Resist

  Silas sits on the end of his treadmill with his head in his hands. We huddle around him. We’re too stunned to ask any more questions, and it’s clear Terry has no power, so we ignore him sneaking out. “It’s a baby mill,” Silas says. “No wonder she’s not interested in Maude or Bruce.” He glances at the couple training in the room. They’re gushing with sweat and probably haven’t much energy to pay any attention to us, but Silas waves us to the other end of the room just in case. “We have to get away from here.”

  “And where would we go?” Dorian asks.

  Silas glowers at him. “Does it matter?”

  “Maybe we’ll all get paired with someone normal,” Dorian says. Is he serious? Does he know what he’s saying?

  “Yeah, cool. Maybe you’ll get some hot concubine,” Silas says. “Think about it from Alina’s perspective.” But I wish they wouldn’t—I don’t want the decision to be about me being a girl. It has to be the best thing for all of us.

  “Leaving has to be our last resort. There’s no air out there. We’ll be dead in a week,” Dorian says.

  “After this ridiculous ceremony, we’ll be forced to . . .” Silas nudges a water bottle on the floor with his foot. I put my arms around him to stop him trembling. He pushes me away. “Inger’s dead and I’m supposed to get over it and get it on with some girl?” Silas and Dorian are standing eye-to-eye, ready to wrangle. Song pushes them apart and stands between them.

  “We can’t do anything until we know what the deal is with Quinn, Bea, and Jazz,” I say.

  “Then we wait,” Dorian says.

  Silas rolls his eyes. “If we wait, we might not get another chance to talk about it. Sorry, but which bit of this sickening thing don’t you understand?”

  Dorian’s eyes widen, and he lifts his fists as though about to hit Silas, when the door opens again.

  It’s Abel. “Don’t leave,” he says, looking at me and shaking Silas’s hand. “Terry said you were in here and that you were pretty upset about what he told you.”

  “We thought you were dead. As well as other things,” Silas says.

  “You know each other?” Dorian asks. His hands are still fists.

  “Remember when I got to The Grove I told you that Abel had been killed? This is him,” I say. I can’t look at Able for more than a second.

  “But you’re not Resistance,” Dorian tells Abel.

  Abel ignores him. “You’ll be shot before you make it past the fountain. Besides, where would you go? If you don’t suffocate, you’ll starve. And Vanya doesn’t make life easy when you return, which you will.” I’m troubled by the idea of pairings, but I can’t help wondering how I’d feel if I knew I’d get Abel. Would that change things?

  “That’s exactly what I’ve been telling them,” Dorian says, as though Abel’s his best friend. He folds his arms across his chest. The rest of us look to Silas. If he and Dorian don’t find a way to agree, the group will come apart, and that can’t happen; we’ve already lost too many people.

  “Whatever we do, we do it together,” I say.

  “Then we’re staying,” Dorian says.

  “We’re leaving,” Silas corrects.

  “Give it a week,” Abel suggests. “If you decide I was wrong, I’ll help you escape.”

  “What’s in it for you?” Silas asks.

  Abel pauses and looks at me. “What the Resistance was doing was worthwhile. Together we might persuade Vanya that there’s something to replanting trees.” I study him. Is he patronizing us?

  If he is, Song doesn’t seem to notice. “But Vanya as good as told us she left The Grove because she didn’t see a point to planting,” he says.

  “We have to show her she’s wrong,” Abel says.

  Silas lets out a long, heavy sigh and throws his head back. “Three days,” Silas says. “But we still need to talk, Abel.”

  The building shudders, and we are silent. “The zip’s back,” I say.

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  28

  QUINN

  The seat next to me is empty when Bea should be sitting in it, her leg pressing against mine. My body clenches as I think of her head resting against Ronan Knavery’s chest, and the zip lands with a clunk.

  We pull off our earphones and jump out of the aircraft.

