by Tarah Benner
“They have to take him to the medical ward!” I shout through the deluge of water. “He’s lost too much blood!”
Tears are streaming down my cheeks, and my voice sounds hoarse and insane. The water stops, and the hands reach for me again.
“No!” I scream, feeling scared and ridiculous. “Let me go! I have to tell them!”
“Harper! Harper! It’s me.”
I force myself to focus on the person in the suit. Through the condensation on the face shield, I see the outline of black-rimmed glasses.
“Sawyer!” I croak, feeling immediate relief. She’ll make sure Eli is taken care of.
“You’re okay,” she says in a soothing voice. “You’re okay. Everything’s fine.”
Her gloved hands grip the collar of my overshirt and pull, unsnapping all the buttons in one fluid motion and pulling it off me. I shiver as she strips me down to my shorts and tank top and climbs out of her hazmat suit.
I almost laugh at the sight of Sawyer in her med intern outfit — scrubbed up as though it’s just another day.
She ushers me through the door on the other side of the chamber, into a dimly lit tunnel, where a gurney is waiting.
“Are they taking him to the medical ward?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says, threading an arm around my waist and pulling me toward the gurney.
“I can walk,” I mumble. “Can I see him when the doctor’s done?”
Sawyer releases me, shaking her head. “They aren’t going to let you see anyone. Not for a while.”
I glance around. The panic is back in full force. “Why not? What’s going on?”
“What happened out there?” she demands.
Now that the suit is gone, I can read the anxiety in her eyes.
I bite my lip. “You know I can’t tell you anything.”
“I’m not stupid, Harper,” she hisses. “This is the third mission this month where Recon has turned up early or not at all. Eli got blown up the last time, and now he’s been shot!”
“Shh!” I glance around at the deserted tunnel to make sure we’re alone. “Give me your interface.”
She looks confused but pulls it off her glasses and hands it over. I know I’m being paranoid, but I wouldn’t put it past Constance to spy on Sawyer, too. I flip it on, but the telltale blinking red dot isn’t there. They aren’t recording her conversations, at least.
“Harper!” she snaps in a whisper. “What’s — going — on?”
I grimace, and when Sawyer speaks next, her voice is so low I can barely hear.
“There are others out there, aren’t there?”
I’ve been sworn to secrecy, but I feel weak and worn down after everything. And Sawyer already knows.
I nod once, and her eyes widen in shock.
“Somebody broke through the cleared zone,” I murmur. “We don’t know why, but we think they’re staking out the compound.”
“Who?”
She wants me to say it.
“The drift — er, survivors.”
“Survivors? How many?”
I shrug.
“How are they alive after all this time?”
“I don’t know.”
“The radiation alone —”
“I don’t know how they’re alive,” I snap. “Nobody does. But our job is to kill them, and they’re trying to kill us.”
Sawyer is staring at me as if her entire world is crumbling around her. “I can’t believe this.”
“You can’t say anything,” I plead. “I’m not supposed to tell you.”
“How could they do this?” she whispers. “Just leave those people out there?”
“I don’t know.”
“They’ve just been lying to everybody. They’ve been lying for years.”
Somewhere down the tunnel, a door slams. Before I can respond, Sawyer looks around anxiously and shoves me onto the gurney. She replaces her interface and pushes my shoulders down until I’m lying flat.
“Sorry,” she murmurs in a choked voice. “I have to strap you down. You came in a little hysterical.”
She pulls the soft restraints around my shoulders and ankles and then covers me with a sheet. I don’t like the feeling of the material holding me to the gurney, but at least it’s just Sawyer.
She pushes me down the tunnel to the freight lift, and we shoot up through the compound. I shiver violently on the gurney, partly from the cold water and partly from the stress of being shot at.
I can’t believe we saw a drifter in the cleared zone. Eli was shot. My nerves are stretched to the breaking point, and I feel as though I’m teetering on the edge of a total meltdown.
The lift dings, and the doors open up into one of the clean, brightly lit tunnels of the medical ward. The friendly scuff of nonslip shoes mixes with the steady beep of monitors. The noise is a pleasant change from the silence of the Fringe, but it looks too nice and orderly after everything I just experienced.
As we venture farther down the tunnel, the usual medical disinfectant smell mixes with the stench of vomit. That sets me on edge, and I try, unsuccessfully, to sit up.
I know I must look nuts, but the nurses we pass don’t bat an eye at seeing a cadet strapped to a gurney. That’s when I realize where we are: the postexposure wing.
One door we pass is wide open. In the sickly yellowish glow of florescent lighting, I catch a glimpse of an emaciated man about my age. His head looks too large for his body, as though the rest of him has wasted away from the radiation.
In that second, his eyes find mine. A shiver rolls through me when I realize that look is his way of saying, “You’re next.”
Sawyer wheels me into a private room and forces me to strip again. Once she’s confident I’m free from radioactive dust, she gives me a shapeless gown to wear, takes my vital signs, and draws some blood in quiet, businesslike Sawyer fashion.
“How’s Eli?” I ask.
“I don’t know yet,” she says, consulting her interface with a tense expression. “They’re still working on him.”
