gasping for air. Our foreheads stay pressed together, our lips so close I almost lean forward and bridge the gap again. “You got your kiss,” I whisper, even though it was my kiss, too. “Now you owe me this.”
In the darkness, we cut out each other’s Pins. We hold back our screams, and we are fearless, just like Koi would want, just like my father taught me to be.
“Nothing happened,” Zephyr says. He kisses me again, harder this time, and I kiss him back.
We wrap scraps of our clothing around the wounds, and we drop our Pins in the Graveyard where they belong.
We live, for the first time in our lives, without the Pulse tracking us.
Together.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
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CHAPTER 68
ZEPHYR
Stars. Meadow’s father said it had to do with trusting the stars.
In the distan
ce, I can hear the train rattling along, coming closer.
“Let’s go!” I say. I take Meadow’s hand and we run, sticking to the shadows. The Dark Time is almost here. We don’t look at each other.
The train’s bright light is about a half-mile behind us when we run past the Pit.
Meadow drops my hand.
“Well, lookie here, lookie here,” a voice says. A man steps out of the shadows, and this time, it’s not a Graver or Pirate.
It’s a Leech, and he’s got his gun trained right on us.
The Leech whistles, and a bunch of them come out of the shadows. Skitz. They were hiding right here on the edge of the city, waiting for us. We didn’t stand a chance.
“Stupid boy,” another Leech barks. This one’s got nothing but a tiny pocket pistol in his hand, and I almost laugh at him.
“Let’s kill ’em,” one of them says.
“The orders were to keep him alive. Both of them.”
The barrel of another gun is pressed to my temple. “Where is the girl?”
“She’s . . . ”
I turn. She was right here.
Skitz, where did Meadow go?
“I uh . . . ” I look around. I think I see a flash of silver, someone sprinting between two buildings.
“She’s dead,” I say. “I killed her myself.”
I hear the click of a bullet sliding into a chamber.
“Alive,” one of the Leeches says. He stomps forward and rips the gun away from his comrade. “We bring him in alive!”
“Fine. Brock, bring those MagnaCuffs over here. Lock him up good.”
A scrawny Leech walks forward. He looks like a new one, fresh on the job. He’s got two thick silver cuffs in his hands. He slips them over my wrists, and they form real tight against my skin. When he presses a button on them, the cuffs light up, and they slam together from magnetic force.
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