Departures

by E. J. Wenstrom

  But the other side… “Are those drawers?” I ask.

  “Yeah. Paper documents. That’s what we need,” Quinn says. She is already pulling me towards them. “This is why we couldn’t find anything on the system, even with hacking. It’s not on the system.”

  “Hacking?”

  “What, you think we can change your digipad’s GPS, but we can’t locate a few documents? When we kept hitting dead ends on the LQM server, I did a little extra digging.”

  As we turn into the rows, C and P stay behind, pulling something out from P’s pack.

  Trailing behind Quinn, I realize each drawer has years and initials labeled on them. Quinn stops us in front of a group labeled DMD.

  “What year was that memo?” she prompts.

  “2231.”

  We search until we find the right year and pull out the first drawer of the section.

  A strange, musty smell wafts out of the drawer with the papers. When I pick them up to look closer at the dried ink upon them, they are chalky. Are all the drawers stuffed so full? So much waste.

  But it does make the search go easier. We split the stack right down the middle and start flipping through them.

  “It’s not going to be here, though,” I whisper.

  “Why not?” Quinn asks.

  “Why would they leave it all in paper for us to find here, when they have removed it from everything else?”

  “They still need to be able to find it,” Quinn says. “They don’t want us to. That’s why it’s out here, under security, in a building they don’t tell us about.”

  By that thinking, all of these documents must be very important. I consider a moment, then flip the papers faster. I capture every detail of every page I can run my eyes over – memos, research, maps – for later perusal in my mind, hungry for any hint they might have to offer. I want to know as much about the Directorate’s secrets as I can.

  “Don’t you have it yet?” C whisper-calls to us from down the way. “We’re all set over here.”

  “Few more minutes,” Quinn calls back.

  “What are they doing?” I ask her.

  “Nothing. Assessing some Directorate tech,” she replies, studying the documents in front of her. “Find anything yet? We need to hurry.”

  We flip through the pages as fast as we can. Minutes tick away. C paces the hall between the door and the archive, stirring up my nerves.

  “Finally!” I exclaim, jumping to my feet and waving a report over my head. I flip through the pages, hungry for answers.

  Quinn jumps up. “Really?”

  I glance over it to capture the full document in my memory, then hand it to her. “It even cites the memo.”

  Quinn studies the paper, then nods. “Amazing.”

  “Celebrate later. Let’s go,” C calls to us.

  Quinn waves him off. I lean in, and we review it together. It opens with a short message, responding to the first memo and acknowledging the need for action. Then, it lays out a plan.

  Except…

  “Wait.” I look over the details again. “There has to be more – it’s a full twenty-eight months after the first memo. That’s too long. There wasn’t anything in your drawer?”

  Quinn’s eyes trace over the header, and then she shakes her head. “The Directorate can make things move really slow, when it wants to.”

  “But…” I sigh. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised at this point that the Directorate would care so little.

  We flip through the next pages, too eager to wait until later. As I piece together the meaning from the verbose, bureaucratic language, my heart sinks. The extent of their plan to fix the serum was to get un-departed citizens out of the Quad as quickly as possible, collect a few data points for research, and then… Dread clouds around me and I stop reading.

  No.

  Evie has to be out there, somewhere, no matter what a stupid report says happens to the bodies at the end.

  “This is hardly a plan at all,” I say. My nails dig into the palm of my hands.

  Quinn flips through the next several pages. “Most of this is about cover-up. Protocols for Departure Crews and security requirements. I don’t even see anything about what to do with the data once they have it. Bastards.”

  “There has to be more.”

  I pull open the next drawer and start flipping through the documents all over again, starting from the top.

  “What are you doing? Q, what is she doing?” C snaps. “Time’s up.”

  “Not until we find the rest of it.” My shaky emotions are forcing a shrill note into my voice.

  From the corner of my eye I can see Quinn gesture to C. She gets up off the floor and settles next to me. “I’m sorry. But this is it.”

  It can’t be. I still don’t know what happened to Evie, and my mind won’t – can’t – bear to accept the answer the report implies.

  “We’re outta here. Now,” C urges.

  Quinn grabs my arm and pulls me with her.

  When we round the corner, P is waiting by a line of long, metallic constructs on the floor. The closest three are attached to a hodgepodge of wiring.

  I halt to a stop. “What’s that?” It’s definitely not tech, not the kind we use in the Quads.

  P pushes a button, and a timer lights up. “It’s what’s going to make this building disappear.” He looks to C. “Eight minutes.”

  A slow heat creeps up my neck as the words sink in.

  “Quinn?”

  Her eyes flicker, but her expression hardens. Behind me, C scoffs.

  “It’s just a building, Gracelyn,” Quinn says.

  “But why?”

  “Chaos, newbie,” C says. “The Directorate keeps all its important documentation here. You think we’re leaving it neat and tidy for them? Someone has to remind these guys, they can’t control everything. That’s all we’re doing. They’re the ones who stored the bombs here. They basically did it to themselves.”

  Why does the Directorate have bombs here?

  I shake my head. That isn’t the point.

  “We can’t do this. What if we need more information?” I exclaim.

