by Tarah Benner
Tonight, she isn’t my responsibility. I’m free to do what I want.
All around me, people are grinding against each other to their own rhythm, completely oblivious to whatever song is blaring through the crackly speakers. The strobe lights make the girls’ glow-in-the-dark lipstick and eye makeup pop, which is more off-putting than sexy.
Still, I’m here, and there’s no reason I shouldn’t try to have fun.
I feel the three little black pills in their neon yellow wrapper with the pad of my thumb and try to relax. I bought them from a sketchy guy in the collapsed Underground tunnel to help me forget, and I have every intention of following through.
There’s a girl in a little yellow dress the same shade as the wrapper dancing with two of her friends under a purple strobe light. The material between her thin bodice and short skirt is completely see-through, revealing an intricate tribal tattoo that wraps around her ribcage.
The girl catches my eye under her fake silver lashes, and I stare back.
Her expression is seductive, but there’s a strange emptiness in those eyes. She isn’t throwing me a silent dare the way Harper would. There’s nothing complicated about her. She’s just fun and available, and she’s not my cadet.
My interface buzzes again — this time with a written message — but I double-click the button without checking who sent it. I already know anyway. Nobody else messages me at midnight.
That message spurs me into action. I need to get Harper out of my head. I need to stop caring.
I told myself I wouldn’t let this happen — that I wouldn’t get attached. But instead of just befriending my cadet and starting to care whether she lived or died, I fell for her like an idiot.
When I’m within shouting distance, the girl in the neon yellow dress smiles sweetly. I get a pang in my gut that’s completely separate from how the rest of my body is responding, but I shove down my guilt and press through the crowd to reach her.
Sticky bodies in rough synthetic fabric brush up against me as I pass, creating a nasty abrasiveness against my skin. It’s sweaty and humid and too loud, but that doesn’t seem to bother the girl.
When I come within arm’s reach, she spins around like a ballerina and presses her body against mine.
Her next move is decisively unballerina-like. She slides down my chest in one fluid motion, grinding her ass against me all the way to my knees. Her long dark hair spills over my chest like crude oil, but it smells all wrong — sickly sweet and floral.
It doesn’t smell like her, and that’s when I know I’m too far gone.
Even down here, Harper manages to hijack my every thought. I can’t be around her without feeling paralyzed by lust, but there’s something else, too — an intoxicating warmth that starts in my core and spreads to my extremities. It makes me feel light and grounded at the same time.
It’s nothing like this.
The girl whips around in a cyclone of hair and presses herself against me. She wraps a spindly arm around my neck and throws her head back.
I know she wants me to kiss her, and I could. I could forget for a few minutes. I could disregard all thoughts of Harper and probably screw her in the middle of the dance floor if I wanted to.
That’s when my interface buzzes again, reminding me of the unread message.
I place my hands on the girl’s hips and pull her tighter against me so I don’t have to see the face that’s all wrong. Her lips are too big, and her eyes are soft and unfocused. Looking at her just makes me feel like a piece of shit.
I should just delete the message and pretend I never received it. I should stonewall Harper in training until she takes the hint and reverts back to being my snarky, uncontrollable cadet.
She’d be pissed at me for a while, but she’d eventually forget all my screwups: my moment of weakness in the training center and two glorious nights tangled up together on the Fringe.
Suddenly, the urge to be near Harper is too strong. I won’t go to her tonight, but I can at least read what she has to say.
The girl is leaning against me now — probably half passed out from whatever pills she’s been popping — so I let her slide down to rest against my chest while I turn on my interface and pull up the message app.
I see the two missed video messages from Harper and one line of text that makes my heart stop:
Need your help. I’ve been taken. Dead L
My arms go limp, and the girl makes a noise of protest when she slides off my chest. I see her lips move, but I don’t hear a word she says. I’m already shoving my way through the crowd toward the exit.
Harper’s words are seared into my brain, and all my frustration is replaced by cold dread and guilt.
I’ve been taken.
I need your help.
Dead L
What the hell does “Dead L” mean?
She can’t be dead if she sent me that message, I reason.
But the sick feeling in my stomach won’t go away. Harper was trying to reach me. She needed me, and I was wrapping myself around some burnout in Neverland.
What could it mean?
Leave it to Harper to find a way to tell me where she was so I could save her. If she was interrupted sending the message, “L” could be the first letter of a name.
But that’s unhelpful. Harper’s smart — much smarter than me. She would have realized her time was limited and chosen her words carefully.
Damn it! She’s counting on me to figure this out. She needs me. She’s in danger. I might already be too late, and it’s all my fault.
She just told me Jayden had hired Shane to do her dirty work. I knew she was in danger, but I let her leave Sawyer’s compartment and go back to Recon by herself anyway. She would have gone straight to her own compartment to rest, but she could have been accosted anywhere in between.
Before I realize where I am, I’m pounding on Miles’s door.
He takes forever to answer, but when he does, he only looks vaguely surprised to see me.
“Dead L,” I pant. “What does that stand for?”
