The Sowing (The Torch Keeper)

  nine

  I struggle against my shackles. “Please … ” But my mouth grows numb and I can’t form any other words. The three captors who are still hooded wheel the slab I’m shackled to out into a small auditorium jammed with people, some whispering to each other, others pointing, and more than a few glaring at me. An older, rugged man with a salt-and-pepper beard appears and holds out a hypo to the young man who’s been interrogating me. “Make it quick and painless, Micajah,” he mutters.

  “I will, Dad.” Micajah hesitates, then takes the hypo. He turns to me, stone-faced, his eyes locked onto mine as he slowly approaches me. I can feel my life slipping away with each step he takes, and the fear that I’ve managed to contain behind the wall of pain and anger is breaching it at last, sending a rampaging surge through me.

  “There has to be another way!” Arrah shouts.

  “Arrah!” I gasp. “My brother. Cole. He’s being held at the Priory. You have to get him out of there before—”

  Two of the hooded figures grab onto me and hold my struggling body in place while the third rips up my sleeve. I can see the vein in the crook of my elbow throbbing, my fear betraying me, pumping the blood so hard it’s as if it’s trying to invite the lethal invader.

  “Let go of me!” I yell.

  The one named Micajah stands before me, needle raised. “Sorry, mate.”

  “He was the one that let me get away in the Valley.”

  This declaration sparks a wave of muttering throughout the crowd as they turn toward its source.

  A figure emerges from the shadows. Even without the envirosuit, I recognize him.

  It’s the boy I let escape. The boy I gave the GX07 to.

  The whole chamber erupts in gasps and murmurs of surprise.

  Micajah’s laughter is filled with warmth as he turns to me. “So you’re the terrorist that has the Establishment chasing its own tail? You’re the Torch Keeper?” He smiles ear to ear. “I was expecting someone a tad older.”

  “Sorry to disappoint,” I manage.

  “No sweat, mate.” He cocks his head toward the kid. “Looks like the ankle-biter just bought you a reprieve.”

  The kid glares at him and flicks him off.

  Micajah chuckles and turns back to me. “You’ve proven to be somewhat useful to the cause.”

  There’s an uncomfortable moment of silence. Micajah looks away.

  “Release him,” the young man’s father barks.

  In seconds, I’m free of my bonds, rubbing my wrists and prompting more murmuring from the crowd. If there’s anyone more shocked at this turn of events than I am, it’s Arrah, who runs over and throws her arms around me. “For a Fifth Tier, you never cease to surprise.”

  “Name’s Jeptha Argus,” Micajah’s father says, clasping my hand. “Please accept our apologies. We had no way of knowing who you were.”

  The kid takes a step forward. “Corin’s the name.” He gestures to the figures behind him, who have now removed their hoods. Two guys and a girl, all around my age.

  “Boaz,” mumbles the tall, lanky one with a slight case of acne.

  The other male, shorter, stockier, and powerfully built with a bald tattooed head, comes forward and offers a beefy hand. “Crowley’s the name. Nice to meet you, Mister … uh … Torch Keeper, Sir.” He busts out into a chuckle, but it doesn’t sound mean-spirited, so I grip his hand firmly and return the handshake.

  The female eyes me with suspicion and hesitates before stepping forward herself. She has short bobbed hair, jet black except for a scarlet streak cutting across it. “Whatever. I still don’t trust him.”

  “Get over yourself,” Corin mutters. He turns to me. “Her name’s Preshea. But we like to call her a lot of other things.” He smirks.

  “Keep it up, kid,” Preshea says through gritted teeth.

  I attempt to ruffle his hair, but he moves away and fires a dirty look my way.

  “Enough yabbering, dipsticks,” Micajah grunts.

  These people are part of the insurrectionist movement? That Deity everyone likes to invoke sure has a sense of humor.

  The crowd begins to disperse, moving about like worker ants on a mission. I clear my throat. “Look. I’m not here to interfere with operations. I’m just someone like all of you, fighting for what’s right.”

