Breathe

  The Pod Minister rubs his mouth with the back of his hand and glares at the crowd. “If you want to leave the pod, you are all free to go. No one is stopping you. Leave!” the Pod Minister shouts. “Open the doors! Let everyone out!”

  The camera closes in on Quinn and he seems to look right into the lens. Right at me. “We can’t leave, and he knows it. They have us addicted to their air.”

  “The interview is over. Quinn Caffrey is clearly mad,” the Pod Minister says. He nods at the stewards who are lined up in front of the stage, and on cue, they begin to move, pushing the crowd back in an effort to force them to disperse.

  “Don’t be prisoners!” Quinn shouts.

  “The microphone!” the Pod Minister calls out again. His face has turned pink and his lips are wet with saliva. “I said we are done here. It’s time for the march.”

  “What are you afraid of?” Quinn yells. The Pod Minister smiles and comes right to the edge of the stage. I move away from the screen.

  “I. Am afraid. Of nothing,” he whispers. What looks like a bottle is hurled on stage and barely misses him. For several seconds nothing moves. The next sound I hear is Quinn’s voice.

  “Well, maybe you should be,” he says.

  “Turn off his MICROPHONE!” the Pod Minister yells again, pointing at Quinn as another object hurtles toward the stage, and then another. Soon the Pod Minister is forced to dodge the missiles coming from the crowd. He looks as though he intends to leap in among the people and personally take care of them, when he sees Quinn about to jump off the stage and make his escape. Suddenly the Pod Minister charges at Quinn and wrestles him to the ground.

  Then many voices can be heard clamoring for attention: “Let him go!” “We want the truth! Can we breathe outside?” “The PM’s strangling him. Someone do something!” “He’s just a boy! Help him!” The stewards, a human wall at the front of the stage, hold out their batons.

  “I’m coming!” I say aloud. But I can’t take my eyes off the screen.

  The Pod Minister pummels Quinn until several stewards bundle forward and pull Quinn to his feet. The Pod Minister brushes himself off and looks right into the camera.

  “All lies,” he wheezes. “Quinn Caffrey will be punished for public disorder, as will anyone else who is caught inciting violence.”

  But the crowd is enraged, and when the Pod Minister opens his mouth to address them again, his composure restored, they chant and hurl things onto the stage. “Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!”

  That’s when my parents appear. “Get out of there! What are you doing?” I yell. The stewards are trying to subdue the protesters who are still throwing things, and my parents manage to rush past them and clamber up onto the stage along with several others.

  As soon as my father is close to the Pod Minister, he launches himself forward, punching the Pod Minister square in the jaw and knocking him to the ground. The crowd, for a brief instant, gasps collectively, and then everyone is hollering, shaking their fists, and catcalling. What my father has done feels like a victory, especially to auxiliaries who’ve spent their lives complying.

  But the Pod Minister will not be beaten this easily. Lying prostrate, a trickle of blood running from his nose, he raises a finger and within seconds more stewards emerge from the recesses of the stage, spread themselves among the crowd, and begin to flail their batons. A steward strikes a young woman on the side of the head and she crumples to the ground like a rag. People begin to scatter, but even more stay exactly where they are, my parents included.

  No one has figured out how to turn off his microphone, and Quinn is yelling again. “Fight for the right to air! There is life outside the pod. And there are trees. We could live out there! We—” He stops, his attention distracted. The Pod Minister is back on his feet. And he has a gun pointed at the crowd. Though not at the crowd, exactly. He is smiling. My stomach flips and I lunge at the screen.

  “NO!” I scream. A shot breaks the momentary silence and then my mother is on the ground in a flowering pool of blood. My father looks at her aghast and turns to the Pod Minister when another crack swallows all hope and my father too is on the ground bleeding.

  Quinn flails, but the stewards keep a tight hold on him and eventually drag him off the stage and out of sight.

  And now no one can stop the crowd. The people are advancing on the Pod Minister and the thrashing stewards are unable to do anything to stop them.

