by Anne Tibbets
“I can’t,” I whispered. “I can’t.”
“I’m not going to hurt you.” There was a tinge of annoyance in his words.
My other hand found the knob. I yanked the door open and fled.
Chapter Three
Across the apartment, I ran. When I wrenched open the door to my room, I spotted the twins napping in their crib. Immediately, my pace slowed and my heart swelled.
Sorrow.
Remorse.
I pushed those emotions deep down and focused on another.
Determination.
Under my bed, I pulled out my old duffel bag and hastily chucked in clothes from the dresser—pants, shirts, my old army jacket that Sonya had stolen for me right after my escape, my favorite combat boots.
Off my bedroom was a small bathroom the kids and I shared. I stalked inside and grabbed my toothbrush and paste, comb and incidentals. When I returned, I shoved them into the bag, slung the strap over my shoulder and turned to leave. But I stopped one step shy.
The twins.
I could hear them breathing. In unison, the hum from their lungs filled the corners of my broken heart with a deep sadness.
I turned toward them. They were snuggled together, wrapped around each other as if they were they still inside my belly.
Would they remember me when I was gone?
Would they even notice I left?
Placing my duffel on the floor, I approached the crib. The sight of my children up close flooded my eyes with hot tears.
I was doing the right thing.
Wasn’t I?
I reached down to brush a strand of hair from Adena’s face. I stroked the roll of Clea’s leg. Then, before I could change my mind, I snatched up the duffel bag and left.
Out in the living room, Ric stood, waiting for me.
His expression stopped me dead in my tracks. Sadness, hurt and a touch of anger. But he had a duffel bag slung over his shoulder too.
He swallowed hard and said, “Let’s go.”
* * *
As we rode Ric’s motorcycle through the streets of Auberge, my thoughts returned to Shirel. Saying goodbye to her had been a little easier than the twins, but not by much. She wasn’t surprised at our news and swore she’d protect and take care of the twins as if they were her own.
I hugged her swiftly and promised to return. But I could tell she didn’t believe me.
I bolted.
Pieces of me had been left behind. Now, there was a hole nothing could fill. It felt as if a tight rubber band held me to the apartment, stretched so taut it would break and slap my skin to welts.
On the streets, riding the motorcycle between cars and through the mass traffic of Central, I shook the thoughts of my babies from my head and tried to focus on the world around me. Conditions in the middle sector of the Auberge territory had become worse in our absence. Much worse. Sonya was right.
The trash piles that accumulated on the curbs of every street were now as high as a person’s head and still stank like holy hell. With plastic outlawed and the landfills full, garbage collected on every available square inch within the walled territory that had long ago reached full capacity.
Plus, ethanol supplies must have dwindled while we’d been gone too. Old gasoline hybrids littered the street corners and the shoulder of every road. People had stuffed more garbage inside the abandoned vehicles for lack of a better place to put it.
The only things moving on the streets were electric cars, beaten and battered-looking people on even worse-looking bicycles and a throng of pedestrians, walking like a herd of cattle down the cracked and broken sidewalks that hadn’t been repaired in over a hundred years.
As far as I could tell, the majority of old factories in Central were boarded up and empty, as well. Some had filled with homeless families unable to afford the escalating prices of Auberge utilities. You could see them peeking out the broken windows and loitering on cement rubble that was once the building stoops.
In addition, Sonya’s assessment of the security forces had been correct. Auberge guards were everywhere. Every corner. Every street. They grabbed people at random and scanned their palms on tablets. Some people were taken away under protest. Others were shoved back into the crowd of people on the streets. I saw a woman run, only to be chased down and hauled away.
I wondered whom the guards were searching for and why they were torturing citizens in this way, and then I realized. They were probably looking for me.
And Ric. And Sonya.
The three of us had caused the destruction of the headquarters server room after they’d murdered our hacker, Tym, and captured Ric and me.
If they were truly after us, I realized, driving through the middle of Central sector in the wide open wasn’t the best of plans. We had to be smarter than that.
As we weaved through traffic, I noticed the security cameras mounted on the dead light poles. Those were new. Auberge must have installed them after the HQ break-in. I leaned forward so I could talk into Ric’s ear as he drove. “We need to cover our faces.”
He nodded and shifted directions, turning south on 7th Street, toward Avenue D. It wasn’t until we’d passed the apartment building where I’d relocated Evie, a little girl who had once volunteered to take my place on the Line, that I realized where Ric was taking us. His sister’s brownstone was on Avenue V and 2nd Street. It took us a good hour to get there, given how many times we doubled back to avoid security cruisers.
When we finally arrived, it was well past four in the afternoon, and the hot orange sun blazed on the tip of the Auberge wall, closing the territory into shadow.
Pulling up to the curb in front of Anj’s house, we slid off the motorcycle. But when I made toward the front door, Ric didn’t. He stood, transfixed, next to the bike.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Sonya wasn’t kidding. It’s way worse than before.”
