CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Carter
After the apocalypse, after you’ve lost your home and your family, after you’ve buried friends, you might think it’d be hard to know where rock bottom is. You might think it’s hard to know exactly when you’re beaten.
It’s not.
Defeat isn’t just being caught. It’s knowing there’s no one else to blame and no one left to fight for. I mean, who was I kidding? Sure, my goals seemed noble—save humanity, right?
But really, I’d only been in it for the girl. All this time that I fought, that I searched Farm after Farm, liberating people, organizing people. I’d done it for Lily. To find her. To keep her safe.
But what was the point? I couldn’t keep her safe. I didn’t get to be with her. And obviously, I was a miserable leader.
Right now, the best thing that could happen for the entire rebellion was for me to get caught. If I was extremely lucky, the Elites would figure out what had happened when they couldn’t contact me, and they’d get the hell back to Utah. If the best that I could hope for was that I was the only one to pay for my mistakes, then I could live with that.
I guess in the end, I was just so effing tired. I was tired of the constant responsibility, of the fear that I might make the wrong decision. That I might have ruined everything. That I might get everyone killed.
If I could have had Lily, maybe I could have made peace with all of that. But without her, what was the point?
It was all so goddamn hard and for once—just for once—I wanted to take the easy way out. I wanted to just lie down and let the bad guys win, because honestly, I wasn’t winning either way. So I might as well just roll over, right?
I walked through the gates of the Farm in handcuffs, my head hung low. It wasn’t the first time I’d come in to a Farm this way, but it was the first time I didn’t have an exit strategy.
Pit Bull led me through the Farm himself, his tranq rifle poking me in the back every time my steps slowed.
Zeke was up ahead, talking to the other two Collabs, guys Zeke greeted as Victor and James.
“If I’d known that’s why he was sneaking off, I never would have let him go,” Pit Bull said, giving me another surly poke.
I slanted a look back at Pit Bull. “You didn’t know?”
Was Zeke’s side trip to Utah something he’d come up with on his own?
“Nah, he just disappeared. If I’d known he had a lead on you, I would have gone with him.”
“On me?”
“Yeah. Who would have thought Zeke could have brought in the great Carter Olson. I never would have thought he had the balls to pull off something like this.”
This little speech tripped me up. “You know who I am?”
“Shit, yeah. You’re one of the most wanted terrorists in the New Republic.”
Again, I stumbled. “Terrorist?”
“The New Republic released the news about a month ago. Thirty-four counts of conspiring to commit treason. Twenty-seven counts of aggravated assault. And fifty-four counts of kidnapping a minor.” Pit Bull reached out and shoved me in the middle of my back. “You would not believe the pain in the ass the Greens have been since then. Like you’re some kind of friggin’ hero. You’d think you were Iron Man.”
Despite myself, despite being at rock bottom, despite my exhaustion, I laughed at that. Iron Man? Seriously? Because they had no idea how wrong they were.
Pit Bull jerked me to a halt and whirled me around to face him. “You think that’s funny? You think that’s friggin’ hysterical? The fact that you’re making my life a pain in the ass? That our Dean has left because of you? That our friggin’ food shipments have stopped because of you? You think that’s funny?”
“Your Dean has left? Your shipments have stopped?”
Was that possible? Was Zeke right? Because to hear Pit Bull describe it, this Farm was in serious trouble. Just like Zeke had described. So why had Zeke betrayed me?
I was still trying to wrap my brain around it when we reached the Dean’s office. It’s almost always at the top of some admin building. In the biggest, plushest office on campus. This Dean was no different.
Pit Bull had swiped his security card and opened the door. Victor, James, and I followed Zeke in. A moment later we were piling out of an elevator on the top floor.
The elevator opened up into some kind of reception area. A couple of Collabs sat in front of a flat-screen TV watching one of those Kate Beckinsale vampire movies. Assholes.
Pit Bull marched across the room and hit one of them upside his head. “Turn that shit off.” The other guy scrambled for the remote and a second later Kate vanished. “You two go patrol the perimeter. Make sure every Collab here is suited up and on patrol.”
“Why? The Dean’s not—”
“Unless you want to be chained up outside like a freakin’ Green, you’ll follow orders.”
The two Kate Beckinsale fans didn’t even wait for the elevator. They dashed straight for the fire stairs and vanished.
Zeke whirled me around and pushed me through the door into the Dean’s office. It was a pretty typical set up. Oversized desk. Lots of book shelves. A couple of chairs against the wall on either side of the door. As soon as the door closed, the Pit Bull started giving Zeke a hard time. I let Zeke push me into one of the chairs, and ducked my head, trying to look whipped, but inside, my mind was whirling. This Farm really was in trouble. And to hear Pit Bull talk about it, I was partly to blame. And right now, I was the only person who could save them all.
And no matter how much I wanted to just give up, I couldn’t. Because if I just rolled over now and let these Collabs win, then I would be no better than they were. If I had the chance to save people and let it slip by because it was too hard, than wasn’t that worse than what the Collabs did?
And maybe I didn’t have Lily anymore, but I still knew exactly what she’d say about that. She wouldn’t give up. Ever. She would fight this until there was nothing left in her to fight. And so would I.
All I needed was something to pick the lock with. All I needed was a moment alone to find a friggin’ paper clip. Then I could almost do this in my sleep. It was the kind of thing I used to practice, just for the hell of it, back in my room at the academy. Looking back, there were so many things about my time there that made sense only in retrospect.
We had all the normal military school stuff: discipline, exercise, and duties, plus the normal school stuff. But then, we had stuff you’d never want to teach a bunch of troubled teens: combat simulations, military strategy. Real-world covert skills. How to hack a computer system and cut the electricity to a building. How to pick a lock and scale a fence. Real guerilla warfare stuff. Who teaches that to kids?
A vampire building an army, that’s who.
But who was I to complain since those skills were going to get my ass out of here. If I could ever get a moment alone to search the desk.
Just then, there was a knock on the door. Pit Bull broke off whatever he’d been saying and glared at me as he walked past. I glanced over at Zeke while Pit Bull opened the door. I expected gloating, maybe a flash of guilt. Instead he frowned at me, shifting his shoulders in a what’s up? gesture. What the hell?
He glanced over at Pit Bull to make sure he was still distracted. Then he held his wrists together, like they were cuffed in front of him and then jerked them apart in a sharp little gesture.
By the time Pit Bull turned around a second later, Zeke was playing with the paperweight again. He smirked at me. Yeah, there was that gloating I’d been expecting. But what had that other gesture meant? He seemed to be telling me to break free of the handcuffs.
I ducked my head again and let the sleeves of my jacket cover my hands. Then, slowly, carefully, I eased my wrists apart . . . and felt the handcuffs give. The pressure slipped one of the teeth free, then another.
All this time, I hadn’t really been captured. And Zeke apparently, hadn’t really betrayed me.
