Glory

by Maureen McGowan

  She tips her head away and smiles, but I can’t tell whether she’s mocking me or reassuring me.

  The men lead her away and Dad starts to follow.

  “Hector!” Houston calls, and my father stops. “Someone will take you in soon.”

  His shoulders slump, and he stands still until long after Olivia’s out of sight.

  When Dad returns to the table, Houston says, “She’ll make it, Hector. She’s determined.”

  “Do you think so?”

  Houston claps Dad’s back. “No guarantees, but based on her interview, I think she’s got a good shot.”

  “Thank you for saying that. Can I have a few minutes to say good-bye to my kids?”

  Houston steps away, and Dad envelops Drake and me in his arms.

  “We’ll all be together again soon,” he says. “I know it.”

  I try to smile but I can’t.

  “Glory,” Dad says, “go with your brother. I don’t want either of you going back into Haven, but I’d rather know you’re together than apart.”

  A lump rises in my throat, but he’s right. If we can find a way back into Haven, we should help.

  “And don’t be so hard on Burn,” he says. “Next time you see him, hear him out. As long as I’ve known that kid, I’ve never seen him attack anyone unless his life was in danger.”

  “You’re wrong,” I say. “This isn’t the first time Burn killed an ally. The day you were expunged from Haven, Burn killed one of the other FA soldiers sent to save you. It was Zina’s brother, and—”

  “I know about that,” he interrupts. “I was there.”

  “But then why did you say—”

  Dad takes my head in his hands. “Zina’s been told a hundred times what really happened. She won’t listen. She’s enraged about Andreas’s death and determined to punish someone for it. She even hates me because he died while the FA was saving me. She’s so convinced that Burn is a murderer, she won’t hear the truth. Burn acted in self-defense.”

  “But Zina’s brother was part of his FA unit.”

  “That day was the first time Burn changed,” Dad says. “Everyone was frightened of him. No one knew what he would do, and Andreas decided he wasn’t going to wait to find out. He was about to shoot Burn.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.” Dad drops his hands to my shoulders. “Talk to Burn. If he doesn’t remember everything that happened that day, help him figure it out.”

  “I’ll try. I will.” But I’m not certain I’ll ever get the chance. And it doesn’t erase what he did to Cal.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  HOW WILL WE get into Haven without an FA unit?” Jayma asks. She’s sitting with me at the pub in Concord. Ravenous, we came here as soon as we got back. “And how will we contact them once we’re in?” She takes a spoonful of thick soup.

  “We’ll do it,” Drake assures her. “Rolph must have left at least one communicator behind.”

  I frown. “Those things have a short range. They were considered old even BTD.” The FA communicators have channels and little dials to turn. “We’ll need to be almost in Haven before we make contact.”

  “Then we should leave as soon as we can,” Drake says. “This place is eerie with so many people gone.”

  “When do we leave?” Jayma asks.

  “Are you done with your soup?” He half grins.

  “No,” I say, “we need a night’s sleep first.”

  Sunlight floods into the room from the door behind me. Jayma’s eyes open wide.

  “What?” I turn.

  Burn’s standing in the doorway.

  Seeing me, he starts to leave.

  “Burn,” Greggor calls, “I already dished out your soup!” The big, fur-covered cook strides across the room and slaps Burn on the back. “Don’t let it go to waste.” He nods to a table in the corner.

  It takes every ounce of my willpower not to watch Burn, but eventually I hear a chair scrape on the floor in the corner. Despite Dad’s advice, I’m not ready to talk to Burn, but I’m glad he didn’t go back to the Shredder camp. I’m glad he’s safe.

  “Maybe Burn will come with us to Haven,” Drake whispers to Jayma.

  “I hope so,” she says.

  The bell in the lookout tower rings and we all jump up.

  “Intruders!” Drake yells.

  So much for our day of rest. Leaving our food half-eaten, we head for the door.

  “I’ll guard the wall by the lake,” Burn says, and his words tear open what’s left of my heart. He’s following Cal’s strategy from the last Shredder attack.

