“You can’t help me with this,” she says. She smiles sadly.
Then she gasps. “This could be the last switch,” she says. I watch her cuff change, slide slowly back down to zero. Then it goes to the letter C.
She’s about to say something else when there’s a wailing, like the Night Siren. But it is different. Almost like . . . voices.
Shouts.
“War!” Tox shouts, from somewhere in the darkness. “Fight!”
That’s when the door of the cave bursts open.
Abram falls in, his meaty hands waving in the air.
A knife sticks out of the middle of his forehead.
“RAID!” Saxon screams.
The cave turns to chaos, as people pour in through the doorway, weapons aimed for the kill.
CHAPTER 103
MEADOW
Oranges fill the Cave.
I don’t know how they found our hideout. Did they follow me and my brother?
I see an Orange man, his ponytail swinging as he turns in circles, ordering his army to attack.
I leap to my feet.
I sprint for him, screaming hatred from my lungs. Not now, not when Peri is here and safe. No one will touch her tonight. A woman jumps in the way. I slam her to the ground, ignoring her screams.
She waves a knife in my face. I slam my forehead against hers, then rip the knife from her grasp.
She spits in my face. I use the butt end of the knife to knock her out, then move on. I have to find my father and Peri.
Everyone is screaming, running around the cave.
Two of the fires have gone out, and the world is a mix of shadows, voices bouncing off the walls.
There are more screams, more footsteps. At least fifty Oranges pour through the doorway. With this many, we don’t stand a chance.
I hear Peri scream, and it is just like the days of torture. I want to drop, put my hands over my ears, but I force myself to remember. That was then. This was now. I turn, see Koi trying to fight off two men while Peri cowers behind him, her face frozen in horror, mouth hanging open.
I don’t think.
I just fling the knife, watch as it sinks into the back of the first man’s neck. He drops, and Koi is able to get the other down to the floor. They grapple, and I rush for Peri. I scoop her into my arms, then rip the knife from the man’s skull.
“Are you okay?” I ask, looking into her eyes.
“Daddy!” she screams. Her first word since we found her.
She points behind me.
I turn in time to see my father, stumbling toward us in the chaos, a spear through his thigh. His eyes are wild, desperate, like he knows he doesn’t have the strength to carry on, and that is far more terrifying than anything I have ever seen. He has a woman on his tail, and she whirls a wicked-looking spiked ball in his direction.
He’s not going to make it.
“Duck!” I scream.
My father drops.
The woman lands on top of him, a snarl on her face. She slams his back with the spiked ball.
I see a rush of blood. Still, he fights.
“Stay here!” I shove Peri into Koi’s outstretched arms, then run to help my father.
I dive, my body slamming against the woman’s. She rolls off my father, and I’m on top of her, throwing punches into her face. She punches me back, and for a second, the world spins.
I slap the sides of her skull, pop her eardrums. Her eyes go wild. Feral. She lunges and sinks her teeth into my neck, draws blood.
“End her!” my father commands from my left. “End her now, Meadow!”
The woman spits my own blood into my eyes. She digs a blade into my thigh. There’s pain, white hot and angry.
And suddenly I want revenge. On everyone. The Initiative, for putting my family into this world, for making Peri look like a ghost of herself, for putting her through agony that no child should ever have to face. I’m angry at the other colors, for disturbing the last peaceful night I might ever have.
I’m furious at my mother. The entire world.
I stick my fingers into the woman’s eye sockets.
I press hard, until she’s fountaining blood, and it’s like everything inside of me breaks.
I hear myself laughing, memories of the Commander and his torture and Peri’s screams, and my screams, and everything up to this point flooding out from my soul. I pretend this woman is the Initiative, and I’m finally getting my vengeance for what they did to me, my family, Zephyr. Everyone in the Shallows.
“Meadow!” Koi’s voice comes up from somewhere beyond, but I don’t really hear him. “We have to go! There are too many of them!”
