“Water!” I yell. “North.”
I stay there only for a moment, reveling in the feel of the wind lightly kissing my cheeks. The domed ceiling is far, far overhead. There is no way we could ever reach the top to escape.
The New Militia, and me sending the signal, are the only options. I touch my fingertip to the small protrusion on my inner wrist, given to me by the Commander when we spoke in private.
I pray that no one notices it.
I climb back down, turn to Zephyr and Sketch. They are both bleeding, him with a puffy lip, her with a slit eyebrow. “If you two are done wasting time, we should keep moving.”
“Relax, Meadow.” Zephyr reaches for my hand. “We’re just having some fun.”
“There is never any time for fun,” I hiss, and back away. “Especially not now. My family is here somewhere. We have seventy-two hours to find them and give the signal.”
“And we will,” Zephyr says, his eyes flashing an angry emerald.
Something clicks beneath his boot.
“Stop,” I whisper, holding up my hands, as I realize what’s about to happen. “Zephyr. Don’t move.”
CHAPTER 76
ZEPHYR
There’s one click, like the sound of a bullet sliding into a chamber. I take a step right as Meadow tells me not to.
And then the world’s gone all wrong. Lopsided.
Something tugs at my left ankle. My head slams the ground, and before I realize what’s happened, I’m dangling in the air, blood dripping from my mouth and into my hair.
“What the hell was that?” Sketch screams.
Her face is even with mine.
Meadow moves fast, searching for something to get me down with.
But there’s nothing. She doesn’t have her dagger, and Sketch and I are just as empty.
There’s a crack in the trees behind us. Meadow whirls, fists clenched. I’m spinning slowly, the cord on my ankle waving me in the wind.
One spin. I see movement in the trees. “There’s someone out there,” I say.
Another spin.
“Get him!” Meadow screams. She dives, but I can’t see who she’s after, because I’m spinning again.
“What’s happening?” I yell. No one answers. I hear grunts. A person cries out in pain, and I don’t know who it is. “MEADOW! SKETCH!”
A third spin, and I’m praying to the stars that they’re okay.
The rope turns me back around.
And I’m facing Meadow and Sketch again. Only this time there’s another person. A dirt-faced boy, and they’ve got him tackled to the ground, his cheek pressed up against the snow.
“I wasn’t gonna do nothing’!” he screams. “Swear it!”
“You’ll shut your damn mouth if you know what’s good for you,” Sketch says.
“Take his knife,” Meadow cuts in. “Get Zephyr down.”
I spin again, missing the scene, but just before I spin back, I see Sketch’s face.
“No, Sketch, wait!” I yell.
She slices the rope. I drop and land on my face.
“Ugh,” I groan, sitting up, spitting out dirt. “Thanks, I guess.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Sketch laughs.
“You didn’t warn me!”
My head throbs and I feel dizzy, as blood rushes back where it belongs. But I finally get a clear look at the kid whose trap I triggered. He looks like a Ward, a younger version of me. He’s got dark hair, matted to his head in thick, crusty knots. He looks like he hasn’t bathed a day in his life.
But that’s not the worst part.
It’s his body.
He’s covered, from his neck down to his bare arms and legs, in boils. They ooze green. One of them pops on his neck, and Sketch backs away, disgusted.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” she asks.
The boy struggles under Meadow’s grasp, but she’s too strong for him. “Let me up. Do it, ’fore Scout comes for ya.”
“He’s just a kid, Meadow,” I say. A kid covered in some nasty stuff that I don’t want her touching. “Let him up.”
He wears a green cuff on his wrist, scuffed and scratched. The screen has a number 37 on it. There is no Catalogue Number on his head. He stares at us like we are the aliens, but he’s the one who looks like he came from another world.
“If you run, I’ll catch you,” Meadow says to him. He nods, whimpering. “Now just tell me where everyone else is, and I won’t hurt you.”