  “Are you kidding?” C says. “There’s no coming back. Even with all our precautions, it’d be far too risky to return. This covers our tracks. No building, no trail. There’s no time, we have to move.”

  A device in the tangle of wiring is already counting down: 7:41…7:40…7:39.

  A thundering pound-pound-pound floods my ears as I stare at the numbers. This is not right. This is not what I agreed to. Quinn pulls me by my arm to keep pace as we flee.

  We are being less cautious now, racing through the maze of halls without checking them first. My mind is still back in the archive room with the ticking-down bomb, and it is not telling my feet what to do. Something catches, I jolt forward, and I’m already halfway to the floor before I realize I’ve tripped.

  C and P keep hustling towards the exit.

  Quinn tries to tug me up.

  “Stop!” I tug my arm away. The disruption to the momentum of the moment allows the rest of me to catch up, and anger boils through my veins.

  “Six fifty-two,” she says. “We gotta keep going, honey.”

  Suddenly, the pet name feels ill-fit. I want to yell at her, but I cannot think straight in all this disorder.

  “Is someone there?” A voice calls from down the middle hall. “Help! Please! Help!”

  Shock tingles and bites down my arms as I skid to a halt against Quinn’s tugs, chased with panic and stinging rage. I look to Quinn. She opens her mouth, then hesitates.

  “Please, help me,” the voice begs.

  Oh my God – secrets, bombs, and now people? What else is the Directorate “storing” in here?

  I start towards the voice, but Quinn grabs my arm. “There’s no time,” she says.

  I almost comply with her by habit, but guilt squeezes at my chest. I can’t do it; I can’t leave someone in here knowing what is about to happen. I yank away, t
urning to run towards the voice, not checking to see if she follows. After a pause, her footsteps echo behind me.

  “Where are you?” I call out.

  “Here!” the voice cries. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. I’m over here.”

  It isn’t hard to find him. At the end of the hall is a series of cells, and inside one of them is a man. His black hair is tousled like he has just woken from nightmares, and his glasses are crooked, resting off-kilter over his pale, dirt-smudged cheeks.

  He presses up against the bars. “Please, get me out of here.”

  “Six oh-six,” Quinn breathes, catching up behind me. “Come on.”

  Every possible emotion melds together into a hot ball in my chest – fear and adrenaline, confusion and sadness, anger, and a burning sense of shame that we almost just ran off, knowing someone is here. What am I becoming?

  “Hack this door,” I order Quinn. “Then we can all go, like you want.”

  “I can’t hack that – that’s all P. And they’re already out. We need to get out, too.”

  I ignore her and turn to the man in the cell. “What are you doing in there?” Of the thousand questions that demand answers right now, this is the one that makes it out of my mouth.

  “I don’t know,” he stammers. “They promised me. I was going to be one of you. They were going to let me be part of the Quads. But then they brought me here instead.”

  The words jam in my head. “But everyone is from the Quads. Wait – ” I lean in. “Who are you?”

  “Five thirty-eight,” Quinn urges.

  The man glances to her and then back to me. “What’s going on?”

  “Answer me, and maybe I’ll tell you,” I snap, pressing up against the bars.

  “Please, get me out of here,” he begs.

  “Look, asshole.” Quinn crashes up against the bars so she is inches from his face. “A bomb is going to go off in five minutes and,” she checks her timer, “nineteen seconds. You can tell her what she wants to know, and we’ll see about getting you out, or we can leave you here.”

  Words start to spill from him so fast they blend into each other. “My name is Tad. Tad Martin. I’m from outside the Quads.”

  “How did you get in the Quad?” My entire head buzzes with confused energy and heat. Then I realize I have more pressing questions. “My sister. Evie. Have you seen her?” I demand. “Green eyes. A little taller than me. Hair like this.” I pull a few blonde locks forward from my ponytail to show him.

  Tad looks at me closer and squints. “You two look exactly the same.”

  His recognition is like a bolt of lightning shooting through me. Is he saying what I think he’s saying?

  “Three minutes and – ” Quinn continues her countdown, but I cut her off, interested in only one thing.

  “Where is she?” I cry out. We’ve lost all pretense of keeping quiet now.

  He jumps back a little at my sudden volume. “She’s safe. She’s with the camp.”

  “The camp?”

  Everything stops, and for a moment these two words are the entire world. I don’t know what the camp is, but if Evie is there, that means one amazing, wonderful thing: she’s alive. Evie is alive.

  All this time, all the risks I’ve taken, it’s all worth it for this one little sentence. I knew I heard something. I knew she was alive. I’m not going crazy. And I still have my sister – somewhere out there. I feel like I’m floating.

  But Tad is still speaking.

  “The Alliance camp. It’s a conglomeration of governments that – well, it was started by a few governments that – ”

  Quinn slams her fist into the bars of the cell door and it releases a sharp clang of metal slamming into metal. “We don’t need a history lesson, tell her where it is and how to get to it.”

  His sharp blue eyes lock to mine, and through the blur of tears welling up, something shifts and softens in him.

  “I shouldn’t tell you this, and I already told the Directorate, so I don’t know if you can even use it. But there’s a network of tunnels.”