The woman’s already dying, probably dead, but I can’t pull away.
I scream until my voice runs ragged. Until hands grab me from behind. I spin, yanking the knife from my thigh, ready to thrust it into my attacker’s throat.
But then I see Zephyr.
“Meadow,” he says. Only my name, and for a second, I almost thrust the knife at him. There’s honesty in his eyes. Truth. Desperation to save me not from the woman, but from myself. “That’s enough! You’ve done enough!”
I see Peri in the shadows. Tears sliding down her cheeks.
Looking at me like . . . like I’m a monster.
I gasp when I see the woman’s face. Feel the hot blood on my hands, the roughness in my throat from laughing and yelling. There’s fighting all around, and Koi drags me to the side, conceals us in the shadows. “We have to run, Meadow. We can’t stay here with Peri. We’re outnumbered.”
I look past him, as the other Cavers fight. A stray boy runs toward us, trying to escape, but a knife gets him in the skull. He drops.
Sketch appears, helping my father walk. His blood-tinged eyes stare right into mine, and in this moment, he commands my every motion. “We will do what it takes to keep Peri safe, Meadow. We’ll run.”
“To where?” Koi asks.
I realize that now is the time. We’re almost ready to leave this place. I have my sister back, my entire family. There is no reason to stay here any longer.
I have to give the signal, but first, we have to run to the extraction point.
“The south end,” I say. “Hurry.”
Tox hobbles forward. “I know South,” he says. He lifts his walking stick, holds it high.
“We’ll follow him,” Zephyr says. “He knows the way. He’s been here longer than any of us, and he knows more than you realize. You have to trust me on this.”
He looks strong. Like a leader, arms rigid at his sides, chin tilted up, so he can stare down at us all, using his height.
“Okay,” I say.
Tox disappears into the darkness of the cave, leading the way.
CHAPTER 104
ZEPHYR
Meadow lost it. Right in front of her sister.
She stuck her hands into that woman’s face like she was digging through sand and . . .
I shove the memory away, force it deep down, where it won’t bug me until later. For now, we have to run.
I don’t know where Tox is leading us, but it’s somewhere deep in the cave. The darkness folds itself around us like a blanket, only it isn’t comforting.
It feels like a cage. I can hear Oranges, tracking us from behind. We move fast, our breathing labored. There were too damn many of them.
“He’s just a loonyheaded old bag!” Saxon hisses from ahead.
“Trust him,” I say. “What other options do we have? You want to go back there and die at the hands of Orange soldiers?”
“I am a soldier!” Saxon snaps. “We just left the other Yellows to die. We left them like bait.”
“Then why did you even come?” Sketch yells. “We did what we had to do. And if you’re with us, then you’ll shut your mouth and enjoy the ride.”
I focus on my breathing. Taking short, quick steps, so I don’t lose my footing in the darkness and fall into Sketch’s back.
My forehead hits the cave ceiling. A
snap of pain.
“Oh, right. Duck!” Sketch says, from ahead.
“Could’ve said something sooner,” I grunt, then stoop lower, hauling Meadow with me, our hands glued together from the dead woman’s blood.
Soon the talking fades.
The cave gets so short and so small that I’m on hands and knees.
“This is a dead end,” Meadow says.
But at the very front, Tox uses his walking stick to beat against a pile of rocks.
They tumble, and I see the light.
CHAPTER 105
MEADOW
The darkness dies when we reach the light.
It is only a small flicker, like shadowed sun. But it is there.
“Dig.” The old man’s voice echoes from up ahead. “Dig!”
Koi is closest to him.
I can hear scrambling from ahead, muffled curses as my brother does what Tox says.
It’s a tiny opening in the tunnel ahead.
We have to go one at a time, crawling on our bellies, and by the time it is my turn a tangle of vines is in the way. I slide through them, out onto the forest floor.