“Okay.” The kid nods. “Just let me go, please.”
Meadow sets him free.
He leaps to his feet. He tries to take the knife back from Sketch, but she lifts it too high.
“You’ll pay for this,” the kid says.
Then he does the one thing he shouldn’t have.
He turns and sprints into the trees.
Meadow laughs under her breath. “That’s exactly what I hoped he would do. Come on.”
She takes the knife from Sketch, then sprints after him, silent as a predator as she follows his trail.
CHAPTER 77
MEADOW
The boy runs fast, dodging in and out of trees with an animal-like swiftness.
He is well practiced at this, and he knows this land.
But I was trained by my father. Trained to run faster, harder, than anyone in the Shallows. With my strength back, I can make my father proud and be the fighter he always pushed me to be. I don’t know how much time I have left. I want to make every single second count.
I stay far enough away that the boy has the illusion of safety. Because I want him to lead me to his home. As I run, I can see things that don’t seem right. A splash of blood on a tree trunk. A crumpled bundle lying in a pile of sticks and leaves. A broken shell of an Initiative Cam. I scoop up a curved, sharp piece, tuck it into my belt loop to use as another weapon.
Behind me, I can hear Zephyr and Sketch calling my name, begging me to stop. They’ll catch up soon enough.
The boy leaps, cutting across a river that runs through the forest, the same one I saw from my vantage point in the tree. My throat is dry, and everything in me begs for me to stop and drink from it. But I have to keep going. Keep following.
Soon a massive rock formation comes into view, like a small version of the giant mountains outside the Ridge. It is circular, almost like a Perimeter of its own.
I duck behind a fat tree, slide close to the trunk so the boy can’t see me.
When I peer back out, I see him smile. He thinks he’s lost me. A boil on his face pops, dripping a horrible, purplish-black liquid, and my stomach lurches. He drops to hands and knees and sweeps aside a curtain of tangled vines, then disappears into a small opening in the rock wall.
Zephyr comes up behind me. “Meadow!” he yells, but I whirl, put my hand over his mouth to silence him, slam him up against the tree.
“Just like old times,” he whispers, grinning.
“Would you just shut up?” I sigh, then point at the top of the rock formation. Smoke trails into the air. It isn’t black, a sign that at least, hopefully, they aren’t cannibals like on the Outside.
With smoke comes the promise of people.
Food.
Answers. So far, we have been the only ones with Catalogue Numbers. Which means that the only others in here with them will be my family. The citizens of the Ridge will remember if they’ve seen them.
“Ladies first,” Sketch whispers, as she comes up behind us. She nudges Zephyr in the back. “That would be you, Zero.”
“I swear to the stars, Sketch . . .” he says, but I hold up a hand to cut him off.
“Go.”
He sighs, then steps into the clearing, drops to hands and knees, and disappears through the vines and into the rocks.
CHAPTER 78
ZEPHYR
I duck into the opening.
The space is way too small for me, so I have to turn sideways to slide through.
And then I get stuck.
I can’t
see what’s happening on the inside of the rock fortress, but Sketch is coming up behind me.
“Go, Zero,” she whispers. She nudges me.
“Hang on,” I hiss. “I’m stuck!”
And I don’t want to go any farther. Because there are voices coming from inside the rocks. Lots of them.
“Stop being such a whiny ChumHead,” Sketch says. And then she shoves me, hard.
I fall forward, my face scraping against the rocks. And land right on the edge of a crowd of people. They turn to look at me, at least twenty of them.
Their eyes go first to my wrist. See the red of my cuff, the C on the screen.
Theirs are all green, with numbers.
And something tells me that’s not good.
CHAPTER 79
MEADOW
Zephyr has fallen right into the entrance of a camp.
It’s a large circular clearing, surrounded entirely by tall boulders. A fire blazes in the center, people surrounding it, and all of their eyes are on us.
Zephyr stands up, scurries to my side.
