We’re up the rest of the night, going over the specifics of the plan, anticipating how we’re going to deal with the various things that could go wrong, and memorizing the layout of IA headquarters.
When we break for a few hours of sleep, sunlight is peeking over the corners of the horizon. I wander the halls aimlessly. Time has been draining away, we’ve only got about a day left, and if things go wrong when we break into IA, I won’t make it out alive.
Maybe none of us will.
I’ve only made it about ten steps when I turn down a hallway and find myself face-to-face with a teenage girl about the same age as Jared, with long, wavy blond hair and big green eyes.
She’s startled at first, and she flinches away from me.
The sight of her—doe-eyed and flinching—makes me feel like I’ve just been punched.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I want to add something else, but I don’t know exactly what I’m apologizing for. For startling her, for not being able to get her home, for this happening to her in the first place—it’s all a blur.
I give up and move around her, still muddled in my own thoughts, and when she’s safely behind me, I hear her say, in a soft, tentative voice, “Thank you.”
I look over my shoulder to see if I heard right or to say “of course” or ask “what for” or something—I’m not sure what—and I realize her eyes are glassy and she’s smiling.
Her face is flushed, and she hugs her arms around her body. “I thought I was going to die in that place.”
She’s not, but she might end up dying here if we can’t figure out how to get her home.
As if she knows what I’m thinking, she adds, “No matter what happens, anything is better than that place. I’m glad you got us out.”
“Me too,” I say, and I mean it.
Looking into her face, I’m struck by how many more people like her are out there. It’s what I need. Energy manifests in the pit of my stomach with that realization and starts to spread throughout my body. I stand up a little straighter, I seem to lose some of the weight pressing down on me.
We have to succeed tomorrow. We don’t have a choice.
If we don’t shut Meridian down, thousands more people will become Unwilling.
01:02:30:27
I head up to the roof and watch the sunrise. The sky is a mix of orange, gray, blue, and black. The world is still and quiet, and even though it’s completely different, it reminds me how I felt when I would go to the beach and stare out at the ocean.
I tilt my face to the sky and close my eyes, feeling the wind brush past my face and through my hair. I think of my double and how she chose to run away rather than help us, and of my dad and Alex, who are gone.
I wonder what Jared is doing right now—if he’s still sleeping late and complaining about how we don’t have milk for cereal, still walking younger kids to school, still reading and playing board games each night. I try not to think about how mad he must be that I’m gone, and I hope he isn’t sulking and giving Struz the silent treatment.
I need to get back to them.
I don’t belong here on this lifeless world. The wrongness makes my bones feel heavy and sluggish. Something about the stillness has made me numb, like I’m now this unfeeling person who’s running around with a gun, but that’s not who I am. It’s not who I want to be.
I want to go home and hug my brother and never leave.
But the thing is, I’m standing here, surrounded by what should be a waking world, and it hits me that this may be it. Shivering from the cold, I close my eyes.
I might not make it home.
On my way down, I find Ben.
There are a million and one things I could say to him right now. I could tell him I’m scared and restless about what we’re about to do, that I’m worried about losing more people I care about, that I’m afraid I won’t keep my promise to Struz. I could tell him that I’ve thought about him every day since he left, that I can’t picture the rest of my life without him, that I don’t want to be replaceable.
But I don’t say any of that. Instead I just reach for him.
My hand touches his shirt and I feel the heat of his body radiating underneath.
He pulls me to him and whispers, “Are you okay?” His breath is warm on my cheek.
I tilt my face to his, look up past the dark curls and long eyelashes, into those bottomless eyes. I almost tell him the truth—that I haven’t been okay since he left. But I can’t bring myself to speak.
Instead, I look at his lips and raise up on my toes so they’re only a millimeter from mine, then I lift my eyes to his.
His lips part. Under my hand his chest rises and falls faster than it should, and his heart pulses through his whole body and reverberates into me.
One of his hands slides behind my back, the other he lays over my fingers, and we stand there suspended in time, in the dark, with only the warmth of our bodies, and the sounds of our breaths.
“I’m sorry,” Ben says, and then his lips are on mine.
They’re soft, and he tastes minty, and the familiarity of it just feels so right. I kiss him back with everything I am, opening my lips, touching his tongue, remembering every inch of his mouth.
And everything that’s wrong seems to fall away. It’s like we’re somewhere else—like we’re back at Sunset Cliffs, kissing for the first time. My skin burns with his touch and my heart is slamming against my chest, and it’s like my whole body has just come alive.
The nervous energy we’re both holding inside morphs into something different, something more active, something a little dangerous. We grab at each other, a force behind our kisses that we can’t quite control. We’re not gentle or careful—we’re not thinking.
His arms pull me in tighter so there’s no room for anything between us. His hands slip under my shirt and are warm against my back, and a shudder moves through me.
“I love you,” Ben breathes between kisses. “Let’s never be apart again.”
I pull his lips back to mine and force him to kiss me. That’s all I want right now.
My thoughts are scrambled, my blood is tingling, and it feels like my skin is on fire. We’re just lips, tongues, hands, and skin—two people who have everything and nothing to lose at the same time.