“I told you he knew,” Zephyr says to everyone. He stoops down to help me up.
His eyes hold mine. “You can’t slip away again,” he whispers. He grabs my hand and I tell myself I am going to leave my insanity behind in that cave.
But I know, and Zephyr knows, that it is not the truth.
There’s no time to talk.
When I look up, I can see the dome ceiling lowering. Like it is getting closer to connecting to the Perimeter. Overhead, the sun is fading.
We are nearing the end of the seventy-two hours.
If I don’t send the signal soon, the New Militia will hold off their attack. They won’t come for us.
We run.
“We have to stop,” Koi says from behind, after an hour of running.
My father is leaning against him, gasping for breath. The wind blows, moving his hair back from his face. And in this moment, I see the paleness of his skin from the loss of blood.
So weak, so unlike himself.
I hear a clicking noise overhead, like the sound of locusts.
It is a sound I have not heard yet in the Ridge. I look up, but I don’t see anything different on the dome. Just silver, more silver, the webbed lines of metal or titanium, patched together like spiderwebs.
Suddenly something dark falls from the sky, far off in the distance.
Then another right after, crashing to the forest. They sound like rain, trickling from the sky, soaring down in a rush of wind and whispers. They’re too far away to reach us, I think. But maybe I thought too soon.
One lands in the ground, beside me.
It is like the stinger of a giant bee, about three inches long, jet black. So sharp at both ends, and serrated along its edges. Perfect for drawing blood, no matter which side of the Needle hits skin.
There is one moment of silence, where my father and I stare back at each other, and everyone else catches their breath.
“Run,” Peri says. Her voice is clear and solid. It is the first thing she has said since we found her. “RUN!”
Hundreds, thousands of Needles fall from the sky.
CHAPTER 106
ZEPHYR
It’s like the sky is crying knives.
We run through the trees, holding our arms over our heads like they can protect us, but it’s totally useless.
A Needle lands in my arm. I yank it out and keep going, but the spot turns black in an instant, and I can feel a sick, horrible sensation as whatever the Needle was laced with pours through my veins.
Tox takes the lead again, using his walking stick to brave the path, and we follow behind. Every few seconds, Meadow’s dad stumbles. Koi helps him back up, and we keep going.
Meadow is beside me, running in tandem, holding Peri’s hand. The little girl is fast, but what amazes me is that Tox manages to stay ahead of us.
The Needles keep falling all around, whistling as they soar past my head.
One lands on Peri’s Regulator, bounces off. Another gets me in my back.
Around me, everyone’s getting hit. Everyone shouts as they’re jabbed through the skin.
But there’s one shout that’s louder than all the others. It’s Koi’s voice.
Meadow stops and turns, pulling Peri with her.
We all look back and see her father crumpled in a heap on the ground.
He’s covered in Needles like the rest of us.
“We have to run!” I scream. But Meadow hands Peri to me and turns back. She falls at her dad’s side.
I see the flash of his wrist cuff, 98, as Koi hauls him under the canopy of a tree, trying to protect him from the Needles. They’re still falling, not as many, but it seems like it won’t ever end.
Sketch rounds back, comes up beside me. “Zero, let’s go!”
“Meadow’s dad!” I yell. I push Peri into her arms.
“Go, get to the Perimeter!”
She shakes her head, dark eyes wide, but she wraps her arms around Peri. The little girl is crying out for her daddy, trying to get away, but Sketch is strong enough to hold her.
“GO!” I yell. “Peri can’t see this.”
A Needle falls between us.
Sketch nods, takes off after Saxon and Tox. I turn and stay behind with Meadow and Koi, as they lean over their father.
He’s coughing up blood.
“You’re okay,” Meadow says. Her eyes are rimmed with tears, but she swallows them back, refuses to let them fall. “Just get up, keep walking. We don’t quit, remember?”
Meadow’s dad coughs again, spits crimson. “I’m done,” he chokes out. His chest is rising and falling too fast.