I nodded, not having the words to express how disappointing and scary I found that to be.
He flicked his head up, indicating a lamppost above our heads. “See that?”
I looked. There was a camera mounted above the broken lamplight. It was pointed at Anj’s door.
“We’ll only have a few minutes,” he said.
I swallowed thickly. “What do we do?”
He tossed me the motorcycle keys. “Keep it running, just in case. She might not live here anymore.”
I nodded. A dismayed feeling clouded my eyes. He hadn’t been in contact with his family since the break-in. What if Anj wasn’t here? How would we find her?
Ric knocked and waited.
After a moment the door slowly opened, and Anj’s familiar face appeared. “Holy shit,” she muttered. And Ric hastily waved me in behind him.
I turned off the bike, snatched the keys from the ignition and followed him.
Like before, the interior of the brownstone was in vast contrast to the exterior. Clean and tidy, with lush furnishings, it reminded me how Ric had come from money—that was now controlled by Auberge. Just like they controlled all the assets inside and all the businesses.
Anj locked the door behind us and hugged her brother fiercely but didn’t seem to notice I was there. Honestly, I didn’t blame her. I was the reason she hadn’t seen her brother in almost two years.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Anj said to him. “But I’d rather hoped I’d never see you again.”
“It’s good to see you, too,” he answered.
“You’re taking a horrible risk coming here,” she added. “I’m pretty sure this house is being watched.”
“We saw. But we need to get to Sonya,” he explained. “Any idea where she’s at?”
She nodded. “She’s in one of the old factorie
s, on I and 5th. You’d better hurry if you want to make it by curfew.”
“Can we borrow a couple of hats?” I asked.
Our eyes met. Anj was still beautiful and had the same toothy smile as Ric and their other brother, Charle. But she was more guarded than the last time I’d seen her.
Wary.
She seemed older, tired and worn down. The cuff of her sleeve was frayed, as were her nerves, given the look in her eye.
“Where’s Charle?” Ric asked. “Is he here?”
Anj flinched. “You haven’t heard then?”
He shook his head.
“They took him.”
He swallowed this news. There was no love lost between the brothers, especially since Charle had played such an intricate part in the conspiracy of my release. But Anj looked saddened to have said it aloud.
“I see.” He dropped his eyes to the polished marble floor and leaned a hand against the mahogany table in the foyer that displayed Anj’s digital photo collection, many of which had pictures of her, Ric and Charle as children. The photos caught his attention, and I saw a wash of hurt ripple across his face.
“He was taken after your capture,” she explained. “I don’t know what they’ve done with him.”
“He’s probably in detention,” he said. “It’s where he belongs.”
Anj frowned, folding her arms across her chest. “Why would he belong there?”
“If you don’t know by now, it’s better you don’t,” he said, his face turning dark.
“Bullshit.” Her emotions crept into her voice. “They never told me anything, and I have a right to know. One minute you were captured, and the next you were gone. Charle told them he wasn’t involved, but they took him anyway. They took me for a while too, but they let me go. I think they’re using me as bait. For you.”
“Then we’ll need those hats,” he said.
Her frown deepened. Opening a wooden panel in the wall that turned out to be a closet, she rummaged around a few moments, then reappeared, holding two old ball caps. They were dark blue with a strange logo I didn’t recognize.
Ric put one on and handed the other to me.
“What did Charle do?” Anj asked. “I asked Sonya after she got back, but she’s cut me off, won’t tell me anything she’s doing. She said it was for my own good.”
“She’s right,” he said, and he moved toward the front door. “It’s better you don’t get involved.”
She stepped forward and blocked his path. “I’ve heard rumors about an inoculation. An immunity is being spread by the girls from the Line. Is it true? Is that why they took Charle?”
The air caught in my lungs. Word was spreading.
I didn’t know whether I should feel ashamed or glad of that.
Ric crushed the bill of his cap and turned away from his sister. Our eyes met. He opened his mouth, and then shut it, closing his teeth together with an audible clunk. He couldn’t say it aloud. To tell Anj how Charle was at the very heart of everything would destroy her too. But as far as I was concerned, she had a right to know.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s all true.”
“Naya!” Ric protested. His eyes flashed at me, but Anj seemed relieved at finally receiving some semblance of the truth.
“Was Charle involved?” she persisted.
I nodded.
“Stop it,” Ric spat.
“She has a right to know,” I argued.
He clenched his jaw and turned away.
Anj ignored him. She swallowed thickly, keeping her gaze on me. “What’s the immunity for?”
“For a biological toxin designed to attack outside the walls,” I told her. “Auberge doesn’t just want complete domination over their own territory. They want to wipe out the population outside the walls so they can take over. They’re using the girls from the Line to spread the immunization to avoid a coup. Then they’ll start a war.”