  Maks takes me to an outbuilding and kicks open the door. “Tell Vanya we’re back,” he tells the pilot, who walks off. I’m yanked along a passageway into a space divided into four prison cells. A girl of about fifteen or sixteen with olive skin is in one and next to her is a guy the same age. She looks up, afraid. “We didn’t steal anything,” she says.

  “Why would we?” the boy adds.

  “Please let us out of here.” She presses her face between the bars.

  “Pipe down,” Maks says, and the girl immediately eases herself away from the bars and into a corner. He turns to me and points at an empty cell. “In there,” he says.

  “What have I done wrong?”

  He raises one eyebrow. He’s so big, it would take nothing for him to squash me, so I just do what he says.

  He hasn’t even closed the door when Vanya blazes in, heading straight for my cell. “Where is she?” she asks, prodding my chest with her finger.

  “They were probably kidnapped. We found three dead drifters in the station. Looks like there’d been a struggle not long ago,” I say. Vanya pinches the tube connecting my air tank to the face mask, completely cutting off my air supply. I pull off my face mask and try taking a breath. It’s no good. It’s like swallowing boiling water. I cough and splutter. Vanya lets go of my tubing. I hold the face mask back over my mouth and nose and suck in as much air as I can manage.

  “I’m extremely disappointed,” she says.

  “He isn’t lying. There were three bodies in the old railway station and blood everywhere,” Maks interjects. “Freshly dead, I’d say.”

  Vanya rubs her head and paces. “Let me ask this: Is it possible Jazz was never with you? Is it possible you knew she was my daughter and decided it would be a clever way of forcing me to look for your friend?”

  “Jazz was the one who knew the others were heading here and could lead us.”

  “My daughter was leading you here,” Vanya says, her eyes losing some of their hardness. Maks approaches her and gently rubs her back. She steps away from him. “If what you’ve told me is true, Jazz is as good as dead and you’ve proven yourself to be useless.”

  “He’d fit in okay,” Maks mutters.

  “Would he?” Vanya says, heading for the exit and disappearing.

  Maks shuts the door to the cell and attaches a heavy padlock.

  “Why are you locking me in?” I ask again. And for how long? I need to tell the others the plan to get back to the pod and overthrow the Ministry.

  Maks laughs. “Makes no difference whether you sleep in here or the main house: You’ve been a prisoner since you arrived.”

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  29

  ALINA

  It kicks off in the cabin after dinner. “You want to throttle me? Go ahead!” Dorian shouts. He rips off his jacket and rolls up the sleeves of his shirt.

  Song is standing between them again yet, so they don’t rip each other to pieces. “Calm down,” he says.

  Maude and Bruce are lying on their bunks with their hands behind their heads. “Let’s have a good ol’ fashioned boxing match. Ding-ding—Round One!” Maude says.

  Bruce laughs but gets up and stands between Dorian and Silas, too. “Not sure what’s going on, boys, but you can’t be having it as hard as us,” he says. He shows us his blistered hands. “So what is the point of all this squabbling?” Bruce asks.

  Silas goes to the window and opens the blinds. It’s a
lready dark. “This place makes my skin crawl.”

  “Silas has forgotten that real revolution means sacrifice,” Dorian says.

  “And Dorian has forgotten that we don’t sacrifice our friends,” Silas snaps back. He tries pulling open the window, and when it doesn’t budge, he goes to the door and jimmies the handle. “Can you get me out?” he asks Song.

  Song crouches down and examines the lock.

  “Where you going?” I ask, joining Silas at the door.

  “The zip came back, but Quinn wasn’t at dinner. Neither were Bea or Jazz,” he says. “I’m going to look for them. I want to know what’s going on.”

  “You’re determined to get us in trouble,” Dorian says.

  “Well, I’m sorry if I’m the only one who gives a crap about them,” Silas says.

  “Hey!” I push him. If anyone’s worried about Quinn and Bea, it’s me; I know them better than anyone, and I’m the one who got them wrapped up in this mess to begin with. “I’m coming with you,” I say.