“We’ll carry him,” Koi says. He looks over his shoulder, sees me standing on the edge. “Zero, come help!”
“No!” Meadow’s father yells. He tries to lift an arm, but it falls.
Either from the weight of the Needles or weakness or both, but I see the number on his cuff now: 99.
His eyes are wild as he looks back and forth between Meadow and Koi. I’m invading this moment, an outsider who needs to be far away, but I can’t go. I won’t let Meadow out of my sight.
“You keep Peri safe,” Meadow’s dad says. He chokes on his own blood. His eyes start dripping it, like he’s drowning from the inside out and it’s trying to escape from every place that it can.
“You’ll keep her safe with us,” Meadow says. She’s crying now, real tears that won’t stop. Then she starts yelling. “We don’t die! We’re survivors, remember?”
Her father shakes his head. At this point he can’t get any words out.
Koi and Meadow stare at him, frozen.
It’s a horror scene, the Needles in his arms, in all of our arms, the black spots spreading on everyone’s skin.
“Go . . .” their father chokes out again. “Go!”
The word is muffled, like he’s shouting from underwater.
Meadow shakes her head. “No,” she whispers. Another Needle falls, lands in her dad’s outspread leg, but it’s like he can’t feel it anymore.
He takes a deep, rattling breath. Go. He mouths the word, but it doesn’t come out.
He gasps, one final time. His cuff changes to 100. Suddenly, as he dies, his eyes flick toward mine. There’s a look in them I haven’t seen before, like he’s pleading with me. Begging.
I nod.
He looks at his children, one last time.
And then the strongest man in the world, the one who would do anything to survive, dies.
CHAPTER 107
MEADOW
My father.
My father.
My father is dead.
But he can’t be dead, not now, not ever. He has always been strong, always taught me to do whatever it took to survive. Killing, stealing, fighting to the last breath.
I roll him away from me, see his gray eyes open and still.
Not blinkin
g at all.
Koi is moaning, sobbing. “No, no, no.”
The world is a blur, as Zephyr comes up behind me, tries to tug me away from my father’s body.
“Wake up!” I scream. “Wake up!”
“He’s gone, Meadow!” Zephyr shouts. “He’s gone!”
The Needles have stopped, but the world feels like it is screaming, raging all around me.
He was supposed to escape with us. He was supposed to survive.
It might be minutes, or seconds, that pass, when my brother rises to his feet. “We have to leave,” he says.
I try to shut my father’s eyes with my fingertips, but they won’t close. They stay open, staring at nothing. I can’t leave him like this.
He is the strong one. He was supposed to be there for my family when I couldn’t be anymore. The switch hits, and I’m so weak that I collapse beside him.
“We have to go!” Zephyr yells.
He lifts me, hauls me away from my father. I’m screaming, writhing, and even in my weakness Koi and Zephyr have to hold me together so I cannot get away.
They start moving, pulling me from my father.
We leave him behind, stuck with Needles, lying on the floor of the Ridge.
Soon the Initiative will find him, and that will be his end. Captured by the very people he spent his entire life trying to hide from.
CHAPTER 108
ZEPHYR
We make it to the Perimeter.
Saxon and Sketch and Tox are here, waiting, and everyone seems fine. The Needles hurt us, but they didn’t kill anyone else here. I set Meadow down on the forest floor. Koi sits beside her, holding her up as her nose drips and she coughs blood. Just like her father.
I wonder when the Leeches will take his body. I wonder if they’ll finally get their Death Code from his blood.
Peri sprints for Meadow and Koi.
“Where’s Daddy?” she asks, but Koi shakes his head. Meadow just stares, blankly, into her sister’s eyes.
Meadow’s cuff is at 98.
Her father’s cuff was there, and it took him minutes to die.
But Meadow can’t die. She’s stronger than death, and she’ll switch again soon. She has to. She has to.