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“I’m going,” I said. “You guys don’t have to. ”
Shelly shook her head. “Of course we’re going. ”
We spent the rest of the day memorizing the maps. Carrie got some charcoal from the fire, and we took turns trying to redraw the floor plans from memory, right there on the barn wall. While one person sketched, the others would watch and correct. After several hours, all of us could remember the hallways and label the main rooms, and even some of the smaller ones.
“What about weapons?” Gabby asked as dinnertime approached.
Shelly leaned back against a wall and tiredly ran her hands through her hair. “We have a small stockpile. Knives, spikes, some homemade brass knuckles. And, of course, all the tools from the work site and the barn. A lot of nasty stuff we haven’t had a chance to use, since they can just stop us with the implants. ”
Carrie looked at me. “They’re going to do that, you know. As soon as we get down there. ”
“I’ve thought about that,” I said. “I’m going to be the distraction. I go first and they start coming after me. You come down after. Since it’s only me, they might not shut you guys off so fast. ”
“And me,” Becky said.
We all looked up at her. She was doing so much better, but I knew how quickly things could take a turn for the worse.
But she insisted she could do it. It was time for me to start trusting her.
“You and me,” I said.
Lily spoke, changing the subject. “When are we going?”
“Not tonight or tomorrow. We need more time. ” I did my best not to look at Becky. We didn’t need more prep time; I wanted her to recover as much as she could to give her a fighting chance.
“Oh,” Curtis said, a broad grin breaking across his face. He sat on a cot and took off one shoe. “I wore these old crappy shoes for two years at the school. They’re falling apart. ”
He pulled out a torn piece of the insole and set it down beside him. He looked at Carrie and winked. “You always—” He stopped, and then looked back at the shoe, his voice quieter now. “The other Carrie always told me to spend some points on a new pair, but now I’m glad I never did. ”
The insole out of the way, he fished inside and then reached out his hand to me.
“Been giving me blisters for a week,” he said, dropping two bullets into my hand. “Thought they’d come in handy. ”
“But we don’t have a gun,” Becky said.
“We can make a zip gun,” I said.
Everyone just stared at me.
“Don’t you guys watch movies? A zip gun. It’s basically a homemade gun—you put it together with a little pipe for the barrel, and some other stuff. ”
Curtis looked skeptical. “Do you know how to do it?”
“Not really. I was kind of hoping one of you did. ”
Shelly took the bullets from me. “Lucky you’ve got a Louisiana girl here. We can make a powerhead. ”
“What’s that?”
“You kill gators with ’em,” she said with a smile. “It’s like a spear with a bullet on the end. You jam the end of the spear into something, and the pressure pushes the firing pin on the back of the bullet. Kills the alligator. ”
I laughed. “That’s perfect. ” I looked around at the group. “Anyone else have any hidden weapons?”
Becky reached into her coat pocket and pulled out the Taser. “I’ve been carrying this around, but it’s already been fired. ”
Without a word, Gabby took it from her and pulled off the cartridge at the front, then flipped a tiny switch and pulled the trigger. The front of the Taser popped and buzzed.
Becky’s mouth dropped open. “You mean that thing’s worked the whole time?”
Gabby smiled and handed it to me. “It only fires darts once, but it still works if you touch someone with it. ”
Carrie laughed. “I think I’m the only person here who doesn’t know freaky things. ”
That night we slept in the barn. The others in the camp might have suspected something was going on, if they were paying enough attention to care. But everything was in so much disarray now that we weren’t too worried.
I’d heard Skiver moved into the fort, and a lot of the other Havoc guys I’d hated. Things were quiet now, because of what had happened to Birdman, but it wouldn’t be long before the power vacuum was just too appealing and the thugs began to flex their muscles. Someone was going to start taking control again.
If this attack down the elevator worked, it wouldn’t matter.
Shelly and Curtis sat by the lantern during the night, fiddling with the powerheads. They’d gotten metal pipes from the washroom—breaking two of the sinks to do it—which they were using as barrels, and after trying half a dozen different handles, they settled on long screwdrivers. These wouldn’t be spears, but I was still thrilled to have them—fourteen-inch-long sticks that fired a bullet when you rammed them into someone. I hoped I’d get to use one on Iceman.
Carrie sat beside Curtis, watching him work. They seemed happy together. Awkward, but trying to figure it out.
Gabby read the maps over and over, backward and forward. When it got dark, she closed her eyes, her hands gesturing left and right. She must have been visualizing walking down the corridors of the complex.
Lily watched the doors, anxiously moving from one to the other, fiddling with gear, wandering around the barn.
“Do we know how to get into the elevator?” Becky asked, lying on her side on a pile of old hay.
I sat near her feet. We’d been together all day, friendly and uncomfortable and not discussing anything.
“It’s just housed in cinder-block walls,” I said. “We can break the walls and then rappel down. We have rope. ”
“That’ll be loud. ”
“We’ll have to be fast. ”
I wanted to say more to her, but I couldn’t think of anything that didn’t sound awful.
“I need to ask you something,” she said quietly.
My stomach lurched.
She turned and looked at me, right at my eyes. Her face was lit orange by the lantern, her brown hair glowing like copper.
“But first,” she said, “I swear I’m not trying to make things weird. I’m not. This will sound a little backhanded, like one of those things girls do to tear each other down. But I swear that’s not what I’m doing. ”
“Okay,” I said. “Go ahead. ” I should have said more, but I could hardly speak those single syllables.
“Jane patched me up when I first got here. ”
“Yeah,” I said. “But don’t think anything about—”
“That’s not what I want to talk about,” Becky said quickly, holding up her hand to stop me. “No. That’s … that’s different. ”
“Okay. ”
“I took a shower yesterday,” she said. She touched her arm. “It’s crazy. Maybe I don’t remember right, because I was so sick and it was always so dark in the Basement, but my arm was torn up pretty bad, right?”
“It was horrible. ”
She sat up, pushing her thin blanket off. She wore a plain white T-shirt, the sleeve cut off at the shoulder. Her arm wasn’t in the sling now—she’d removed it to sleep—but it was wrapped in new gauze.
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