  I can no longer see my parents. I drop to my knees, as every noise in the world disappears and in my ears instead is a shrill scream, which, only after several seconds, do I realize is my own.

  51

  ALINA

  The soldiers are advancing on The Grove from all directions. And behind them, around twenty armored tanks are grinding their way through the debris of the city. My instinct is to run, not fight. “What are you waiting for?” Silas shouts, his gun firing off a round of bullets.

  I peer through the scope and pick off my first soldier. My first murder. My stomach turns and if I had anything in it, I’m sure I would be sick again. Silas is next to me, relentlessly firing his gun, and as he fires, he roars—guttural, primal. Maude is here too, along with about twenty drifters with sniper skills, and Dorian is on Silas’s other side. On any other day I am sure we would make a formidable team. Today, we are too few.

  Occasionally soldiers drop as our sniper wounds them and a few troops in the rear fall out of line in an attempt to dodge the bullets, but most are sprinting in our direction. Suddenly their tanks fire, splitting open whole sections of the stadium, and the soldiers run right through the openings.

  I continue shooting as our stolen tank emerges and fires at the running soldiers. But the Ministry has twenty tanks, and we have only one, and within minutes, ours is forced to retreat as more vehicles bombard The Grove. I scream and fire off another round.

  A zip flies overhead and at once The Grove is filled with choking foam, dust, and debris. We duck our heads. “Shout when you’re ready to make a run for it,” Silas says. Many of the drifters are already dashing for the lower levels.

  “How many have we got sniping?” I shout.

  “One hundred and fifty, give or take. I’ve positioned them at every side.” That may be true, but if the other teams are as scared as this one, that number has just halved as our troops disband to save themselves.

  “Let’s go!” I shout.

  “Follow me!” Silas yells. I reach for Maude, but Bruce already has her safely by the hand.

  As we move down the back stairs we are forced to step across bodies to escape. Some are only injured, some clearly dead. The foot soldiers must have already entered the building. If we stop to help we may never make it out alive, so we keep moving.

  We run as best we can along a wide corridor when another bomb hits. Through the shattered glass paneling we see a sight that makes each one of us stop running and gasp aloud: the forest we’ve spent our lives cultivating is shriveling up before our eyes. Black foam swells along the columns of trees and eats its way from branch to branch.

  A small figure hurtles toward us. “Petra won’t come out!” It’s Jazz. She’s hysterical. “Make her come out!”

  “Where is she?” I shout.

  “She says she won’t let the trees die alone.” Jazz tears away and gestures for us to follow. We scramble back down to the lower level where the roaring battle is muffled by the sound of the shivering, dying trees.

  “Come out. Come out, please!” Jazz screams, her voice like sharpened metal. Petra is sitting on a low branch of an oak. Her hair is loose and her feet are bare. She was the one who made us prepare for war, who insisted we fight, and now here she is meditating her way to defeat.

  “What in hell’s name you doin’ up there, you fruitcake?” Maude screams, shaking a fist at Petra.

  “Get down here. Cut the crap, Petra!” I shout. I’ve nothing to lose and someone needs to bring her to her senses.

  “What have they ever done?” she asks. She str
okes a branch and rests her head against it. “All I ever wanted was to protect them. I failed. I won’t desert them.”

  “You didn’t fail. Get down and fight for them. Fight for yourself. The foam will eat through that tree in a couple of minutes and you’ll be gobbled up along with it.”

  “It’s too late. You all know it’s too late. The zips are coming back. Another bomb and we’ll all be dead.”

  She’s right. It was crazy to think we could win. “We’re leaving. Come with us,” I say.

  “Take Jazz,” she says, and with that begins to climb the tree, moving closer to the foam. Two zips roar overhead.

  “I’m going!” Silas shouts. When I grab Jazz’s elbow and start to drag her away, she sticks her feet into the soil and becomes immovable.

  “Help me get Petra down,” she pleads. Her dirty face is lined with tears.

