by Tracey Ward
“Not exactly.”
We all turn to look at Trent.
“What do you mean?” Vin demands.
“When we left there was a cannibal guard still inside the tunnel, waiting just under that drain.”
“Bryan,” I breathe, remembering my tall creeper.
“He was one of them?” Vin asks, pointing to the ceiling where the cannibals wait somewhere above us.
“Sort of,” Ryan explains. “He was with them but he wasn’t exactly like them. He was more… predatory than the rest.”
“He freaked me out,” I agree.
“Roll call! Rec room! Now!” Vin commands, turning sharply to the crowd at the door. “No one is left alone! Buddy system goes into effect immediately! Go!”
Everyone flies into action. Only Vin, my Lost Boys, two guards, and I stay in the showers. When we’re alone, Vin turns to the guards, his eyes bright and hot.
“Lock this space down. That drain is a weakness. Seal it.”
“Wait,” I tell the guards, turning to Vin. “You can’t do that. That’s how we got in. How will we get out?”
“You’ll take the water, same way you left before. You don’t need to sneak in and out.”
“Yes, we do. What if the other Colonies have eyes on this place? They can’t see us coming and going over the water or they’ll know something is up. This tunnel is our only way.”
“You expect me to leave it open to the cannibals after this?” he asks angrily, pointing to the woman on the floor.
“Guard it, but don’t seal it. We need it open.”
“For what exactly? Where are you going?”
“It’s not where I’m going, it’s who’s coming. Elijah, the head of the cannibals, will want to come here to talk about what we do next.”
Vin steps up until he’s towering over me. “And what do you think is happening? You think I’m allying with them now?”
“You need to team up with someone,” I snap, not intimidated by him. “You can’t keep this place by yourself. Word is going to get out to Marlow and the Colonies that this place is under new management, and when that happens you’ll have angry armies knocking at your door. What are you going to do then? You’ll lose this place so fast you won’t even remember it, and any chance we had of being free will be dead.”
He chuckles. “Still reaching for that star, huh, Kitten? Freedom?”
“Isn’t that what all of us want?”
“It’s a dream. A stupid one.”
“You wanna be Marlow’s stable boy forever?” I ask, aiming for the belt, or just below. “Do you want to answer to him for the rest of your life? You’re not that old, Vin. You’ve got a lot of years left and you can spend all of them under another man’s thumb or you can be your own man and live your own life free and clear of all of them—the Hive, the Colonists, even the whores.”
Vin stares at me with hard eyes that give nothing away but I know he hears me. I know he wants that freedom because Ryan is wrong: we are alike. And deep down Vin wants it just as badly as I do.
“We have one chance,” Ryan says, coming to stand beside me. “One shot at taking them out, but without this Colony we have nothing.”
Vin steps back suddenly, rolling his shoulders. He glances back at the guards watching from behind him. Listening.
“We’ll have a meeting,” he says curtly. “We’ll let the people decide what we do, both with the building and the cannibals.”
“Are you going to kill them?” I ask anxiously.
He shrugs. “We’ll see, won’t we?”
***
It only takes ten minutes to round up everyone in the entire building—two hundred people plus the cannibal prisoners and three reluctant outsiders rallied into one location in under ten minutes. Vin runs a tight ship.
Ryan, Trent, and I stand against the wall in the common room watching people chat quietly as we wait for Vin to break the news. With how quickly gossip flies in this place, I assume everyone already knows. But do they know who they’ve lost?
Vin stands in a huddle with six other people—four men, two women. I don’t recognize any of them. They’re talking in hushed tones, the men and women holding pieces of paper that they were all pointing to at first, but now dangle limp and useless in each of their hands. Vin is standing in front of them, his arms crossed over his chest and his handsome face patiently serious.
“Did you know her?” Ryan whispers to me.