“Way to go, skitzface,” Sketch mutters.
Overhead, at the tops of the boulders, the forest starts back up again and the trees are linked together by sharp hooked wires that make a tall fence.
It is a good home, a solid place to stay.
But the people who own it look like savages, like an army of the living dead.
My eyes fall on a young boy by the fire. He has what almost looks like an extra arm sticking out of his side. The others are just as bad.
I see a woman across the bonfire, her face strangely swollen and covered in a mask of angry red boils. An older man lying on the ground close to the fire, one of his arms with thick, rippling muscles, the other arm limp and atrophied.
The General was right about the Ridge.
The people here are mutated. Destroyed.
Horrific, like they have stepped out of a nightmare, come to life. As soon as we can, I will send the signal to him, the one we talked about in whispers, when everyone was asleep, the night before we left to come here.
I take a few steps backward into Sketch.
The people here all wear green cuffs. They look at ours.
Red.
Out of place here.
“That’s them!” the boy shouts, the one I followed. “Caught ’em right by the entrance. Told you they’d follow me.”
When they see us, our faces fresh and clean, our Catalogue Numbers on our foreheads, our clothing unworn, they stare hungrily.
Hatred is a tangible thing, and when I face a predator, I can sense it.
But these people don’t look like predators, or fighters. They look weak, and broken.
And starving.
“Who are you?” I ask.
“Reds, huh?” A man rises from the crowd. “Welcome to the Rock.”
He has long, muscular arms. And scars littering his entire face. They look like burns, twisting his skin, bubbling up in places, the same way Sparrow’s face was. His dark hair hangs in mats down to his shoulders, and as he stands, the crowd watches his every move.
He is definitely their leader.
“What happened to you?” I ask. “All of you?”
“What? There somethin’ wrong with the way we look, Cleanie?” The man rounds the side of the bonfire. He looks like a character out of my nightmares. As he gets closer, I see the tears in his clothing. The skin beneath is scarred, too. His entire body is covered, as if he was thrown to a fire, or burned with acid.
He steps up to me and looks me over. Zephyr slides in front of me, arms crossed. I roll my eyes. I can take care of myself. For now.
“What do we have here?” The leader holds out a filthy scarred hand, like he’s going to touch Zephyr’s Catalogue Number.
But I dive, grab the man’s wrist, and twist it backward. I hold it until it’s about to snap.
“No one touches us,” I say. “We came for answers. Nothing more.”
The man smiles, but there is darkness in his eyes. “Easy, now,” he says. “You came to us, Cleanie.”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
He laughs, but it comes out like a wheeze. “It means you just got here, that’s what it means. Letter Cs, on your cuffs? Clean blood. They ain’t got to you. Yet.”
I let his wrist go.
He staggers backward, still staring at my Catalogue Number. “We’ve seen others like you. Things are changing here.” He looks back, at his people. They watch with wide eyes, as if they are afraid. “Tell us, Reds. Where did you come from? Why did they send you here?”
“Tell us where the others like us are staying,” I say instead. “A trade of information.”
His voice crackles like the fire. “Look around you. This place ain’t much, but it’s home. And when a guest enters a home, it’s customary to bring a gift.” He looks over his shoulder again. Some of his people stand.
I take another step back.
“Now, Cleanies. What do you have to offer us? Give us a gift, and you can stay the night. There are bad colors out there. Blues and yellows and purples, and more. But we’re Greens. We’re the good guys, and we can be friends, if you give us a reason to be.”
“We have nothing for you,” Sketch says.
But the man has other ideas. “Your coats,” he says. “Your boots.” He nods at the knife in my hand. “And the boy’s knife you stole. He’ll be needing that back.”
“No,” I say, wrapping my coat tighter around myself, pulling the knife flat against my chest. I have a flash of a memory, standing on the beach with Peri, when the Pirates made us give up her shoelaces. “These are ours.”
