Outbreak

by Tarah Benner

  On screen, I watch Owen stalk out of the frame. Then I smack the keyboard again and rewind the footage.

  As far as I know, this is the only video Constance has of Owen, and it seems strange to me that he would get caught on camera after living like a ghost all these years.

  The drifters are planning something — something huge — and Owen’s appearance makes it seem as though he’s taunting the compound. He’s had the same smug expression since we were kids: come and get me, motherfuckers.

  He couldn’t have known I’d be watching this footage. Recon relies on heat mapping to gauge how many warm bodies are holed up in the towns surrounding the compound. I didn’t even know that Constance’s reach extended to the radiation-soaked desert — not that I’m surprised. There seems to be no limit to what they’re capable of.

  All the public areas within the compound and dozens of compartments are under surveillance. They used my computer to spy on me and drained Harper’s bank account to keep her from leaving. They probably know where I am right now.

  Owen moves out of sight, and I pause the recording again. I’m just about to rewind the footage when a blurry sign behind him catches my eye.

  I zoom in on the image and squint at the writing. It’s one of those pre–Death Storm novelty signs that reads, “Hog Parking Only — Violators are Cruisin’ for a Bruisin’.”

  I know that sign. I’ve seen that sign.

  I hastily pull up the file of my deployment history and pound in my password. I remember the most recent deployments, but the Green Valley mission is a little fuzzy. At least I think that was the town with the biker bar.

  I didn’t leave any descriptive notes about the town itself — just the number of drifters I killed and their locations. Luckily, the person who visited after me was more thorough. He even took a few photos of the town’s major landmarks.

  Sure enough, I see the biker bar in all its rough-neck glory: weathered wood siding, the rattlesnake emblem burned into the wood, and an outdated sign advertising Mud Wrestling Mondays.

  Suddenly, the door to the surveillance room creaks. I hit “escape” to hide the files and spin around in my chair.

  I’ve got an excuse on the tip of my tongue, but it’s only Miles. His towering tattooed frame fills the doorway in an intimidating way, but I’m relieved to see him.

  “Finally!” he snaps. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

  “What?”

  “It’s almost oh-eight hundred. You’re gonna be late for training.”

  “It can’t be.” I rub my eyes and glance at the time again. Sure enough, I’ve pissed away another forty-five minutes, but it felt like five. “Shit.”

  Miles is staring at me as though I’ve gone nuts. “Have you been here all night?”

  “I . . . yeah.”

  “Never knew you to pull an all-nighter for Jayden,” he says, a suspicious edge to his voice. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Nothing, I just . . .”

  I trail off so I don’t have to make up an excuse. I know I shouldn’t tell Miles about Owen — or that Harper ran away to 119 — but all those secrets are weighing on my mind. I’ve never really needed anyone, but right now, I desperately want to unload my troubles on Miles.

  “What’s going on?” he prompts.

  Miles may be more of a brawler than a strategist in the ring, but he’s one of the most intuitive people I’ve ever met.

  I let out a tired breath and swivel around to pull up the footage of Owen. I rewind and hit “enter,” and the recording starts to play.

  Owen’s appearance is over before Miles really has a chance to focus, and when he leaves the frame, Miles looks more confused than before.

  “What am I supposed to be looking at? Is this ours?”

  “No. It’s surveillance footage from Constance.”

  “Those assholes have surveillance cameras on the Fringe?”

  “Yeah.”

  He swears. “And they’ve just been sitting on this information the entire time? We could have used this.”

  If Miles weren’t my only real friend, I’d be scared shitless. He’s terrifying on his best day, and right now, he looks furious.

  “That’s not what I wanted to show you.”

  I hit rewind and play the footage again. He watches the recording over my shoulder, and I freeze the video and point at Owen. “Look like anyone you know?”

  “How can you tell? I can’t even see his face.”

  “That’s my brother.”

  There’s a long pause.

  “Huh?”

  “My brother . . . Owen.”

  For a moment, Miles stands frozen. He’s staring at the screen in deep concentration, and I realize I only mentioned Owen once — back when we were kids in the Institute.

  “The brother who was killed the night your parents were murdered?”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “He’s . . . He’s alive?”

  I nod slowly. Hell, I can hardly believe it myself.

  “Shit!”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wait . . . is he a drifter?”

  “What else would you call someone who lives out on the Fringe?”

  “Oh my god.” Miles’s eyes grow wide, and he reaches up to rub the back of his head. “Shit, man. I’m sorry . . . But are you sure? I mean, how can you even tell that’s him? You can’t see his face.”

  “Because I met him . . . the last time Harper and I were deployed.”

  Miles’s eyes bug out, but his expression quickly turns serious. When he speaks next, his voice is slow and deliberate. “What do you mean you met him?”

  “I mean he saved my life. A couple gang bangers were torturing him for information, and Harper and I got caught in a shootout. I would have been killed, but he shot one of the other drifters. When I saw his face, I just knew.”

  “Are you sure he’s your brother, though?”

  “You don’t think I checked?” I ask, a little irritated that he’s so reluctant to accept my story.

