Resist

  Wren, who’s opposite Silas, leans in. “Huh?” she says, crumbs flying onto Silas’s plate.

  “Give me peace,” Silas snaps, and Wren sulks back, turning her body slightly away. Silas slides closer to me. “Abel was the one who told us to stay.” He thumps the table and our cutlery jumps.

  “Maybe he didn’t think any of us would become benefactors.”

  “You aren’t to go with him. I don’t want you to end up out back in a fresh grave,” Silas says.

  “Once we have Maude and Bruce we can go back and overthrow the Ministry. Isn’t that what we’ve always wanted?” It’s certainly what I’ve wanted.

  Silas looks around. Quinn and Dorian are seated across the dining room with the other academics, but Maude and Bruce are missing. “Fine, go with Abel,” he says. “And as for going back to the pod . . .” he begins, but a hush swims through the room.

  Vanya has risen. “I only have one announcement this evening.” She pauses and those still eating put down their knives and forks. “Our groundskeeper, Peter Crab, who is responsible not only for the land within Sequoia, but also for maintaining a semblance of order beyond the walls, is missing. If any of you see him, or have an inkling where he could have wandered off to, please inform Maks immediately.” Maks is scanning the room. Silas and I don’t look at each other.

  Not even a glance. We know without saying a word that our time is running out.

  I leave the lab feeling a bit twitchy from the EPOs. I haven’t swallowed the tablets, at least, and spit them out, hiding them underneath the runner in the hallway while I wait for Abel. He emerges from another room with Sugar, who is rubbing her upper arm. Her coarse blonde hair falls over her face.

  “I’m skipping meditation tonight, Sugar,” Abel says. “I’m not feeling well.”

  “Really?” she says coldly. I don’t want to be jealous of her, but I can’t help it. She doesn’t even seem to like Abel and she gets to spend her all day with him. And all night.

  “Hurt my neck. Must have been the hike,” Abel says.

  “Okay,” Sugar says. She looks at me suspiciously. “Feel better,” she says, and stalks down the hallway and out of sight, all the time rubbing her arm.

  “What about Maks? Where did you say you’d be?” Abel asks.

  “He has something to do for Vanya. He said he’d see me back in the room tonight. I’d say we have an hour.”

  “Right,” Abel says. Without wasting another second, we scurry me along the hallway and down a set of steps. When we get to a landing, he fumbles with a huge painting on the wall until it clicks, and he reveals a hidden hallway. “Follow me,” he says. We slip through and Abel pulls the painting behind us. I wait for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, but they don’t. The light has been completely shut out. I reach for him and he takes my hand. This doesn’t mean anything, I remind myself. I won’t be taken in again.

  “Careful,” he says, and we start down the hallway. My free hand slides along the brick wall, and I feel for the edge of each step with my feet.

  “It was hard when you disappeared. They said you were dead. It was on the news,” I say. It’s easier to talk to Abel now we’re in the dark. I can be more honest—less afraid to be myself.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, which is all I need to hear. But he continues. “My job was to learn as much about the Resistance as possible. Vanya heard you had developed new breeding programs, but the only breeding you lot were doing was with plants.”

  That mission to steal clippings from the biosphere was the first important thing I’d done for The Resistance, but it meant nothing to Abel. He was just along for the ride. And because of his cold feet, we were almost caught. And because of that I had to flee the pod and involve Bea and Quinn in something they knew nothing about. I could keep going, tracing everything that’s destroyed us and brought our group here from that moment.

  “So you never gave a damn about the trees.”

  “I believed in what we were doing,” he says. “Growing trees was giving people hope. After that day in the biosphere, I so badly wanted to tell you who I was, but before I could, I was picked up.” He squeezes my hand.

  “What did the ministry do to you?”

  “Beat the crap out of me. They were still waiting for me to spill it when the riot started up, and some minister just chucked me out and expected me to choke. By the time I found The Grove, it was a mountain of sludge.” He pauses. “We’re at the bottom. Come on.” We scurry along a tight passageway. The floor feels greasy, but Abel doesn’t slow down.