  Burn heads down toward the lake, and the rest of us head up the main road. The few people left in Concord join us as we race through the village to the lookout. If our odds seemed bleak the last time we were attacked, our numbers are even lower now.

  The bell stops ringing. Either the guard has decided that the danger has passed, or she’s already in battle—or dead.

  When we reach the tower, at least twenty settlers are gathered in a circle. I duck through the crowd to get to the front.

  “Captain Larsson?” My mouth drops open. Gwen has her gun pointed at the chest of my former COT instructor. I haven’t seen him since he helped Burn and me escape from Haven.

  Captain Larsson smiles—an expression I barely recognize on his ruddy face. “Hi, Glory.” He holds his hands up in surrender.

  “You know this guy?” Gwen lowers her gun slightly.

  “Yes, he was my Comp trainer.” He’s wearing civilian clothing.

  A rumble goes through the crowd.

  “He’s a Comp!” Terry, one of the tower guards, grabs Larsson’s arms and binds them behind his back.

  “I told you. There’s no need for that.” Someone steps out from behind Larsson.

  Cal! The breath rushes from my lungs and I run forward. Jumping, I throw my arms and legs around him. “You’re alive!”

  He hugs me tightly, then sets me down. His cheeks are bright red. “Yeah, and lucky to be that way. Our FA unit ran into Larsson on the way into Haven. He tried to convince Rolph to turn back, but he wouldn’t. So we came back to warn everyone here.”

  “Warn us about what?” My mind spins with questions. “And how can you be alive? I saw Burn throw you into the pit.”

  “Burn?” He rubs his head. “What pit?”

  “At the Shredder camp.” Fear grabs my gut. I back away from him. “This isn’t Cal!” I yell. “It’s Zina.”

  “No.” He shakes his head. “It’s me.”

  “Prove it,” Drake says. “The person Burn killed looked like you, talked like you.”

  “When were you at a Shredder camp?” Cal asks. He shakes his head. “Zina went to a Shredder camp. Rolph sent her to sneak around there, impersonate Shredders, and warn us if they were planning another attack.”

  I raise my hands to my head. Zina’s solo mission. This makes so much more sense. “Burn didn’t kill you.”

  “Of course not.”

  I look directly into Cal’s blue eyes, and the truth seeps through my shock. These are the eyes of the boy I’ve known and loved my whole life. I was so wrapped up in saving my dad, I got fooled by Zina—again.

  “Burn didn’t kill you,” I repeat softly. “He killed Zina.”

  Cal, Jayma, Drake, and I sit in the first row of seats in the Assembly Hall. Gwen and Terry, the other tower guard, guide Larsson onto the platform in front of us and sit him down next to the table. In spite of my plea, the rest of the group refused to untie Larsson after they heard he’s a Comp. They barely trust Cal. There are too many of us in Concord who once lived in Haven.

  It looks like everyone left in Concord is here, and the room sizzles with tension.

  I stand and raise my hands to quiet the crowd. Once the noise dies down, I turn to Larsson. “Tell us everything.”

  “The day you, Burn, and Cal got out of Haven,” he says, “things were looking pretty good for the joint FA and rebel front. The first wave of the invasion pla
n worked.”

  “What was the plan?” I ask. “Everything going on in the Hub that day looked like chaos to me.”

  Larsson clears his throat. “The FA and rebels moved into the Hub together on the President’s Birthday, spreading the word to every employee who’d listen. We told them that they were free. That it was okay to fight Management. That better days were ahead.” He pauses for a breath.

  “Thousands of employees converted to our side that first day. The next day’s rebel meeting was massive. We couldn’t fit everyone on the factory floor. But over the next few days, Kalin took control of every communication screen in Haven. Not only the big ones in the Hub but every System screen, every announcement screen. She confiscated all privately owned TVs—even from Management.”

  “Who besides Management has a TV?” Drake asks.

  “True,” Larsson continues. “But the point is: she placed screens everywhere, and her speeches are playing constantly on a loop. It’s impossible to escape them.”

  “What is she saying?” I ask. I suspect I know the answer, but everyone else here needs to know, too.

