“Careful,” he says, and we start down the stairwell. My free hand slides along the brick wall, and I feel for the edge of each step with my feet.
“It was hard when you disappeared. They said you were dead. It was on the news,” I say. It’s easier to talk to Abel now we’re in the dark. I can be more honest—less afraid to be myself.
“I’m sorry,” he says, which is all I need to hear. But he continues. “My job was to learn as much about the Resistance as possible. Vanya heard you had developed new breeding programs, but the only breeding you lot were doing was with plants.”
That mission to steal clippings from the biosphere was the first important thing I’d done for The Resistance, but it meant nothing to Abel. He was just along for the ride. And because of his cold feet, we were almost caught. And because of
“So you never gave a damn about the trees.”
“I believed in what we were doing,” he says. “Growing trees was giving people hope. After that day in the biosphere, I so badly wanted to tell you who I was, but before I could, I was picked up.” He squeezes my hand.
“What did the Ministry do to you?”
“Beat the crap out of me. They were still waiting for me to spill it when the riot started up, and some minister chucked me out and expected me to choke. By the time I found The Grove, it was a mountain of sludge.” He pauses. “We’re at the bottom. Come on.” We scurry along a tight passageway. The floor feels greasy, but Abel doesn’t slow down.
“And Jo?” I may as well ask everything now, while I have the chance.
“I found her at The Grove. She was trying to escape Sequoia and that’s why she’s a benefactor now.”
But that isn’t really what I want to know. He lets go of my hand. A meager, gray glow fills the passageway and a gust of icy air rushes at me. “This way,” Abel says, and guides me outside and toward scattered splashes of light. The main house is at our backs, and Abel continually checks behind us. As we get closer, I realize that the spots of light are windows—narrow to the point of absurdity.
Soon we’re hunkering beneath a row of windows. “Take a look,” Abel whispers. My stomach tumbles. Whatever is through this window can’t be unseen. I press an eye to the light.
Inside is a bright hospital ward with metal beds down each side and people dressed in flimsy undershirts strapped to them. They all have tubes threaded through their mouths and noses, and IVs stuck in their hands. Everything is connected to hissing machines by their beds. A loud beeping fills the room, and a nurse jumps up from her desk and dashes to someone’s bedside, where she tinkers with knobs on one of the machines. The beeping stops, and a deep moan replaces it. The nurse looks down at the person impassively and goes back to her desk.
I slide down next to Abel. “I don’t understand,” I say.
“That’s the testing lab. Their oxygen’s being rationed and their organs are being monitored. Vanya wants to understand suffocation and what chemical conditions might prevent it.”
I look again to see if I can spot Maude or Bruce, but everyone is uniformly skinny, and I can’t make out any faces. “How long are they kept like this?” I wait a long time for an answer, and then it comes without Abel having to say anything. I stare at him unbelieving. “They experiment on people until they die?” It’s what I suspected, but knowing it’s true is different. It’s too horrible. “But what reason does Vanya give for why they don’t mix with the others and are never seen again?”
“You heard her in the orangery going on about benefactors dedicating their lives to meditation and how this energy mustn’t be contaminated.”
“People buy that?”
“Some do. Some choose not to think about it.” And why not? It’s no more far-fetched than the idea that trees will only grow in the biosphere. People believe what they’re told.
“There’s more,” he says, and crawls to another window.
This room is filled with cribs and playpens. A nurse sleeps in a rocking chair holding an infant. The children are crying, wheezing, or asleep. None of them are connected to tubes, but most are covered in Band-Aids and bruises. There’s a shriek and a toddler sits up in her crib, her eyes full of tears. The nurse opens one eye. “Hush,” she says.
“They’re pumping the air in at fifteen percent,” Abel whispers, “and they keep lowering it until a child looks like he might suffocate. Then they hook him up to an oxybox. They’re training them.”
I look into the room again. “Where are the mothers?” I ask. Does one of these babies belong to the girl we saw in the attic?
“Vanya believes the kids are hers. The mothers stay in the main house. The older ones are upstairs. If they survive, they’ll be brought over when they’re twelve. Vanya’s only been doing this eight years. She thinks she’s creating a better breed of human.”
“She’s mad.”
A shadow blocks the light coming from the window. “We should shut these blinds,” a splintery voice says. The light dims, as the window is screened over. I squash myself against the wall.
“You brought Jo back here and you let
“Jo needed to give birth somewhere. And I didn’t know the extent of things until Jo told me a couple of days ago.”
“She knew?”
“Maks took great pleasure in filling her in when she got back,” he says uneasily.
“So now what?” I ask. The windows are impossibly narrow and we can’t simply saunter through the front door.
“Maks has keys,” he says. “If we could get them. . . .” He trails off.
“Are you joking?” He isn’t the kind of person to leave keys lying around.
“There’s no other way, Alina,” he says. He sounds tough, but he would—it’s not his neck on the line.
“Well, if we do this, we aren’t leaving any benefactors behind. And definitely not the kids.”
Abel gapes at me. “What? No. We can’t take all of them. We’ll be caught.”
I pause and listen to the cry of a baby. The cry gets louder and louder until it finally subsides and the night is silent again. “Did you think we’d help you rescue Jo and no one else?” Abel shakes his head. He looks guilty. And afraid. As he should. “Have you always been in love with her?” I ask.
He sighs. “It isn’t like that. Jo’s my best friend. I’ve known her a long time,” he says. “You and me, we never had a chance to get to know each other. If we did . . .”
I want to tell Abel to go to hell. If he thinks he’s going to get me to help him by promising something like that, he’s right—he
We head through the door leading into the main house, and Abel clutches my arm. His touch still makes my legs wilt, and I hate myself for being so weak. “Why do you have to act so hard-nosed all the time? You don’t make it easy to love you.”
I almost laugh, but rage tears through me, and I shove him so hard, he staggers backward. He has no idea what I’ve been through since he was caught and because of his lies. I look at him squarely. “I’m running out of energy,” I say. “I’m going to focus on this one last thing and then I’m retiring from saving the world. Maybe we’ll talk about how unlovable I am then. Okay?”
40
BEA
Ronan’s attic studio is covered in paintings and drawings and a rainbow of color is splattered across the
