Breaking Point

weapon. The sound came from the line of temporary showers down a tile-encased corridor. As I tiptoed toward it I heard Sean’s voice from the medical car twenty feet away and told myself to relax. He would hear me if I ran into trouble.

I pushed back the trash bag curtain, but there was no one standing on the wet tile floor. Drip, drip, drip, went the steady, ear-shattering leak from the doorway. The IV shower bags with their attached spray nozzles hung limply on their wall hooks. I stared so long into the shadows that I began to see shapes. Hear things that didn’t exist—creaking, moaning, whispers.

“You get used to it.”

I spun, already swinging the flashlight, and watched Truck stagger back into the wall, surprise painted all over his simple face.

“What?” I bent, hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath.

“The dark,” he said, and then began to laugh. “You get used to the dark after a while.” He leaned close and whispered, “Saw you sneaking around. It gets to you quick, doesn’t it?”

His blond hair gleamed in the glow of the flashlight. He was the one I’d seen, not Tucker. I shook my head to clear my thoughts.

“Yeah, I guess so,” I said.

He walked with me to sick bay to meet Sean, who was sitting on a wooden stool in the train car, talking to Jack, and the medic I’d seen earlier; a short, bawdy man with a bald spot on the back of his head.

There was no sign of Tucker.

I stepped inside guardedly, remembering how Jack had looked below me as I pressed a baseball bat into his throat.

“I guess we’re all friends now, huh?” I said.

“No sense of humor,” said Jack. He flashed a condescending grin from across the car, and I caught the thick red mark across his neck. “Guys, we forgive and forget, but not a chick, man.”

“Find a bat and I’ll remind you,” I said.

“Ooh!” Truck gave me a high five, which I reluctantly returned. Here, under the wind-up lanterns, it was obvious that his left eye was swollen from the fight. He was sitting beside a cardboard box with the word morefeen scribbled on it. The medic laughed as Truck playfully shoved a sullen Jack off his perch.

“Shut up!” Sean shouted, slamming his hand against the wall. I stiffened. “The report’s wrong. Your man screwed up,” he said.

“The roster,” I realized, deflating. “She’s not here.” We had the wrong town. I hated myself for ever believing Tucker Morris would tell the truth.

“He’s never wrong—” began the medic.

“He’s wrong,” interrupted Sean. There were shadows of disbelief under his eyes.

“If you didn’t want to know, why’d you come?” asked Jack.

“What’s going on?” I said. “Is Rebecca at the reformatory or not?”

“Good news, she’s there,” said Truck. “Bad news, it’s not a reformatory.”

“What?”

“It’s a physical rehabilitation center,” the medic said. “Attached to the hospital. We don’t go there—not because it’s packed with soldiers or anything,” he qualified. “There’s only a skeleton staff of uniforms and it’s mostly manned by Sisters and doctors. But it’s… bad luck.”

“What does that mean?” I was beginning to feel that cold hand of panic walk down my spine.

“The place is a circus,” said Truck. Mags had said this earlier, but Truck’s tone held far more disgust. “A freak factory. They’re all over. You seriously haven’t heard of a circus?” I shook my head. “All right, look. It’s a place where they patch up the injured just enough that they can put them on tour and… what did they call it? Deter something…”

“Deter noncompliance,” finished Jack.

“Right,” said Truck. “All the people the Bureau messes up get sent there. Civvies and ex-soldiers and Sisters. They’re kept in enough pain so that they’re dependent, you know? So they can’t run away.”

I saw the burned boy in the Square, whose mother had held him up for everyone to see.

Advertising, Chase had said. Nothing puts people in their place like the threat of pain. He’d seen this first while he’d lived here, in Chicago. Had he suspected?

“One of our guys got caught,” said Jack. “They beat him pretty bad. Kept him on a breathing machine in that rehab facility and toured him around the base. Wanted to show off what happens when you bite back.”

It was the first time I’d seen him without his tough front. Even Truck was quiet. The cold air around us grew thin and brittle.

My anger for Tucker was scalding. How could he have neglected to mention this? If he’d really been inside that building, he would have known what went on there. Unless his supposed training—and his contact on the inside—were just more lies.

“What happened to him?” I asked weakly.

“Mags,” said Truck. “Mags went topside with a team, to this old abandoned high-rise across the street. From the top floor you can see down onto the courtyard on their roof. When they brought him outside, she took him out.”

“Mercy kill,” added the medic. It was the first time I’d heard the term used with something other than a bird with a broken wing, and it sunk into my body like fangs. “Mags is tough as nails. She could probably teach you a thing or two, Sniper.”

It took me a moment to remember my role, but when I did, all I managed was a one-shouldered shrug.

Now I knew why the gang outside had silenced when we’d mentioned where we needed to go. Why they’d all waited for Mags’s reaction. She’d killed one of her own men there, and instead of being horrified, they’d been reverent.

It occurred to me the sniper could have been in Chicago all along. It made perfect sense. Mags was cold, protected by a legion of ex-soldiers who could defend her if needed. I wished Chase was here. I wondered if he’d woken yet; if he was looking for me.

My mind turned back to Rebecca, my fear for her swelling. “Why couldn’t the team break into the facility and get him? You said there aren’t many soldiers.”

The three Chicago boys glanced at one another warily.

“A Sister has to accompany any soldier into the building,” Truck told me. “And it’s not that Mags couldn’t rig that, but what were we supposed to do with him once we got him out? We can’t support that kind of care down here.”

Sean had had enough. He tore out of the car into the darkened passage.

I shook my head, wishing I could replay this conversation with a different outcome. But we’d come here for answers, and we’d gotten them.

I left the car and found Sean just outside, pacing.

“Sean,” I said. He didn’t stop. I stood in front of him. “Sean!”

“I still have to go. I have to see.” He crouched, hands on his head.

“Sean, stop it,” I said, grabbing his shoulders. “We’ll figure this out.”

“How? How are we going to do that?”

“I… I don’t know. Yet. I don’t know yet, okay? But we’ll think of something.”

He stood, shaking his head. “I should have gotten her out of there years ago.”

“Sean, it’s not your fault. If anyone’s, it’s mine.”

“No.” He shook his head. “No, I was supposed to look out for her.”

“Sean…”

“Chase got you out!” His voice was powerful enough to push me back a step. “Chase didn’t wait, but I waited. I kept waiting, thinking that there’d be a better time. She’d age out, and then I’d go AWOL…”

Sean was losing his control, and as he did, mine returned. My hands had captured his wrists, and squeezed when he tried to brush me off.

“Sean, listen to me.”

“I swear, if they’ve been towing her around the base…”