  “You couldn’t have come to us at a more crucial time,” Jeptha says. “Now that you’re with us, there’s a better chance our plan will succeed.”

  My eyes shift between Jeptha and Micajah. “What do you mean?”

  Micajah clears his throat. “Before you got here, the plan was for Arrah to undertake the most difficult part of the mission, since she was the only person we could place close enough to the target.”

  Arrah shoots me a look. “I’m more than capable of handling myself.”

  Jeptha shakes his head. “Arrah, you’ve never undertaken an assignment of this magnitude.” He gestures to me. “Spark here has a proven track record of operating under extreme conditions and thwarting the Establishment under their very noses. We can’t afford to fail. It should be him, with you as his backup.”

  “What are you talking about?” I repeat.

  “Of course.” Jeptha turns back to me. “Tomorrow, during the Ascension Ceremony, we’re going to assassinate Prefect Thorn and the Prime Minister herself.”

  ten

  The night seems endless. I lie on my bunk in the Citadel dorm wearing only my underwear, bathed in a cold sweat. The sheets are a rumpled valley of hills and canyons wedged around my prostrate body. I can only stare straight ahead. Vertigo overwhelms me. I haven’t had such a sleepless evening since the night before I was recruited last season.

  And now here I am, on the eve of the Ascension Ceremony—

  the event that will culminate with me assassinating Cassius, along with the Prime Minister and anyone else unfortunate enough to be within a ten-meter radius of the dais.

  Ascension Ceremony. I stifle a hollow laugh. The irony isn’t lost on me.

  Ever since Cassius betrayed Cole and me, I’ve wanted nothing more than to inflict payback on him. But this assassination attempt is a cold, calculated exercise in premeditated murder.

  Sure, I’ve planned and executed strikes against Establishment strongholds for months now—the attack on the prisoner convoy, disrupting the communications tower, the siege on the Emporiums—all without batting an eye. I was burning with a single ice-cold purpose, blocking out all my emotions … and becoming someone else. Someone who didn’t care whether I lived or died in my attempts. After all, the lines between the two were already so blurred, I guessed it was all the same either way.

  It was all so much easier when I shut off my emotions and became Lucian Spark, Imposer trainee, the number one terrorist on the Establishment’s Most Wanted list. But I was a fool to think I could hide behind that persona for too long. No matter how hard you try, how much you delude yourself, you can never escape who you truly are.

  The thing is, I’m not sure just who I am anymore.

  The briefing I received before I left the rebel cell tonight replays in my head, over and over again.

  Jeptha held up a small gold pin, a perfect replica of the Fifth Tier trainee insignia that’s pinned to the breast of my uniform. “Even if they sweep for weapons before the ceremony,” he told me, “you’ll be able to get this through without being detected.” He handed it to me.

  I turned it over and over in my fingers, examining every inch of the gleaming pin. “What is it, really?” I asked.

  He took it back, pointing to a tiny groove in the base that would only appear as a miniscule imperfection to anyone who’d actually taken the time to scrutinize it. “It’s a BMP.”

  “A Bio-Magnetic Pulse? I’ve heard rumors about those.”

  Jeptha nodded. “The biological equivalent of an EMP, excep
t this one sends out a microwave signal designed to compromise heart, lung, and brain functions.”

  “Compromise? You mean terminate. As in instant death, don’t you?”

  He pursed his lips. “Yes. It’s quite lethal. The perfect way to kill your enemy while not creating collateral damage or subjecting the environment to the after-effects of messy biological warfare. Just another of the Establishment’s insidious creations that we are using against them.”

  I shook my head. “These are supposed to be in the planning stages, just experimental at this time. How did the rebellion come by them?”

  Jeptha hesitated. I sensed he was uncomfortable.

  That’s when Micajah stepped forward. “That explosion at the munitions factory. The one the Torch Keeper—you—set off.”

  “What about it?”

  “During the chaos, the prototypes were stolen and sold on the black market. We managed to get ahold of a few.”

