The streets coming into Castledale were just as Saffediene and I had seen them on the feed: lifeless. Part of me wondered why, and the other part already knew.
Even though Thane had said sequestered, I knew the city had been abandoned. I’d learned about ghost towns in my ancient civilizations classes; they usually died because the water dried up or legend claimed a spirit haunted the area.
In this case, General Director Darke drove away the people with threats and mind control. Already the buildings seemed older, the sidewalks cracked. I imagined what this city might look like in fifty years. In one hundred years.
Would it look like Seaside? Or the Badlands? The Citizens there had survived wars and fires and brainwashing. People had survived. Built new buildings. Cultivated trees. Castledale could be repopulated, no matter what General Darke had done.
With my resolve to defy Director Hightower firm, I squared my shoulders and entered the only building in use in Castledale: the safe house where the Resistance would make its final stand.
I steered clear of Jag. He was stormy and dangerous, what with Vi unconscious and over half his crew dead or missing. Saffediene filled him in on our convo with Ivory. I’d asked her to keep any mention of what had happened with Blaze out of the report.
She’d do it, even if she didn’t like it. During the eight-hour flight here, I’d told her about the mission to Freedom when he’d died. She’d listened—something Jag had never done.
Blaze’s death wasn’t my fault. He was the Assistant Director of Seaside; he should not have been assigned a mission that could have compromised his position in the Association.
His death was Jag’s fault.
Of course we’d both spent the last two years blaming ourselves inwardly and each other outwardly. But I’d learned that blaming someone doesn’t help. It only colors your view of them, and I’d been watching Jag through a red haze for a long time.
Everything he did angered me. Everything he said, I questioned. And when he took Vi from me, my blame and fury and guilt were easily dumped on Jag. I didn’t know how to overcome it, so I waited on the fringes for Saffediene to report, and then I took her hand and led her down a posh hallway. “Did we get room assignments?”
“We need to see Laurel for that.”
So we did. Laurel had organized the building into wings, with our tech facilities and infirmary in one, the dining hall and common areas in another, bedrooms in a third, and the war room in the last.
Everyone seemed to be in the war room with Jag, so that’s exactly where I didn’t want to be.
The lodging wing was dimly lit and crazy-quiet. Four hallways branched off the main corridor, with girls down two of them, and boys down the other two. Half of me wanted nothing more than to rush to Vi’s bedside and urge her to wake up. The other half wanted to slip into the privacy of Saffediene’s room and forget I’d ever loved another girl.
Neither half won. Saffediene kissed me quickly on the mouth before disappearing down one of the girls’ halls. I listened to her retreating footsteps mingle with the dull chatter from the war room.
Then I escaped to my room, which consisted of a narrow cot shoved against a wall and a single shelf above it. Sitting on the bed, I seriously considered leaving. What would happen if I did? Would anyone care? How long would it take for them to notice?
“There you are, Zenn,” Vi’s mom said from the doorway. The light haloed her, and she looked younger than I remembered. “I need you in the tech department. Have you got a minute?”
“Sure.” I followed her down the hall, through the war room, and into the opposite wing. Immediately the stench of burnt metal and hot smoke filled my nose. My dad used to smell like that when he came home from work. My stomach twisted, and I felt a profound sadness. I hadn’t seen my father in so long.
I forced away those thoughts when Laurel turned into a brightly lit room and gestured me inside. Counters ran the length of the room, some covered with bits of tech and others overflowing with bare filaments.
“It’s all raw,” I said with a sinking feeling.
“See why I need you?” Laurel introduced me to a couple of guys whose names I forgot as soon as she said them. I nodded at Trek, who instructed the two guys in words that sounded like English but held no meaning for me.
Laurel and I moved down the counter to a station stacked with bins of what looked like scrap metal with wires sticking out of one end. “I need you to weave these filaments into receivers.”
I took a step back. “I know next to nothing about tech,” I protested. “I don’t even know what a receiver looks like.”
Laurel pointed to a spherical silver ball the size of my pinkie nail. “That’s a receiver. We need about fifty more to complete the teleporter rings.”
“We have fifty rings?” I asked, incredulous.
Laurel glanced at the two guys in the front of the room. “We will when you get those receivers made,” she said. She left, and I knew those of us working in the tech department had been tasked with the impossible.
Jag
37.
Vi woke up twelve hours before Ian Darke was scheduled to arrive in Castledale. I’d just finished my disgusting breakfast of a fruit-and-nut TravelTreat. I’d been going crazy, waiting for her to wake up, half believing she never would. When her eyes fluttered open, I drew a sharp intake of breath. Vi blinked a couple of times, her pupils too large. “Mom?” she said, her voice little more than breath.
“Vi, babe,” I whispered. “I’m here.”
Her head turned toward me, almost robotically. Fear flashed through me. What if she couldn’t remember me?
A slow smile spread across her face. “Jag.”
I hugged her and cried into her neck. Just as quickly as the relief filled me, anger took over. I pulled away. “Don’t you ever do anything like that again,” I said.
“Okay,” she agreed, probably a little too fast. I didn’t care if I’d influenced her with my voice.
“Where’s my mom? I swear I heard her singing earlier.”
“Raine was singing,” I said. “Some of us have been sitting with you in shifts.”
“Zenn?”
I stiffened, though I tried not to show it. “He’s been really busy in the lab.” Translation:
“He completed the receivers we needed for the teleporter rings. He’s never worked with tech, but your mom said he’s brilliant at it.”
Vi’s eyes grew wistful. “He’s brilliant at a lot of things. Most everything he does, actually.”
“I know.”
“We hurt him,” she said simply.
“I know,” I said again, wishing it could be different, but accepting that it wasn’t. That was something Vi