  “Lemme help,” Maude says, springing up from the bed. She roots around in her hair and hands Song a pin. He straightens it out and sticks into the lock. We all watch and wait, and after a few minutes the lock clicks.

  But Song isn’t the one who’s opened it. Wren, the girl we met at dinner with the icy eyes and headscarf, stands in the doorway. She’s carrying a heavy load of red fabric over her arm.

  “I come bearing gifts,” she says, stepping into the cabin and throwing the folds of fabric onto my bunk. We gather around. She lifts up one and shakes open a long, red robe with snaps down the front. “For the ceremony. One size fits all.” She offers one to each of us. Maude and Bruce watch carefully. We haven’t told them about the Pairing Ceremony.

  “Am I finally being made a dame? If so, I’d like to request a transfer to the royal chambers and a servant to do my gardening for me,” Maude says. “Also, I need a foot rub.”

  Wren looks down at Maude’s knotted feet, frowns, and passes her a robe. “For you,” she says.

  Maude beams and slips the robe straight over her head. Silas and I share a glance. If they’ve been invited, then it can’t just be about breeding. Silas’s face relaxes a fraction, and he holds his robe out at arm’s length to look at it.

  “Did Maks and Quinn find anyone?” I ask Wren.

  “Don’t think so,” she says. “All dead apparently. Murdered or something.”

  “Even the girl? Even Bea?” Maude asks. Wren shrugs unsympathetically. I bite down hard and clench my jaw. Bea murdered? After everything she endured?

  I don’t believe it.

  “And where’s Quinn now?” Silas asks.

  “He’s been taken to the lockup.”

  “Lockup?” Silas pushes.

  “Yep,” Wren says, and with no further explanation goes to the door. “I finally got a robe today, too. Can’t wait to meet my other.” She beams, showing her yellow teeth, pulls the door closed behind her, and locks it.

  “Ugly-looking bitch,” Maude croaks, clutching for a joke. “I’m ancient. At least I got an excuse.” She returns to her bunk and flops down.

  “We should talk about it, Maude,” I say.

  “About what? I ain’t got nothing to say,” she whispers.

  Bruce sits next to Maude and kisses the side of her head. “Maddie?”

  “Jazz was a pain in the butt, but she was just a kid,” Dorian says, sounding more like his old self. He folds up his robe. “How many more of us need to die?” He’s speaking to himself, but we all nod.

  “And now Quinn’s been imprisoned,” Silas says.

  “Because Jazz couldn’t be found, and Vanya needs someone to blame,” I say.

  “We have to speak to him. We have to find out what happened,” Silas says.

  Song returns to the door. He tries again to pick the lock with the hair slide. When he can’t, he slumps on the floor. “It’s useless,” he says.

  Maude is on her back. She points upward. “Go through the roof,” she says, and we all look up to see what she’s pointing at: the skylight.

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  30

  BEA

  Ronan and I are in a room on the second floor of an old hotel not far from the station. The floorboards creak, and the walls are ready to fall in on themselves. Ronan uses a finger and thumb to make an opening in the crooked blinds. “What can be taking him so long?” he wonders.

  He sits next to me on the bed and sinks into it. We aren’t using a flashlight in case an opportunistic drifter sees the light, but even in the gloom, I can make out the wrinkles in Ronan’s brow.

  It’s freezing again and I can’t stop trembling or thinking about Quinn. I curl up to keep warm. “How will they escape from Sequoia, if it’s so terrible there?” I say. “And what makes Quinn think they can just stroll back into the pod to help?”

  I wish I’d tried harder to persuade him to stay. I just watched him leave. And he never mentioned Maude. Does that mean she never made it to Sequoia?

  Ronan rubs his eyes. “I don’t know, Bea. But what I do know is that Jude asked for Quinn, and what I’m giving him is a sick kid and his son’s outlawed girlfriend. Let’s concentrate on winning him over, and then worry about Quinn, okay?”

