Chapter Twelve
Sunny
I wasn’t sure I should tell Jin-Sook and Eli to come out of hiding and join us, but whatever Hayley wanted to show us, I wanted Eli to see it as well since he was the expert on recruiters. I didn’t feel threatened by Hayley or the four soldiers with her. Alex was another matter, although it was becoming clear that he was better behaved in Hayley’s company. And if Alex did start something, we weren’t exactly defenseless.
“It’s okay to come out,” I yelled to Jin-Sook and Eli. A ripple of tension went through the soldiers when they suddenly appeared at the forest edge.
Other than a glance, Hayley didn’t pay them much attention. She just turned and headed in the direction from which she had come. Most of the Dome soldiers, including Alex, turned and followed her, with a few hanging back to guard from behind. I didn’t feel there was any immediate threat from the recruiters because Jin-Sook hadn’t given me any signals. She was attuned to life in the forest. She knew every nuance of the breeze, the seasons, and the animals that made their home there. She could tell when strangers were around, just as she had sensed the bourge’s presence before any of us. And the only thing she was being watchful of was them, her knuckles white as she gripped her bow.
The apprehension among all of us was almost tangible. Although I knew Jack’s friends had never really cared for me, I had thought they’d at least accepted me. They had always been polite, never hostile. Now I had to wonder how much of their attitude had been for Jack’s benefit.
Maybe Reyes was right. Maybe I had become blind to what was really going on.
“We stick together,” I said in a low voice.
Jin tugged on her bow to draw our attention to it. “I won’t hesitate to use this if I feel the need.” I knew her reflexes were lightning fast and deadly accurate.
“Good,” I said. We moved to catch up to them.
Including Hayley, Alex, and the two soldiers behind us, there were eight bourge. I took stock of our defenses in case things turned ugly. Both Jin and Eli had knives, dart guns, and bows. I didn’t know Eli very well, but I did know Jin was expertly skilled in using her weapons. Summer, Reyes, and I all had guns, knives sheathed in the sides of our boots, and the strength and speed our exoskeletons gave us. We were more than capable of defending ourselves.
“Look at the cart tracks,” Eli said, and we all paused. He stopped and crouched, pointing to two flat lines scored into the earth. “They can’t be more than four days old.”
“How do you know that?” I asked. My heart flipped in excitement. Only four days old meant we were catching up.
“The tracks had to have been gouged deep to still be here after all that rain we had last night, so the ground must have been thawed when they passed through.” He poked two fingers into the rut. “It was a heavy load to make tracks this deep.”
It was hard to hear, but it wasn’t unexpected. “You mean it was carrying men.”
He gave a curt nod. “That would be my guess.”
“What are you?” Alex asked Eli. “Some kind of tracker?”
“Something like that,” Eli said and stood up. He rubbed the ugly cross-shaped scar on his cheek. “I’m a former recruit.”
Hayley put a hand on her hip. “Are you kidding?” She looked at me. “Why didn’t we know about him? This is our third search.” She said it as if they were entitled to a guide and we were not.
I could have responded to Hayley in a lot of ways, like pointing out that her inherent prejudice and distrust of the so-called heathens actually made her unentitled, but I didn’t want to provoke a conflict.
“You didn’t ask,” I said.
She narrowed her eyes at me, and I flashed back to the first time I’d met her, when she’d thought I was nothing more than Jack’s concubine. She didn’t like me then either. And the reminder made me question why she was out here risking her own neck to look for Jack. Did she still have feelings for him?
She turned her attention to Eli. “Well, now I’m really looking forward to hearing what you have to say about this,” she said, continuing in the direction we’d started.
Scanning the trail as I walked, I vainly tried to get a vibe from the place. Had Jack passed through here just four days ago in the back of a cart pulled by bears and guarded by men called recruiters? It was unimaginable. One minute we were exploring an old, decayed city, and the next—bam!—our lives were ripped apart. How could it have happened? We had been carrying rifles and had never even gotten off a shot.