She removes the sensor from my arm and meets my gaze. “I have to go now. I’m sorry. You don’t have any life-threatening injuries, so I have to let them debrief you.”
“No! Don’t go!”
I’m a little shocked by my own desperation, but being with Sawyer is the only thing holding me together.
“I have to,” she says. “I’m sorry. I promise I’ll come check on you. And I’ll find out what’s going on with Eli.”
“Okay.”
Sawyer leaves me alone in my room, and not a minute later, I hear another knock.
The visitors don’t wait for me to answer before barging in. I’m not surprised to see Remy Chaplin again. As the undersecretary, he’s tasked with making sure no Recon operatives spill the beans about what’s really going on outside the compound.
But when I see Jayden skulking behind him, I shrink back into my pillows. She’s wearing a familiar predatory expression that makes my stomach clench, and she’s pissed.
“What’s going on?” she yells as soon as the door swings closed.
“Eli’s been shot,” I blurt out. “And there’s a drifter inside the cleared zone.”
Her face blanches. “What?”
“We just saw the one, but they are definitely performing some kind of drifter recon.”
“Drifter re —” Jayden stops and shakes her head. “Start from the beginning, Riley. You aren’t making any sense.”
“They figured out how to remove our mines. They’ve repurposed them beyond the perimeter. They almost blew us up! They figured out how to deactivate the signals so they don’t show up on the map. We can’t even get a read on them once they’ve been transplanted.”
Jayden and Remy exchange a knowing look that irritates me, but I keep going.
“I got a look at their tech setup, too. It’s not very advanced, but they’re definitely organizing.”
I stop, remembering what Eli said about deciding what information w
e want to give away.
What am I doing? I need to shut up until I talk to him because I am way too frantic to think clearly.
“Did you perform your assigned patrol, Cadet?” asks Jayden in her most patronizing tone.
“What? Um, yeah . . . We went to that town, like you said.”
“And what is its status?”
I stare at her in disbelief.
Why the hell is she asking me about some stupid town when drifters are staking out the compound as we speak?
“Cleared,” I lie, just trying to speed this part up. “But —”
“That will be all, Riley,” she says, holding up a hand. “I’ve heard quite enough.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s clear you’re suffering from severe stress — probably caused by leaving the compound for the first time.”
“What?”
Yeah, I’m stressed. But since when has Jayden given a fuck about my well-being?
Then she turns her striking dark eyes on me in what I imagine is her most sympathetic expression. “It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Nervous breakdowns and hallucinations aren’t uncommon among cadets who are deployed before they’re ready. Just relax. We’re going to see that you’re under constant care until you feel better.”
“Constant —”
“Supervision, Riley. Just until we can be sure you aren’t a danger to yourself or to others.”
“I’m not a danger to myself . . . and I’m not going to tell anybody. But you need to listen to me!”
“Don’t worry,” she says, and I’m positive I’m not imagining the tiny evil smirk twitching on her lips. “I’m sure the doctors can help you sort out what’s real and what’s . . . How should I put this? A figment of your imagination.”
“Are you serious? You’re worried I’m going to tell the whole compound about the drifters, so you’re going to lock me up so I seem crazy?”
I glance from Jayden to Remy, fury and disbelief fighting for dominance. She looks smug, but Remy’s expression is grave.
He doesn’t think I’m crazy. He’s scared shitless.
“Please don’t share these, uh, hallucinations with anyone else, Riley,” says Remy in a quiet voice. “We don’t want to start a panic over nothing.”
I open my mouth to retort, but Jayden cuts me off. “Rest up,” she says, patting my leg. I want to smack her in the face. “We need you back at full strength for your next deployment.”
Next deployment? Eli was shot less than an hour ago, and Jayden’s already thinking of our next mission. That’s when it hits me: Constance never meant for us to come back. They were sure the drifters would finish us off for them.
Now that we’ve returned, they’re not going to let that happen again. And Jayden’s going to make damn sure I don’t have the chance to tell anybody what we found.
They file out of my room, and I stare at the door for several seconds in shock.
Sawyer reappears a moment later, and I can tell by her expression that I’m not going to like what she has to say.
“What’s going on?”
“He’s stable,” she says in a breathless voice. “They just moved him to his own room.”
“I want to see him.”
She shakes her head. “You can’t. Nobody can see him until he’s been debriefed. And anyway . . .” She trails off, and I can tell she’s dreading whatever she has to say next.
“What is it?”
“I have to move you to the psych ward,” she says, looking torn. “Head physician’s orders. Jayden got to him.”
“For how long?”
Sawyer takes a step toward me, eyebrows raised. “Until you take back whatever you think you saw. Maybe not even then.”
“They can’t keep me there forever,” I say indignantly.
“They can keep you there as long as they want — at least until they need you again.” Sawyer’s eyebrows creep impossibly higher. “I’ve seen it.”
So this is what happens to Recon operatives they consider a risk to the compound: They lock them away until they’re confident they won’t tell anyone what they saw.