I shrug. “I don’t know. I couldn’t recognize her. I doubt it, though. I see most of the people I was even a little bit close to.” I jut my chin toward the southern corner of the room where a big man stands next to an older redhead and a young brunette. “That’s the kitchen staff over there. Aside from Vin and Nats they were my only real friends. They’re the ones who first told me about the rebellion.”
Ryan follows my gaze. I think Trent was already looking.
“They made the pie?” Ryan asks, his face very, very serious.
I laugh. “Yeah, they made a pumpkin pie to bribe me. It worked. It was delicious.”
“What are their names?” Trent asks.
“Oh, um,” I stutter, thrown by the question. It’s personal and it’s coming from Trent. I expect battle stat questions from him: How much can they lift? What’s their dominant kill hand? Weapon of choice? “The big guy is Steven. The redhead next to him is Crystal, and the brown-haired girl is Amber. The other ones I’m not sure about. I think one of the other guys is named John? Don? Dan? I don’t remember. We didn’t talk much.”
“Where’s Nats?” Ryan asks.
I scan the room but I don’t find her. My blood goes cold. “I don’t see her.”
“They might not have everyone here yet.”
“Vin would have recognized her,” I say, voicing the fear coursing through my veins. “If it was her in that room, he would have known her.”
Ryan only nods and I wonder who exactly I’m trying to convince—him or me?
Suddenly Vin steps into the center of the room. Without a word from him, without a gesture, the entire room falls into silent expectation.
“Whoa,” I breathe.
“No doubt who the boss is here,” Ryan mutters.
“As you all probably know by now, there’s been a breach,” Vin begins. He isn’t even trying to raise his voice. He’s speaking in a normal tone, just daring people to make a sound above him. “It’s been contained. The intruders have been captured. Their intentions are still up for debate, but we’ll get to that in a minute. The most important thing that has to be addressed immediately is one I’m sure you all know about by now. We’ve had a fatality in the building.”
There’s a scattering of gasps. Maybe a few people were somehow out of the loop, but for the most part the room is unaffected. They already knew the what. They want to know who.
“I’ve spoken to the Mayors,” Vin continues, looking over his shoulder at the men and women he had been talking to, “and through roll call and head counts we’ve been able to find out who we’ve lost. It was Rebecca, from the gardens.”
A wider-spread gasp runs through the ranks. There are tears immediately being shed and quiet sobs are peppered through the room.
“I know we’re all very sad to hear about what happened to her. We’re also very angry because her death could have been avoided.”
“I heard it was a Risen attack,” a man calls out.
“Are there Risen in the building?” someone else cries out fearfully.
Vin shakes his head solemnly. “It looked like a Risen attack but we’re sure it wasn’t.”
“Then what was it?”
“Who was it?”
Vin glances at me for the briefest of seconds. Just long enough to make me sweat.
“It was a cannibal,” he tells the room.
Chaos. Absolute freak out chaos. People seriously scream in fear. I haven’t seen anything like it since the early days, and the sight of it now makes me shift on my feet nervously, eyeing the exits
.
“Calm down, calm down,” Vin says loudly, his voice bizarrely soothing. “The Guard is sweeping the building right now. If any other outsiders are still here, they won’t be for long.”
“Are these them?” a woman shouts, pointing angrily at the cannibals held prisoner.
“Yes,” Vin confirms. “They’re cannibals.”
More chaos. There are curses mixed inside angry shouts. Some people move farther away from the prisoners, eyeing them cautiously. For their part, the cannibals stay perfectly still. None of them make a sound or move a muscle as a room full of people is whipped into an angry frenzy around them.
“Stop!” Vin commands sternly.
The Colonists quiet almost immediately.
“It’s being taken care of. You’re safe. I promise you. From what I’ve been able to find out so far, these are not the people responsible for what happened to Rebecca, though we are still looking into it and they will remain in custody.”
“They should be killed!”
“Put them outside the gates! Let the Risen have them!”
