running. We haven’t got a choice.
“Drop the guns,” he growls.
“Maks?” Alina says. Her voice quivers. But the only thing that scares me is the fact that he’s stopping us getting to the south station.
“Guns down, hands up,” he repeats, and we throw our guns to the ground and put our hands in the air. “On your knees.”
“Get on with it,” Alina says. I can feel her shaking. I’d grip her hand, but I have a feeling she wouldn’t appreciate it. And neither would this thug.
“Where are the others?” Maks asks. I look at Silas, not sure who he means.
“They’re safe,” he says.
“They won’t be when I find them,” Maks says.
“I should’ve killed you in your sleep,” Alina says, acting more like herself. She spits into the dirt. Maks laughs.
The zip fires and showers us in small rocks and shards of metal. We shrink from the shrapnel and Maks is thrown to his knees, his gun knocked from his hands. It gives me just enough time to retrieve my own and aim it at him. He puts his hands up and grins. Silas and Alina snatch up their guns, too, but they don’t shoot him, so neither do I, though one bullet is all it would take.
“You’d rather fight alongside the Ministry than fellow rebels,” he sneers at Silas and Alina.
“Thousands of innocent people live in the pod. You’re lunatics,” I tell him.
Alina approaches Maks and his chest puffs out. She rams her gun against it. She pauses, and I think she’s about to say something, but without warning, she pulls the trigger.
Maks stares at Alina in disbelief and falls forward. His face hits the clay and his green jacket darkens where the blood soaks through.
Alina looks at me. “He would have killed us.” She doesn’t have to explain; I should have done it for her.
“The south station,” I remind them, and we take off, leaving Maks to bleed into the earth.
We squat behind the sandbags again, scanning the battlefield teeming with bodies and soldiers for a safe way into the station. “Straight through,” Silas says. Alina nods in agreement as one of our tanks grinds past.
It fires and hits the zip. Shrapnel showers down and both Sequoians and Ministry soldiers are injured.
Everything stops, giving Silas, Alina, and me a chance to get to the tank. The hatch opens and a figure appears, lifting the visor on his helmet. It’s Jude. He shouts, but over the thunder of engines and distant gunfire, it’s impossible to tell what he wants.
And then a round of gunfire rattles the air and Jude reels like a spinning top. He falls from the tank. I turn to see Maks on his elbows holding his gun, smiling. Silas and Alina flog him with bullets. This time he stays down.
But Jude is down, too. A soldier is next to him. “Medic!” he shouts, and I run to them. I pull Jude’s radio from his inside pocket. “General Caffrey has been shot. Send a stretcher.” No one responds. Just static.
Silas and Alina are next to me. Neither of them tries to help, and I don’t bother appealing to them. I wrench off my jacket, and place it beneath Jude’s head.
“Is he dead?” Alina asks.
“He’s got a pulse,” the soldier says.
Jude opens his eyes, and I take a relieved breath. “It’s too late,” he croaks. “They’re at the south station. Get the people out of the pod. Get them all out.” He pulls at his collar. He’s been hit in the only unprotected place —his neck. I rip the arm from my shirt, scrunch it into a ball and press it against the wound. He can’t die. We need him.
“There’s no time to evacuate so many people,” I tell him.
“The south station,” Silas says coldly. He isn’t looking at Jude. He doesn’t know what Jude has become or that he’s spent these last few weeks protecting the Resistance.
“Go,” I say, and they are gone, as is the soldier who clambers through the tank’s hatch and rolls away. Sequoia’s zip aims for the tank, barely missing it.
Within a minute the piece of my shirt against Jude’s neck is soaked through with blood. My stomach clenches. I try appealing to whoever is on the other end of the radio again. But I may as well be talking to myself.
Jude fingers his facemask. I increase the density of oxygen, for all the good it will do.
“What now?” I ask, hoping he knows how to save himself.
He coughs. “You seem capable, Ronan. You tell me.”
57
QUINN
The blasts outside have covered the pod in a film of dust, so it’s pretty much impossible to see what’s going on. And Zone One is a mess. Alarms are ringing in every Premium building as auxiliaries loot them. There are bodies everywhere. No one’s safe, and the Ministry is visibly absent.
You’ve got to wonder if this is a bit like The Switch—people so hungry for air they’d do anything to hang on a bit longer. And in the end, they all died anyway.
I have Jazz on my back, and Bea is holding Lennon and Keane’s hands. We are on our way to the border. A figure rushes at me, and I hold tightly to my tank. I’m about to lash out, when I realize it’s Gideon. And he’s carrying a massive backpack. “I broke into the biosphere. Got bulbs, seeds, and a few cuttings: everything we need,” he says. He eyes Lennon and Keane.
“My brothers,” I say. “Where’s everyone else?”
“They went on ahead.”
We turn into Border Boulevard and stop short. A group of men with airtanks and broken bottles sees us and charges. “Keep back!” Gideon says, waving a kitchen knife. The men come to an abrupt halt a few feet from us.
“We could leave via the trash chutes?” Bea says, backing away from the men.
One of them points at me. “You’re the Premium who spoke at the press conference. They said you were dead.”
“I’m not.”
“You said we could breathe outside,” the man continues. The rest of the gang listens. A larger group—kids my age wearing balaclavas—stop and watch.
“It’s that guy from the screen,” one of them says. “Oi, everyone, it’s that Premium guy!” Within seconds we’re surrounded.
“So
“It’s complicated,” I say.
The crowd presses in. “What do we do?” someone demands. “You’re the one who started this.” A couple of months ago I didn’t believe I could start anything, and even now I’m not sure I can lead.
“Tell them what to do,” Jazz murmurs in my ear.
“It takes dedication,” I say. “But you can train your body to exist outside. And we can help you do it.”
“Stuff that. I’m getting out of here and joining the Resistance. They’ll know what to do,” someone says.
“We’re all that’s left,” Bea says. “The Ministry killed the others.”
“You think we’ve been growing avocadoes and beets just in case you ever found the guts to leave? Get real. You need air but you need food, too. Nonperishable food. Everything you can find. We’ll wait for you at The Cenotaph,” Gideon says.
“And be ready for it to get tough out there,” I warn them.