  “Okay, okay. I’m only asking. I mean, it just seems so . . . unlikely.”

  “I know.”

  “So you two talked?”

  I nod.

  Miles jerks his head around behind him, as though he’s worried someone might overhear us. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

  “What was I supposed to do?” I snap. “I thought he was dead all these years!”

  “Dude! If Jayden finds out you were talking to a drifter, you’ll be in the cages for the rest of your life! Shit. Treason is grounds for lethal injection.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” I growl. “He’s my brother!”

  “You’re not thinking of trying to find him again, are you?”

  I glance at the screen. This conversation is not playing out the way I’d hoped.

  “You’re going to try to find him!” Miles snaps in disbelief. “Eli, you’re gonna get caught! Are you seeing all this?” He gestures around at the monitors. “They’re watching you everywhere! They’re probably watching us right now!”

  “So what?”

  Miles shakes his head and then falls silent for several seconds.

  “Are you thinking of joining him?” he asks in a husky voice. “Going AWOL and turning drifter?”

  “No!” I splutter. “No. Of course not.”

  He looks marginally relieved, but he’s still shaking his head.

  “I’m not crazy,” I add. “You know what’s crazy? The board thinking we can protect the compound when we have no fucking clue who these guys are or what they’re planning.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The drifters want to bring down the compounds. To them, we’re the enemy. Hell, we’ve been killing off all their friends for years.”

  “You sound like one of them.”

  “I’m not! It’s just the truth.”

  Miles sinks down into the chair next to me as though our conversation has taken everything out
of him. He presses his hands together and lets out a hard breath against his fingers. “Eli, I want you to listen to me: They are the enemy. The drifters want us all dead. They’re the people you need to be fighting — not Jayden, not the board, not even Constance.”

  I open my mouth to speak, but he points his index finger at me in a commanding way that makes the words die on my lips.

  “I know you’ve got this crusade against Jayden and Constance because they tried to put Riley six feet under, but people like them exist to keep us alive. The drifters are the real threat. They’re the ones we’re fighting.

  “I know your brother being one of them makes you question everything. Shit, you’d be fucked in the head if it didn’t. But don’t confuse the issue.”

  When Miles finishes, I’m completely speechless.

  Miles — the guy who shamelessly steals extra rations and takes on illegal fights — still believes in Recon’s mission. He still thinks the compound has his best interest in mind. He believes we’re doing the right thing.

  And if he believes it, that means everyone else must believe it, too. In that moment, it hits me just how tight a hold the compound’s leaders have on our minds.

  When I finally find my voice, it’s hoarse with indignation. “What we do is murder.”

  Miles shakes his head slowly, his dark brown eyes serious and unyielding. “No, Eli. We’re fighting a war.”

  “What war?” I yell. “They’ve got nothing, and we have everything! They’re blowing us up with our own mines, for god’s sake.”

  “What has gotten into you?” he snaps, jutting his face forward so it’s closer to mine. “You of all people used to understand. You used to hate the drifters more than anybody.”

  I scoff and look away, but Miles isn’t letting this go.

  “Eli, those people are the ones who killed all your cadets. They’re the ones who killed your parents.”

  “Don’t you get it? Those people are somebody else’s parents. And we just shoot them like they’re not even human.”

  “Whatever. We wouldn’t even be having this conversation if it weren’t for Riley. She’s got you all turned around.”

  “I’ve got it under control,” I snap.

  “No, you don’t. That’s your problem. You think you can handle Constance and the drifters on your own like you’re some one-man army. But the only way Riley’s ever gonna live is if she takes that ticket to 119. Period.”

  His words settle in my stomach like a brick. “She already did.”

  “What?”

  “I sent her and Celdon to 119. She’s gone.”

  Miles gives me a funny look. “No, she’s not.”

  “Yeah, she is.”

  Miles’s eyes grow wide. “Dude, you need to get some sleep.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I just saw her.”

  My spine goes rigid, and my heart speeds up. “What?”

  “Yeah.” He glances at the time again. “She’s in the training center right now with all your cadets.”

  Even though I know it’s impossible, a bolt of electricity shoots through my chest. It stings with fear and dread, but it also leaves a trail of warmth in its wake.

  Harper can’t be here. Miles must be talking about someone else who just looks like her, but I have to see for myself.

  Without another word, I fly out of my chair and squeeze past the servers crowding the doorway. I shoot out of the surveillance room and down the dimly lit tunnel toward the training center.

  The smell of bleach and sweat hits my nostrils before I even open the doors, and when I step inside, my senses are overwhelmed by activity after hours alone in the dark.

  It’s nearly oh-eight hundred, so the training center is swarming with cadets warming up and waiting along the walls for their commanding officers.

  I carve a path around the older Recon veterans stretching on the mats, looking for a dark head of silky hair and a pair of luminous gray eyes.

  In my desperation, I almost call out for her, but there’s no way she’d be able to hear me over the cadets’ chatter and the heavy clink of weights. As someone passes above me on the suspended metal track, the loud shaking adds to the din.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I catch the flick of a dark ponytail.

