Resist

evening is consumed by something called a Pairing Ceremony.

Dorian waves the paper at Terry. “Pairings?”

“You’ll be told your vocation, get paired, and move into the main house. Most of you, anyway. Some people just get given a vocation and the pairing comes later.”

Silas, who’s breathing heavily after hiking hills for almost an hour, repeats Dorian’s question. “Paired?”

Terry fidgets with the schedules still in his hands. “Didn’t Vanya explain?” Silas shakes his head. “You’ll be given your permanent partners,” Terry says.

“Like work buddies,” Song says. “I saw people going about in pairs and I wondered.”

“Sort of.” Terry smiles and makes to leave.

Silas holds him back. “So I could be partnered with Alina?”

“Well, you’re cousins, so no,” Terry says. He shifts from one foot to the other. “You have to be genetically compatible. You know?” Silas scowls. Dorian and Song, who are standing side by side, frown. But after the tests they’ve done on us, we aren’t completely shocked: Not only will Vanya choose what each of us spends the rest of our lives doing, but she’ll also select our mates. It’s almost enough to make me pine for the pod. Almost. “Breeding’s encouraged and most pairs have children who might actually survive . . . this.” Terry waves his hand around the room, but he means the world beyond it—Earth. “Comes naturally, I suppose.”

“Naturally?” Silas says through gritted teeth.

“So where are the children?” I try to keep my voice steady, remembering the girl in the attic, the fear in her eyes, the sweat on her forearms, and the doctor cool and detached as she counted her own contractions. Will motherhood be my fate, if we stay here?

“We keep them in a nursery and train them from birth,” Terry says.

“You take away the girls’ babies?” I ask, stepping closer to Terry. He doesn’t make the rules here, but I have an urge to hurt him anyway.

“I have no intention of breeding. Ever,” Silas says. Having loved Inger and lost him, I’m not surprised by Silas’s outrage.

“But you want to join us. This is what we do,” Terry says simply.

Silas sits on the end of his treadmill with his head in his hands. We huddle around him. We’re too stunned to ask any more questions, and it’s clear Terry has no power, so we ignore him sneaking out. “It’s a baby mill,” Silas says. “No wonder she’s not interested in Maude or Bruce.” He glances at the couple training in the room. They’re gushing with sweat and probably haven’t much energy to pay any attention to us, but Silas waves us to the other end of the room just in case. “We have to get away from here.”

“And where would we go?” Dorian asks.

Silas glowers at him. “Does it matter?”

“Maybe we’ll all get paired with someone normal,” Dorian says. Is he serious? Does he know what he’s saying?

“Yeah, cool. Maybe you’ll get some hot concubine,” Silas says. “Think about it from Alina’s perspective.” But I wish they wouldn’t—I don’t want the decision to be about me being a girl. It has to be the best thing for all of us.

“Leaving has to be our last resort. There’s no air out there. We’ll be dead in a week,” Dorian says.

“After this ridiculous ceremony, we’ll be forced to . . .” Silas nudges a water bottle on the floor with his foot. I put my arms around him to stop him trembling. He pushes me away. “Inger’s dead and I’m supposed to get over it and get it on with some girl?” Silas and Dorian are standing eye-to-eye, ready to wrangle. Song pushes them apart and stands between them.

“We can’t do anything until we know what the deal is with Quinn, Bea, and Jazz,” I say.

“Then we wait,” Dorian says.

Silas rolls his eyes. “If we wait, we might not get another chance to talk about it. Sorry, but which bit of this sickening thing don’t you understand?”

Dorian’s eyes widen, and he lifts his fists as though about to hit Silas, when the door opens again.

It’s Abel. “Don’t leave,” he says, looking at me and shaking Silas’s hand. “Terry said you were in here and that you were pretty upset about what he told you.”

“We thought you were dead. As well as other things,” Silas says.

“You know each other?” Dorian asks. His hands are still fists.

“Remember when I got to The Grove I told you that Abel had been killed? This is him,” I say. I can’t look at Abel for more than a second.

“But you’re not Resistance,” Dorian tells Abel.

Abel ignores him. “You’ll be shot before you make it past the fountain. Besides, where would you go? If you don’t suffocate, you’ll starve. And Vanya doesn’t make life easy when you return, which you will.” I’m troubled by the idea of pairings, but I can’t help wondering how I’d feel if I knew I’d get Abel. Would that change things?

“That’s exactly what I’ve been telling them,” Dorian says, as though Abel’s his best friend. He folds his arms across his chest. The rest of us look to Silas. If he and Dorian don’t find a way to agree, the group will come apart, and that can’t happen; we’ve already lost too many people.

“Whatever we do, we do it together,” I say.

“Then we’re staying,” Dorian says.

“We’re leaving,” Silas corrects.

“Give it a week,” Abel suggests. “If you decide I was wrong, I’ll help you escape.”

“What’s in it for you?” Silas asks.

Abel pauses and looks at me. “What the Resistance was doing was worthwhile. Together we might persuade Vanya that there’s something to replanting trees.” I study him. Is he patronizing us?

If he is, Song doesn’t seem to notice. “But Vanya as good as told us she left The Grove because she didn’t see a point to planting,” he says.

“We have to show her she’s wrong,” Abel says.

Silas lets out a long, heavy sigh and throws his head back. “Three days,” Silas says. “But we still need to talk, Abel.”

The building shudders, and we are silent. “The zip’s back,” I say.

28 QUINN

The seat next to me is empty when Bea should be sitting in it, her leg pressing against mine. My body clenches as I think of her head resting against Ronan Knavery’s chest, and the zip lands with a clunk.

We pull off our earphones and jump out of the aircraft.

Maks takes me to an outbuilding and kicks open the door. “Tell Vanya we’re back,” he tells the pilot, who walks off. I’m yanked along a passageway into a space divided into four prison cells. A girl of about fifteen or sixteen with olive skin is in one and next to her is a guy the same age. She looks up, afraid. “We didn’t steal anything,” she says.

“Why would we?” the boy adds.

“Please let us out of here.” She presses her face between the bars.

“Pipe down,” Maks says, and the girl immediately eases herself away from the bars and into a corner. He turns to me and points at an empty cell. “In there,” he says.

“What have I done wrong?”

He raises one eyebrow. He’s so big, it would take nothing for him to squash me, so I just do what he says.

He hasn’t even closed the door when Vanya blazes in, heading straight for my cell. “Where is she?” she asks, prodding my chest with her finger.

“They were probably kidnapped. We found three dead drifters in the station. Looks like there’d been a struggle not long ago,” I say. Vanya pinches the tube connecting my airtank to the facemask, completely cutting off