Resist b-2

by Sarah Crossan

  “Then who?” I shout. Could it be Quinn and Alina? She stole a tank—maybe she’d steal a zip, too. But how would she pilot it?

  We hurry inside and foolishly, I cover my head with my hands. The roaring of the propeller blades dwindles, then intensifies again as the zip circles overhead. “They know we’re here,” I shout above the noise.

  “This way!” We don’t have time to get back into our clothes, so we stuff them into Ronan’s backpack and sprint down the stairs. The noise is deafening. The zip is landing on the road. The whirling blades send debris flying in every direction. “Quick!” Ronan urges. I follow him through the station, jumping over human bones, and onto a road strewn with poles, their old electrical wiring still attached. Ronan heads left toward a clock tower with its hands missing.

  He runs ahead and before long there’s a distance between us. I stop as the sound of the zip finally abates and everything is still. Ronan gestures for me to follow him, but my heart is pounding, and I can’t shout to tell him, so I scuff onward and when I reach him, he takes my hand and drags me along. “What’s the matter?” he whispers.

  “I wasn’t a Premium.” He looks confused and then he touches his earlobe. Still keeping hold of my hand, he leads me down an alleyway.

  “Breathe slowly,” he says. I stop and take in deep lungsful of air. While he clambers back into his trousers, shirt, and coat, I focus on keeping my heart from bursting through my ribs.

  “Here!” a voice nearby calls out. Ronan takes my hand again and we hide behind a stinking old wheelie bin. He opens his coat and wraps me up in it. I feel his chest next to my back and sink in deeper for warmth. He rests the hand holding his gun on my stomach.

  “Okay?” he whispers. My teeth are chattering. I am too cold to nod.

  Ronan squeezes me tighter as someone prowls the alleyway. Garbage crunches and squelches under the weight of a boot. The barrel of a gun comes into view. And a face.

  Quinn.

  “Bea?” He stares at me, wrapped up with Ronan.

  There are more footsteps and a voice in the alleyway. “See anything?”

  Quinn looks away. “Nothing. I’ll keep looking. They can’t be far.” The footsteps recede.

  I struggle out of Ronan’s embrace and throw my arms around Quinn. He stays still and stiff. “Quinn,” I whisper, bending down, picking up Ronan’s sweater and pulling it over my head. My legs are bare. Quinn looks away and so does Ronan. I feel tears at the corners of my eyes, which I wipe away with the back of my hand.

  “Ronan Knavery?” Quinn says. “And where’s Jazz?”

  “Your father picked her up,” Ronan says. “She’s safe.”

  “My father?”

  “He wants you back. He’s going to protect you,” Ronan says.

  Quinn squints. He’s as suspicious of Ronan as I was. “Let’s go, Bea,” he says, taking my hand.

  “Where are you going?” Ronan asks.

  “None of your business.” Quinn begins to pull me away, but I stay rooted.

  “I think your dad is really looking for you, Quinn.” I press my hand against his cheek, so he’ll look at me.

  And it works. “You believe him?” he asks. But it isn’t about whether or not I believe Ronan, it’s about Quinn having a chance to reconcile with his father. If someone told me I could see my dad again, I’d listen to what he had to say.

  “We have a plan to get rid of the Ministry, if we can convince your dad to help.”

  “He’ll listen to you, I’m sure,” Ronan says.

  “Me? He hates me. Just go home, Ronan.” Quinn’s tone is belittling. But Ronan doesn’t deserve it. He’s only been kind, and Jazz and I would be dead if he hadn’t shown up.

  “Come back to the pod, and we’ll change things together,” Ronan says, pounding his palm with his fist. “Why struggle out here?”

  Quinn laughs. “The only thing that’ll change the pod is if every one of those ministers croaks,” he says.

  “So let’s see to it that they do,” Ronan says.

  This gets Quinn’s attention. He prods Ronan in the chest. “Like you’d give up your fancy house and art studio for the likes of Bea.”

  “He isn’t lying,” I say, though how can I be one hundred percent sure? I only know what he’s told me.

  “Where are they?” someone shouts from the road. Quinn blinks and looks at me.