He whistles. Two men stand, the one with the muscular arm, and one with bloodred eyes. They cross behind us, and others join, making a circle. Blocking out the exit tunnel. I start to move, ready to fight my way out.
But suddenly sweat beads on my brow. I sway on my feet.
The switch is coming again. Soon I will be useless.
“You understand, I have people to look after,” the leader says, and spits blood on the ground. “We won’t hurt you. We just want what you have. The nights are cold. You find your Reds, and they’ll take care of you, same as Greens look after Greens. That’s the way it works here, Cleanie. But for now . . .”
He motions for his men to move for us.
I clench my fists, beg myself to just hang on until we’re out of here. My nose drips. Fresh blood.
And then there’s a noise in the distance.
A whirring sound, coming from afar.
The men freeze. They glance at their leader. All around, everyone starts murmuring. Children start to cry. Women shush them and pull them close.
“Scout, they’re coming,” the woman says. “Help us.”
“Stay calm,” the leader says. “Remember. Don’t. Move.” The people huddle together, leaving the entrance open and free. Their leader looks at us, and winks. “You got off easy. I’d say you’re lucky, Cleanies, but . . .” hHe glances at the sky, and for the first time, I see fear in his eyes. “The Biters are here.”
The buzzing grows louder and louder.
“Meadow,” Zephyr says, and he tugs at my shirt, tries to pull me back. “Meadow, let’s go.”
But I’m frozen. I can’t move.
Curiosity tugs at me, and I have to know. Have to see for myself what we are up against.
The buzzing intensifies, and I can almost feel it in my bones.
A wave of giant, black winged insects soars over the top of the fortress, blocking out the sky. It’s like the world freezes, as I look up at hundreds, thousands of them, buzzing as loud as the Night Siren wails. They look like mosquitos, nearly as large as my hand. Biters.
“Well, flux me,” Sketch says.
The world snaps back into the present. Biters dive downward, an army poised for the attack, and the Greens erupt into a chorus of screams.
CHAPTER 80
ZEPHYR
My instincts take over. br />
I dive for the tunnel, pulling Meadow and Sketch with me. I shove Meadow through first, and she scurries inside. Sketch goes next, and I’m about to race after them when something stabs me in the neck.
I scream.
Pain, worse than anything I’ve ever felt before, like I’ve just been struck with a white-hot fire poker. I slap the Biter, and it squelches against my palm. An explosion of blood and black goo on my skin.
“Zero!” Sketch yells.
She yanks me in after them.
I fall to hands and knees, and then Sketch is ripping off her jacket, shoving it into the gap behind us. Meadow and I follow suit, and in seconds we’ve covered the entrance to the Ridge as best we can. Behind the barrier, I can hear the Greens screaming, the constant buzzing of the Biters.
“What the hell were those things?” Sketch asks.
In the darkness, we’re crammed together, breathing hard, listening as the screams and the buzzing fade.
“I don’t know,” I whisper, as silence comes. The throbbing on my neck fades, but now I swear I can feel something running through me. Like there’s poison in my veins. “But I think one bit me.”
I barely have the words out before there’s a strange, speckling in my vision.
Then it goes dark.
“What just happened?” I whisper. “Where’d the light go?”
I feel someone shift beside me.
“Zephyr . . .” It’s Meadow’s voice. “It’s not dark.”
“Yes it is,” I say. I wave my hands in front of my face, but I can’t see anything at all. Only pure oil black, darker than a starless sky.
“No, Zero,” Sketch says. “It’s not.”
“I can’t see,” I whisper.
It’s then that it hits me.
I think I’ve just gone blind.
CHAPTER 81
MEADOW
This is impossible.
Zephyr was fine, seconds ago, and now he is blind. His cuff changes. The letter C becomes a number 47.
I tell myself to stay calm, to stay in control. It is what my father would do, and probably has done, since coming to the Ridge. There is always an explanation for everything, and once I find my father, he will explain this to us.