  I buried my face in my hands. “So basically, who-knows-what weapons might be out there and in whose hands, for sale to the highest bidder. All because of me.”

  Jeptha gripped me by the shoulders then. “And tomorrow, things will change for the greater good, all because of you.”

  My eyes remained fixed on the pin. “What exactly do you want me to do?”

  Micajah handed Jeptha a large roll of paper, which the older man unfurled on a round stone table. Arrah, Drusilla, Boaz, Crowley, Preshea, Corin, and I all gathered around to take a look.

  A set of schematics. From the looks of it, detailed blueprints of the Citadel of Truth, highlighting the dais in the Town Square below the Prefect’s balcony. I didn’t need to see those floor plans and layouts. The entire area was ingrained in my mind the day I was recruited.

  Jeptha jabbed at an area on the plans, indicating the dais with his index finger. “If the Establishment follows standard protocol for an Ascension Ceremony, and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t, the five trainees will be gathered here, just in front of the stage. Once the ceremony begins, they will each be called, one by one, to come up to the podium, where they will be greeted by the Prime Minister and the Prefect and have their rank pins exchanged for ones corresponding to their next level of training.” He then looked directly at me. “As the Fifth Tier, you will be the last one called up to the dais.”

  I nodded, understanding exactly how things were going to play out from there. “Once I walk up and receive my congratulations from the Prime Minister, I’m to hand Cassius—Prefect Thorn—my old pin, while he pins the new rank on me. Only I won’t really be handing him my pin, but the BMP device.”

  “Exactly,” Jeptha responded. “Quite simple.”

  I shook my head. “But how does the BMP get activated?”

  Micajah cleared his throat and leaned over the blueprints, brushing against me. “A small group of us, composed of Crowley, Preshea, Boaz, Drusilla, and myself, will be positioned right here”—he traced an area on the diagram—“by the fountain with the statue of Queran Embers, the Establishment’s founding father.” He winked at me. “I think it’s appropriate that the monster who started it all should witness its destruction firsthand.” He turned back to the diagram. “We’ll activate the BMP with a remote transmitter.” He held up a small black box.

  I shook my head. “So the whole square will just drop dead?” I wrinkled my nose in disgust.

  Micajah’s warm hand moved to blanket mine. “Relax, mate. We measured the circumference of the dais. The BMP has been calibrated to affect only that particular radius. No one in the crowd will be harmed.”

  His smile radiated genuine warmth. I pulled my hand away, suddenly angry at myself but not knowing why. “Wait a minute. Something doesn’t make sense with this plan. “Arrah and I will still be standing on the dais when that BMP goes off.” I glared from Micajah to Jeptha and back again. “You didn’t say anything about this being a suicide mission.”

  Jeptha clamped a hand on my shoulder. “It’s not.”

  “But you said—”

  He reached a hand into his pocket and pulled it out, opening his palm to reveal two yellow tablets. “Just prior to the ceremony, you and Arrah will take these.”

  I studied the pills. “What are these, some kind of antidote?”

  Jeptha pursed his lips. “More or less. While testing the BMPs, the Establishment figured they’d need a way of counteracting its effects in order to safeguard their own personnel during their use. So they came up with the compound that you allowed Corin to escape the labs with—GX07—which, once ingested, will shield the body’s vital organs from the effects of the pulse during limited exposures. We have enough of this antidote to safeguard the team who will be in range of the BMP.”

  Micajah nodded. “It’s kind of like the potassium iodate pills our ancestors used to ward off the effects of nuke radiation during the Ash Wars. And we’ve confirmed that there isn’t any other source of the GX07 for the Establishment to immunize themselves with.”

  “So you hope,” I muttered. But there was something else that was bothering me, more than the possibilities of what could go wrong. “The three other trainees—Dahlia, Leander, Rodrigo. They’ll be up there with us. What’s going to protect them from the BMP?”

  I already knew the answer even before Jeptha replied.

  “The other trainees are virtually Imposers already. Who knows when we’ll get this opportunity again? I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do about that.”