  “Auxiliaries wouldn’t trust Jude Caffrey or Cain Knavery’s son. I need you both,” Ronan says.

  “Vanya’s going to tear out your liver and have it for dinner,” the voice shouts.

  Quinn holds my face in his hands. Oh, I missed him. “Is there any chance of this working?” he asks.

  I nod. “Your dad took Jazz. I think he’s changing, Quinn. If there’s any chance at all, shouldn’t we take it?”

  “Vanya’s nuts. We’re dead if we go back there without Jazz. She’s Vanya’s daughter,” Quinn says, more to himself than to Ronan and me. Suddenly he takes Ronan by the coat collar. Ronan doesn’t flinch. “This better not be a trap,” he says, and steps behind the wheelie bin so he’s out of view of the street. “Now we have to get out of here,” he says.

  “This way,” Ronan says without another second’s discussion, and runs to the end of the alleyway. We follow, but as we reach him, he turns around, his eyes wide.

  “It’s blocked,” he says, reloading his gun. “Only way out is past whoever you came with.”

  “Quinn, let’s get moving. Where are you?” the disembodied voice calls.

  Ronan puts a finger to his lips and holds his gun ready.

  “QUINN!”

  Quinn looks at Ronan’s gun. “Unless his shot is spot on, this could go very badly,” he whispers to me. I open my mouth, about to tell him that Ronan is a perfect shot, when Quinn releases my hand. “Go to the pod with Ronan and I’ll follow. If this is going to work, we should gather everyone to help. I’ll get the others and join you.”

  I feel lightheaded. “I need you,” I tell Quinn, hoping he knows how true this is. It was true even when we were only friends.

  “Alina and Silas have to be part of this. It’s their fight,” he says. “Besides, they’re the ones with the connections and skills.”

  “But . . .”

  “Hide.” He pushes me toward the wall, where I hunker down behind a pile of garbage. “You, too,” he tells Ronan, who shakes his head and keeps his gun pointed. “Protect Bea,” he says. Ronan hesitates for a couple of moments, then dives next to me. I must be breathing loudly because he puts his hand over the blowoff valve in my mask.

  Quinn fastens the top button of his coat and readjusts the strap of his rifle. “Stay hidden,” he says.

  “Anything?” the voice booms.

  “Nope,” Quinn says.

  “Then let’s get out of here. The drifters must have taken them. Vanya isn’t going to like this. I wouldn’t want to be you when we get back.” The man behind the voice snorts.

  Quinn stands motionless, and once the man has retreated, looks at me. My hands are still covered in Jazz’s blood. My frame is thinner than it ever was. I haven’t washed in a long time. I look exactly like someone who needs to be protected. “I love you, Bea,” he says, and before I can protest or tell him I love him, too, he takes off down the alleyway and is gone.

  27

  ALINA

  Vanya wouldn’t hear of me going along with Quinn in the zip, so we have to sit tight. Maude and Bruce have been put to work in the greenhouse. The rest of us are in a cardio room doing interval training with a girl and guy we don’t know.

  Terry, who sat with us in the dining hall last night, comes into the room carrying a handful of papers. “Just the newbies,” he says. We stop the treadmills, and he hands us each a list printed on heavy gray paper. I rub it between my fingers.

  “Is this stone?” Song asks, turning the schedule over in his hands.

  Terry nods. “Yep. We finally managed to make up a batch.”

  “Limestone and resin,” So
ng says. “At The Grove we never tried. Too busy with the trees.”

  “What is this, anyway?” Dorian asks, reading.

  “Schedules for tomorrow. You’ll get your permanent ones soon.”

  I eye the schedule. Morning activities are pretty standard: cardio, meditation, breaks for food. But the entire evening is consumed by something called a Pairing Ceremony.

  Dorian waves the paper at Terry. “Pairings?”

  “You’ll be told your vocation, get paired, and move into the main house. Most of you, anyway. Some people just get given a vocation and the pairing comes later.”

  Silas, who’s breathing heavily after hiking hills for almost an hour, repeats Dorian’s question. “Paired?”

  Terry fidgets with the schedules still in his hands. “Didn’t Vanya explain?” Silas shakes his head. “You’ll be given your permanent partners,” Terry says.

