isn’t any point in delaying things. I’ve heard from Jude Caffrey that it’s getting worse. Time to act.” He steps in front of Niamh and grabs my face, his sweaty hand over my mouth. “We thought we hacked most of you down when we destroyed The Grove. So who’s attacking us?”
“Is there another riot in the pod?” I ask. And is Quinn a part of it? Could he be here? Hope trickles its way back into my body. “If you’re so tough, why aren’t you out there battling the bad guys yourself?”
He smacks me hard across the face. The chair teeters on its back legs and crashes to the floor. I land on my hands tied to the back of the chair and clench my jaw to stop myself from whimpering. I roll to the side and try moving my wrists.
Niamh presses her lips together. “Was Wendy behind all this?”
“Or was it Ronan?” Vine adds.
Niamh shudders. “And Wendy’s helped these new terrorists attack us, I suppose,” she says, not giving me time to answer his question. “Let’s just shut off the air to the cell and let her choke,” she says. Vine stands over me and shrugs. He couldn’t care less what happens to me.
A noise in the hallway makes me tense and another steward bumbles in. He looks at me and gulps. “They’re waiting to start the chamber meeting, sir,” he says.
Vine turns to Niamh. “Tell them I’ll be there shortly.”
“Yes, Pod Minister,” she says. She pokes me with her foot.
“I’m no different from you, Niamh,” I say. I don’t beg or plead with her to help me, I simply give her a chance to do the right thing.
“No, Bea,” she says. “We’re innately different, and that’s part of the problem: you and your RATS think we aren’t.” She leaves the cell, slamming the door shut on her way out.
Vine crouches down and strokes my face with the back of his hand. I try to bite him. He pulls his hand away and laughs. I’m like prey, and it feels far too familiar. I scream as loudly as I can, to startle him if nothing else, and only stop when an alarm blares from the speakers in the wall and a red light on the ceiling flashes and spins. “It can’t be,” he says.
“What can’t it be?”
He looks down at me. “You know very well, it’s the air siren. The Resistance must have damaged the tubing. You’ll pay for your involvement in this.”
“The tubing?”
“They should have remembered that the first places air is siphoned from is the Penal Block and auxiliary apartments.” He heads for the door.
“You’re leaving me here?” I ask. I’m not scared of dying—I’ve been faced with the prospect so many times I know it’s inevitable, and suffocating is the most inevitable thing of all—but I don’t want to die alone. Someone should witness my last moment. I deserve that, at least, don’t I?
Vine sneers and presses a bell on the intercom. He waits several moments, then pulls on the door handle, but it doesn’t budge. He clears his throat and tries the intercom again. “I’m ready to leave now,” he says into the mouthpiece, furrowing his brow.
I cough because the air in the cell has already thinned. “What if no one comes?” I ask, goading. “If there’s trouble, wouldn’t everyone be recruited to fight? Wouldn’t the stewards run scared if they thought the air was being siphoned?”
He puts his hand to his chest then thumps the cell door with his fists. “Let me out!” he bawls. He clutches his chest and thumps that too. I focus on stretching out my exhalations. My breath sounds like the ocean. Vine kneels on the floor next to me and puts his ear to my mouth. “What kind of trick is that?” he asks. His breathing is rapid.
“No trick,” I say. “I have all the air I need.”
“Get me out of here!” He blanches, going back to the door where he cranes his neck and opens his mouth wide to catch all the air he can. “It burns,” he croaks and starts hacking.
He tries his finger against the button one last time before sliding to the floor panting and then kicking the door and yowling incomprehensibly. And soon he is on his knees hyperventilating, and with very little warning, passes out. I watch his chest rise and fall. He’ll live a while longer. But only a while.
And I stay as still as I can on the floor preserving my oxygen. The air is very thin, but it’s enough to live on. For me at least.
For now.
50
ALINA
Whole regiments are surrounding the three recycling stations that have their tubing intact and snipers are positioned in their towers. “We can shoot,” I tell Jude Caffrey. He dips his head, as if to say,
We bolt toward the station and hurdle hastily erected sandbags. A soldier on the door recognizes Ronan, lets him through, and we take the winch to the top. My heart thrums so loudly in my ears I can almost hear it over the gunfire. All I can think about are my aunt and uncle, and Bea and Jazz, who’ll suffocate if we don’t stop Sequoia’s troopers from blowing up the pod’s tubes. It’s what the Ministry always feared, what they told people terrorists might do, and at The Grove we laughed at their fearmongering.
At the top, we dash from the winch and onto a balcony, where we throw ourselves onto our stomachs and inspect the ground below through the scopes of our rifles. Vanya’s troopers have appeared from the west and are advancing on the stations. Only their helmets and shields, fashioned from old car doors, protect them. Occasionally one of them falls to the ground, but the dead and injured are trodden over and the troop continues. Ministry soldiers are taking cover behind the sandbags and firing continuous rounds of ammo; the Sequoians are undaunted.
The clunking zip appears to my right as it loops the pod. It fires again at our station and for a few seconds the building buckles. Silas, Ronan, and I gape at one another wondering, for one horrifying moment, if the whole thing will topple to the ground and us with it. But the damage is superficial and the building quickly stops shuddering.
Ronan elbows me. “What are you waiting for?” he says. He has eyes the color of steel and the bearing of someone used to war.
I look through the scope again. To avoid the debris from the station the Ministry soldiers have broken ranks, giving Vanya’s troopers time to dart forward and leap over the sandbags. Guns are fired, but all the soldiers are suddenly forced to use knives and the butts of their rifles to protect themselves. One of the Sequoians throws a Ministry soldier to the ground and repeatedly pounds his head against the ground. My stomach heaves. I take aim and fire. The trooper lets the soldier go and clutches his side. He pulls off his helmet. It isn’t a he at all. I’ve shot Wren. She falls, like a heavy lead pipe, into the dirt. Within minutes other troopers have trampled over her and if she was alive after being shot, she isn’t now.
“I’ve killed Wren,” I tell Silas.
He squints. “It’s her or my parents.” I hate the truth of this. I hate all the killing and the weighing of one life against another. When will it be over? I need it to be over. I can’t live in a world like this anymore.
“They’re too close to the tower. I can’t get a good shot,” Ronan says, standing up. “And if they break in at the bottom they could use the emergency staircase to get to the control room. We’ll never hold them off from here.”
We jump up and follow him. Was Ronan one of the soldiers I was shooting at a few weeks ago when the Ministry destroyed The Grove? I am a turncoat, I realize, fighting side by side with an enemy. But today we fight together to protect the pod and the people we love.
And that seems the right thing to do.
