by Tarah Benner
Flipping open the lid, I practically groan at the heavenly combination of heat and food in my hands. The box is packed with quinoa, steamed greens, tofu, and — because there is a God — glazed sweet potatoes.
Celdon rolls the water bottle across the room and tosses me a plastic fork. I waste no time shoveling a colorful clump of food into my mouth.
I don’t taste the first few bites. I don’t even think I chew.
“Hey, hey! Slow down!” says Celdon.
I shoot him a wild glare, and his face drains of color.
“You haven’t eaten in days,” he adds sheepishly. “You’re gonna make yourself sick.”
“Worried they’ll find out you fed me?” I snarl.
Celdon opens his mouth, but no words come out. I’m so disgusted that it’s diminishing my enjoyment of the meal. Celdon isn’t my friend — or Harper’s, for that matter. He’s in Constance, which means he’s been playing us the whole time.
It belatedly occurs to me that the food could be poisoned, but that seems too basic for Constance.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer. He looks too ashamed.
“You’re fucking unbelievable,” I say between bites. “You know that?”
Celdon’s face falls into a dark scowl. “It’s not what you think.”
“Bullshit. It’s exactly what I think,” I say, stabbing into two warm tofu chunks more forcefully than I mean to.
“No, it’s not. I’m not really on their side.”
“Sure looks like you are,” I mutter, getting more and more angry every second. “I should have known. Hacking into our interfaces and computers? That’s advanced shit. They’d need someone who’s as good as Harper says you are. It’s so obvious now.”
“That wasn’t me!” Celdon splutters. “And it wasn’t that advanced. I could have done a way better job. If I’d hacked your computer, you wouldn’t have known that I’d done it.”
“So you put yourself up for the job?”
“I’m still on your side, Eli,” he growls. “I’m not going to dangle that video in front of the drifters to lure in Owen. And I’m gonna do what I can to help you and Harper from the inside.”
“Well, you’re doing a fucking great job so far,” I growl, my voice dripping with sarcasm.
He lets out a frustrated burst of air from between his teeth. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Yeah. You slithered in as soon as they finished torturing and starving me for . . . How many days has it been?”
His eyes shift to the side. “Three.”
“Thanks a lot. You’re a fucking hero.”
“You know what they’d do to me if I got caught in here?”
“I think I have a pretty good idea!” I snap, gesturing my fork around the chamber.
That makes him shut up.
“You know what the worst part is?”
He doesn’t say anything.
“Harper trusts you with her life. She’ll be devastated when she finds out. She’s never gonna forgive you for this.”
“Harper doesn’t ever need to know,” says Celdon, fixing me with an imploring look. “I’m just here until I find out what I need to know. Then I’m out. I swear.”
I stare at him in disbelief. Celdon is looking at me with a strange mix of anger and panic in his eyes. That’s when it occurs to me that he actually believes that’s how it works.
“Out?” I repeat, my voice echoing in the silent chamber. “There is no ‘out.’ You don’t get to quit Constance.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” he yells. “I don’t mean out of Constance. I mean out of this compound. One-nineteen was a bust, but there has to be somewhere we can go.”
“Why did you join in the first place?”
“They know what happened to my mom.”
“Your mom?” This has taken an unexpected turn.
“She gave me up when I was a kid. Harper told me the leaders in charge of the Fringe Program killed her to get to me, but they didn’t. My mother is alive, and Constance knows where she is.”
“Is that what they told you?”
I never took Celdon for a fool, but his desperate desire to feel hope has led him into denial. Maybe everybody is in denial when it comes to their families.
He nods.
“They’re probably just messing with you. Jayden and all the rest of them will do anything to get what they want. They killed Sullivan Taylor. They almost killed Harper. You think they’re above making up some lie about your mother to get you on board?”
“No,” he says in a hollow voice. “I’m not an idiot. But it’s the only lead I’ve got.”
“What are you hoping to find?” I snap. “Whatever reason you ended up in the Institute, it isn’t good. Either Harper was lying and your mom did give you up, or she was telling the truth and the board had her killed.”
He looks away. “I know that, okay? But either way . . . it’s gotta be better than not knowing.”
I shake my head and open my mouth to speak, but Celdon cuts me off. “Tell me something: Has your life gotten better or worse since you found out Owen was alive?”
I don’t answer. I don’t have to. Owen has brought me nothing but heartache and trouble since the day I found him in that basement.
“You’re being tortured because of him,” says Celdon. “But would you rather go back to thinking he was dead?”
I shake my head. Celdon’s still a slimy little sack of shit for joining up with Constance, but I understand why he did it.
“Where’s Harper?” I ask.
I’m dreading the answer, but I have to know.
“She’s in the cages. They told her she’s looking at ten to twenty years in there.”
“Shit.” Somehow I’d hoped that Harper would find a way out of things as she always seems to. “Well, I guess that’s longer than I’ve got.”
“I don’t understand why you’re protecting him,” says Celdon. “Just tell Jayden what you know. It’s not like that information is actually going to lead her to Owen.”
I don’t say anything right away. I’m not sure if I can trust him.
