“Can we please stop playing this game of ‘Who suffered more?’” Tim drops the end of the shotgun and it falls into the dirt. “Can’t we just agree that all of our lives suck?”
“If you kill us, General Walker will kill you,” I say to her. “And you know it.”
She juts her chin out, her dark hair in soft waves around her face. It’s not fair that it still looks so pretty after hours and hours of hiking.
Suddenly Wes lifts his head, his ear cocked toward the door of the barn. “Do you hear that?”
Twenty-two listens, and I watch as the emotion drains from her face until she is carefully blank again. “It’s a helicopter.”
Tim takes a step forward. “It must be the Project, coming to find us. We should go out there.”
Wes grabs Tim’s arm to stop him. “Do you think the Project would be that obvious? It has to be the Secret Service. At this point maybe even the FBI and the CIA.”
“It’s an all-out manhunt,” I whisper. “Just to find us.”
“We tried to kill the president; what do you expect?” Unlike her expression, Twenty-two’s voice is still cutting, a new blade against my skin.
“They’ll have infrared,” Wes says. “If they scan the barn, they’ll know we’re here.”
“They might think we’re just animals.” Tim gestures up at the roof. “Infrared never works the way it should.”
“It doesn’t matter. We need a plan,” I say. “We can’t keep wandering through the woods.”
Twenty-two drops to her knees, gathering all the dirty clothes into a heap. “We have a plan. We go north until we hit Montauk. The safest place for us right now is with the Project.”
“The only way to reach the Facility these days is through an underwater tunnel, but I know the codes to access it. Going to Montauk is the best choice,” Wes puts in.
When the waters rose, Montauk was one of the first towns on the coast wiped away in the flooding. There is only a tiny island left where the firehouse used to be. But the Facility is encased in stone and it never flooded, perfectly preserved inside the rocky cliffs of Long Island. The Project decided not to move, and now the Facility is even more hidden, with secret tunnels leading down through the ocean.
Tim shakes his head. “The safest thing to do is wait. The Project will find us eventually.” He holds up his arm, revealing the thin scar on his wrist. “They’re probably tracking us now.”
“We can’t wait.” I turn to glance at the half-open door of the barn. “We don’t even know if the Project will come for us, and soon these woods will be swarming with soldiers.”
“They probably think we’re headed north to try to get to Canada.” Tim lowers his hand, clenching it around the shotgun, his eyes locked on Twenty-two’s curved back. He tenses every time she moves, though she seems oblivious to us as she straightens, the clothes in a neat pile at her feet.
“Which is why we should go south,” I say. “We can stay in the woods but follow the coastline until we’re past New Washington. It should throw them off; the last thing they’ll expect is for us to go back in that direction. We can head down into Virginia and then move north again from there. Maybe the Project will find us on the way.”
“By that point we might even be able to steal a car,” Wes adds. “They won’t be able to lock the grid forever. It’s a good plan.” He tilts his lips up at me, an almost-smile, but I turn away, still able to feel the point of the knife against my neck.
“Fine.” Twenty-two jerks her chin toward the ground. “But we can’t leave all this here.”
Wes finds a box of matches in the tack room and we start a small fire on the floor, burning our torn dress clothes, the bloody cloth I used to clean Tim’s wound. When they are ashes, we bury them in the dirt, smoothing it over until the floor is even again. Twenty-two and I shove our feet into the work boots I found, stuffing the toes with cotton to make them fit. I keep one eye on her at all times, but she is back in recruit mode, ignoring Tim and me, her emotions stripped away again. They are too unpredictable—her moods, her anger, and I am afraid that as soon as we’re in the forest she will try to kill me again.
And what do I make of Wes, who told her to let me go, who seemed ready to leap forward and rip her arm away? But he didn’t actually do it, and Tim was the one who lifted his gun to her, who fought for me.
We leave the barn and sprint across the exposed, sun-filled lawn. I can hear the helicopter in the distance, a metal hummingbird beating its wings. When we finally reach the woods, still dark from the heavy pines overhead, I should feel relief. But I stare at the harsh line of Wes’s back, the tense set of Twenty-two’s shoulders, and I know that I am far from safe.
Chapter 8
I step over a fallen branch, and the heel of my boot hits something hard. Concrete, dusty and eroded, covered in grass and moss. It is almost impossible to see, but it is still there, proof that once there was a road here, that once this was a place filled with people and homes.
We have been hiking for two days, using the stars to navigate our way south and keeping the ocean to our left. We are far enough inland that we don’t see the waves, but sometimes I can smell the brine, the salty air, and it reminds me of Montauk and home.
It is hot and humid for June, but climate change has raised the temperatures everywhere. By noon, it is well over