The element of surprise had given the recruiters the upper hand. Even Naoki, Ryan, and Talon, whose habit it was to blend in with their surroundings at all times, had strolled out into the open. We hadn’t bothered to look behind us, too engrossed in the city we were set to explore, too confident in our technological superiority to be afraid of the unknown. Too presumptuous in our belief that there simply weren’t enough people in the world to worry about ever crossing paths. It all added up to one big stupid mistake, and it had proven costly.
As we rounded the bend in the trail, the landscape opened up and trees became sparse. The mountain provided a stony wall on one side, and a steep ravine led down to the river on the other. There were so many tracks that the soil looked churned up, and the charred remains of campfires pockmarked the ground. The sheer number of people who must have camped there was staggering. My hand went to my forehead as I tried to take it all in.
“I thought you said recruiters hunted in small packs,” Reyes said to Eli.
Eli surveyed the area, shaking his head in disbelief. “I’ve never seen a hunting party this big.”
“We’re up against a small army,” Jin-Sook breathed.
A sense of hopelessness tugged at me. Even if we could trust the bourge and combine forces with them, we were still vastly outnumbered.
I kicked at the remnants of a campfire. “They weren’t afraid of their fires being seen.”
“When you’re at the top of the food chain, you don’t have to be afraid,” Eli said.
“What’s that over there?” Summer asked. She moved away from us, pushing past a few soldiers as she went, and I caught one of them giving her a shy smile. Summer didn’t notice him though. She kept going past and then reached down and picked something up from the damp ground. She smeared away the mud, examining the small item. “Oh, it’s plastic,” she said and looked at Hayley. “I guess one of you guys dropped it.”
“Can I see it?” Eli asked, walking toward her. He took it out of her hand and two seconds later declared, “It’s the top off of one of their water bottles. It belongs to Ryder’s men.”
“They have plastic?” one of the soldiers blurted out, and both Hayley and Alex shot him a warning look. “I mean, sir! Sirs!” His face turned red.
“So? They collect water bottles,” Alex said with disinterest. “It can take five hundred years for that kind of plastic to break down.”
“They mine for plastic,” Eli said. “And then they turn it into stuff.”
“Mine plastic?” Reyes asked incredulously. “You mean, like, mining for coal?”
“I don’t know anything about coalmining, but plasticmining is dangerous. Most plastics are found at the bottom of collapsed buildings, like old shopping malls and skyscrapers, down in the concrete wells underneath them. I can tell you from personal experience it’s not just cave-ins you have to worry about, but what’s living down there too. Cats use old buildings as dens, and the farther south you go, vipers and sometimes alligators are a problem.”
The only collapsed buildings I had ever seen were the ones we’d come across last week in the old city we were set to explore before the recruiters attacked us. I remembered big blocks of concrete; twisted, rusted-out rebar; and a mix of synthetic and organic debris filling in all the cracks, giving the vegetation a place to grow. How could anyone “mine” that?
“Wait a minute, did you say personal experience?” I asked. A creepy feeling was working its way up my spine. “Is that wha
t they recruited you for?”
Suddenly he didn’t seem to want to make eye contact with me. “Yes,” he said. My stomach clenched. His gaze shifted back to me, his face apologetic. “They’ll take the men back to the city first so Ryder can inspect the new recruits and assess payment.”
“Payment?” Alex asked. “The recruiters get paid?”
“Well, yeah,” Eli said, as if that were a given. “Why else would they do it?”
Whether or not they were paid was irrelevant in my mind. Up until now, everyone had told me that Ryder recruited men to go fight his war against the North. I mean, it took time to train someone to be a soldier, right? But mining... Having grown up a slave in the Pit, I knew all too well that miners were just thrown into a hole and told to dig. We were running out of time. Or maybe we’d already run out.
“But they recruit men to become soldiers,” I said with an edge of hysteria, trying to block the image of Jack being dropped into a collapsed building with vipers, tigers, and God only knew what else. “Not miners. That’s what you told me. That’s what everyone told me.”