“What makes you think it’s Owen I’m protecting?”
“Well, you certainly aren’t protecting yourself.”
I tilt my head to the side, waiting for him to catch up.
Finally, the realization dawns on him. “You think sitting here letting them torture you is protecting Harper?”
“Isn’t it?”
He opens his mouth, looking lost for words.
“Look. There’s no other reason for Jayden to let Harper live. She’s a liability. She knows too much. But right now, they need to keep her alive to use as a bargaining chip. The longer I hold out, the more time it buys her.”
Celdon rubs his head in frustration. He knows Harper’s time is limited as well as I do. He just doesn’t want to face the truth.
“You have to get her out of here,” I add. “Any chance you get. I don’t give a fuck who your mother is or why she gave you up. That’s in the past. Harper is alive now, and she thinks you’re her friend. If you still care about her at all, you’ll get her out.”
Celdon gives me a shaky nod and gestures at the empty takeout container. “Yeah, okay . . . Are you done?”
I nod.
“Somebody will be in to check on you in a few hours,” he says, taking the box and the fork. “I should go.”
The room has started to warm up anyway, so I toss Celdon his blanket and cross my arms over my knees to hold on to some of the remaining heat.
“I’ll be back with more food tomorrow if I can leave my compartment without anybody noticing. But you better act weak so they don’t know you’ve been fed.”
Celdon folds the blanket under his arm and turns to go. “How long do you think you can keep this up?”
“As long as I have to.”
There’s no doubt in my mind that I could take another three days of this — a week, if Constance�
�s patience holds out that long.
They can torture me all they want: beat me, starve me, drive me to the edge of insanity and bring me back to remind me of my misery. I’ll keep fighting until my body cannibalizes all my muscle tissue and my organs shut down.
I’ll fight as long as I can to protect Harper.
* * *
Without the blaring music and the gnawing hunger in my belly, I actually manage to get a few hours of sleep on the dusty chamber floor. I still shiver violently the entire time, but I no longer feel as though I’m on the verge of death.
I awake to the muffled sound of voices: a man and a woman. I can’t distinguish the speakers’ words, but I can tell the woman is angry.
After a moment, the voices fall silent.
The door creaks open once again, and I rise up into a seated position. The light from the tunnel makes it impossible to distinguish my visitor’s features, but I’d know that silhouette anywhere: short and trim, fists clenched at her sides, hair slicked back in a tight bun.
Jayden.
Reaching behind her outside the door, Jayden flips the switch, and my chamber is illuminated once again by soft lights along the crown molding.
Surprisingly, Jayden isn’t wearing her usual smug expression. Her face is grave, and she’s practically shaking with fury.
I’m hardly surprised. Jayden hasn’t gotten answers from me in three days. She isn’t any closer to locating Owen or exterminating the drifters’ leaders. From her perspective, I’ve been beating her at her own game.
“I received an interesting message this morning,” she says in a casual voice. “Apparently, one of my own officers filed a human rights complaint with the board.”
I just stare straight ahead, waiting for her to continue.
“Somehow, someone found out you were being detained here and decided to make an issue of it as a matter of principle.”
My mind is racing, trying to figure out who besides Harper would know where I’m being held.
Miles might have his suspicions, but he would never go to the board. He’s smart enough to know it wouldn’t do any good, and he wouldn’t risk his punishment blowing back on Brooke.
“Now, who besides Cadet Riley would be that foolish? Hmm?”
“No idea.”
“You don’t have any idea?” Jayden repeats in a bemused voice. “Well . . . I assure you I’ll find out. That way you know whom to blame.”
“Do what you’ve got to do,” I growl, keeping my gaze fixed on the blank wall in front of me.
“Oh, I’m not going to do anything,” says Jayden. “My hands are tied from this point forward, which is really too bad for you.”
Despite my resolve to act as though her news isn’t affecting me, I turn my head slightly so I can see her expression out of the corner of my eye. “Too bad for me?”
She nods. “I know this hasn’t been easy for you, but all you had to do was answer my questions . . . Then you would have been free to go. I may have even been able to negotiate a reduced sentence for Riley. I can’t do that now because your case has become a matter of public record.”
I wait with bated breath, not bothering to conceal my anxiety. If the board has gone public with the charges, that means everyone in the compound now thinks I’m a traitor. But that isn’t the worst of it.
“The game’s over, Parker,” says Jayden in a flat voice. “We’ve reached the end of the line.”
nine
Owen
I awake to the smell of coffee brewing in the next room — which is weird, considering I don’t drink coffee.
It’s a bittersweet smell loaded with memories of home: my mom reading the paper on Saturday morning while my dad made chocolate chip pancakes.
Now I associate it with Sage. That girl can sniff out an old can of coffee in a looted grocery store like no one I’ve ever met. She lives for the stuff.
Behind my eyelids, I can see the pinkish glow of sunlight streaming in through the cracks between the window boards. I’m lying in my shit-tastic twin bed wishing I could go back to sleep and wake up in somebody else’s life.
“You’re awake,” says a musical voice from across the room.
I open my eyes and get a jolt of lust at the sight of Sage standing in the doorway.