I’m tired of the never-ending fear I can’t shake.
I don’t want to be afraid anymore. I don’t want to be numb. And I don’t want to die.
But somehow in Ben’s arms, when he kisses me, none of that matters.
Because I’m not alone.
00:18:20:05
“If it’s not tight, it will be hard for you to move fast,” Barclay says. I’m wearing jeans, sneakers, my bra, and a bulletproof vest that Barclay is helping me tighten. It’s lighter and thinner than anything my dad ever wore, and instead of having Velcro, it laces like some kind of crazy weapon-resistant corset.
But he’s right. Once the laces are tight and it’s fitted against my body, it moves with me, like it’s a part of me rather than something that will get in the way. I don’t tell him that, though. He’s got enough of an ego.
I do understand why I’m wearing it. The likelihood we’re going to get shot at while we break into IA is . . . well, it’s more of a certainty. Barclay grabbed both these vests—his and Hayley’s—from his mom’s house, along with the zip drives he used to copy the files. Wearing them, if we get hit, we’ll be bruised and achy, but we won’t be bleeding or dead.
I suppose that reduces the risk a little. I can pretend it’s like playing paintball and less like running from the law.
Unless, of course, someone shoots us in the head.
Someone clears his throat, and I look up to see Ben in the doorway. He isn’t looking at me, though. He’s looking at Barclay.
Barclay hands me my shirt and takes a step back. “See you in a few minutes,” he says, and he can’t fully suppress the smile.
“Did you get your earpiece?” I ask Ben as I pull my shirt over the vest.
“Yeah, Barclay showed me how it works,” he says.
Barclay only had two of them, so he and Ben will wear them. It will let us communicate with each other in case the plan changes or things start to go wrong.
Ben grabs me and pulls me into a hug, crushing me against his chest. “You don’t have to do this,” he says. “It could just be me and Barclay.”
Shivers run up my spine, and my legs feel too weak to support me. Here, in Ben’s arms, with the smell of mint and soap in my nose and the beat of his heart underneath my face, my resolve falters slightly. The thought of running away flickers through my mind. We could be together, on the move, living an adventure most people don’t dream of. But it’s nothing more than a momentary hesitation, an image conjured up by the fear that’s taken root in my mind. I don’t mean it.
Because no matter how scared I am, I do have to do this.
It’s the best plan we have.
Because we’ve got less than a day left.
“We can do this,” I say to Ben. Because I have to believe it. Because it’s our only option.
“I love you,” he whispers, and my heart flutters.
Knowing it deep down and hearing it out loud are still two very different things.
“If we make it through this . . .”
I shake my head against his chest. “When we make it through this, we’ll talk about it then.”
“But—”
I look up, my nose brushing against his cheek. “Remember when the world was ending?” I whisper.
He nods.
“We didn’t say good-bye or make promises then, and we’re not going to now.” It’s not that saying good-bye will be like admitting we might die. I know the odds we’re up against. I know we might not make it out of this. It’s more complicated than that. “I need something to look forward to.”
He doesn’t say anything, so I push back in his arms and look at his face. His eyes are glassy.
“Don’t worry about me. I have a lot to live for,” I say, and I mean it. Right now, it’s the truest statement I can make.
He nods, and I lead him, our hands intertwined, to the roof of the building.
Barclay is waiting for us. Cecily is there too. She’s showered and pulled her hair back. The circles under her eyes aren’t quite as dark, and I’m relieved that even though she was angry with me, she was at least able to get some sleep. She smiles at me. “Let’s get this party started.”
I give her a sideways glance. She’s a little too excited for someone wearing a bulletproof vest.
“Oh c’mon, J,” she says. “We are going to nail these guys.”
“Yeah, just try not to end up dead,” Elijah says as he comes in.
“Didn’t you see the sign?” Cecily says. “This room is positive-thinking only.”
Elijah just snorts.
“Enough of the bickering. Are we ready?” Barclay asks. I look at him—he’s wearing a small smile and cracking his knuckles, his body weight shifting on his feet. He can barely stay still from the adrenaline, and even though I can’t exactly describe what it is that he’s feeling, it’s contagious.
It starts as a nervous fluttering in the pit of my stomach, and it spreads through my body, becoming a restlessness in my limbs.
I take a deep breath and squeeze Ben’s hand.
“Ready,” I say, stepping to Barclay’s side. He nods and holds his quantum charger in front of him, pressing a button. That brief, high-pitched electronic sound hits my ears, and then the cool, empty air of the portal is in front of me.
My heart beats a little faster. This is it.
In an hour, this could be all over.
Or we could be dead.
00:17:59:55
It’s just Barclay and me now. Cecily and Ben are in a different position, planning to enter the building from a back entrance. They’re the backup plan. They have a zip drive with the files and if Barclay and I fail, they have to get the files into IA’s system.
I push my worry for them to the back of my mind. I can’t let that distract me.