  “She’s saying that the rebels and the FA are terrorists out to destroy Haven and hand it over to Shredders.” Larsson leans forward in his chair. “It didn’t help that a few of the FA soldiers looked like Shredders to the people inside.”

  “That message isn’t new,” Drake says. “That’s what Management said about the rebels even before Mrs. Kalin became President.”

  “True, but Kalin’s claiming that the former President welcomed the invasion, knowing that the resulting casualties would be an opportunity to downsize, cut costs, and improve the ration shortages.”

  Mrs. Kalin can twist anything, I think. Worse, she can make people believe her lies.

  Larsson goes on. “Kalin claims that she—and only she—can keep Haven safe. She told them that she’s close to finding a cure for the dust but needs more test subjects. Volunteers.”

  “She’s brainwashing people into submitting to her barbaric experiments,” I say.

  Larsson nods. “The Hospital was swarmed, so they instituted a lottery to select which employees got to volunteer first.”

  “I don’t understand,” Gwen says.

  Questions arise from around the room: How could she sway so many people like that? Kalin’s claims are crazy. Why does anyone believe her? What are the other members of Management doing? Why would anyone volunteer to go into the Hospital?

  A woman in the middle of the room shouts, “Why didn’t our people tell everyone that she’s lying?”

  “Because Mrs. Kalin can control minds,” I explain. “She can plant thoughts. It’s her Deviance.”

  “Using the screens?” Drake asks.

  “Her Deviance works with eye contact,” I answer. “It must work with a screen, too.” Would that work with mine?

  I climb onto the platform and stand next to Larsson. “Mrs. Kalin believes she’s better than everyone else. She calls herself Chosen, but she doesn’t mean what we do. She claims she’s destined to lead what’s left of humankind, and she plans to kill anyone who tries to stop her.”

  “How do you know all this?” Gwen asks.

  “Because she tried to get me to join her. My Deviance affects my mind, not my body. So by her twisted definition, I’m Chosen, too.” I can sense the collective reaction in the room: suspicion.

  “How do we know you’re not under her control?” Terry asks. “How do we know you’re not controlling us?”

  Gwen looks at me with fear in her eyes. She’s thinking of that night in her tower.

  “I’m not. I can’t plant thoughts.”

  Drake jumps up. “Kalin couldn’t control Glory’s thoughts. Otherwise, she’d still be in Haven.” He turns to me. “Otherwise, you’d be working with her, right? But you’re immune.”

  “Actually, her Deviance did work on me at first, but I figured out how to sense when she’s in my mind. It’s hard, but I can block her.” I look at Larsson. “And you can block her, too?”

  “No,” Larsson answers. “But on the President’s Birthday, when I watched you with her on the balcony, I suspected what she was doing. I avoided the screens, which wasn’t easy, believe me. I tried to get others to look away, but for most people it was too late. And for the rest . . .”

  “What?” I ask.

  “She holds public executions for anyone who speaks out against her. She has them killed in the Hub.”

  Killing people resistant to her power is the job Mrs. Kalin wanted to give me.

  Terry rounds the table, his boots clunking on the wooden platform. “We just sent another unit in. Are you telling me they might be brainwashed already? And how did you end up with Cal?”

  Sweat drips down Larsson’s forehead. “I intercepted the FA unit as they were coming in. I warned Rolph. Told him not to go in.” He shakes his head. “Rolph disagreed, but Cal understood. He brought me back here to warn the rest of you.”

  “What about the rebel leaders?” I ask. “What are they doing to stop her?”

  Larsson’s expression is grim. “Most of them are dead. Adele, Sahid—they avoided the screens, but the other rebels turned them in. Adele and Sahid were dragged into the Hub and killed by people they thought they could trust.”

  “Why didn’t the crowd try to stop them?” Drake asks.

  “Stop them?” Larsson shakes his head slowly. “The crowd cheered. Even the smallest word against Kalin gets you killed.”

  The room’s so quiet we can hear the lake lapping against the shore a hundred yards away.

  Sahid is dead. Adele is dead. Maybe Rolph, too. Everyone who was on our side is either dead or under Mrs. Kalin’s control.