  “And Jo?” I may as well ask everything now, while I have the chance.

  “I found her at The Grove. She was trying to escape and that’s why she’s a benefactor now.”

  But that wasn’t really what I wanted to know. He lets go of my hand. A meager, gray glow fills the passageway and a gust of icy air rushes at me. “This way,” Abel says, and guides me outside and toward scattered splashes of light. The main house is at our backs, and Abel continually checks behind us. As we get closer, I realize that the spots of light are windows—narrow to the point of absurdity.

  Soon we’re hunkering beneath a row of windows. “Take a look,” Abel whispers. My stomach tumbles. Whatever is through this window can’t be unseen. I press an eye to the light.

  Inside is a bright hospital ward with metal beds down each side and people dressed in flimsy undershirts strapped to them. They all have tubes threaded through their mouths and noses, and IVs stuck in their hands. Everything is connected to hissing machines by their beds. A loud beeping fills the room, and a nurse jumps up from her desk and dashes to someone’s bedside, where she tinkers with knobs on one of the machines. The beeping stops, and a deep moan replaces it. The nurse looks down at the person impassively and goes back to her desk.

  I slide down next to Abel. “I don’t understand,” I say.

  “That’s the testing lab. Their oxygen’s being rationed and their organs are being monitored. Vanya wants to understand suffocation and what chemical conditions might prevent it.”

  I look again to see if I can spot Maude and Bruce, but everyone is uniformly skinny, and I can’t make out any faces. “How long are they kept like this?” I wait a long time for an answer, and then it comes without Abel having to say anything. I stare at him unbelieving. “They experiment on people until they die?” It’s what I suspected, but knowing it’s true is different. It’s too horrible. “But what reason does Vanya give for why they don’t mix with the others and are never seen again?”

  “You heard her in the orangery going on about benefactors dedicating their lives to meditation and how this energy mustn’t be contaminated.”

  “People buy that?”

  “Some do. Some choose not to think about it.” And why not? It’s no more far-fetched than the idea that trees will only grow in the biosphere. People believe what they’re told.

  “There’s more,” he says, and crawls to another window.

  This room is filled with cribs and playpens. A nurse sleeps in a rocking chair holding an infant. The children are crying, wheezing, or asleep. None of them are connected to tubes, but most are covered in Band-Aids and bruises. There’s a shriek and a toddler sits up in her crib, her eyes full of tears. The nurse opens one eye. “Hush,” she says.

  “They’re pumping the air in at fifteen percent,” Abel whispers, “and they keep lowering it until a child looks like he might suffocate. Then they hook him up to an oxybox. They’re training them.”

  I look into the room again. The babies are strapped to their beds. “Where are the mothers?” I ask. Does one of these babies belong to the girl we saw in the attic?

  “Vanya believes the kids are hers. The mothers stay in the main house. The older ones are upstairs. If they survive, they’ll be brought over when they’re twelve. Vanya’s only been doing this eight years. She thinks she’s creating a better breed of human.”

  “She’s mad.”

  A shadow blocks the light coming from t
he window. “We should shut these blinds,” a splintery voice says. The light dims, as the window is screened over. I squash myself against the wall.

  “You brought Jo back here and you let us stay when you knew all this,” I hiss.

  “Jo needed to give birth somewhere. And I didn’t know the extent of things until Jo told me a couple of days ago.”

  “She knew?”

  “Maks took great pleasure in filling Jo in when she got back,” he says uneasily.

  “So now what?” I ask. The windows are impossibly narrow and we can’t simply saunter in the front door.

  “Maks has keys,” he says. “If we could get them. . . .” he trails off.

  “Are you joking?” He isn’t the kind of person to leave keys lying around.

  “There’s no other way, Alina,” he says. He sounds tough, but he would—it’s not his neck on the line.

  “Well, if we do this, we aren’t leaving any benefactors behind. And definitely not the kids.”

  Abel gapes at me. “What? No. We can’t take all of them. We’ll be caught.”