Shocked into silence, I let Sawyer summon an electric wheelchair and steer me down the tunnel in my hospital gown toward a wing I’ve never visited before. It looks like all the others in the medical ward, except the walls aren’t made of frosted glass. They’re completely solid and only have a tiny window near the top of the heavy steel doors.
I shiver. It reminds me of the interrogation room Control tortured me in.
But when Sawyer swipes us in, I see that the inside is nearly identical to the other rooms. There are no padded walls or restraints on the bed, and they’ve even left me a pair of shorts and a black tank top to change into.
“I had Lenny bring up some of your clothes,” she says.
“Can she visit?”
Sawyer shakes her head. “You aren’t allowed visitors, but I’ll come check on you. And I’ll keep you updated on Eli’s status.”
“Thanks.”
Standing there in my hospital gown, it strikes me once again how much my life has deviated from the future I had planned. Nothing is the way I thought it was, and now it feels as though I don’t have any life of my own.
I’m one of Recon’s “assets” now, and they can do whatever they want with me.
eight
Eli
I hate the feeling of regaining consciousness after passing out. It’s not like waking up from sleep. You jerk back to life with a sense of urgency — as if your tired brain knows you were in the middle of something important.
Something like . . . getting back to the compound to warn the others.
Judging by the cold air and the sickly artificial light spilling through my eyelids, I’m not on the Fringe anymore. Harper must have gotten me back somehow.
What had I needed to warn Remy about? My leg?
That can’t be right. But there’s a sharp pain throbbing from my knee to my hip. My brain is struggling to connect the dots, and I recognize the sluggishness from the last time they had me on pain meds.
Reluctantly, I peel my eyes open.
I’m lying in a hospital bed — again — with a tube shooting fluids into my arm. I’m alone, which means they’re either debriefing Harper, or . . .
No. Constance still needs Harper. They wouldn’t have killed her. Not yet.
The rational part of my brain is wrestling with all the pent-up fear and paranoia I’ve accumulated from being on the Fringe, but the paranoid half is winning.
I don’t trust Jayden as far as I can throw her, and right now, I have no idea where Harper is. Constance could have thrown her in the cages for safekeeping, for all I know. All the veins in my arms are popping against my skin, and I realize I have the edges of the bed in a death grip.
I take a few deep breaths to calm myself down, but it isn’t helping. That relaxation shit never does. The only thing that will help me relax is for someone to come in here and tell me what the hell is going on.
I throw back the blankets and stare down at my legs. The left one is covered in snowy white bandages, and someone has tied my ankles to the bed.
What. The. Fuck.
Bending at the waist, I try to reach the restraints around my ankles and almost rip out my IV in the process. I swear and stab the call button, feeling like an invalid.
Two nurses with bouncy ponytails rush in looking panicked, but they both bite back a laugh when they see me hunched over my knees, hairy legs exposed in the short hospital gown.
“Sorry about that, Lieutenant,” says one bottle-blond nurse in a lilting voice. “We don’t want you ripping your stitches.”
“Stitches?”
As she bends to undo the restraints, it all comes back to me in a rush: the drifters, getting shot, the man in the cleared zone.
“Can you find Remy Chaplin, please?” I snap.
“He-He’s right out in the lobby,” she stammers. “I’ll let him know you’
re awake.”
Now that my legs are free, I can tell putting weight on my left leg would be a bad idea. But I need to tell someone what’s going on.
A moment later, Remy breezes in as though he’s got all day. Behind him — surprise, surprise — is Jayden.
“Well. Good afternoon, Parker,” she simpers. “It seems you can’t go a single deployment without some life-threatening injury forcing you back to the compound early.”
“That’s not why we came back,” I say between gritted teeth. “The drifters cut off our water supply. They mean business.”
“The backup reservoir?”
“Yeah. But that’s not what I wanted to report. There was a drifter . . . in the cleared zone. About a mile and a half from the compound.”
Jayden’s mouth tightens, but she doesn’t look surprised. “That’s not possible.”
I hesitate for a moment, unsure if I should tell her everything we learned about their operations. “It is. They know how to disable and repurpose our mines. One almost blew my legs off.”
Remy’s jaw has gone rigid, and I can tell I’ve awakened his worst fears. “Why would they only send one man into the cleared zone?”
“To investigate. To see if it was possible. As a warning. I don’t know! There could be a million reasons.”
Remy glances at Jayden with a serious look in his eyes. “Commander, since Cadet Riley’s story checks out, we should send out another party to patrol within the cleared zone . . . ensure none get within sight of the compound.”
“With due respect, Undersecretary, our first priority should be learning more about the drifters’ operations. Clearly there are more than we thought, and now they’re mobilizing against us. We need to locate their headquarters and terminate their leadership.”
Remy gives her a look that would make any lesser woman cower, but Jayden stretches up to her full height and meets his gaze dead-on.
“Our first priority is protecting the people inside this compound, Commander,” he says sharply. “And don’t you forget it. Send out the patrol. All intelligence-gathering missions are tabled until further notice. Is that understood?”
There’s a long, awkward pause as Jayden sizes Remy up. Then she seems to decide to pick her battle some other way.
