Rebirth

pulled the truck around the corner, where it was hidden from the front of the building by the oleander hedge.

If she failed now, someone would find Smoke and Ruthie here. They would kill Smoke, but Ruthie was an outlier, and a child, and they would take care of her.

“I love you,” she mouthed as she slipped out of the car, and she had almost reached the entrance when a car came around the corner so fast that the tires shrieked, and stopped a few feet from the front door. Two men jumped out, leaving their doors open, and ran inside. Now that Cass had a view into the enormous high-ceilinged lobby that formed the entire ground floor of the dorm, bare except for a few clusters of furniture on a patterned rug in the center, she saw that a dozen girls and young women were gathered at the other end, hugging each other and screaming.

Between them and her, Dor was standing with his hands over his head, a short middle-aged female guard backing him toward the wall with a rifle that looked outlandishly large in her hands. Nearby a girl with long honey- colored hair was kneeling on the floor, a second female guard holding a gun to her head and yelling something at the two men from the car.

Cass didn’t think. She raised the gun Dor had given her and remembered sunlit afternoons when her father took her out in the field by the pond, setting up cans along the falling-down fence, the way he wrapped his arms around her when he taught her how to sight down the barrel.

Two dozen steps to the open doors and the woman never stopped yelling and Dor never turned around and the girl on the floor was the only one who saw her. As the guard behind her turned toward the two men crossing the lobby, the girl rolled out of the way and Cass took her shot.

The first man went down like a rock. As the other spun around and dropped, Cass fired again and again but he didn’t stop, he turned in a circle and came up shooting back at her. Cass felt the pavement at her feet break and splinter and she dived through the doors into the building, sprinting to the shelter of a sofa, her heart racing, ears filled with screaming. There was another shot, and another, and more screaming, and someone ran past her, out into the night. She peeked around the sofa and saw the shooter crouched low, crawling toward her, and even as their eyes met he took another shot but it went wide.

“Outlier! I’m an outlier!” she screamed. “I’m putting down my gun and we can figure this out! Don’t shoot anymore. I’m an outlier!” She had to get to Dor, had to trade herself for him and Sammi. She could make this right. The Rebuilders would understand the trade they proposed-they would know that Mary would value her life far above the others’. Dor was strong and he was good. He was Sammi’s father and he was a good father, and he would make sure that Ruthie was safe. He would take Smoke and if there was a chance for him, Dor would find that chance. Everyone she loved could live, maybe even thrive, and all Cass had to do was stay here.

“Shoot me and Mary will know you killed an outlier,” she yelled. The girls clustered at the back of the room stared at her, holding each other and crying. She scanned their faces, frantically searching for Sammi. “Every girl here will tell them. They’re all witnesses. But if you let this man and his daughter go I’ll put down my gun. I’ll come without a fight.”

There was silence, and Cass took a deep breath. That was it, all she had to offer.

She came out from behind the sofa, standing up. The man in front of her didn’t lower his gun, but he didn’t shoot, either. Behind him, the gray-haired woman stared at her with fury. At her feet, the other woman guard twitched and moaned.

A low, guttural cough echoed through the still room. Cass looked around wildly for its source.

Then her gaze fell on Dor.

He knelt on the floor, clutching his head. Blood ran through his fingers.

Cass had been willing to strike a bargain with the Rebuilders-her life for Sammi’s and Dor’s freedom. But they hadn’t listened to her. They’d shot him. Once again they had taken what was not theirs, and this time Cass would not stand for it.

“Deal’s off,” she whispered to herself.

And she pulled the trigger.

The man was only a couple of yards away. Too close to miss, and he fell practically at her feet. Cass barely glanced at him. Instead, she got ready to take her next shot.

But as she tried to steady her shaking arm, tried to blink away the sudden blurriness in her vision, the female guard staggered sideways and fell, her final shot going into the ceiling, tackled by several of the women who’d been clustered in the back of the room.

One of them broke away from the others and kicked at the fallen guard, screaming, and the gun went spinning and sliding across the floor, coming to rest under a vending machine that had long since been looted of the last of its contents.

Cass surveyed the scene in stunned amazement. She longed to sink to the floor herself, adrenaline giving way to trembling terror, but now there was another girl who’d just made enemies of the Rebuilders.

Cass could shoot the two women guards. Up close, she saw that the one who lay spitting and gasping had the mark of the koru on her wrist. She was high-level Rebuilder. There was no reason to spare her.

“Where’s Sammi?” she yelled at nobody in particular. “The new girl? Where is she?”

The long-haired girl who’d been kneeling on the floor crawled away from the center of the room, then stood and ran toward her.

“Where’s Sammi?” she asked again. Up close, Cass saw that her wide, pretty face bore more anger than fear. A tiny diamond pierced her nose, and it flashed in the lobby lights. “She escaped.”

“Escaped-where?”

“Out there. Over the wall. Like, ten minutes ago. That’s where she said she was going, anyway. I helped her. I’m-I was her roommate. Roan.”

Cass’s heart sank. All the blood, all the dead, everything they had done to get here, and now Sammi was gone, and Dor was shot. Outside, in the truck, was her own daughter, and Smoke, near dead. How had this happened, how had so many people ended up depending on her? And what was she supposed to do now, when they had reached the end of her options?

Already tonight, Cass had killed twice and given away her innocence. Very little remained. Was it enough to take care of the people she loved? Cass had no idea. But it would have to be enough for tonight.

Do the next right thing.

Cass swallowed hard, and swiped at her eyes with her free hand.

“You,” she ordered to the girl who’d kicked the gun. “What’s your name?”

“Leslie.”

“Okay. Pick up the guns. There-and there. Get his.”

After only a second’s hesitation the girl did as she asked, crouching down to reach under the vending machine. She jammed it in the pocket of her flannel pajama pants and scrambled to collect the rest of the weapons.

“You can’t stay here,” Cass said, holding out her hands for the guns. “You’re the enemy now. You have to come with us.”

Leslie nodded, handing over the weapons.

Cass took a deep breath and looked at Dor. Please please please, she prayed. Let him live.

“We need to go now,” she said. The last of the girls-seven of them, she saw now-had fallen quiet and backed up, away from the scene in the center of the lobby, against the wide glass window that looked out on a courtyard that must have once been pretty, and was now filled with the skeletons of ornamental trees. “Roan and Leslie, help this man. He comes with us. All of you can, too. But you have to come now.”

“No,” the gray-haired guard said, in a steely voice. “No one leaves. Leave this building and they’ll shoot you on sight. Stay here and we’ll guarantee your safety. You and your babies.”

“Babies they won’t let you keep,” Cass snapped. “Your choice. We leave now.”

Roan and Leslie crouched next to Dor and helped him to his feet. Cass could see the bloodied place on his skull, obscured by his long thick hair. He swayed, but the girls supported him, staggering under his weight, their pajamas already streaked with his blood. He stumbled, his ankle buckling, and for a second Cass anticipated him falling to the shiny waxed floor of the lobby and knew that if he fell, they would have to leave him. Already the guard in front of her was edging away, wriggling like a snake; Cass knew she had only seconds to decide whether to shoot her. Either way, she had to get out now, even if it meant leaving Dor here, injured and alone.

Her finger was tightening on the trigger, tears obscuring her vision, when Dor grunted and staggered two steps