Resist

The girl stares, and without waiting to find out more, the boy reaches into his jacket and pulls out a handgun. I don’t know what to do, so I grab the gun from my own coat and point it at the girl, which is a stupid thing to do. I’m obviously not going to shoot her. “No need for any of this,” I say.

“Who are you?” he snarls.

“Quinn,” I say. “I’ve left my girlfriend alone in the city with a dying child. I need to find a doctor.”

“How do you know about Sequoia?”

“Someone from The Grove told me about it,” I say.

“Are we going to kill each other?” the girl says, and stands between us.

“Get out of the way, Jo,” the boy snaps. I think he might really kill me, if he had to.

“We’re going to Sequoia, too. You can come with us.” She turns to the boy and gestures for him to lower his gun, but he doesn’t. “He should come with us,” she repeats.

“Your purple tattoo,” the boy says. “You’re Premium scum.”

I touch my earlobe. “I was,” I say, and put the gun into my coat pocket. “They think I’m dead.”

“Yeah?” he says. “They think I’m dead, too.” Jo steps aside as he finally puts his gun away and begrudgingly holds out his hand. “I’m Abel,” he says.

PART II THE CHOICE

12 ALINA

A hard knock on the cabin door wakes me. I roll off the bunk and open it.

“Sleep well?” Maks says. He looks at my bare feet and allows his eyes to travel the length of my body. If anyone else did this, I’d throw a punch. But Maks is huge. And we’re guests.

“I slept fine.” I cross my arms over my chest, and stare right back at him.

He looks behind me at the others. “Vanya’s ordered breakfast. She wants you to join her. No need to bring the golden oldies. Can you remember the way to her suite?”

“Yes,” I say, even though everything about yesterday is a blur. Maks leaves, and I quickly shut the door to keep out the cold.

“What a meathead,” Silas says, sitting up in his bunk and stretching.

And soon everyone’s up. Dorian and Song spend a few minutes each on the oxyboxes while Silas and I lower the density of oxygen in our tanks.

“Why ain’t we wanted?” Maude complains. “You’re gonna get back ’ere and find us boiling in a pot. I hope you like the taste of bunions.”

“She probably doesn’t trust drifters,” I say. “She griped about it yesterday. But you’re with us, and we’ll let her know that. Don’t worry.” Maude cuts her eyes at me. Bea’s the one she trusted because Bea’s the one who saved her. But if she knew me, she’d know she can trust me, too, now we’re on the same side—I’d never betray a comrade.

We follow a pebbled path from the cabin to the back of the main house. A guard talks into a radio then waves us through, and once inside, we let Silas lead us along darkened hallways and up a flight of stairs until he stops and points. “I’m pretty sure it’s those doors,” he says, and is about to speak again when a muffled scream roots us to the spot.

The hairs rise on my arms. “What was that?” I say.

“Upstairs,” Song whispers.

“Shh, just listen.” I hope that what comes next is a laugh, or better yet, nothing at all. But another scream rings out—louder and longer.

“We have to see where it’s coming from,” Silas says.

“We can’t go snooping wherever we want,” Dorian says.

“You think we should ignore it?” Silas steps up to him.

I put a hand on each of their arms; we can’t come apart now. “It might be nothing,” I tell Silas. “But we should check just in case,” I say, turning to Dorian.

They both nod, and we all follow the scream up another set of stairs. At the top I gently try a few unyielding doorknobs until I find one that gives. Behind is a narrow staircase. “I’ll keep watch down here,” Dorian says.

At the top, we step into a tapering hallway, dark apart from a sliver of light at the end. We tiptoe toward it, and there’s another scream. When we reach the door, we pause.

“Do we want to know?” Song whispers. Of course I don’t want to know. I want Sequoia to be a haven. A home. But I grasp the handle and turn it slowly.

A guttural scream greets us. And a sweating girl sitting up in bed wearing a white gown. When she sees us, she pushes her hair from her eyes and leans forward, squinting as though she isn’t sure how real we are. She is wearing a facemask and breathes out short, sharp breaths. On the other side of the room, a man has his back to us. He didn’t hear us come in, and the girl doesn’t alert him. The room is clean and bright, empty apart from her bed and a counter top.

The girl rolls onto her side, grasps her stomach, and grunts.

“Count the time between the contractions,” the man says calmly, never turning around.

“Give me something for the pain,” she begs, and that’s when we take off. Without firmly shutting the door, we careen down the hallway and almost land in a heap at the bottom of the stairs.

“Well?” Dorian says.

Silas examines the ground. He looks like he might faint. And the girl in labor screams again.

When we finally reach Vanya’s room, she looks at the clock on the mantelpiece. “We don’t encourage sleeping in,” she says, her voice husky. Maks is sitting in a pink armchair. He is looking only at me. I stand straight.

“We got lost,” Silas says.

“Well, you’re here now.” Vanya gestures toward a table piled with food, and we sit and eat. There isn’t the variety there was at The Grove—no fruit or bread—but there are plenty of synthetic dishes and a variety of cooked potatoes. I spoon a heap of what looks like singed twigs and bark into my mouth. It’s salty with plenty of crunch.

Vanya smiles. “You like? That’s something we’re particularly proud of,” she says.

“Protein,” Maks adds.

“We found a few scurrying around in the kitchen and now we have thousands and thousands,” Vanya says. “We farm them in a cabin near to yours . . . cockroaches.” I cough and almost choke. I have never eaten a living creature before. I should be disgusted, but I can’t help rolling the bug around in my mouth in amazement, and trying to conjure up an image of what the creature would look like alive. Does it have eight legs? Wings?

“They survived?” Song says. He picks up a cockroach between his fingers and chews on it.

“We survived,” Vanya says. She is at the head of the table and Maks is at the opposite end, next to me. His foot presses against mine, and my muscles tighten. “Was the cabin comfortable?” Vanya asks. We nod. “And when you got lost, I presume you got to see a few things.”

“Not much,” Silas says. “But I hope we can help here, or at the very least learn to fit in.”

“I think you’ll be a wonderful addition,” Vanya says, and touches Silas’s face. When she sits back, she puts a finger into her mouth like she can taste him.

Silas’s neck flushes, but he doesn’t object to Vanya’s flirting, just like he never objected to Petra’s temper and violence. At The Grove, we all learned how to defer to a leader.

“Why do you need that?” Vanya asks, pointing at my airtank. Now I’m the one whose face burns. Even