“What?”
“Dead L!”
Miles rubs his bleary eyes, trying to get on my level of craziness. “What the hell are you talking about?” he groans.
“Harper’s been taken,” I choke. “She sent me this.”
I beam him the message, and his tired eyes widen as he reads it.
“Shit. Is this for real?”
“Yes! Constance has to be behind this. Where would they take her?”
“‘L’ could stand for ‘level,’” he murmurs.
“Dead level,” I gasp. Everything suddenly clicks into place, and my breathing comes a little faster. “Holy shit. That’s gotta be it, right?”
Miles’s mouth is still hanging open, and I’m gone before he can say anything else.
As I yank open the door to the emergency stairwell, it occurs to me that I should have asked him to come.
Who knows who’s taken her or how much muscle they brought along. Harper’s hell on wheels. They’d need more than one guy to subdue her without making a scene. I could be walking into an ambush, but nothing can slow me down now.
I wind my way up the compound to the level that no one ever visits. When I yank on the handle, I remember why: The dead level is sealed off from the rest of the compound. Only a handful of Waste Management workers are given access.
The door is locked.
I’m probably only a few yards away from her, and I’m stuck out here.
My mind races, trying to think if I know anyone in Waste Management who would answer a message from me at this hour. I could call Control, but if Dellwood is on duty, Harper could be dead by the time they send anyone down here.
I rack my brain, trying to think like Harper.
If she were in my position, she wouldn’t go to the law. She’d just hack her way in.
No. Harper would call for backup.
By the time my brain puts the pieces together, I’m already searching
the directory for Celdon Reynolds.
I ping his interface, and his groggy image appears in front of my eyes. He’s sitting in a darkened room, and only the top part of his face is visible in the faint blue light.
“Celdon! It’s Eli! I need you to override security clearance for me. It’s Harper!”
“What?”
“Harper!”
“What the hell are you —”
“Constance. The dead level. Can you unlock it remotely?”
“Well, yeah. But —”
“Just do it,” I snap. “They’ve taken her.”
Suddenly, he looks completely alert.
“Give me a minute.”
He gets up from his bed, and I hear the frantic crash of keys as he begins typing.
My heart is pounding in my chest, and my skin is on fire.
It might be too late. I wasted a lot of time. I didn’t answer when she messaged. She probably died hating me.
No, I scold myself. She has to be alive.
“I’m in,” Celdon murmurs into his interface. He’s not looking at me. His eyes are glued to his computer screen, and I can still hear his fingers flying.
Come on. Come on.
“You’re good.”
I lunge forward and yank on the door. Sure enough, he managed to unlock it remotely.
Relief and gratitude spill into my chest, and I make a mental note to be nice to Celdon in the future.
If I’m not too late.
I nod at him once and shut off my interface.
As soon as the door swings open, I’m hit with a strange, earthy odor. I recognize the smell, but it’s not something I’m used to. It reminds me of fall before I was brought into the compound, but it doesn’t have the pleasant, life-giving aroma of dead leaves. It smells fake and toxic.
Part of me wants to go tearing in, fists a’blazing, but I know I should be quiet. They could be armed. I’m not. The element of surprise is my only advantage.
I close the door quietly and move toward the other end of the level. Luckily, the dead level isn’t a maze of tunnels dividing the space into compartments, offices, and section facilities. It’s one big field of bodies.
There’s an artificial chill in the air, but I know if I reached down and dug my fingers into the loose dirt, it would be sickeningly warm from decomposing bodies.
A hundred yards away, I hear a faint whimpering noise and the low-pitched drawl of male voices. I set off toward the source of the noise, stumbling once on a human-sized mound of earth.
I right myself and shiver. I don’t want to think about what they’re going to do with my dead body once Jayden is through with me. Even if I die of natural causes, I hate the idea of being buried and used even after I’m gone.
The soft earth muffles my footsteps, and soon I’m right on top of two figures standing over a prone body.
Harper.
“No!” she shrieks, screaming as one of the men reaches down and grabs her by the hair.
Relief and disgust hit me simultaneously. She’s alive, and they’re hurting her.
For once, I don’t think.
I throw myself at the man holding Harper, tackling him to the ground. For a second, we’re tangled in a painful knot of knees and legs, but then I steady myself and straighten up.
My fist crashes into his face, and I feel my knuckles graze his slimy teeth. He probably cut me up, but he’s going to be in much worse shape.
My arm has a mind of its own as it lays into him once, twice, three more times.
“Who are you?” I yell.
The man leers at me through a bloody mouth. I can see the reflection of his grin in the dim light.
This time, I slam my hand down on his throat. “Answer me!”
But I don’t have a chance to continue my interrogation. The other man grabs me from behind, yanking me backward off the first guy.
I growl and swing my elbow back into the man’s ribs. He groans, loosening his grip enough for me to turn into him. I can’t see what I’m doing in the dark, but I’ve come alive.
My limbs connect with his shins, ribs, and nose. He stumbles back, and Harper’s leg flies out in the dark. She kicks him hard in the kneecap, and he backs off.