  I pause and listen to the cry of a baby. The cry gets louder and louder until it finally subsides and the night is silent again. “Did you think we’d help you rescue Jo and no one else?” Abel shakes his head. He looks guilty. And afraid. As he should. “Have you always been in love with her?” I ask.

  He sighs. “It isn’t like that. Jo’s my best friend. I’ve known her my whole life,” he says. “You and me, we never had time to get to know each other. If we did . . .”

  I want to tell Abel to go to hell. If he thinks he’s going to get me to help him by promising something like that, he’s right—he doesn’t know me very well. “Let’s get back before someone notices we’re missing,” I say. “I’ll tell everyone tomorrow what we have to do.”

  We head through the door leading into the main house, and Abel clutches my arm. His touch still makes my legs wilt, and I hate myself for being so weak. “Why do you have to act so hard-nosed all the time? You don’t make it easy to love you.”

  I almost laugh, but rage tears through me, and I shove him so hard, he staggers backward. He has no idea what I’ve been through since he was caught and because of his lies. I look at him squarely. “I’m running out of energy,” I say. “I’m going to focus on this one last thing and then I’m retiring from saving the world. Maybe we’ll talk about how unlovable I am then. Okay?”

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  40

  BEA

  Ronan’s attic studio is covered in paintings and drawings and a rainbow of color is splattered across the floor and walls. A large board with bands of gray and red smeared across it in thick, irregular lines is sitting on an easel. It looks wet, but it’s dry to the touch.

  “What does it mean?” I ask, approaching the easel.

  “If I knew that, I wouldn’t need my therapist,” he says, and grins.

  “I like it,” I tell him. Something about the fury of the strokes speaks to me. Maybe I could paint. In the future. If I have one.

  “Every color I use, I find in the sky,” he says. He points at the wide skylight in the roof. The only thing visible through it is the pod’s glass surface and the sun. The space is completely private. A refuge. If I were Ronan, I’d never leave it. But now that we know the Ministry is planning to cut off the oxygen in all empty apartments, he’s giving it up to hide Harriet, Gideon, and any other Resistance members on the Ministry’s hit list—there’s been no way for him to secretly get hold of enough air tanks to keep the wanted Resistance members alive in airless apartments.

  “You’re a good person,” I tell him, in case he doesn’t already know it.

  “Sometimes,” he says.

  He collects the cans of paint, plaster, and glue, piles them in the corner, and hangs the paintings resting against the walls on crooked nails to get them off the floor. He stops when we hear a light tap on the door and puts his ear against it. When Ronan unlocks the door, Wendy bundles into the studio carrying a stack of sheets and blankets. “This is all I have spare,” she says, throwing the bedding on the floor. “I’ll look in your room, too. We have to get a move on though. Niamh will be back soon. And what about food? How am I going to justify the expense?”

  “I can sort that out,” Ronan says. Considering what he’s doing, he’s very calm. It’s not even my house, and my heart is racing.

  “And what if they need the bathroom?” Wendy asks. She grimaces and I find myself doing the same. Ronan remains unruffled.

  He picks up a drop cloth from the floor and hangs one side to a hook in the ceiling, the other to a screw sticking out from the wall. “It’ll be no more than a bucket with a lid, and I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to empty it every hour with Niamh prowling around, but it’s the best we can do,” he says.

  “How many are there?” Wendy asks. She prods the bedding with her toe. They both look at me.

  “Around fifteen,” I say.

  “Once Niamh’s gone to bed, we’ll bring them up. But I still think it’s an awful risk hiding them here,” Wendy says. Keeping me in her annex for a day has been stressful enough, but the idea of hiding hoards of Resistance members in the house, right above Niamh and any visiting ministers, has Wendy on edge.

  Ronan picks up a blanket and shakes it out. “No one will think of looking here,” he says. “Would you?”

  Wendy shakes her head. Still, keeping everyone fed, clean, and quiet won’t be easy.

  “Did you bring up my stuff?” I ask Wendy.