The haze of steam rising out of the cracked mug in her hand gives her a dreamlike quality and makes me wonder if I’m actually awake yet.
Sage is wearing an oversized blue Oxford shirt and nothing else. It isn’t mine. She likes to scavenge expensive shirts from men’s boutiques, tuck them into hiking shorts, and pile on all the clunky silver jewelry she can find.
I don’t get the way she dresses, but she could walk in here wearing a paper bag and I’d still get hard. Right now, all I see are cinnamon legs that go for miles.
I reach out for her groggily, but instead of going in for round two, she places her coffee on the floor and nestles into my side so that her long black hair fans out across my stomach.
“What are you doing today?” she whispers.
“Why do you ask?”
“I thought maybe we could spend the day together . . . just the two of us.”
“You know I can’t,” I mutter. “I have to meet Malcolm.”
Sage rolls onto her shoulder and gives me a look that every woman I know has mastered: disappointment.
She wants me to grab her, pull her into my arms, and stare into her almond-shaped eyes with adoration. She wants me to say “fuck Malcolm” and then spend the whole morning loving on her.
I want that, too, if I’m being honest, but I like Sage too much to give her the wrong idea.
“Sorry,” I say with a shrug. “I can’t get out of this. I’m already on Malcolm’s shit list.”
“Ugh! Who cares about Malcolm?” she says, swatting me playfully. “I don’t see why you can’t just leave.”
I scoff. Of course she doesn’t. Sage blows into town in the back of strangers’ pickup trucks with that old red bike she takes everywhere and spends her days shopping ruins. She goes where she wants . . . does what she wants. I envy that about her.
“Leave?” I repeat. “And go where?”
She purses her lips but doesn’t say anything. We’ve had this conversation too many times to count, and it always turns into a fight.
“Anywhere I go, there’s gonna be people like Malcolm who want something from me. At least here I —”
“Have a life?”
I let out a frustrated sigh. I’m not sure you could call what I have a life. I’m sleeping on some dead old lady’s sheets in a house full of ceramic cats. My best friend in the world left me high and dry, and my brother hates me. I report to an ego-tripping douchebag who would have been just another thug before Death Storm.
These days, Sage is probably the closest thing that I have to a friend. I should never have complicated things by sleeping with her. But she showed up at a time when I desperately needed something good in my life, and I gave in to that feeling.
But the more nights she climbs into my bed, the more I start to feel as though I’m doing something wrong.
One of these days she’s going to ask to stay with me, and Sage doesn’t belong here. She belongs in another world — a world that existed before Death Storm. It’s the reason she rescues nice clothes from abandoned stores and hunts down pretty things that used to have value.
But I’m not some designer shirt that she pulled out of the rubble. She can’t dust me off and give me another life. She doesn’t know half the things that I’ve done, but I’ll always be torn up, dirty, and really not worth saving.
“I know it feels like you’re trapped here, but we could get away,” she says.
I shake my head. It’s easy for her to say. She’s a hot girl who’s got men tripping over themselves to help her. She never has to wonder where her next meal’s gonna come from or worry that she won’t have a roof to sleep under. Doors fly open for her when she rolls into town.
“Whatever you and Malcolm
are working on . . . you don’t have to go through with it.”
“It’s done,” I say, glaring up at the ceiling. “There’s nothing to do now except wait.”
Sage sighs and runs a hand through her hair. “I wish you would tell me what you were doing.”
“You know I can’t.”
“Yeah. But this one’s different for you. I can tell.”
“No, it’s not. It’s just another job.”
Sage shakes her head. “You haven’t been sleeping, Owen. You toss and turn all night. And a few weeks ago, you just disappeared. You still haven’t told me what really happened that day at the old base.”
“You know what happened. Jackson bitched out and left me to deal with Malcolm’s crew alone. They came at me, and I had to put them down. Malcolm hasn’t trusted me since.”
“I know what you told Malcolm. But I also know you, and I can tell when you’re hiding something.”
I shake my head.
“Don’t you trust me?” she asks. Sage knows when she’s onto something, and she’s hurt that I won’t tell her.
“What do you want me to say?” I demand. “That Jackson just fucking left without telling me? That my best friend is gone? That he left me with a leader I hate?”
“This isn’t about Jackson,” Sage snaps. “His leaving wasn’t a surprise to me or you or anyone else. You knew he was disgusted with Malcolm. That isn’t why you’re upset.”
I roll my eyes in an effort to play it off, but Sage is dangerously intuitive.
“What I can’t figure out is why you’re lying to me.”
“Because it’s better for you not to know.”
“Why is it better?” she asks, turning to face me and tucking her legs under her butt. Sage’s voice is never harsh, but it’s shining with resolve.
“Look,” I say, squeezing my eyes shut and massaging my temple. “It doesn’t even matter, all right? It’s over — done.”
Sage makes a noise of protest, but before she can put her feelings into words, I jump out of bed and start hunting for a pair of clean shorts to wear. Most of my clothes are still stuffed at the bottom of the ratty backpack I’ve been living out of for the past five years. It smells like home: sweat and campfire and gun smoke.
