“All right. Good enough. Brock, let her know we’ve got the boy.”
“Sir,” the Leech boy says. He’s lifting the radio to his mouth when a gunshot explodes into the night.
The kid falls onto his knees. He’s been shot in the chest. There’s a whistle and a squelch as the soldier closest to me gets a knife through an eye socket.
I smile. It’s not a knife. It’s Meadow’s dagger.
I can’t see her, but she’s here, somewhere in the shadows.
“Come out, little girl!” the Leech next to me shouts. He hauls me to my feet. “Move!”
“Nah. That’s okay,” I tell him, and then I watch as he falls. Another guy drops right after him, and a second later, another.
Another gunshot, but it misses the last Leech and hits me instead, right in the thigh.
“Flux!” I scream. Meadow comes out of the shadows, holding a rifle.
She stops, takes a deep breath, and shoots the last Leech just before he puts a bullet in her skull.
“Get up!” she yells at me. “Run! Go for the train!”
“You shot me!” I scream at her.
It hurts like hell.
Meadow hauls me to my feet and I start running, hobbling. It takes everything I’ve got in me, and when I leap into the moving car, I land face-first on the hard metal flooring.
“You shot me,” I say, catching my breath. “I can’t believe you shot me.”
“You’ll be fine.” She isn’t even winded. “Stop being a baby. Look, it’s already healed up.”
“You have the worst aim ever!” I groan, because no, it hasn’t healed up all the way. It’s still trickling blood, and it still hurts like hell.
“We can’t stay here long,” Meadow says. “They all radioed someone, and they’ll probably shut the train down soon. Start looking for a sign. Stars. He said it had to do with stars and darkness.”
The next thing happens so fast we’re both caught totally off guard.
A woman leaps onto the train. All I see is her black uniform, her bald head, her pierced eyebrow, and I recognize her at as the Leech worker from the Rations Hall.
Meadow cries out. “Zephyr!”
We both lunge for the woman, but I reach her first. I tackle her to the floor of the car. She struggles to fight, but I’m bigger. Meadow holds a dagger to her throat, but before she cuts her deep, the woman says one word.
“Resistance!”
“What did you say?” Meadow shouts. A drop of crimson bubbles up on the Leech’s tattooed skin.
“Resistance!” she gasps again. “The stars!”
Meadow’s dagger clatters to the metal floor.
“What are you thinking? Kill her!” I say. “She’s lying!”
But Meadow shakes her head. “My father has that scar.” She points at the mark on the woman’s neck, just above her collarbone. There’s three tiny stars in a row, cut so they mimic that Orion’s belt constellation Talan and I used to love looking at. “It means something.”
“Are you sure?” I say.
“I’m positive,” Meadow says. Her voice is so sure, but I’m not. “She’s with us. Please, Zephyr. I know it.”
“Get the hell off of me,” the Leech woman hisses, and before I can pull away, she launches me upward, flips me, and rolls on top of me. She locks her hands over my throat. “If I wanted to kill you, Patient Zero, you’d already be dead.”
“The stars,” Meadow says, nodding her head. “Of course.” She turns to me and takes my hand, smiling for the first time in days. “Zephyr. This is Orion.”
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CHAPTER 69
MEADOW
All this time, and I never knew.
“That was a suicide mission. You know that, right?” Orion says. She stands across from me, arms locked over her chest. Watching me with those strange, dark eyes. “The way you took that guy out in the alley, and stole his rifle? You’re a clever one. I’ll give you that.”
“How long have you been in the Resistance?” I ask her.
But Orion only shakes her head. “Answers come later, Blondie. I’ve been searching for you since you went on a killing rampage in the Everglades. I’ve got no patience left. Now hush, and get ready to jump again.” She lifts her pierced eyebrow toward Zephyr, and he turns away, embarrassed.
The train leaves the city. We pass by the Ward Reserve. I hear the buzz of Orion’s radio chip. “Boss. Hey boss. Commander needs your report.”
“Not a sound,” she hisses to us, and lifts her palm to speak. “Caught the little bastards on the train. The girl was a tough one. Boy went out like a light.” She winks at Zephyr, and the muscles in his jaw twitch.
“Hold your position, Soldier. We’ll come to you.”
Orion reaches into her ear, pulls out the tiny chip, and throws it out the open door of the train.
“This whole time you were on my side,” I say. “This whole time, you could have warned me about the Murder Complex. You could have warned me about my mother.”
Orion shakes her head. The light of the moon makes her skin glow a soft white. “Some things are better left unsaid, Blondie.” She looks at the wrap on my arm and on Zephyr’s. “Did you remove your Pins?”
I nod. “Just before you found us.”
“Shouldn’t have,” Zephyr groans beside me, but Orion smiles.
“Well . . . welcome to the Damned life. Now you’re running around this town like a ghost.” She winks.
The train lurches left, making us sway on our feet. We are past the marshes now, heading toward the Perimeter. I look at the Pulse, blinking, but no longer tracking me, and I know Zephyr and I made the right choice.