Movement from the cannibals catches my eye. I glance over to find Macy looking right at me, her eyes pleading and watery. She looks terrified.
“Wait!” I shout. I’ve stepped forward into the center of the room with Vin before I even realize what I’m doing. When I do realize it, when every eye in the entire place is on me, I wish I could sink into the floor and disappear. “I—we have—”
I look at Vin, feeling frantic. He’s watching me calmly, waiting. They’re all waiting. All watching. I’m gonna be sick.
I swallow hard. “I brought them here to help you.”
“You brought them here?”
“Why isn’t she tied up?”
“She’s one of us! She went for help!”
“She brought death!”
“No, I didn’t!” I shout defensively. “I—We tried to bring The Hive, but—”
“The Hive? Rapists and druggies! That was your plan?”
“I’d rather she brought The Hive than the cannibals.”
“She should have stayed gone. We’d be better off and Rebecca would be alive.”
I can’t tell for sure in the chaos, but I’m pretty sure that last shout was Lexy.
I look to Vin, feeling helpless, but what I find is nothing. He’s staring at me blankly. No emotion, no support. No help. They’re calling out The Hive, his home, as being full of rapists and drug addicts and he’s just standing here, passive. Silent. He might as well throw me to these wolves. Without his support they’ll tear me apart.
“You wanted help and that’s exactly what she brought you!”
I whip around, startled. Ryan is striding across the room like he owns the place. He comes to stand directly beside me, his body nearly touching mine.
“My name is Ryan Hyperion!” he shouts, grabbing the attention of every last person in the room. They quiet again, even though there are still murmurs drifting through the crowd. “I was a member of the Hyperion gang, a fighter in the Arena of The Hive. I recognize some of your Guard. Members of the Elevens, the Westies, the Pikes. I even recognized Vin when we arrived. And yes, we brought them here.” He points to the cannibals, all of them watching him intently. “We went to The Hive for help, but they wouldn’t give it. We went to the Vashons for help, but they wouldn’t give it. No one with the numbers we needed were willing to help us. To help you.”
Ryan pauses to look around the room, letting that sink in. Reminding them that this was all for them.
“Then we found them. Your prisoners. The people you want to kill. The people who risked everything to free you.”
“They killed Rebecca!”
“They were clear from the start that no blood would be shed if they could help it,” he replies, stretching the truth just a little bit. “The man who killed Rebecca was acting alone and he should be held accountable for his actions, no one can deny that, but you cannot condemn them all for what one man did.”
“He’s a cannibal, like them. They’re all dangerous. They should all die!”
“You’re a Colonist!” Ryan shouts back. “You’re all Colonists. You all kidnap and enslave. You should all be punished!”
The anger in the room is tangible. I want to thread my fingers through it as it weaves through the room, feel it ripple warm over my skin. It’s that real. That visceral. Ryan has touched a nerve, but he’s also hit home.
“They’re people,” he continues softly. “They’re men and women just like you, and they want what you want. They want freedom from the Colonies. They want to live with their families in the open, unafraid. Like it or not, right now we’re all beggars and we can’t afford to be choosy. You don’t have to agree with the way they live because, honestly, they don’t agree with the way that you live, but they’re still willing to work with you. I hope you have the common sense to work with them.”
“The enemy of your enemy is your friend,” Trent intones.
Ryan nods to the room. “The Leaders in the stadiums fear them just as much as you do. Take this chance to turn that weapon against them and take back what’s yours—your lives.” Ryan goes to stand beside the cannibals, turning his back on them and proving his complete lack of fear. “Talk to them. Hear them out. It doesn’t have to be here. Send them away tonight, seal your doors, but don’t turn your backs on them for good because they might be your only chance. The way things are right now, it can’t last. You can’t hold this building forever. Eventually the other Colonies will find out what’s happened here or The Hive will get wind of it, and then where will you be?”
“Enslaved,” Steven replies.