  “Like work buddies,” Song says. “I saw people going about in pairs and I wondered.”

  “Sort of.” Terry smiles and makes to leave.

  Silas holds him back. “So I could be partnered with Alina?”

  “Well, you’re cousins, so no,” Terry says. He shifts from one foot to the other. “You have to be genetically compatible. You know?” Silas scowls. Dorian and Song, who are standing side by side, frown. But after the tests they’ve done on us, we aren’t completely shocked: Not only will Vanya choose what each of us spends the rest of our lives doing, but she’ll also select our mates. It’s almost enough to make me pine for the pod. Almost. “Breeding’s encouraged and most pairs have children who might actually survive . . . this.” Terry waves his hand around the room, but he means the world beyond it—Earth. “Comes naturally, I suppose.”

  “Naturally?” Silas says through gritted teeth.

  “So where are the children?” I try to keep my voice steady, remembering the girl in the attic, the fear in her eyes, the sweat on her forearms, and the doctor cool and detached as she counted her own contractions. Will motherhood be my fate, if we stay here?

  “We keep them in a nursery and train them from birth,” Terry says.

  “You take away the girls’ babies?” I ask, stepping closer to Terry. He doesn’t make the rules here, but I have an urge to hurt him anyway.

  “I have no intention of breeding. Ever,” Silas says. Having loved Inger and lost him, I’m not surprised by Silas’s outrage.

  “But you want to join us. This is what we do,” Terry says simply.

  Silas sits on the end of his treadmill with his head in his hands. We huddle around him. We’re too stunned to ask any more questions, and it’s clear Terry has no power, so we ignore him sneaking out. “It’s a baby mill,” Silas says. “No wonder she’s not interested in Maude or Bruce.” He glances at the couple training in the room. They’re gushing with sweat and probably haven’t much energy to pay any attention to us, but Silas waves us to the other end of the room just in case. “We have to get away from here.”

  “And where would we go?” Dorian asks.

  Silas glowers at him. “Does it matter?”

  “Maybe we’ll all get paired with someone normal,” Dorian says. Is he serious? Does he know what he’s saying?

  “Yeah, cool. Maybe you’ll get some hot concubine,” Silas says. “Think about it from Alina’s perspective.” But I wish they wouldn’t—I don’t want the decision to be about me being a girl. It has to be the best thing for all of us.

  “Leaving has to be our last resort. There’s no air out there. We’ll be dead in a week,” Dorian says.

  “After this ridiculous ceremony, we’ll be forced to . . .” Silas nudges a water bottle on the floor with his foot. I put my arms around him to stop him trembling. He pushes me away. “Inger’s dead and I’m supposed to get over it and get it on with some girl?” Silas and Dorian are standing eye-to-eye, ready to wrangle. Song pushes them apart and stands between them.

  “We can’t do anything until we know what the deal is with Quinn, Bea, and Jazz,” I say.

  “Then we wait,” Dorian says.

  Silas rolls his eyes. “If we wait, we might not get another chance to talk about it. Sorry, but which bit of this sickening thing don’t you understand?”

  Dorian’s eyes widen, and he lifts his fists as though about to hit Silas, when the door opens again.

  It’s Abel. “Don’t leave,” he says, looking at me and shaking Silas’s hand. “Terry said you were in here and that you were pretty upset about what he told you.”

  “We thought you were dead. As well as other things,” Silas says.

  “You know each other?” Dorian asks. His hands are still fists.

  “Remember when I got to The Grove I told you that Abel had been killed? This is him,” I say. I can’t look at Abel for more than a second.

  “But you’re not Resistance,” Dorian tells Abel.

  Abel ignores him. “You’ll be shot before you make it past the fountain. Besides, where would you go? If you don’t suffocate, you’ll starve. And Vanya doesn’t make life easy when you return, which you will.” I’m troubled by the idea of pairings, but I can’t help wondering how I’d feel if I knew I’d get Abel. Would that change things?

  “That’s exactly what I’ve been telling them,” Dorian says, as though Abel’s his best friend. He folds his arms across his chest. The rest of us look to Silas. If he and Dorian don’t find a way to agree, the group will come apart, and that can’t happen; we’ve already lost too many people.