  Leander was already a sadistic bastard, taking pleasure in bullying and hurting others. He’d fit right in with the likes of Styles and Renquist. Rodrigo wasn’t much better. But what about Dahlia? She was Mrs. Bledsoe’s daughter. How could I be complicit in her death after all her mother did for Cole and me?

  I shook my head then. “No. I won’t do it. They’re just as much victims here as everyone else trampled under the Establishment’s boots. They’re … they’re my friends … ”

  And in some sick definition of the word, they were. The closest thing I’d had to friends since the deaths of my fellow Recruits during the Trials.

  Jeptha sighed. “We can’t force you. But we urge you to remember just what’s at stake here. It’s your choice.”

  I hated him in that moment. First the Establishment, now the rebellion. Always forcing me to make hateful choices.

  I snatched one pill from his palm, along with the BMP, and jammed them in my pocket without saying a word. I didn’t want to look any of them in the eye for fear I might pummel them.

  “I’ll do my part.” I squeezed the words out even as I squeezed past Jeptha and the others, not caring that I still didn’t know exactly where I was or how to get the hell back to the Citadel.

  Once out of the main room, I was blindfolded by Boaz and Crowley—to protect the location of this cell should I be found out—and led through a maze of passages until they finally removed the blindfold and released me into the catacombs of the sewers. I braced against a wall, ignoring the slime seeping through my clothes and remembering the last time I was down here. I was with Digory; he’d challenged me to look beyond my personal circumstances and take a stand to do what was right.

  If only I’d listened to him then, not gone to Cassius …

  then maybe we could be together now.

  Would assassinating Cassius and the Prime Minister in cold blood be what Digory would want me to do? In the end, even with all his talk of fighting for the greater good, he’d let his personal feelings for me cloud his judgment, hinder his duty.

  At that moment, faced with tainting my hands with the blood of my fellow trainees, I understood exactly how torn he must have felt—and how much he must have loved me in order to ignore the inner voices screeching about honor and loyalty to the cause.

  I would have done the same for him.

  Finding the nearest ladder, I hoisted myself up the rusting rungs, s
lid open the manhole cover, and peered both ways to make sure no one was looking before crawling out into the snow. The refreshing coolness of the flakes was welcome, ridding me of the stench of the sewers. I opened my mouth, relishing the wetness against my dry tongue.

  I figured I’d better get moving, if I was going to have time to reach my contact at the port and make arrangements to get Cole and myself away from this hellhole.

  The grate squeaked behind me, followed by soft footfalls on the snow-covered cobblestones. I spun. A figure loomed in the alley behind me, eclipsing me with its long shadow.

  “It’s me, mate.” Micajah stepped forward, his smoldering charcoal eyes cooled to ash. “I called to you before, but I guess you didn’t hear me.” He half-chuckled. “I figured someone better make sure the Torch Keeper didn’t get lost on his way home.”

  I studied the moon hovering through the mottled skies. “Sorry. Lot on my mind.”

  “It’s a lot to ask of someone. I understand.”

  I shot him a look brimming with all my frustration and confusion. “Do you really?”

  He held my gaze without so much as a blink. “You think you’re the only one who’s had to make difficult decisions? I thought the Torch Keeper was made of stronger stuff than that.” He whirled, his hair coming loose and whipping behind him, his torch cutting a flaming rainbow through the gloom before he slammed it into the packed snow and snuffed it out. Then he ignored me and tromped through the side streets.

  I plowed through the maze of alleys after him. “Wait a minute. Who the hell do you think you are, turning your back on me? Hold up! Are you listening to me? Stop or I’ll—”

  He stopped at last, under a torn awning swaying in the wind. “What are you going to do, arrest me, Imposer, Sir?”

  Our eyes met and held for a moment.

  Then his face, stoic up until then, trembled with effort and he broke at last into a chuckle and a lopsided grin. “Now there’s the fire I’ve heard so much about.”

  I sighed. “Yeah, well, keep it up and you’re liable to get burned.” I glanced around the corner. “I think I can find my way from here.”