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There was a little more light, but not much. The fort was still quiet, a mass of shadows.
Three steps across the creaky boards and I was back down on the ground. I darted across the courtyard to Carrie’s room. In less than a minute I was in and out, the maps over one shoulder.
I hadn’t gone two feet when I heard another footstep on the boards. It was close.
I didn’t turn to look. I ran.
“Benson,” a voice called in a loud whisper.
Jane.
I turned back. In the darkness her silhouette made it look like she was wearing a dress, but as she got closer I could see it was her apron. She was heading out to milk the cows.
“What are you doing?” she asked as she reached me.
“Getting blankets,” I lied. Whether she believed me or not, I had no idea.
“Come on,” she whispered, and started toward the gate.
I should have stopped her right there, but I was too worried about the noise. I didn’t want to talk in the fort.
We walked down the road. Frost crunched under my feet, and every breath let out a cloud of silvery ice. Even the cloth maps were cold.
I didn’t know what to tell her. I could say that I shouldn’t have kissed her, that it was a moment of weakness, that I didn’t even realize what I was doing. But that wasn’t true. It didn’t take a moment of weakness to kiss Jane—it took a moment of daring.
I could tell her that it was because she and I couldn’t agree. Because we had no future. Because even if I had Jane and we could be together here, it wouldn’t be enough for me. I needed freedom.
But that was a lie, too, or only part of the truth. Yes, I wanted freedom, and I could never be what Jane wanted—I could never enjoy staying here, not for a year or a month or a week. But that wasn’t it.
It was because I loved someone else more. That didn’t even sound right—that made it sound like I gave Jane three stars and Becky four. It wasn’t like that. It was that, despite everything wonderful about Jane—everything I loved about Jane—I was still in love with Becky.
I was in love with Becky.
“I’m leaving,” I said.
Jane stopped. We were standing at the stream, its water murmuring beside us as it fought its way through the ice and rocks.
She faced me.
“Yesterday …” I stammered. “I shouldn’t have … I—”
Her whispered words were so quiet I could barely hear them. “I know. I knew yesterday. ”
I stared back at her, wishing I could see her face, her eyes, and not just the dim blur in front of me.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” I said, knowing immediately how stupid it sounded.
Her head moved. I couldn’t even be sure whether she shook it or nodded.
“I’ll be here,” she said weakly. “When you come back for us. ”
I wanted her to scream. I wanted her to call me a liar and a player and a bastard. I wanted her to slap me.
“Good luck,” she said. Her hand reached up to my face, and her lips touched my cheek. “Please be safe. ”
Jane pulled back her hand, paused, and then hopped quickly across the stream, darting from rock to rock in the darkness.
We met in the barn, after Jane had finished with the cows and left. Gabby was with us now, too, which made seven. Of that seven, three were wounded. It wasn’t exactly the best revolutionary army.
We sat just inside the open door, with Gabby perched on the threshold to watch for trouble. I’d laid the largest, most detailed map out on the floor in front of us, and we gathered around it on our knees.
“It looks accurate,” Shelly said, “from what I remember. It’s been a long time. ”
“It looks good to me, too,” Curtis agreed. “This is where the detention elevator goes down, and this is that first hall. ” He traced his finger along a corridor. “They took us to this waiting area, and from there I went to a surgery room. ” He studied the map for a moment, closing his eyes to think, and then tapped the map again. “I think it’s this. ”
Gabby shook her head. “I wasn’t conscious for any of that. I woke up in the cell. ”
“They’re like hospital rooms,” Curtis said, searching the map for them. “Except they have bars like a prison. It’s where you recover after surgery. ”
I’d seen rooms like that on the map. “These?”
He and Gabby both inspected them. “I think so. Yeah. ”
Shelly held up another piece of cloth. “I think this is a more detailed map of that. ”
The floor plan on that map was darker, with a lot more written in the margins. It looked like any and all details people remembered had been included—one note said the walls were white tile, and another said one of the bars on a certain cell was loose.
Becky tapped one of the scribblings and read it aloud. “‘Pass code for cell number nine starts three-seven-eight. ’”
“How do the pass codes work?” I asked, looking at Curtis and Gabby. “The note says you can reach the keypad from inside the cell?”
Gabby shrugged. “Think of a jail cell, but it has a keypad instead of a keyhole. ”
“You’re in there for a long time,” I said. “Can’t you just mess with it and figure it out?”
“No,” Carrie spoke up. “If you put in the wrong code an alarm goes off. ”
“The only problem with this map,” Becky said, “is that it doesn’t have any information about where that commissary elevator goes. ”
“None of us ever got that far,” Curtis said, and tapped the cell map again. “All we saw was surgery, the cells, and we walked through this other section when we were leaving. ”
Shelly sat back. “That brings up the big question. What’s our goal down there?”
I dug through the other maps and found one that was significantly different. While the others were quickly sketched and covered with scribbles, this one was finely drawn, annotated with clear lettering and even illustrated. It was drawn on the back of a torn white T-shirt, and labeled CONTROL ROOM.
“I read through it this morning,” I said. “Birdman was the only person to ever go there. It says he escaped at some point and opened a lot of doors trying to find his way out. He got captured here. This map was his personal drawing. ”
I laid it out for the rest of them to see. The room was long and narrow, lined with things that Birdman had marked as “machines” and “monitors. ” At the far end were two chairs in front of a row of computers, and something on the wall that looked like a window that curved inward. From the care he took with this map, it was obvious Birdman knew it was important.
We all stared at it, reading the notes. They were very descriptive—talking about the colors of the lights, the size of the monitors, the polished cement floor—but nothing that explained what we were supposed to do when we got there.
It was Shelly who finally spoke. “If we go in there and start flipping switches, we could kill someone. ”
“We’ll have to figure it out. It’s our only chance. ”
We stared at the map. Everything that kept us captive here might be destroyed in that room. Could we turn off the implants? Turn off Iceman and Ms. Vaughn? Maybe even call for help?
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