Resist

after Vanya. “Jazz is your daughter?” he asks.

“Yes,” Vanya calls from the bathroom. “Now go and find her.”

23 RONAN

By the time I make it through the back exit of the station and around the front, hoping to take the drifters by surprise, they’ve vanished. And so has Bea. She’ll have run, and I hope she has the sense to go back into the station as it’s the only building not on the brink of collapse. “Bea!” I yell, hopping over fissures in the road and hurtling back through the doors.

I hear them braying before I see them. “Get on with it, Brent, don’t be a sissy. If you’re not in the mood, let me have a go.” I finger my gun and climb the stairs. When I peer through the glass in the restaurant door, they have Bea trapped by the balcony, prodding her like a cold dinner. “Don’t,” she peeps. “I’ll give you anything you want.”

“We know you will.” They hoot. Bea sobs. She’s no longer wearing her shirt. She is trembling in her bra and pants.

I slink into the restaurant, planning to be on top of them before they notice, but in my haste I don’t look where I’m stepping and glass breaks under my foot. The men spin around. And they don’t waste a second. Two of them dive toward me and only hesitate when I raise my gun, ready to shoot.

“Careful, hombre,” one says.

“Let’s talk about this,” the other suggests.

“Down on the ground,” I say. They snicker like this is the silliest thing they’ve ever heard.

“Shoot them,” Bea says, her voice eerily calm. The man still holding her smacks her. Bea’s knees buckle, and I fire.

One man falls without a sound. I fire again to be sure he’ll never get up and the others grab their weapons. The one holding Bea presses the pitchfork to her throat.

“Try that with me, you little bastard, and I’ll rip her open,” he barks. “Now hand your gun to Earl.” The drifter with the baseball bat eases toward me.

“Stay where you are,” I say.

“Don’t give him the gun. We’ll both be finished if you do,” Bea says. “Shoot him.”

“Can’t you shut her up?” Earl says, turning. The guy with the pitchfork knocks the side of Bea’s head with the heel of his hand.

I close one eye, focus on the forehead of the man holding Bea, and pull the trigger. I am driven back only a fraction. The drifter crumples to the ground and as he does, Bea seizes the pitchfork from him and rushes at the last man. He turns, but it’s too late: the last thing he sees before he dies is Bea thrusting the prongs of the pitchfork into his chest.

She lets go of the weapon, watches him slide to the ground, and collapses. The delicately ridged track of her spine is clear through her chalky skin.

Her shirt and sweater have been trampled into the carpet, and when I shake them, glass and dirt cling to the fibers like a razor-edged reminder of what’s happened.

I throw them aside, remove my coat, and pull my own sweater over my head.

A sob comes from deep inside her belly as I touch her gently on the back. She covers her chest with her arms. “Here,” I say, and turn away.

“I should have listened to you,” she says. “I was trying to be strong. Now I’m a killer.”

I turn back around and crouch beside her. “It was him or you.”

“I thought you’d left. I thought I was alone.” She can’t say any more. She’s crying too hard.

“I’d never have left you,” I say. I watch her and breathe in the deathly silence of the station. My gun is still warm. I fasten the safety catch. The men I killed are sprawled across the carpet. Perhaps I should feel a shred of remorse, but I don’t.

All I care about now is getting back to the pod. And I’m going to have to convince Jude to find a way to help Bea instead of Quinn.

Because she shouldn’t have to live out here.

No one should.

24 BEA

Ronan leads me to one of the green chairs, turning it to face the windows, so I don’t have to look at the drifters. He opens up a compartment in his backpack filled to the brim with protein and nutrition bars and hands me one. I pull away my mouthpiece and take a small bite, which is all I can stomach. “You have to keep up your strength,” he says.

He’s watching me for signs I’ll break down, but I wish he wouldn’t. Every time I catch his eye I see the pity and horror of what might have been. And I’m ashamed. It was my own fault. I wanted to prove to myself how strong I’d become. And I wanted to prove to Ronan that everything he knew about drifters was untrue. Except it wasn’t.

“What are you even doing in The Outlands, Ronan? Isn’t there a servant at home waiting to run you a hot bath and cook you a meal?”

“Yes,” he says. “But I told you, I’m looking for someone.” He pauses. “For Quinn Caffrey. His father sent me. Do you know where he is?”

I want to trust him, and after what he’s just done for me, I probably should, but if Mr. Caffrey’s the one looking for Quinn, it must mean trouble. “I haven’t seen Quinn since the pod.”

Ronan studies me. He knows it’s a lie. “Well, I have to find him,” he says. “Will you help me?”

“I wish I could.”

“I’m a member of the Special Forces, Bea. I was at The Grove. I know what the Ministry did because I was there fighting for them.”

I sit up, pull off the sweater he gave me using one hand to keep my facemask in place, and fling it at him. How could he have destroyed all those trees? And killed so many people?

He doesn’t have the face of an enemy, but that’s what he is—he’s his father’s son. “You. Make. Me. Sick,” I say, and head back into the restaurant, where the three dead men are still bleeding into the carpet.

Ronan runs after me and forces me to look at him. “I didn’t know what we were doing until it was too late. I know the Ministry is full of crap. I want out, and Jude said he’d help. If I find Quinn for him, he’ll change my identity and I can leave the Special Forces. He’ll do it for Quinn, too. . . . And you, I’m sure.” But he doesn’t sound so sure. No Premium father would want his son involved with the likes of me.

I scratch Jazz’s dried blood from my hands. “I don’t want to go back,” I say simply. “And how could you, after you’ve seen what’s possible?”

“I’ll become an auxiliary. I’ll be like you.” He says this like it’s the most magnanimous gesture in the world. It’s all I can do to put my hands behind my back to stop myself from punching his puffed-out chest.

“Do you know what it’s like to be an auxiliary? Do you like running or dancing or kissing or anything remotely normal? Because once you become like me, every breath will cost you. You think that’s a life I want to go back to or one I’d want for Quinn? Leaving the Special Forces and living in Zone Three isn’t going to solve anything. You’ll be in hiding, that’s all. A coward in hiding.” I stop. I’ve been shouting, and my throat hurts. I didn’t hit Ronan, but from his guilty expression, I might as well have.

“I don’t want to hurt people anymore,” he whispers, looking at the floor.

“So fight to make things better.”