  He’s right: If I’m going to be any use to Ronan, and if my parents’ deaths are to mean anything, I have to focus on what we’re about to do. “We just tell the truth: Quinn was here and then he left. Jude Caffrey knows what Quinn and I mean to each other, and he’ll know I wouldn’t return to the pod if Quinn wasn’t following.”

  “You seem very confident,” Ronan says. He stands up and peers through the blinds again.

  “I’m not,” I say. I’m terrified of returning to the place where my parents were killed and attempting to collude with a man responsible for countless deaths at The Grove.

  But if I want to stop others from spending their whole lives under the Ministry’s iron thumb, I only have one choice—I have to throw my shoulders back and fight.

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  31

  ALINA

  Song gives me a leg up, but when I push on the hatch it doesn’t budge. “There’s a latch,” Song says.

  I pull it to left and the piston lets out a gentle puff. Then I haul myself up onto the roof and sit low in case a patrolling guard spots me. Down in the cabin, Song and Bruce are helping Silas. His two hands appear at either side of the opening and then he’s pulling himself up through it. He sits on the opposite side of the hatch. “It might not be true. About Bea,” he whispers into the night.

  My stomach heaves. “I think it is.

  “Well, let’s wait until we talk to Quinn,” he says. “We can’t know that anything these people say is true.”

  I don’t want to dwell on it. What’s the point? What does thinking ever change? I crawl to the edge of the roof and turn onto my belly. I dangle a moment before letting go and land awkwardly. No floodlight is activated, and I crouch in the stillness. Silas lands next to me with a thud seconds later.

  We stay hunched and sneak behind the cabins. As clouds cover the moon, we’re bathed in complete darkness, and I feel Silas hold on to the tail of my jacket to make sure he doesn’t lose me. When we reach the last cabin, and our eyes have fully adjusted, we stop. The annex is to our right, in front of the main house, the other outbuildings to our left. Between the outbuildings and us is an expanse of open land, and if it’s protected by motion sensors, we’ll be discovered.

  The clouds shift, and the moon dispenses a little light. Silas looks quickly from left to right. “That must be the lockup. Narrow windows,” he says, pointing to squat building in the distance. He’s about to speak again when we hear low voices. We flatten ourselves agai
nst the wall as Vanya and Maks come into view. I breathe as slowly and quietly as I can.

  “I’m sorry about your daughter,” Maks says.

  “She was dead to me a long time ago,” Vanya responds.

  “Well, maybe she isn’t. I don’t trust any of them,” he says. “They’re too clever.”

  Vanya smiles. “So what? How many brainy traitors have we buried?”

  They are tittering when the area erupts in light. I pull my face around the corner and instinctively take Silas’s hand. He puts a finger to the blowout valve of my face mask. Like he has to warn me to be quiet.

  “What are those idiots doing?” Vanya says. “Go and shut down the floodlights.” Maks gallops away.

  “It’s Vanya,” a new voice says.

  “What are you playing at? What if someone sees you?” Vanya hisses, and the floodlights dim to nothing. I poke my face around the corner. Silas stands over me and does the same. In Maks’s place is a pair of men carrying a long object wrapped in plastic. They put down their load and stand panting.

  “The buggy broke down,” one of the men tells Vanya. “Had to carry it ourselves.”

  “Just get this garbage out back where it belongs. And if I ever see you two trying something like this again, it’ll be you rolled up in plastic.” Vanya kicks the load violently and strides away, the men watching her go.

  “Hormonal or what,” one whispers. The other snickers. As they reach down for their bundle, Silas pulls on my elbow. “We have to follow them,” he says.

  “What for?”

  “Do you want to guess what’s in that plastic or shall I?” he asks.

  “What about Quinn?” We need to make sure he’s okay, and find out what’s happened to Bea.

  “What if that is Quinn?” Silas asks. I stare at the bundle. If Silas is right, then it doesn’t matter what Abel says; we can’t stay one more day.

  “You don’t think that,” I say.

  “He wasn’t at dinner.”