“I’m not a part of your disgusting little fantasy,” I hiss.
“Oh, but you are.” He smiles and taps a silver bracelet on his wrist. One single button on that bracelet controls my little sister’s fate.
His barcode is bold on his pale skin. He wears the usual Initiative uniform, black and pressed clean. I see the patch on his lapel, the Initiative eye.
Doctor Wane pulls out a black device from her lab coat, presses a button, and waits. Seconds later, a black Orb floats into the room. It stops, hovers in front of me.
“This is a Cam,” she says. “It will be our eyes while you carry out your mission.”
It isn’t human. But I know the Cam is watching me. When I move, it moves.
The Commander nods in approval. “Go on, then. Your mother is waiting.”
“You’d better hope the Resistance doesn’t come while I’m gone,” I say. “I’m sure they’d love to slaughter you like the pigs you are.”
Before he can slap me, I turn on my heel, shoulder past the two guards, and march right out the front door.
Sunlight.
The second it hits my face, I feel a little more alive. It may not be real freedom, but it is a taste. I blink away the brightness, let the warmth settle on my skin.
I will go along with the Commander’s plan to find my mother. But I won’t try too hard. I will stall, take him in circles, waste as much time as I can. If I could get a message to the Resistance . . .
The Cam bobs along at my side.
No. The Initiative will see, whatever I do.
I hop the train as it comes past. There are three others, standing in the shade of the car. When they see the Regulator on my neck, and the Cam at my side, they recoil.
“You’re her,” a woman says.
“Who?” I ask.
She leans closer, peers at me. “The soldiers, they said you’d come today. Said if anyone touched you, they’d lose rations for a month . . . or worse.” She whistles and backs away. She is quiet as the train soars past the Reserve.
I see the marshlands fly by in muddled colors, flashes of white from the Wards’ tents. I imagine Zephyr is there now, safe and sound, but the image brings forth a hot surge of jealousy.
I gave myself up so he could get away and free my family. I wonder if he’s done it yet. I wonder if he has found them all, far away from here.
If only the world was nice enough for that to be true.
I wonder if I will ever see any of them again.
When I reach the edge of the city, I leap. I join the pressing crowd, a wave of people surging as one. The Cam soars into the sky, out of reach. But when I look up, it’s still following.
She won’t be out in the open, the Commander’s voice says in my head.
“You can’t just pop in when you feel like it,” I growl. “If you expect me to concentrate, and do this job right, get out of my head.”
The crowd moves me toward the Rations Hall. I long for the old days, working side by side with Orion. How different life would have been, if I hadn’t met Zephyr. If I’d gone on, working day in and out, not knowing that the entire time, she was on my team. Maybe she would have recruited me eventually. Maybe we would have had more time to plan and do things right from the start.
I duck right, head for the alley, stepping over a dead body.
I look behind the Dumpster. There is a sleeping person, but it isn’t my mother.
You’re wasting time. Do you think I’m a fool?
“Give me access to the Rations Hall,” I say.
I can almost hear him sigh.
Then the door across from me pops open, and I rush inside.
I check behind the crates, look inside the empty ones.
I see faces pressed up against the glass barrier. Wards and other citizens, starved and desperate. A fight breaks out, and Initiative guards end it with a bullet to a woman’s brain. Blood splatters against the glass, bright crimson.
There is nothing in this building, Miss Woodson. Move on.
“Get out of my head!” I growl.
I leave through the alleyway and cross the street, head for the beach. I press through hundreds, thousands of people. Everyone pushes and shoves. Someone knocks my Regulator, and pain radiates through my body like shards of ice.
I gasp. I feel like I can’t breathe, so I push harder, then almost tumble into the alley. I run, leap over another body that is missing an arm.
The second I hit the jungle floor I’m sprinting. My body takes over, needing to run, to move. And being lost in nature makes me feel, for a second, that I am just heading back home.
The houseboat will still be there.
Peri will be waiting on deck, her curls dancing in the wind.
Koi will be carving on a slab of wood, and my father will train me before the Dark Time comes.
I hear the roar of the ocean. I stop on the edge of the trees, see the waves crashing onshore. The ocean is angry today. The shipwrecked boats dip and dive, tossed about by the current.
I have a flash of a memory. Smoke trailing to the sky. The last bits of my houseboat, sinking beneath the waves.
Zephyr’s hand, touching my arm as I wake up. Me throwing his body to the sand, threatening to kill him if he comes near me again.
How badly I want his touch now. How badly I want his soft words, and his foolish belief that things will always be okay.
I sit down in the sand.
The Commander speaks to me, but I interrupt him. I have a small ounce of power, and I am going to use it.
“My mother won’t come to me here,” I say. “She’ll come to me in a place that matters.”