  “Whatever we do, we do it together,” I say.

  “Then we’re staying,” Dorian says.

  “We’re leaving,” Silas corrects.

  “Give it a week,” Abel suggests. “If you decide I was wrong, I’ll help you escape.”

  “What’s in it for you?” Silas asks.

  Abel pauses and looks at me. “What the Resistance was doing was worthwhile. Together we might persuade Vanya that there’s something to replanting trees.” I study him. Is he patronizing us?

  If he is, Song doesn’t seem to notice. “But Vanya as good as told us she left The Grove because she didn’t see a point to planting,” he says.

  “We have to show her she’s wrong,” Abel says.

  Silas lets out a long, heavy sigh and throws his head back. “Three days,” Silas says. “But we still need to talk, Abel.”

  The building shudders, and we are silent. “The zip’s back,” I say.

  28

  QUINN

  The seat next to me is empty when Bea should be sitting in it, her leg pressing against mine. My body clenches as I think of her head resting against Ronan Knavery’s chest, and the zip lands with a clunk.

  We pull off our earphones and jump out of the aircraft.

  Maks takes me to an outbuilding and kicks open the door. “Tell Vanya we’re back,” he tells the pilot, who walks off. I’m yanked along a passageway into a space divided into four prison cells. A girl of about fifteen or sixteen with olive skin is in one and next to her is a guy the same age. She looks up, afraid. “We didn’t steal anything,” she says.

  “Why would we?” the boy adds.

  “Please let us out of here.” She presses her face between the bars.

  “Pipe down,” Maks says, and the girl immediately eases herself away from the bars and into a corner. He turns to me and points at an empty cell. “In there,” he says.

  “What have I done wrong?”

  He raises one eyebrow. He’s so big, it would take nothing for him to squash me, so I just do what he says.

  He hasn’t even closed the door when Vanya blazes in, heading straight for my cell. “Where is she?” she asks, prodding my chest with her finger.

  “They were probably kidnapped. We found three dead drifters in the station. Looks like there’d been a struggle not long ago,” I say. Vanya pinches the tube connecting my airtank to the facemask, completely cutting off my air supply. I pull off my facemask and try taking a breath. It’s no good. It’s like swallowing boiling water. I co
ugh and splutter. Vanya lets go of my tubing. I hold the facemask back over my mouth and nose and suck in as much air as I can manage.

  “I’m extremely disappointed,” she says.

  “He isn’t lying. There were three bodies in the old railway station and blood everywhere,” Maks interjects. “Freshly dead, I’d say.”

  Vanya rubs her head and paces. “Let me ask this: Is it possible Jazz was never with you? Is it possible you knew she was my daughter and decided it would be a clever way of forcing me to look for your friend?”

  “Jazz was the one who knew the others were heading here and could lead us.”

  “My daughter was leading you here,” Vanya says, her eyes losing some of their hardness. Maks approaches her and gently rubs her back. She steps away from him. “If what you’ve told me is true, Jazz is as good as dead and you’ve proven yourself to be useless.”

  “He’d fit in okay,” Maks mutters.

  “Would he?” Vanya says, heading for the exit and disappearing.

  Maks shuts the door to the cell and attaches a heavy padlock.

  “Why are you locking me in?” I ask again. And for how long? I need to tell the others the plan to get back to the pod and overthrow the Ministry.

  Maks laughs. “Makes no difference whether you sleep in here or the main house: You’ve been a prisoner since you arrived.”

  29

  ALINA

  It kicks off in the cabin after dinner. “You want to throttle me? Go ahead!” Dorian shouts. He rips off his jacket and rolls up the sleeves of his shirt.

  Song is standing between them yet again, so they don’t rip each other to pieces. “Calm down,” he says.

  Maude and Bruce are lying on their bunks with their hands behind their heads. “Let’s have a good ol’ fashioned boxing match. Ding-ding—Round One!” Maude says.

  Bruce laughs but gets up and stands between Dorian and Silas, too. “Not sure what’s going on, boys, but you can’t be having it as hard as us,” he says. He shows us his blistered hands. “So what is the point of all this squabbling?” Bruce asks.