51
QUINN
The rationing alarm is whirring like mad through Zone One and probably all across the pod. The streets are empty. All the Premiums must have taken cover at home or in a Ministry building. How long will it be before even these places get the air cut? The death toll doesn’t bear thinking about.
In houses along the street, faces are pressed to windows. People are too afraid to come outside.
I check the gauge on my airtank. It’s running low, but it’ll be enough, I hope.
I sprint along the wide boulevard toward the Justice Building because that’s where Bea is.
And she’s okay.
She is.
I know it.
52
BEA
Lance Vine has turned blue. And it won’t be long before I look like that myself. I close my eyes and block out the thought. I block out every thought and focus on my exhalations. I count them out, only inhaling a little when I get to ten, so I can ration the remnants of oxygen lingering in the cell. The air is so fine, every breath hurts. And I have a searing headache.
I open my eyes and look at the red light flashing on the ceiling, when Niamh bursts into the cell.
“Don’t close the door!” I wheeze over the siren blasting through the speakers. She doesn’t hear me, and the door closes behind her.
“Oh no.” Niamh gapes at Vine sprawled on the floor. She nudges him with her foot. “What have you done?” She puts a hand to her chest. “The air,” she says. “I can’t . . .” She starts to cough so hard, she’s unable to finish her sentence.
She looks like she wants to hurt me, but she also looks afraid. I’m alive and Lance Vine is dead. “The guards have all gone AWOL, but we’ll fix them . . . just as soon as everything gets back to normal,” she says. She goes to the intercom panel and is about to press her finger to the button when she realizes no one’s stationed outside to hear it buzz. She looks at me and gasps, and I sigh, expecting to have to watch Niamh die, too, but as she pulls on the handle, it opens. She cries out. And so do I.
It’s Quinn.
“Oh, Bea.” He pushes Niamh aside and rushes to me. He holds my face in his hands and looks at the dead man and then at my chafed wrists. “Are you okay? I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He uses a knife to free me, pulls up his mask, and kisses the palms of my hands. “I knew you were alive. Alive and kicking everyone’s asses,” he says.
“You’re here,” I say. I throw my arms around his neck and squeeze him so tight, I’m afraid I might hurt him. He kisses me on the mouth, the forehead, the neck, then puts his mask over my mouth and nose. For a moment I forget how filthy I am. “We need to find Ronan and your dad. They’ll help us,” I say.
“Leave my brother out of this,” Niamh says. She’s holding open the door and a little air from the hallway is filtering into the cell. If she leaves, we’ll both be dead. I have to keep her talking.
“Ronan’s on our side, Niamh. You
“You poisoned him against us,” she says.
“No we didn’t. He joined of his own free will, and you could, too.” The alarm is still blaring.
Niamh’s neck reddens. “And become like
Niamh scrabbles to her feet. “You’re going to be sorry.”
“No, I don’t think I am,” I say.
She looks like she is about to say more, but instead runs away along the hallway, shouting for a guard who will never appear.
“The pod’s under attack,” Quinn says.
“Then we better hurry up.” I grab his keys and open the cell door opposite. Old Watson is slumped in a corner. I didn’t even know he’d been caught. “Watson!” I drop to the floor and shake him. He doesn’t respond. I put my ear to his face, but I can’t hear breathing. Am I responsible for his capture, or was it his plants?
I rip the facemask Quinn gave me away from my own face, press it to Old Watson’s, and pull his legs from under him so he’s lying flat. I pump his chest, leaning hard on my hands, and Quinn tilts back the old man’s head and breathes into him.
Once. Twice.
But nothing happens.
“
Quinn stands up. “It’s not working, Bea. We have to get out of here.” He doesn’t understand: Old Watson saved me when I had no interest in saving myself. I won’t leave him here.
“I’m trying again,” I say, and lay my hands over his heart. I count out the compressions, one to thirty, and Quinn kneels back down and blows into his mouth, filling him up with air.
And it works! Old Watson gasps. I push the few strands of hair he still has away from his eyes and he opens them. “Don’t try to speak,” I say, and help him sit.
I throw Quinn’s keys back at him. “The other cells.”
“You’ll be okay?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. “Of course, I will.”
53
QUINN
Bea, Old Watson, about thirty Resistance members, and I flee the Justice Building. Auxiliaries crowd the streets, frantically darting this way and that, and most of them are carrying a weapon of some sort. I stop a boy about my age as he gallops by. “What’s going on?”
“The bastards have cut off the air to Zone Three apartments.” He pulls himself loose from me and runs away as best he can. A humanoid voice comes over the loudspeaker. “
We look at one another anxiously and then Gideon, Silas’s father, turns to me. “We need airtanks.”
“This way,” I say.
“Where are we going?” he asks, racing alongside me.
“Research Labs.”
We careen along a street, which is quickly clearing as auxiliaries jump over gates and high walls to get to Premium homes. It’s complete chaos: windows are smashed and gunshots fired. I slow down. “My brothers,” I say.
Gideon shakes his head. “We haven’t time.”
“I’m getting them,” I tell him.
“Fine. We’ll meet you at the border in an hour. Give me the keys and we’ll find the tanks,” Gideon says. I throw the keys at him.
“What about Jazz?” Old Watson asks. He’s right next to me, but his voice sounds far away. He’s way paler and more hunched than he was when I last saw him. He isn’t cut out for all this. Then again, who is?