Anj’s pretty face turned white and a hand went to her mouth.
“Charle set it up,” I continued. “He had the girls inoculated, artificially inseminated, then turned them loose to spread the immunity through their body fluids and those of their children. He did it to me, too, and my kids.”
Her horror twisted into revulsion.
“He told us everything at the estate,” I said. “Then he informed Auberge where to find us. We were captured. Ric was shot. Sonya broke us out.” It felt good to finally talk about it, even if Anj’s terror was hard to watch.
Ric stood at the front door with his arms crossed. I knew he was angry with me, but I also knew he’d get over it.
Tears wet Anj’s eyes. “So you went into hiding.”
“Yes,” I said.
“And they took Charle because he told you everything.”
“Yes.”
“Then why’d you come back?” she asked. “You should have stayed gone.”
Ric dropped his arms to his side. “Because it’s not over,” he said, his face flushed. “According to Sonya, they’ve started again. A whole new batch of girls.”
A wave of understanding crossed Anj’s face. “The Line fire. They were cleaning house.”
“Yes,” I said.
“What are you going to do?” she asked Ric, turning from me again.
He shook his head, his expression sour. “Whatever we have to, I guess.”
“I want to help,” she said hastily.
“You are helping,” I told her, holding up the ball cap. “Now, if your house is being watched, you’d better chase us out when we leave.”
She thought for a moment, then turned back to the hall closet and came out with a baseball bat. “Will this do?”
Ric couldn’t help but smile. The dimple in his left cheek appeared for just a moment but then sunk back into his frown. The bat must have been from their younger days because he said, “Really? You still have that?”
Anj raised an eyebrow, looking strikingly like her youngest brother. “You’d rather I get Father’s hunting rifle?”
“Good point.” He moved toward the front door. “You should leave Central, Anj. It’s not safe here. Go to the estate in South. Hole up there for a while.”
She nodded. “Yeah, okay.”
He looked to me. “Ready?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
He threw his arm around his sister to hug her quickly, then unlocked the bolt and threw back the door. He grabbed my hand, and we ran.
Anj took a swing with the bat and narrowly missed my head as we dashed from the house and down the stoop. “Stay away from me!” she shouted.
We hopped on the bike just as Anj came down the front stairs, swinging at us again.
As the motorcycle pulled away, I noticed she was crying.
Guilt forced my eyes away.
I wished there was something that could take away the pain I had caused her, but there was nothing I could do about that.
Chapter Four
We backtracked again. Heading north toward Sonya’s place on I and 5th, we remained silent, but I felt the strain in Ric’s body. A new posture had transformed him.
Tense.
So tense.
He was rigid.
Through the streets we weaved and dodged traffic, leaning together into the turns like second nature. It seemed only yesterday when we’d made our escape to Ric’s estate in South in similar fashion.
But it wasn’t yesterday.
When we reached I and 5th, it was dark. We were out of time. Curfew had begun and if we stayed out any longer, we risked getting arrested.
On each corner of the street, there was a factory. The building on the northwest corner appeared to have closed just recently, manufacturing tin cans, I guessed, given the pile of cans stac
ked all the way up and into the cracked and shattered windows of the building. On the opposite side of the street was a fabric factory burned to the ground. All that remained was the blackened beams and scorched cinder blocks of a day’s wage torched to rubble, and tufts of surviving unmilled cotton floating in the air.
This left us two factories to scout.
The one on the southeast corner was covered in graffiti and had a mural on the wall of two crying women. Upon further inspection we realized it was full of rotting compost. The last building, on the southwest corner, had a masking tape X striped across the shards of a downstairs window. Given the ripped signage on the outside, it had once been a shoe plant.
I pointed the X out to Ric. He grunted in response and pulled the motorcycle into the adjoining alley.
I slid off the back of the bike so he could stash the vehicle behind two overflowing Dumpsters. Then I walked toward a large metal sliding door that appeared to lead inside, but something had stopped Ric. He stood by the bike as if debating whether he would come.
“You coming?”
He turned to me and his eyes flared. “I wish you hadn’t told her.”
I waited just a fraction of a moment to choose my words. He meant Anj. “As I said, she has the right to know.”
“She’s in danger now.”
“She was in danger before she knew the truth. Now, at least she knows why.”
“And that’s better?” he challenged me.
This stopped me. In my mind, the truth was always the preference. I couldn’t imagine ignorance was better. Having lived much of my life with an unawareness pressed upon me, I believed the whole truth was tantamount to living. I couldn’t fathom not telling Anj all that I knew. Or why Sonya and Ric thought it best to keep her in the dark.
I’d been in the dark before. The light was always best.
Even if it was blinding.
“I’m sorry,” I said in an attempt to defuse his temper.
He saw through that ruse. “No, you’re not.”
“Okay, maybe I’m not,” I admitted. “But you’ll never convince me otherwise.”