My outburst drew attention, and they all paused to look at me, but it was Hayley’s expression that spoke volumes. Hers was a mix of distaste and pity. I pulled myself up taller and dug my nails into my palms. I didn’t care if she hated me, but I refused to be pitied.
“What else can you tell us about them, Eli?” I asked in a more controlled voice.
He placed a comforting hand on my shoulder. “That every single person they capture is worth something to them, and getting them back to Ryder for payment is what recruiting is all about. I’d say they’re only four days ahead of us. There’s time to catch them.”
“What do they get paid?” Alex persisted.
“Food, property, wives,” Eli said.
Jin-Sook curled her lip. “Only the women considered worth breeding are taken and given as wives. The rest are used by the men in the camp and then slaughtered.”
Then that made the woman back at the house we’d just left proof that it was recruiters who’d been there. My eyes ran over Jin-Sook’s attire, and I fully understood her desire to hide her femininity.
“If they only have a four-day lead on us, we should be on our way,” I said.
After the way Alex had greeted us—as adversaries instead of friends—all thoughts of joining forces with them were gone. We couldn’t trust them.
“Wait,” Hayley said. She cast a glance at Eli. “We could use your guide.”
I cocked my head to one side, wondering if I had heard her correctly. “Excuse me?”
“C’mon, Sunny,” she said, her tone condescending. “You have no weapons, you’re on foot, and you’re not trained for this kind of thing.” She thumbed somewhere behind her, and for the first time I noticed the bikes parked beside some brush. “We’re Jack’s best chance at being rescued, and if we have a guide to lead us to Ryder, our chances just got better.”
My lips tightened against uttering the scathing response I wanted to give her.
Reyes made a grunting noise, a cross between a snarl and a laugh, and folded his arms across his chest. Hayley looked at him, raking her eyes from his face down to his toes and all the way back up again. Her smile was genuine. “You’re welcome to join us too. You can ride with me.” The woman was positively tactless. First Jack and now Reyes? The smile left her face when she refocused on me. “Sorry, we don’t have enough room for everyone. It’s just that your friend looks like he might be able to handle himself in a fight.”
Reyes’ lip twitched. “You’d be smart not to forget that,” he said and walked away. I almost clapped.
I didn’t bother to hide my smirk. “Guess he’s not interested.”
The rest of us moved to catch up to Reyes. I noticed the same soldier who had shyly smiled at Summer earlier was looking at her again, his hand half-raised as if about to wave. Summer was oblivious to him, and he dropped his hand as she passed.
“Don’t say I didn’t try to help,” Hayley called after us. We ignored her.
As soon as we were out of hearing range, Reyes stopped and turned on me. “You can’t tell me you trust those bourge.”
Ordinarily I wouldn’t respond to Reyes when he was angry. After years of being his girlfriend I’d learned that Angry Reyes had a tendency to lash out and hurt the object of his ire. But this time, I admitted to myself, I shouldered some blame.
“I’m sorry. I thought I could, but that was a mistake.”
“So in true Sunny style, you trusted first and asked questions later,” he said, mocking me. “No wonder Leisel Holt was able to manipulate you so easily.”
I balled my hands into fists. The nerve! “I don’t think it was that much of a stupid mistake, Reyes. I mean, if they’re out here looking for Jack, it’s because they care about him and want him back too. And if he trusted them, I didn’t see why I couldn’t. My only mistake was thinking they would treat us as equals and want to combine our search efforts.”
Reyes leaned closer to me. “Of course Kenner trusted them. He’s one of them!”
A flush of anger heated my cheeks. “Don’t start,” I said through gritted teeth. “I know you hate Jack. I get it. I really do. So I understand if you’re having a hard time giving him credit for everything he did for the Pit. But have you forgotten that it was Bron and a whole lot of other guards who smuggled weapons into the Pit so we could defend ourselves? Stood guard over Alliance meetings to protect us from being discovered by Domers? Risked their lives to help us? There are a lot of good people from the Dome who don’t deserve your hatred.”
