The smell hits me as we reach the last few stairs—the sharp sting of bleach and battery acid burning in my nose. As soon as Wes steps onto the floor, dim fluorescent lights flicker on, clearly reacting to a motion detector. I blink, and it takes me a minute to get used to the sudden light.
We’re in a small, clean room. On each wall is a door with a black, inch-long square next to it. Wes walks over to the door furthest to his left and places his index finger down on the small pad. There’s a whirring sound, like the noise a computer makes when it’s booting up. I see Wes’s hand twitch slightly. When he pulls back, a tiny drop of blood is beading on his finger.
An automated male voice says, “DNA authorization complete. Voice recognition?”
Wes leans forward. “Eleven. One. Seven. Six. Five.” He is completely emotionless. There is little distinction between his voice and the one coming from the invisible speaker.
“Voice authorization complete.”
The door slides open, disappearing into the wall. Wes moves through the doorway and I stay close at his back.
The door closes behind us and we’re trapped inside a brightly lit small room. I turn wild eyes on Wes, but he just looks at me sharply and almost imperceptibly shakes his head. I stay frozen, waiting.
The white light around us flickers and then dies. We’re in complete darkness, and I fight the urge to reach for Wes’s hand. With a low hum, a red plane of light appears above us. It slowly scans the room from ceiling to floor. As soon as the light hits my head, I stiffen and close my eyes. Wes didn’t say anything about them scanning our bodies. They’ll know for sure that I’m not Seventeen.
This is it. I’m caught.
But Wes had to have known about these lights, that they’re not too dangerous. They’re probably just scanning for the tracking chip, safely embedded in my arm. Still my body stays rigid as I feel the heat from the beam travel down my body.
Finally, the red laser disappears, and the light overhead sputters back on. A door opens on the opposite wall, and I let out a breath I wasn’t aware I was holding.
We step out into a white, empty hallway. It’s so bright that it makes my eyes water. It is so different from the last time I was down in this Facility; there is no siren blaring overhead and the constant red, flashing alarm has disappeared. Instead, fluorescent lights illuminate the white concrete walls, and everything is eerily silent.
There are doors on either side of us, at least ten in this corridor alone. Some are metal, while others are a cloudy glass that I can’t see through. We walk down the narrow space. It bisects with two other hallways, and Wes takes the one on the right. I have no idea where we are underground, but this bunker wasn’t far from the entrance I came through last time, which means we can’t be too far from the TM.
Now that I’m not distracted by a screaming alarm, I notice more details about the Facility. It looks like it did in the 1940s, though the tiles on the floor and the white walls are slick and more modern. It feels almost futuristic: clean and sterile, filled with glass doors and rounded light fixtures.
I hear footsteps coming up ahead and I falter, but Wes keeps moving forward steadily. A guard rounds the corner. He’s walking toward us. Don’t scream, don’t scream. I breathe slowly and think about the ocean in summer and the beat of the waves crashing against the shore. He is right in front of us now, in what looks like an army uniform, only all black. I keep my head down, but he barely glances at Wes or at me as he walks past.
As soon as he’s gone, I pull the hood of my sweatshirt more firmly over my head. The shadow of it covers my hair and most of my face. I want to smile at Wes, to touch his arm, but I can’t. Instead I silently follow him through the underground corridors.
He approaches another door and puts his index finger onto the pad again. We enter another long hallway. Halfway down, a female guard with buzzed brown hair is standing in front of a wide metal door.
There’s a noise like marching up ahead. Wes immediately steps back, flattening himself against the nearest wall. His eyes flicker toward me and I copy him. I stay completely still, my body pressed against the cool concrete.
The first to emerge is a guard, a little older than the girl in front of the door and carrying a large gun. Behind him, in two neat rows, come the children.
They are different ages, races, and heights, but they all shuffle forward as one body. Though they are not the same children I found in the Facility in 1944, they might as well be—half starved, vacant, with little life left in their small bodies, gray pajamas hanging off their frames. They move more like zombies than humans, completely unaware of Wes or me as they pass. It’s as though we’re simply part of the wall. Another piece of this place designed to hurt them.
I swallow hard as they pass us, the sound of their feet shuffling through the hallway. Wes is tense at my side. Our hands are close enough to touch. I block out everything but Wes, until I can almost