Barclay and I have the more dangerous position. We’re standing in front of the only entrance into IA headquarters—for the second time. Now, the dozen concrete steps loom in front of us, and the oily glass skyscraper seems more sinister than it did only a few days ago.
“You agreed you’d take orders from me—you’ll remember that, right?”
I turn to Barclay. I don’t like that he’s bringing this up now. “I did agree to that, why?”
He looks at the doors, where there are no less than six armed guards who at worst could have a shoot on sight order for both of us. Our only hope is they’re caught by surprise, that no one expects us to walk in the front door. “If it looks like we’re going down, I want you to run.”
“You want me to leave you?” I don’t worry about how incredulous I sound.
“If I’m caught, they won’t execute me, at least not right away.”
I’m not sure either of us believes what he’s saying. He’s worse than me, after all. He’s the guy who was on their side, and is now committing treason with the enemy.
A traitor is always the worst thing someone can be.
But we don’t have time to argue about it now. I’ve made a lot of promises to people I care about. This one is no different. “I’ll follow your orders.”
“Good,” he says with a nod.
And we climb the stairs.
00:17:58:52
We go through the center glass doors side by side. This time I don’t pause to take note of the marble floors and the corporate business decor of the lobby. I don’t linger on the airport security–style body scans.
My eyes find the armed guards.
Of the six guards, four are focused on the people coming into the building, operating body scans and giving directions. One is about fifteen feet in front of us, in the direction we want to go—he’s standing by the elevators. The other is standing off to the side—the same guy we approached just a few days ago.
And lucky him, he has to deal with us today, too.
We’re just a few feet from him when he takes notice. His face is all business, like he’s about to regurgitate the company line, tell us we can’t enter this way, and go through the motions. Then his face changes. His lips part, and his eyes widen slightly, shifting from Barclay’s face to mine. The recognition is clear.
Everyone is looking for us.
When he reaches for his radio, I relax a little. The orders aren’t shoot on sight. They clearly still want to bring us in alive.
Everything happens so fast—it’s over in a split second—but I’m ready for it. I know what Barclay is going to do. I know what I have to do.
The guard has time to press the button on his radio, but no sound comes out because with one swift move, Barclay knocks him out with an elbow to the face. Before he hits the ground, we’ve both disarmed him. Barclay has the machine gun, and I’m pulling the sidearm from the guard’s hip.
Barclay turns the machine gun on the armed guards at the body scanners, and I raise the sidearm, pointing the barrel at the face of the guard by the elevator.
“Drop your weapon!” I yell, advancing on him. My grip is tight on the gun, and my arms burn from the tension. “Drop it or I’ll put a bullet between your eyes.” I won’t actually do it, because I’m too tense and too far to be that good a shot, but also because we don’t want to hurt anyone. I’m bluffing—and I’m bluffing big because I’m outgunned, and if he thinks too long about it, he’ll realize that.
His surprise and my threats outweigh any inclination to try to be a hero, and he lays his machine gun on the ground. My heartbeat kicks into overdrive, and I kick the gun farther away so he can’t make a lunge for it. “Hands up, behind your head.”
Behind me, I have a vague sense of Barclay going through the same motions. But more because I know the plan and less because I’m paying attention to him. I’ve put my trust in him and his ability to guard my back, but I know he’s
yelling and making threats, telling the guards—and the people in line—to get rid of their weapons and lie flat on the ground.
With his hands over his head, the guard in front of me drops to his knees, and I relieve him of the sidearm and the backup gun at his ankle. I take both of them for my own and keep my gun trained on him the entire time.
“Facedown on the ground,” I say, taking a step back to give him room.
He does what I say, and I turn to Barclay. The room is remarkably quiet—no sobs, groans, or even gasps. It’s a creepy sort of silence, the kind that comes before a storm, and I hope that we’re ready for it.
Barclay has everyone on the ground, and he’s stripping the last two guards of their weapons, dismantling them easily, breaking the pieces apart, buying us just a little more time.
When he’s finished, he starts toward me. He still has the machine gun pointed at the guards and the crowd, and he reminds them, “Stay on the ground. Don’t make me shoot you!”
He continues backing up.
Someone from the crowd calls out right as Barclay is about to reach me. I can’t see who because he stays down. He says, “You don’t have to do this, Taylor. Whatever’s going on, there are people you can turn to.”
Barclay’s expression is stone-faced when he answers. “Tell that to Eric.”
00:17:54:51
When Barclay reaches me, I run for the door to the stairs and pull it open. We need to get to the fifth floor, and taking the elevator is too dangerous. Barclay follows me.
But before he does, he pulls the fire alarm.
It blares around us as we run up the steps. It’s so loud that it drowns out the pounding of my heart and most of my thoughts. I’m on automatic, pushing myself up the stairs, following Barclay as closely as I can. We pass the second floor, then the third. People who think this is a drill start to flood the stairwells and pass us on their way down to the lobby. A lot of them are analysts or administrative staff and a lot of them either don’t know—or know of—Barclay or me. They’re too wrapped up in their own jobs or they don’t expect anyone to be crazy enough to break into IA headquarters.