“I stuck my Pin in a Ward’s bag a few hours back.” Orion smiles. Her teeth are shiny and white. She has lived the life of an Initiative soldier for a while, judging by her well-fed looks.
“The Reserve’s gonna be lit up like a Christmas tree before too long. ’Course it means I’m done. Ah, it’s all well.” The train speeds up, making a turn along the side of the Perimeter wall. Soon we will hit the bridge and cross to Cortez. “You two good to jump?”
“Why wouldn’t we be?” Zephyr says, putting his arm over my shoulder. I want to shrug him off, want to do this on my own as I always have. But his warmth calms me. I do not always have to be by myself. I can have a partner. And maybe, if Orion leads us to the Resistance, I can have an entire team.
Together, we all move to the edge of the train car.
“They always said you were a tough one, Z. Blondie shot you in the leg, eh?” Orion laughs and looks at Zephyr. “Wait till you meet the Others.”
“Others?” He asks. “Like me? Where are they?” He leans forward, eyes lit up with questions, but before he gets an answer, Orion laughs again, winks at him, and leaps from the train. She disappears into the darkness.
“Come on,” I say, taking his sweaty hand.
“I don’t trust her,” Zephyr says, his green eyes slits, like a snake’s. “Do you?”
“I don’t have a choice,” I say, because right now, Orion is the only lead we have to finding the Resistance, to finding Peri and Koi. Thinking of my siblings fills me with a rage that rocks me from the inside out.
“Fine. But if she kills us, Meadow, this one’s on you. Not me.”
“You should worry less. It doesn’t look so good on you,” I say.
I drop Zephyr’s hand, take a deep breath, then leap out into the unknown.
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CHAPTER 70
ZEPHYR
I’ve pushed a cart full of bodies to the Leech Headquarters every week, dripping sweat, holding back my vomit, for as long as I’ve been a Ward.
The routine’s never really made me think
twice about my safety. It’s never made me feel afraid, because I’ve always imagined the Leeches thought I was dead, too. Totally worthless. A pathetic Ward.
Now that I know what I really am, what the Murder Complex is, everything’s turned upside down.
“That’s where they train the Patients,” Orion whispers beside me in the darkness. We’re crawling in the dirt like bugs. The sky rumbles and lightning cracks overhead. Rain starts pelting us. Soon the dirt turns into mud, and the crawling gets painfully slow.
Orion continues. Skitz, she’s as bad as Talan.
“It’s also where they’re holding Blondie’s family, if I’m right. And of course, it’s where they’ve got the Board.”
“What’s the Board?” Meadow asks. I see her look at the Leech Headquarters, and the anger in her eyes is scary as hell.
“It’s what we call the Motherboard,” Orion whispers. “The person who controls the Motherboard controls the Murder Complex. It’s how they turn the damn thing on.”
She leads us to the oldest part of the Shallows, through a maze of old palms and moss-covered trees, until we reach an old, pre-Fall road. Most of it’s covered by overgrowth, but the pavement is still visible in places. Finally, Orion stops. Lightning strikes, and the world lights up for a second like someone’s turned on a lantern above the trees.
“This is where we disappear.” Orion grins, pointing at an old metal grate. There are ones like it all over the city streets. I’ve found dozens of dead bodies on them. I’ve always been concerned about what’s on top of the grates. Never what’s hiding under them. Orion lifts the grate and slides it away. I can see a ladder. Below that, just darkness.
“Get in,” Orion says.
Meadow and I just sit there like ChumHeads, staring down into pitch-black.
Orion groans. “Hurry up.”
Meadow slips her legs through the hole in the ground and disappears down the ladder.
“After you, Patient Zero,” Orion says. I step in and grasp the ladder. I’m about to start down when I feel her hand on mine. I look up and her face is so close I can see her sweat.
“You make one wrong move down there, you let that freaky Murder Complex mind trick make you hurt any one of my team, and I promise you I’ll slit your throat before you even know what’s happened. You understand?”
I don’t answer her. I climb down the ladder and hold my tongue the entire time.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
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CHAPTER 71
MEADOW
When I was little, Koi and I used to race to the ocean floor. We would hold our breaths and dive deep, open our eyes, and see an entirely new world. So beautiful and peaceful.
“It’s always been there, Meadow,” my father said, when I told him about it. “Some things are better when they stay hidden beneath the surface.”
Going to the Resistance Headquarters is like discovering the ocean floor for the first time. The ladder leads us to tunnels so dark I cannot see my hand in front of my face. Orion takes the lead, talking quietly the entire time so we can follow her voice. Her murmurs echo off the walls, and there is a constant drip-dripping of water that soaks our heads.
We finally reach the end of the tunnel and enter a massive underground room. The space is lit by flickering torches, and I can see the shadowy figures sitting in huddles around the concrete floors.
“Honey, I’m home!” Orion says, whistling, and I hear laughter from all sides. In the corner, two boys are sparring. One is far larger than the other, but the smaller one is winning with effortless grace. Others stand around watching them, cheering them on. A rat scurries past my feet, and a little boy runs after it. He is even smaller than Peri.
“What is this place?” Zephyr asks.