There’s a rumble of agreement, grudging and angry. But they’re not dumb. They know what’s coming and they know how fragile their situation is.
“They’ll leave tonight,” Vin tells the room, his eyes on Ryan. “We’ll send them back to their home and we’ll agree to talk about joining with them on one condition. They have to give us the man who killed Rebecca. We do with him as we see fit, no interference.”
It’ll never happen. Elijah will never allow it. Bryan may have acted outside the norm for the cannibals, I don’t really know for sure, but I do know that family is everything to them. Bryan is one of them and they’ll never give him up.
“Good,” Ryan says. “That’s good.”
“But remember this,” Vin continues. “This house will never be theirs. No matter what happens or where we go from here, they will never set foot inside these walls again. Is that clear?”
I meet his eyes, nod curtly. “Crystal.”
“Get them out of here.”
With that Vin leaves the room. I’m surprised by the abruptness of it, but I don’t have time to worry about it. Immediately people are in motion all over the room and I’m worried about the cannibals. That’s the craziest moment of my crazy day—worrying over flesh eaters.
Members of Vin’s Guard appear in the doorway. They make quick work of rounding up the cannibals and ushering them out of the room, a room that’s beginning to buzz louder and louder with discord. I’m starting to wonder if Ryan, Trent, and I shouldn’t leave tonight too.
“Joss.”
I jerk when I feel a hand on my arm, a hand attached to the quiet voice behind me. I’m pretty on-edge the moment, not really sure everyone in the room has moved past the ‘lynch her!’ phase, but I’m infinitely relieved and surprisingly happy when I turn to find Amber standing beside me.
“Sorry,” she says with a sheepish smile, retracting her hand quickly. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You didn’t,” I lie. I do it poorly, as always. I can see it in her bright blue eyes that she doesn’t believe me. “How are you?”
“Good. We’re all really good, actually. Well, except for tonight. The news about Rebecca is unbelievable.”
“I’m sorry.”
“We were worried for you there for a minute. Good thing your friend stood up.”
“Oh, ye
ah, this is Ryan.”
She smiles. “I heard. I’m Amber.”
“Hi,” Ryan says.
“I’m Trent.”
We all look at him, Ryan and I both a little uncertain.
Amber goes right on smiling, not knowing the weird she’s walking into. “Hi, Trent. I liked what you said about enemies and friends.”
“It’s a proverb. Fourth century.”
“Oh.”
“Arabian or Chinese. No one knows for sure.”
“Well, it’s cool. And fitting.”
“You work in the kitchens.”
Amber looks at me, unsure. It’s not exactly a question. “Yes?”
Trent doesn’t say anything after that. He stares at her as though he’s waiting for something. Problem is, none of us knows what the hell it is he’s waiting for.
“Anyway,” Amber says hesitantly, “we’re so glad you’re back, Joss. You were gone so long we worried we’d lost you.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. Help wasn’t exactly easy to find.”
“You did your best and we’re all grateful,” she says, lying much more convincingly than I do. “We’re lucky we had Vin while you were gone. He’s really turned this place around. It feels so different now.”
“Who are the Mayors?” Ryan asks. “Are they a council?”
“When we were a Colony we were split up into groups based on our jobs. The Guard, the gardens, the kitchen, you know. There used to be a Team Leader in charge of each group. When Vin overthrew the place, he put the Colony Team Leaders in prison and replaced them with our own people who work just like the rest of us, but they also meet with him. They’re the ones called Mayors. They’re a voice for each group.”
“Wait, hold on,” I interrupt her. “Did you say ‘when Vin overthrew the place’? What? He did it alone?”
Amber beams excitedly. “Practically. They tried to kill him twice and he survived both times.”
“And that made him valuable to you,” Ryan says thoughtfully.
“Well, yeah. It’s like what you said about the cannibals. If your enemy is afraid of it, you should use it as a weapon. After he survived the second attack when he was already injured, we were all convinced.”
