Article 5

“It’s no waste,” said Chase firmly. It made me feel a little more confident that we were still making the right choice.

We were about to say more when there was a commotion outside and three more men charged through the door. Two must have been brothers. One was in his late twenties, the other older. They had dark hair and dark eyes, but the younger had recently broken his nose, and the other now had a bruise below his right eye. The third was a wiry redhead, about Chase’s age. Dry blood had crusted over his cheek. I didn’t recognize them from the square, but I knew it must be the other soldiers Sean had been with, because they all held the same trash bags filled with their uniforms.

There was an eruption of voices and movement. Everyone was trying to speak at once.

“Get them out of here, Banks. Then come back for debriefing,” ordered Wallace. “Tomorrow, take them to Tubman yourself.”

I wanted to stay but was glad Wallace had approved our departure.

Sean led us down the hallway in the opposite direction from the stairs. A few heads popped out of the doors, interested in what had transpired in the square. I realized with some amazement that the entire floor must have been filled with resistance fighters.

The single room we entered was more tightly confined than Wallace’s had been. A moth-eaten velvet chair crowded the corner, bumping into a bare queen-sized mattress. On a small nightstand were boxes of cereal and Horizons bottled water.

“Is this someone’s room?” I asked, staring longingly at the food. I hadn’t eaten since a rest stop mid-morning in eastern Kentucky, and I was famished.

“It was,” he said grimly. My spirits crashed as I realized the previous occupant was either captured or dead. “Talk, Miller. Quick.”

I promptly told him everything I knew, beginning with the night I’d blackmailed them and ending with my abduction from the shack. I didn’t dare look at Chase. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t done bad things, but the secret of how I’d hurt these people had festered inside of me, and I was more ashamed than ever.

Chase prowled like a trapped animal while I talked, opening a window, which revealed the wrought-iron fire escape just outside. This seemed to settle him, but he remained quiet. The weight of his judgment hung over me. Maybe I deserved it.

“Was she hurt?” Sean looked far away. Broken.

“I don’t know.” I closed my eyes. I remembered the crack of the baton on her little body. Yes, she had been hurt. But the frantic gleam in his eyes stopped me from telling the truth. It seemed cruel to tell him when there was nothing he could do about it.

“And you never told Brock about me and Becca.” He still sounded a little leery.

“No. Rebecca was…” I paused. “Rebecca was my friend. Maybe not at first. And she probably doesn’t think so now. But I’ll always remember her. I know it doesn’t matter what I say, but I wish things had been different.”

Sean was quiet for a moment.

“How did you know she was here?” Chase asked Sean finally. I wondered if it was curiosity or some other purpose that had caused him to break his silence.

In a rush, Sean told us how he’d been discharged from the base in Cincinnati, where he’d been sent after the incident at reform school, and met Billy and Riggins, who had been in town collecting stray soldiers for the resistance. Billy’s other talents included breaking into MM cruisers and accessing prisoner lists via their scanning device. That was how Sean had found out about Rebecca’s transfer.

I remembered the scanner the highway patrol had used when he’d pulled us over. A miniature computer. Billy was quite clever, it seemed.

Since there was no way to break into the base without getting killed himself, Sean had settled on working for the resistance until Billy could get him more information about Rebecca.

Before Sean could say more, Wallace summoned him from down the hall.

“I’ll take you to the carrier tomorrow,” he said.

“Sean, wait,” I said as he was leaving. “I just… I’m so sorry.”

He looked at me for a long time through tired eyes. They were not resentful, not mistrusting anymore. He didn’t blame me. And somehow that made me feel worse.

“It’s them, Miller. Not us. It’s the FBR that should be sorry.”

* * *

AFTER a while I went to the window, comforted by the cold air on my face. It was dark now. Through the bars of the fire escape I could see headlights snaking through the city intersections in the distance, and the goose bumps rose on my skin. Curfew was on. The MM was just below. All around. Everywhere.

It’s the FBR that should be sorry, Sean had said.

He was right. They’d taken Rebecca. They’d taken my mother. They’d nearly broken Chase. Now we could never go home. We would have to live in hiding forever.

I tried to force my thoughts elsewhere but was bombarded by images from the day. The throngs of starving people. The dead man by the generator. Sean—when I hadn’t known it was Sean—yanking me through the crowd. The acceptance that Chase could still make it, even if I didn’t.

He was stronger. A fighter. He could survive in this world.

“We need a new plan. New rules,” I began, trying to sound strong. Chase had been listening down the hall, but at the sound of my voice he stepped away from the doorway and waited for me to continue. I hoped he wouldn’t try to be difficult; it was hard enough acknowledging what I was about to say myself.

“If the MM finds one of us, the other needs to go on. The other needs to get to the safe house and find my mom and make sure she’s okay.”

My words sounded hollow. He didn’t say anything.

“You can’t come after me if I get taken, do you understand?”

Still nothing.

“Chase!” I slammed a fist down on the windowsill and the pane rattled. “Are you listening to me?”

“Yes.” He was standing right behind me. I spun into him.

“Yes, you’ll do it?” I knew I should be relieved, but I didn’t feel it.

“Yes, I’m listening. No. I won’t do it.”

The same fear iced my spine that I’d felt earlier today in the square. The fear that my mother would be on her own. The fear that Chase would be caught and condemned to death. The tears were coming now; there was no use trying to hide them.

“Why not? If something happens to me…”

“Nothing is going to happen to you!” He grabbed me by the elbows, making me stand on my tiptoes. His eyes burned with the anger I knew he only reached through fear. How did I know that about him? I thought fleetingly. How could I read that, when I hardly knew what I was feeling?

“What if something does?” I threw back. “I can die, just like Katelyn Meadows! I can starve like that man in the square! I can be taken by the MM, or shot—”

“STOP!” he shouted. My mouth fell open. He breathed out unsteadily, his face pale in the dark room, and tried to compose himself. He was only mildly successful.

“Ember, I swear on my life, I will not let anything like that happen.”

I crumpled in his arms, crying freely now because I was afraid. Because I didn’t want to die. Because if I did, I had secured no future for my mother or Chase. For the people I loved.

I hadn’t ever cried before him like this. Everything I’d been holding back crashed over me. Losing my mother. Missing my friends. Hurting Sean and Rebecca. The carrier on Rudy Lane begging for his son. The man in the square. Chase pulled me in tightly, sheltering me with his body, hiding me from the fears that lashed both of us.

“Why did you come after me?” I sobbed. “If Sean had been a real soldier, you could have been killed.”

“I don’t care.”

“I do!”