Reyes’ face creased into a scowl. “Are you kidding me? A few good bourge and I’m supposed to forgive and forget a lifetime of slavery? Of taking their beatings? Of not being able to do a damn thing but watch them kill us!” He turned to Summer. “How about you? Have you forgiven them?”
Summer’s mouth fell open, and she took in a sharp breath. Her complexion paled beneath the rosy glow the sun and wind had bestowed on her over the past few days. Angry tears stung my eyes as I shook my head in disbelief at Reyes’ utter callousness. I glared at him. “How could you?” Moving toward Summer, I wrapped an arm around her. A tear slid from beneath her glasses.
Reyes pinched his brow with his thumb and middle finger and swore under his breath. He stepped toward us. “I’m sorry,” he said to Summer. Elbowing me out of the way, he pulled her in for a hug. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
Summer nodded against his chest. “I know.” She put her hands on his chest and pulled back to look first at him and then at me. “You two have to stop fighting. You were at each other’s throats most of last night, and now you’re squabbling over who was right or wrong to trust those idiots back there.”
Reyes took a step away from her, mouth opened to make some retort, but Summer held up her hand to stop him.
“It’s my turn to talk, and after your last comment, you owe me.”
Reyes closed his mouth, looking contrite.
“I understand why you hate the bourge, Reyes. And you know that I hate them so much I almost killed myself in a bottle over it. But after living with Sunny, Jack, and Ted and putting up with their bourge friends stopping by for visits, I came to the realization that not everyone from the Dome is like Holt. So I understand why Sunny thought she could trust those Domers.” She turned to look at me. “And I also know that not everyone is like Jack, and you need to be a little more cautious.”
It wasn’t really what I wanted to hear from my best friend, but it was what I needed to hear. I could feel the heat of my embarrassment as I silently admitted she was irritatingly right. I flicked a glance at Eli and Jin-Sook to see how they were taking our argument and noticed Jin had her head tilted as if listening for something.
“What?” I asked her.
Her lips pursed into a ssshhh, and she headed deeper into the forest. We pulled our hoods up and ran after her, finding a stand of four trees grouped closely together. We all stood still, a
nd within minutes Hayley, Alex, and the rest of the team whizzed past on their bikes, heading south. Reyes’ hand curled into a fist as he watched them go.
“I’m glad they’re gone,” Reyes said.
I let go of some of my anger. “Me too.”
“That makes all of us,” Jin said.
“By the way,” Summer said to Reyes, “what was going on between you and what’s-her-name? It looked like you two might have met before.” Her mouth turned up into a coy smile as she looked at Reyes. “And she wanted you real bad too.”
Reyes’ face reddened. A smile sprang to my lips despite the fact I was still upset with him. I feigned wiping something from the corner of my mouth to hide it. Even though I didn’t like Hayley, her blatant interest in Reyes was kind of funny. But more importantly, it was good to see Summer being her old self again. For the past ten months, any comment that even hinted at her time with Holt had been enough to send her into a dark, silent mood with a bottle in hand.
Despite his obvious discomfort, Reyes smiled at her. I got the impression he was thinking the same thing I was. “Hmphf,” he breathed out. “More like she wanted an expendable urchin around to save her ass if she needed it.”
I knew Reyes well enough to know that there was something he wasn’t telling us.
Chapter Thirteen
Jack
The red-hot branding iron seared my skin, melting through the layers and sending the smell of burning flesh wafting up my nose. Clenching my teeth, I hissed through the pain, refusing to give in to the scream bubbling up the back of my throat. No matter how much it hurt, it didn’t compare to the anguish of watching the kids being branded, to listening to their agonizing shrieks while their parents begged and pleaded with the recruiters for mercy. I wouldn’t add to their terror with my own cries.
The cool spring breeze rushed in to blow against my seared tattoo the second the iron was taken away. It would have been soothing if the pain weren’t so intense. Someone grabbed me by the shoulder and led me away from the firepit. Behind me I heard a sizzling and Naoki’s intake of breath as he was branded. I stole a glance over my shoulder. Talon was right behind him doing his best to look brave.
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