“This is the Cave,” Orion says, sweeping her arms in a circle. The place smells like waste, and the air is thick with a foglike heat that makes it hard to breathe, and water continues to drip down over my head and onto my clothes.
But something about the Cave makes it the most amazing, welcome place I have ever seen.
“It’s not much, but it’s home. We’ve been here a few years now. Work is slow. We’re gathering our own troops. Our own army of Patients, if that’s what you want to call them. Zombies, more like.” She laughs.
Zephyr flinches.
“Come on,” she says. “I’ll give you the grand tour.”
There are groups of people clustered around torches, speaking in hushed voices, holding out books, scribbling on salvaged scraps of paper. I see photographs of my mother plastered on one of the dry walls. Zephyr points out photographs of Initiative soldiers, buildings, the trains, the Reserve. In one corner, marked by glowing white candles that line the floor, there are names and dates scratched into the walls. Some have notes scratched beside them. RIP.
I love you.
You still owe me 5 Creds.
“Our memorial,” Orion says, “for the ones we’ve lost. There’s no Catalogue Dome down here. No toilets, either, but we’re living in one I guess, so you can drop your pants and do your business wherever you like.”
I hold back a short laugh, and wish Peri could meet Orion. She would giggle at every word this woman says. I feel like now I am meeting the real Orion for the very first time.
The whole Cave is one wide circular space, with more tunnels leading outward into darkness. And on the far right side, tied down with heavy metal chains, are three figures with bags over their heads.
“Who are they?” I ask Orion.
“Patients,” Zephyr says. His arms are crossed. Fists clenched. “They’re Patients, aren’t they?”
Orion nods. “They chose to join us and fight the cause. But they’re still Zoms when the Initiative wants them to be. We haven’t figure that out. So far, at least.”
“So you tie them up.” Zephyr nods. There is sweat on his forehead, and he’s soaked, and I want to reach out to him, but keep my hands at my sides instead.
“We protect them from themselves,” Orion says. “It was their choice.”
She introduces us to people, some who look as if they have not seen the light in months, pale as flounder. “Everyone has a different job,” Orion says. “Some gather food. Some gather information. Some,” she says, eyeing a massive dark-skinned man chewing on a bone, “go out and recruit Zoms who want to join us in the fight.”
“And what is the fight, exactly?” Zephyr asks.
“You don’t pick up on much, do you, Zero? We’re going to shut down the Murder Complex. Someday, at least.”
Finally she takes us to the center of the room, where a small stage made of wooden slats has been erected. There is a Pad, like the ones the Initiative Evaluators carry, and on it, I see a slideshow of faces with Catalogue Numbers. “Patients,” Orion says, nodding at the images. “We were lucky enough to hack into their system a few weeks back. The other day, we knocked out all their cameras, which is probably the only way you two got here alive. Problem is, we lost our tech girl. She disappeared suddenly—we’re guessing she’s dead. Now we can see when the Patients will attack, and lucky for you, Zero, it’s not your special day. But the problem is, even though we know— . . . ”
“There’s no way to stop them,” a voice says behind me. I whirl around and there is a young man with hair as black as the night, and eyes blue as the summer sky. I have never seen anyone like him. “You’re the Woodson girl,” he says, studying me closely. “My father worked with yours.”
“My father?” I ask, and Zephyr’s hand skims my back. “My father worked . . . here? With all of you?” There are faces in the darkness, watching us, but I don’t care.
“He sent us information,” the young man says, shrugging. “Taught a few of our people how to fight, way back when. Word is you’re his protégé. We’ve been waiting on you to join us for a long time.”
He exchanges a glance with Orion.
Then he turns to Zephyr. “So. You’re the precious Patient Zero.”
Zephyr’s hand squeezes mine hard. “Zephyr,” he says. “I prefer my real name.”
“Nah. I’ll stick with Zero. The name’s Rhone,” he says. “Welcome to the Resistance.”
“Why are we here?” I ask, because I am confused. Because my father never told me about a Resistance, or Rhone, or Orion.
The more I uncover, the more I realize that my father never really shared anything with me at all.
Rhone grins at me. “You’re here because your father promised us that when the time came, you’d help us do a little something. In return, we’ll help you get him back.”
Zephyr stiffens beside me. I can tell he does not like this. But I look at Rhone and nod my head. “Go on,” I say.
“It’s simple, really. You’re going to break into the Initiative Headquarters. You’re going to find the people who control the Motherboard, and you’re going to kill them.”
Kill them. Finally, words that settle me. Words I understand.
“Now you’re speaking my language,” I say. Rhone laughs, and Orion pats me on the shoulder.
The only person who does not smile is Zephyr.
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CHAPTER 72
ZEPHYR
I sit back against the wall and watch Meadow for the next few hours, while Rhone and Orion show her maps of the Leech Headquarters. They give her codes to doors, until she can recite them back by memory. They pair her up with their best fighters, men and women both. She beats almost all of them like it’s no big deal. I watch with a group of others, off to the side, as Meadow’s body gets all bruised and bloody. She’s spectacular.
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