  If Miles is seeing things, then I am, too. But there’s no mistaking Harper’s lean profile or her energetic cadence as she jogs around the track.

  The fear simmering just beneath the surface spills into my bloodstream and ignites a fire in my chest.

  Miles wasn’t hallucinating. Harper is back.

  four

  Harper

  The first rule of avoiding murder? Don’t go anywhere alone. Stay away from dark tunnels and shady underground fights. Stick to public places with lots of people.

  That’s the only reason I dragged myself to training this morning after Celdon and I returned from 119. I didn’t sleep at all last night. My mind was reeling from everything we’d learned about the virus and the danger we’d be facing now that we’re back on Constance’s radar.

  Jayden is going to try to make me disappear — no doubt about it — but I don’t plan on going down easily.

  As I round the corner of the suspended metal track, I inch closer and closer to Lenny. Her normally creamy complexion is flushed from the run, and her fiery red braid is swinging back and forth between her shoulder blades.

  She isn’t as fast as I am, but she’s pushing herself this morning. She beat me to the training center and didn’t even stop to talk when I arrived.

  Her impending deployment must have lit a fire under her, and now she’s training like crazy in the hope that if she’s fit enough, fast enough, and strong enough, she might be able to outrun death on the Fringe.

  Blaze is another twenty yards ahead and gaining speed. When I got to the training center, the first thing I noticed was that he’d trimmed his spiky copper hair into a clean crew cut. His normally carefree expression mirrors Lenny’s look of panic and determination, and his shirt is already drenched with sweat.

  “Hey! Riley!” calls an angry voice from below.

  I know that voice. It sends a surge of heat through my chest that quickly spreads to my extremities.

  I quicken my pace and glance down to the training floor. Eli is standing in the crowd, staring up at me.

  Even though it’s only been a little more than a day since I last saw him, I drink in the sight of him as if it’s been a year. Those sharp blue eyes are boring into mine, and the severe set of his jaw makes it look as though his face has been cut from stone.

  This is not the concerned, compassionate Eli from the Fringe or the intense, fiery version who pinned me up against the wall. This is Eli the asshole, and he looks pissed.

  “Get down here!” he yells.

  Lenny glances over her shoulder and raises an eyebrow. “What did you do?” she pants, a devilish grin cracking her anxious expression.

  “No idea.”

  I jog around her and take my time coming down the rickety stairs toward Eli. But as soon as my feet hit the floor, he’s striding toward me with purpose.

  In all his handsome, furious glory, I have the bizarre urge to tear off his uniform and run my hands down his body. His chiseled chest is rising and falling rapidly under his gray fatigues, and his powerful arms are clenched at his sides.

  But as soon as he gets close enough to kiss, he clenches a hand around my bicep and drags me across the training center like a disobedient child. I don’t look up, but I can feel the other cadets’ eyes on my back as Eli drags me toward the exit.

  Indignation flashes through me, and a hot flush spills down my neck. As soon as we clear the double doors, I yank my arm out of his grip and shove him in the chest — hard.

  Eli looks momentarily stunned but doesn’t relax his posture.

  “What the hell is your problem?” I snarl.

  “My problem?” he repeats, eyes flashing. “What the fuck are you doing here?” />
  “Keep your voice down,” I hiss, glancing over my shoulder.

  Through the open doors, I can see a few cadets craning their necks to get a good look at us. Eli’s sudden fits of rage aren’t a secret in Recon, but it’s not every day that a lieutenant singles out a cadet and drags her out of the training center.

  I’m unprepared for the intensity of my outrage. Eli has no right to order me around — especially after he lied to me about coming to 119.

  I’m hurt and humiliated and a little offended that he’s so unhappy to see me. I mean, I didn’t expect him to sweep me off my feet and kiss me in front of everyone, but a tiny bit of enthusiasm would have been nice.

  Eli’s eyebrows are furrowed in deep concern. He’s definitely not working up to a passionate kiss. “Harper . . . why did you come back? You shouldn’t have come back!”

  “We didn’t have a choice.”

  He frowns. “Did they send you back?”

  “N-No.”

  “Then why are you here? You should have stayed at 119.”

  I look around again to check that the tunnel is deserted and lower my voice. “We couldn’t.”

  I take a deep breath, steeling myself to voice the horrible reality of the situation. “There is no 119. Everyone there is dead.”

  Eli stares at me in disbelief. Then a look of intense distress flits across his face. “They’re all dead?” he whispers.

  I nod. “We looked everywhere. We couldn’t figure out where they all could have gone. And then we saw the dead level . . .”

  A violent shudder rolls through me. Eli twitches as though he wants to pull me into his arms, but then he swallows and clenches his fists.

  “We went poking around in the medical ward,” I continue. “Celdon accessed the network so we could check the news feeds and hack into their medical records. They all died from some kind of virus, but Health and Rehab didn’t know what it was or how to cure it.”

  “But what about the supply shipments? Why would our people go there if . . .”

  “They’ve been looting from 119 — cleaning out their medical supplies and who knows what else. Those Operations workers must be part of Constance.”

  “And you didn’t find out how the virus was introduced in the first place?”