At first I think he’s going to engage us again, but then he takes off toward the door at a sprint.
That’s what you get when you buy your loyalty: a pack of cowards who won’t take a hit for you.
I should run after him, but the first guy is recovering.
Rage remakes me as I come at him with everything I’ve got. I become someone else — someone I’ve only been a few times in the ring when I lost control.
I don’t care that he’s not fighting back. I don’t care when he goes limp.
“Who do you work for?” I yell.
“Eli!” Harper warns.
My rage turns to desperation in two seconds flat. “Who is he?”
I already know it’s Shane, but I want him to say it. I should stop, but I don’t. There’s no referee here.
I wind up for another shot, but Harper throws her hip into me, knocking me to the side.
“Eli! Stop!”
I freeze, the sound of her voice calling me back to my body. The man lying underneath me is out cold.
“You’re killing him.”
I’m shocked by the low growl that comes out of my mouth. “He deserves to die.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Harper deflate. “Maybe. But I don’t want you to be the one who kills him.”
In that moment, those words are about the only thing that could stop me from ending this guy’s life.
Shaking with rage, I get to my feet and turn toward her. It’s too dark to see her face, but her posture tells me she’s hurt and exhausted.
“Let’s get out of here,” I murmur, gripping her shoulders to steer her around the mounds. She doesn’t put up a fight, which worries me a little.
Has she forgotten that I yelled at her earlier? Harper should be furious with me — and she doesn’t even know what I was doing when she needed me.
We reach the door, and the light from the emergency stairwell immediately blinds me. It’s late, and there’s nobody out but us.
The second I catch sight of her battered face and bound hands, that dangerous rage flares up again, ripping through my arms and chest like a shot of fire.
It takes me a second to remember she fought Marta tonight, but there are definitely new bruises blooming around her eye and under her jaw.
I turn her gently and pull out my pocketknife to cut her restraints. As I saw through the plastic, I try to force my voice to sound normal. “Are you all right?”
She nods slowly, and alarm bells immediately go off in my head as her shoulders sag and her head dips forward.
She’s so still she could be falling asleep, but when I lean forward to look at her face, it’s frozen in a wave of tears.
Suddenly it feels as though the past few hours never happened. I reach around and pull her against my chest, locking her in place with both arms. She doesn’t fight it.
“They were going to k-kill me,” she stammers, her body shaking against me. A few tears plop onto my arm, and I tighten my grip.
“No. We stopped them.”
“You stopped them.”
Guilt laps at my insides as I get a whiff of her hair. It’s distinctly Harper’s smell, and the thought fills me with shame. “I almost didn’t,” I say thickly. “I was so mad at you tonight that . . .”
She stiffens but doesn’t pull away. “That what?”
“That I almost ignored your messages.”
She hiccups but doesn’t say anything, so I continue.
“If I hadn’t come . . . If you . . .” Something breaks inside me, and I grip her tighter. “I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”
Harper is quiet for a moment and then says, “You were right. I shouldn’t have fought Marta.”
After all this, she’s admitting she was wrong.
�
��No, you shouldn’t have. But it doesn’t matter. I’m so sorry.”
She turns but doesn’t look at me, and I lower my hands to her elbows. She’s staring off over my shoulder with a haunted look in her eyes.
“Those were Shane’s men. He sent them after me because Jayden ordered him to have me killed.”
“Yeah.”
“Jayden isn’t going to stop, is she?”
“No.”
This was a wake-up call — no doubt about it. Harper and I were kidding ourselves if we thought we could outsmart Constance and survive. I should have known that if Jayden didn’t get us killed on the Fringe, she’d resort to other measures.
Now that we have the money, there’s no reason for Harper not to go to 119. It has to be said, but not tonight. She’s shaky and weak, and I need to take her home.
Not caring that it’s against the rules, I reach down and take her hand. I lead her down the stairs toward Recon, and she’s quiet the whole way there.
I wish she’d say something, because I just keep replaying the horrible moment when I thought I might be too late.
If it hadn’t been for Celdon, I would have been, I remind myself. I never would have gotten a controller in time.
I walk Harper to her door and examine her one last time. She is definitely going to have a shiner tomorrow, but the damage will fade. I tell myself that there’s no harm done, but that’s a generous lie.
I brush her temple softly, careful to avoid her bruises, and her eyes flutter closed.
“Are you okay?” I whisper.
“I’ll be fine.”
I know she will be. Harper is strong. She’ll survive another compound. Hell, without Jayden lurking around, she’ll probably run it one day.
While her eyes are closed, I bend down and brush my lips against her forehead. She leans into me, but I pull away gently before I screw up all over again. My mistakes have cost her enough tonight.
“Goodnight.”
I stand and watch her until she’s safely inside her compartment and the door locks behind her. Those men are still out there somewhere, though I doubt they’ll try to hurt her again.
Shane may be dangerous, but he’s never messed with me.
twenty-five
Harper