  She blinks and looks at Ronan. “There’s no need for you to sleep here with everyone else, love,” she says. “After what you’ve been through, a little privacy is what you need.” Ronan coughs and Wendy stops talking. She pulls her lips into her mouth. He must have told her what happened with the drifters.

  “It wouldn’t be fair if I got special treatment,” I mumble. I wish he hadn’t said anything. Quinn never would have. He knows how to keep a secret.

  “I’ll see if I can dig out more sheets,” Wendy says, opening the door and tiptoeing away. Ronan locks the door behind her. “You don’t have to be a martyr, you know.”

  What? Is that how he thinks I behave? “I act like a martyr?”

  “Bea . . . I don’t mean it like that. Please stay in the annex with Wendy.” He tilts his head and looks inconsolably sad.

  I turn away from him and step closer to one of his paintings: a series of blue circles along with smaller, seemingly arbitrary turquoise splotches. “You don’t paint real things. And there’s a violence to them. Why?”

  “People see what they want,” he says. “And you see violence.”

  I ignore him and reach out to touch the painting. The color looks like it might drip down the board and onto the floor, but it’s hard and rubbery. “Do you think we can recruit enough people to make a difference?”

  He squats next to me. “We have to try, don’t we?” he says.

  “No, Ronan. We have to win.”

  “And we will,” he says.

  Ronan powers up a radio and a thick beat thunders through the studio. Everyone looks at him. “I play music when I paint,” he tells us.

  “Well, you were right. Two hours ago the air in the apartment got siphoned off,” Harriet says. She unrolls her sleeping bag next to Gideon’s, then puts her hands on her hips and studies the other Resistance members unpacking their meager belongings. A group of girls is beneath the skylight setting up. When they see me, they smile. Some men and boys are at the far end of the studio whispering and arranging.

  I’ve already chosen a spot by the door, and Wendy has given me an extra blanket in case I get cold.

  “What now? We’re useless in here,” Gideon says.

  “You’re alive,” I tell him. Plenty of people aren’t.

  Ronan runs his hand through his hair. “Tonight Old Watson and
I will round up more applicants for the army. When we have enough people and they’re all armed, we fight.”

  “Could be a long wait,” Gideon says.

  “And we can wait,” Harriet says. “Bea’s right. Not being dead or imprisoned is enough for now.”

  “And what if his sister comes up here?” Gideon asks, speaking to everyone except Ronan. I keep quiet when what I should do is remind him that Ronan has just saved his life—he could be a little more grateful.

  “It’s thumbprint activated, and mine is the only one registered,” Ronan says.

  “A thumb pad. That’s safe,” Gideon says sarcastically.

  I can’t listen anymore. “Ronan is doing his best. If you want to go out and live in the alleyways until you get picked up, do it. This is no one’s ideal situation,” I tell him.

  Harriet frowns at her husband. “Gideon’s grateful. We all are,” she says.

  Ronan rubs his hands together. “I’ll be up once a day, if I can. I’ll bring food.” He switches off the music. Everyone in the studio looks at him. “You should tiptoe and avoid raised voices,” he says.

  I join Ronan by the main door. Suddenly I don’t want him to go. I hold on to the tail of his shirt. “You’re in charge,” he says. He looks at my hand, which is still clutching him, and touches it with the tips of his fingers. If I asked him to take me with him, he would. But I have to keep order up here.

  I release him. “Goodnight,” I say, and he slips out the door.

  I go to my sleeping spot and lie down facing the wall. I close my eyes and see Quinn. For a while I thought I might never see him again, even clearly in my mind. But that was only because I was scared of losing him forever.

  I don’t think I’m scared anymore.

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  41

  QUINN

  Every time the dining hall doors open I hope it’ll be Alina, and after I’ve given up on her, she marches in. She gives me this stony look and takes a seat with the other troopers. A server lays a red dessert at the other end of my table, and the academics ladle out hefty portions for themselves, ignoring our end. “I’ll get us some,” Clarice says.