  “We have to go. We are going to try to get down the river. We’re heading for Sequoia. Petra wants to die here, Jazz. Let her,” I say. There’s no point in lying to the child. She deserves the truth. But Jazz won’t hear the truth, or doesn’t like it. She pulls herself from my grip and starts to climb Petra’s tree. “JAZZ!” I scream. She doesn’t turn back. She scurries up the trunk like a little insect and is gone.

  Silas is behind me. “She’s made her choice,” he shouts. “We have to go!”

  “But she’s a child,” I say to no one in particular.

  We dash across the smoldering field to the west end of the stadium where we raid the airtank stockpile, grabbing as many as we can carry. Dorian will be fine—and though Silas and I have spent the last two weeks in intense training, we will need it along the road. Maude and Bruce certainly will. No one seems to have made it to this side of the building yet and the potent gunfire in the northeast section of the building sounds horrific.

  Dorian puts down his weapon and begins to unbolt the heavy door while Silas and I fit ourselves with airtanks and then ensure that Maude and Bruce have theirs, too.

  “Get your hands up,” a steely voice demands. When we turn, a broad figure in full army regalia is standing less than five feet from us, pointing a rifle in our direction. Behind him, ten soldiers stand with their guns aimed at us, too. I’m sure this is it, and I try to think of something calming so that when I die my last thought won’t be a violent one.

  “I know you,” Silas snarls. “You murdered my friend.” He steps forward but Dorian and Bruce manage to restrain him.

  “Shall we shoot him, General?” one of the soldiers asks.

  Maude snorts and spits at the soldier’s feet. “Shoot me, why don’t you, you little runt,” she says.

  “General?” the soldier presses, waving his gun between Silas and Maude.

  “Little runt,” Maude repeats.

  “No. We need a few of them alive, so we can make examples of them.”

  “Didn’t they make an example of your son?” Silas spits.

  The general lowers his weapon and steps forward. Could this be Quinn’s father? It must be. Silas continues. “I’m surprised they didn’t publicly execute him, once they realized he lied to everyone. How many days did you waste down on the beaches? I hope you had fun making sandcastles.”

  “What do you know about my son?” the general demands, taking Silas by the shirtfront and pushing him into the wall.

  “Your son saw you murder Inger. His name was Inger. Did you know that? Did you care?” Silas’s eyes are full of fury. “Your son knows you’re a murderer. That’s what I know about your son. So, tell me, what do you know about him?”

  I step forward. “Quinn knows what you did, and he’s ashamed of you. He knows what you are and he knows what we are. He chose us.”

  The general turns abruptly and scrutinizes me. “You must be the infamous siren. You aren’t half as pretty as I imagined,” he says.

  “General?” The soldier looks behind us at the corridor, which is filling with black foam. Regardless of which side we’re on, if we don’t all get out of here, we’ll be eaten alive by it. Bruce and Dorian work on unbolting the door again and no one stops them. Maude tries to pick up her gun but a soldier spots her and steps on the barrel.

  The general’s radio sputters to life. Keeping Silas pinned with one hand, he pulls it from his jacket pocket and shakes it roughly.

  “General Caffrey, General Caffrey. This is Sergeant Delaney from the pod,” a scratchy voice calls out. “Speak,” the general commands, talking into the radio’s mouthpiece. “We need the army back at the pod immediately, General. There’s civil war breaking out here. I repeat, it’s civil war. We need backup.” The general looks at the remaining soldiers and points to the door. They move forward and help Dorian and Bruce get it open.

  “Are the bombs in place?” the general asks one of the soldiers.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Out that way. Quickly. Get one of the zips down here this minute. We’ve done our job. By dusk this place will be a ruin.”

  Suddenly an explosion rocks the stadium and the general topples to the floor with Silas as the rest of us do our best to stay standing. I am yanked by the arm and bundled through the exit together with the soldiers as plaster, bricks, and shards of glass rain down on us. Looking over my shoulder, I see Silas and the general scramble to their feet and follow. Another loud bang unsettles the walls and we back away from the stadium as thick black clouds devour the sun. The soldiers are no longer aiming their guns at us but instead at the stadium, as though it is a giant creature about to attack. A final explosion shoots debris skyward and we have no choice but to run because the stadium is collapsing, every outer wall giving up its fight. We turn and watch as the walls fall away and all that remains standing are the oaks, birches, willows, beeches, and other trees, covered by syrupy, spiraling black foam. Several of the soldiers look aghast at the shrinking, dying trees and then at the general, who is now on his feet. He merely lifts his chin in defiance.