  “Tunnels?” My hands grip the cold metal bars.

  He leans in too, pushing his glasses up on his nose.

  “It’s old, from the Third World War. The Directorate never sealed them up. I don’t know if they use them still, or if they thought they might need to use them again someday, or – ”

  “Where’s the tunnel?” Quinn demands.

  Tad lets out a hard, short laugh. “It’s everywhere. It runs under the entire Quad. Connecting the Quads. And out to the camp.”

  I blink at him, hardly believing this is all dropping in our laps. Forget the papers – this is what I need.

  “How do we get to them?” Quinn, ever pragmatic.

  Tad shrugs. “When they brought me here we came out at the park, but I can’t remember exactly. It was a couple of years ago. It was the blue line. Follow the blue line.”

  “So you don’t know,” Quinn says. Her voice is cold.

  A document pulls up in my mind from the documents I just scanned, falling in place like the last piece of a puzzle.

  “It doesn’t matter. I have the map.” I jump and turn to Quinn, hardly believing it. “It was in the archives upstairs. It’s in my head.”

  Quinn’s eyes dilate. “Then we’re done here.” She grabs my arm and pulls me towards the door.

  “Wait! You can’t leave me like this!” Tad slams his fits into the bars of the cell door, releasing a harsh clank.

  “Quinn,” I shriek. I tug against her grip, but her hold is too tight. “We’ve got to help – ”

  “No. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Even as she pulls the door open, an earth-shattering boom quakes over the building and reverberates through my body, and the walls begin to crack. Quinn pushes me out so hard I almost fall to the ground, except that she keeps shoving, forcing me forward instead of down, until we are clear of the building and hidden in the brush behind it.

  As the DMD storage building falls to pieces, she pulls me into her and kisses me hard, stealing my breath away a second time.

  For a flash, I am high on the moment – the incredible good news about Evie, the cool night mist on my hot skin, the rush of the close brush with death – and tug at her shirt to pull her closer. Then I remember she made me party to a terrorist act, that she put my life at risk, that we left someone behind in there. I shove her away.

  “You left him there. To die,” I exclaim.

  Quinn clasps a hand over my mouth.

  “Shhh,” she whispers. “Yes. I left him. Because it was him or us – him or you. And I chose you. I will always choose you.”

  Her eyes ignite with more than the reflection of the post-explosion flames, something beautiful and fierce, supernatural and heartless.

  I will myself to be still. She takes her hand away.

  “If you’d listened,” I start. “If you’d let him out when I told you to – ”

  But she cuts me off: “Then he’d never have told us about your sister or the tunnels. And now, we’d have a prisoner on our hands. What would we do with him, Gracelyn? He can’t stay in the Quad, and he can’t go back where he came from, either. He’s a traitor. And thanks to you, he knew our faces.”

  I have no answers. All I know is Quinn didn’t tell me the truth about tonight, she didn’t listen to me, and now someone is dead. It isn’t right, and Quinn’s cool pragmatism about it sends quivers up my spine.

  “Did you know they kept people in there? When you all decided to bring a bomb with you?”

  Quinn purses her lips into a thin line. She looks me straight in the eye. “No.”

  “You did. You’re murderers.”

  “Grow up, Gracelyn. Nothing is so black and white. We do what we have to. Someone has to fight back against all this.”

  Security car lights flash from the front of the building. They’re gathering to investigate.

  “I’ll show you home,” Quinn says.

  “No. I can get
there myself.” At least, I think I can. What I can’t bear is one more second with her.

  I turn away before she can rebut me, and take off, running down the road.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Gracelyn

  Evie is alive.

  She is out there, somewhere, beyond the borders of the Directorate.

  Weeks ago I would not have been able to believe that anything lay beyond the Quads. The idea would have been impossible, not even worth imagining. But since Evie departed, I have opened myself to all kinds of things. Knowing Evie is out there somewhere is a greater good than the troubles that come with discovering the Directorate’s lies.

  After this night’s strange turn of events, emotions churn through me in extremes. Elation to know for sure that Evie is alive and safe. Confusion at the layers that keep peeling away from the Directorate. Anger at Quinn’s deception and calculated coldness.

  But mostly, relief.

  Relief that I really heard what I thought I heard the morning of Evie’s departure. Relief that all my risk and obsession was not for nothing, some imagined distraction, the manifestation of grief we are told so often to drug away.

  The hardest part is over – I figured it out. I proved it. Now, I have to figure out what to do about it.

  ***

  I lie in my bed and wait for morning, these thoughts and emotions racing through my mind in cycles. When my digipad’s waking sequence initiates, I try to act as normal as I can. I get ready for work. I sit next to Hanna on the shuttlebus. I settle in at my desk. Even so, my cheeks are flushed with exhilaration. Which helps to distract from the circles under my eyes.

  My mind still whirls.

  I only manage a few minutes at my desk before I bolt to my feet again. Hanna starts at my abrupt movement.

  “Sorry,” I say. “Question for Quinn.”

  I make my way through the hall as calmly as I can, ignoring the friction as my need for answers chafes against my anger at her from last night. But I need her for this. Don’t I? Or does dragging this relationship out for my own gain make me as bad as her?