  “What about Sahid’s son, Joshua?” I ask. He and Adele were the first rebels I met. Josh is just a kid, like me.

  “I haven’t seen Josh in almost two weeks,” Larsson says. “I expect he’s either dead or in the Hospital.”

  The murmurs in the crowd turn to shouts: “Larsson’s a Comp. We can’t trust him! This is a trick to keep us from sending more soldiers.”

  “We don’t have any more soldiers,” I shout back, but I doubt anyone hears me over the din.

  “Hey!” I hold up my hands and the noise lessens. “Larsson may be a Comp, but I trust him. He took a big risk in coming here. He has nothing to gain from telling us any of this.”

  Gwen faces Larsson. “Why haven’t you killed Kalin?”

  “No one’s seen her in person since the President’s Birthday. She’s in hiding, controlling everyone through the screens.”

  “Everyone?” Terry asks. “Haven has over three hundred thousand employees.”

  “If we can stop the screens from broadcasting her messages,” I say, “her mind control will eventually wear off. It did for me.” And for Cal, but I don’t want to bring him into it. There’s enough distrust in the room already.

  Larsson stands. “Even if we can stop the broadcasts, Kalin’s ideas have spread through Haven like an infection. If ideas are repeated enough they become ideologies, taken as truth.”

  I nod. “It’s like the old Management propaganda: Haven Equals Safety.”

  “But it’s worse than that,” Larsson says. “Haven employees repeated those slogans, but most of the lower-level employees never believed them. Did you?”

  I shake my head.

  “Of course you didn’t,” Larsson says. “Employees repeated the slogans to make their lives easier, and because they didn’t see another way out.”

  “Isn’t it the same thing now?” Gwen asks.

  “No. Kalin’s not just saying these things; she’s planting the ideas in people’s heads.” Larsson taps his forehead with his fingers. “They think her ideas are their own. They’ll do anything she says.”

  “Still,” I say, “if we stop the broadcasts, it will help.”

  “Agreed,” Larsson replies.

  “How do I get to Kalin?” a deep voice says from the back of the room. “I’ll kill her.”


  I crane to see through the crowd. Burn is standing near the door. Has he seen Cal? Does he know?

  “We’ve sent people to try to reach her,” Larsson says. “It’s impossible to get close enough without coming under her power.”

  My knees shake as I say, “It needs to be me.”

  “No, I’ll do it!” Cal leaps onto the platform. “I already know what she can do. I’ve been through it, too, and recovered.”

  “Watch out! It’s Zina!” Burn yells, pulling a spear from his pack as he charges toward Cal. I step in front of Cal just as Burn thrusts his spear. The point stops inches from my neck.

  “Burn, it really is Cal.”

  “How do you know?” The intensity in Burn’s eyes is hard to read. I think I see hope, but I also see uncertainty.

  “Trust me.” I reach up to move the spear point away. “You didn’t kill Cal—you killed Zina.”

  Cal steps from behind me. “I was in Haven. My FA unit left the same day you guys took off. People here saw me go with them.”

  Burn glowers. “I can’t believe she fooled me again.”

  I know how he feels.

  “Rolph sent Zina to the camp,” Cal says. “She was already there when—”

  “She saw another chance to prove you were a killer.” I touch Burn’s shoulder, but he pulls away. “She provoked you. She cared about hurting you, about proving her point, more than she cared about her own life.”

  Burn stands still for a moment. He looks relieved, but not as much as I expected or hoped. “So where do I find Kalin?” he asks. “I’ll rip her head off.”

  “I can get in to see her,” I say. “I’m her daughter.”

  “No you’re not.” Drake jumps forward. “Did she plant that thought in your head, because you’re not her daughter”—he takes a step back—“are you?”

  “No.” I smile at Drake. “Of course not. But she wants me to be. She even filed the adoption paperwork with HR. Kalin will see me.” I’m sure of it. Caroline was sent here to find me. “I’ll convince her that I’m on her side, then use my Deviance to kill her.”

  “It’s too dangerous,” Cal says. “We should send a sniper to shoot her. I’m a good shot.”