  “Sir?” one of the soldiers says. The general just shrugs. Several soldiers decide not to hold their positions and turn away while the four or five who remain aim their guns at us once again.

  “To the tanks!” the general orders, and then these soldiers, too, are lumbering away.

  “What now?” Silas asks, glaring at the general. Silas is pointing his handgun directly at the general’s head. The general doesn’t flinch or call anyone back to defend him. “I should finish you,” Silas says.

  “You should run, son,” the general says, and without even looking at Silas, walks off through the snow and is gone.

  52

  BEA

  “How much did you see?” Old Watson wants to know as he falls through the front doors, but the look on my face is enough to tell him I saw everything. And the look on his face tells me I wasn’t wrong about what I thought I saw. “There’ll be time to grieve later,” he says, picking up my bag and stuffing it with the few things I’ve left lying around the apartment.

  Old Watson goes into his bedroom and comes out with an armful of clothes. He walks toward me and covers my head in a coarse beret. “Now is the time to escape.” I don’t move from my spot by the balcony doors. I’ve been watching the anarchy through the glass. Windows have been smashed. The tram has been hijacked. There are riots in most of the streets. Everyone has gone mad and yet my body feels like it’s been filled to the brim with liquid calm.

  “We have to get a move on,” Old Watson says. He turns off the screen, which is nothing but static.

  “Let’s go.”

  “I have nowhere to go,” I tell him. Less than an hour ago, I became an orphan. It’s a word I always thought of as romantic. Only girls in bonnets and boys in short, threadbare trousers can be orphans. How can this word have anything to do with me?

  “You have to get out of the pod. It’s chaos out there, your perfect chance. I know a way.”

  “What about Quinn?” I say.

  “Quinn can look after himself.” Still, I don’t move. I examine the shape of my ha
nds. Dad always said I had the same hands as my mother. He said I have slender hands that should play an instrument. I never played though; we couldn’t afford it. “Bea, it won’t be long before they start pumping halothane gas into the pod instead of oxygen. It’ll knock everyone out. They did it before—years ago. Then it won’t be safe to escape. Even if you have an oxygen tank, you’ll be spotted. You don’t have a lot of time.” Old Watson forces me up and pulls me out of the apartment.

  The streets are pandemonium. Swarms of auxiliaries are heading toward Zone One, moving past us in frenzied droves carrying makeshift weapons, and those who aren’t marching that way are trying to stop those who are. There are mothers and fathers trying to hold back their children and children trying to restrain their parents.

  “This way,” Old Watson says, cutting through the crowd and dragging me down a dark alley. I follow him, but my knees buckle and I am on the ground. Maybe they’ve already swapped the air supply for gas because I can’t breathe, not even a modest breath. Not only that, but my heart is slowing and one arm is beginning to twitch.

  “I’m having a heart attack,” I gasp. Old Watson is on his knees trying to get me up.

  “No you aren’t. I know it feels like that. But you’re okay. Your heart is breaking,” he says. He tries to lift me from the ground. “Get up, Bea. Your parents would want you to live.” And he continues to talk, but I have no idea what he’s saying because the pain in my chest is so strong it has cut off my senses. I cannot hear a thing, but I can see the light at the end of the alley and people dashing past. They are running. Everyone in Zone Three is running.

  53

  QUINN

  Apart from a single dim light bulb hanging from a wire in the ceiling, it’s dark. From somewhere deep inside the building, I can hear water gurgling. The stone floor has brown stains all over it, and there are manacles on the walls. In the corner there’s a bucket in case I need the toilet and on the floor in the middle of the cell there’s a thin, soiled mattress. There’s only one thing they do in this room.