The Slave Series Page 16

  “I told her not to get involved,” she whispers, anxious. Unease settles over me.

  “What do you mean? Involved with what?”

  She pulls her hand free and refuses to look at me. My heart rate picks up. I can’t help feeling that whatever Aspen is doing is destructive. Why else would her mother be nervous?

  I hurry through the halls, my breath catching when my shoulder bumps into people who rush in the opposite direction. The lights are bright tonight while everyone waits. My eyes are sensitive to them, and pain stabs my head.

  I find my way to the training room, where the tires hang stacked from the ceiling. It’s empty, except for a young boy with his back to me, fists beating the air. I lean into the wall and cover my eyes, breathing slow. The medicine I was given isn’t touching this pain.

  I kick off and walk to the training room doorway again to get a better look at the boy. He is very young. He stands with is feet firmly planted, knees slightly bent, small arms tense. When he turns his face, I gasp.

  “Sam?”

  Sam whips around and for a second looks at me like I’m a stranger. And I am really. But we ran for our lives together the night we were rescued, and my heart skips a beat at the sight of him.

  “Do you remember me?” I say. When his face softens into a smile, I smile too. He runs to me and wraps his arms around my waist. It’s unexpected, but my good arm instantly folds around him. Sam might be fighting back his fears, training with hardened soldiers, but he is still a boy—tender in his center. His head barely reaches my shoulders. I drop to a knee and smooth aside his hair.

  “You’ve grown already,” I say. He’s filled in, no longer the slight, starving boy I lifted from the street. He grins.

  “That guy says I have muscles now.” He lifts an arm, flexing.

  I grin and touch his bicep. “What guy?”

  “The one you’re always with. He’s huge!” So he does remember me. He’s seen me, and I’ve been too preoccupied to see him.

  “Sorry I didn’t come find you,” I say. “How are your brother and sister?”

  “They aren’t big enough to train,” he says, chest puffing. “They really like the food, though.”

  “That’s good.” I smile. “You’re keeping them safe. You’re a very brave young man.”

  Sam’s expression falls. “Do you think I’m really brave?” he says, eyebrows pinched. “I think I’m too small to be brave.”

  His shoulders droop, head hanging forward. I tap his chin until he looks at me.

  “Do you see how many people are in that training room right now?” I ask. Sam twists to look.

  “None.”

  “Right. Except for you.” His eyes light up, just a little.

  “I’m afraid though,” he says. “But your friend said I’m allowed to be afraid. As long as I don’t stop trying.”

  My heart swells at the picture of Cash taking time to mentor Sam. A pang of worry shoots through my chest. They should be back soon.

  “He’s right,” I say. “And he would know. He’s very brave too.”

  Sam returns to practicing his punches, and I watch him until thoughts of Aspen peel me away. I move farther down the hall, checking through each doorway. She’s nowhere.

  I come across a door that—unlike all the others—isn’t open. A cold draft breezes underneath. Pushing through, I find myself in the long, dark corridor where the glass windows shattered. Cold wind howls through the narrow space—a perfect wind tunnel. I step farther out, my boots crunching over glass shards. I shouldn’t be here. This part of the factory is forbidden. But I hear sounds, something echoing in the distance, and before I know it I’m standing in the open frame of a broken window, peering out.

  I know there are soldiers out here. I take comfort in knowing they can probably see me, even if I can’t see them. The streets are eerie at night. All along the buildings, windows are cracked and shattered. Inside them I see nothing but black—dark shadows concealing whatever harmless nothings fill the rooms. From here, my eyes play tricks on me. The longer I stare at the gaping windows, the more uneasy I feel. Cash would be mad if he knew I was here.

  My heart speeds up, and I’m preparing to leave, when my ears catch on another sound in the distance.

  Gunfire.

  My organs slam to a halt, and I’m staring wide-eyed down an alley. I wait, but no one is coming.

  It’s too early. They’re still too far.

  But didn’t Takeshi say an hour? It’s been that or longer. I stand paralyzed in the window frame, half of my body in the cold street, surrounded by a bed of glass. I watch and try to remember to breathe.

  The gunfire continues, endless pops that echo through my body. My hand grips the frame too hard, and tiny edges of glass press through my palm. I can’t lose him. I hate feeling helpless, and that’s what I am now. Each pop of a gun could mean that Cash is lying on the street, bleeding—alone.

  Voices carry from my right, and I jerk my head that way. Soldiers, I think. It is a murmuring—quiet and tense. I stare toward the sound, watching wide-eyed for movement. Maybe they’re preparing for the Workers. Maybe it’s almost time. I turn back in the direction of the gunfire still popping in the distance. They have to be getting close.

  The voices draw my attention back, and this time there’s movement under an awning. A clump of figures stands huddled. The group breaks apart, heading away from the factory. As they move under the moonlight, I get a flash of red hair. My body goes rigid.

  Aspen.

  28

  They’re walking quietly, keeping to the shadows. I do the same, tiptoeing along the edge of the factory until I reach the awning they just left. I peek upward, at the rooftop. Guards are looking out over the streets, eyes trained toward the sound of guns. Following the same path, I race through the shadows, trying to catch Aspen. Whatever this is, it’s what her mother was worried about, and I have to try to stop her. I follow them into a dark alley.

  “Aspen,” I whisper when I’m in range. When she doesn’t respond, I try again—louder.

  “Aspen!”

  The whole group stops. They turn fast, eyes lit. There are seven of them, a mix of soldiers and Workers. One of the men I recognize. He is the soldier with the scar along his forearm, the one I stood next to the day Solomon told us the history of the valley. He glares at me.

  “What are you doing here?” he growls, keeping his voice low.

  “I need…I need to talk to Aspen,” I stammer, losing confidence as each second ticks. I didn’t think this through. I didn’t think at all.

  “Hannah, go back!” Aspen widens her eyes at me. She orders me, like I am inferior. “You shouldn’t be out here.”

  “You shouldn’t be out here. Aspen, what are you doing?”

  “I’m only going to say this once,” the man says, pointing a finger at me. “Go back to the factory. You have no business out here.”

  I ignore him. Something has kicked in—a need to protect Aspen. I only look at her.

  “Come on, Aspen,” I say. “Come back with me.” Wind blows through, freezing my face.

  “I have to do this.” She steps closer to me, glancing nervously toward the closest roof. Her breaths fog in the air.

  “Do what?”

  “I hate repeating myself,” the man snarls. “I said go back.”

  Aspen looks to him. “Give me just a second,” she says. I’m shocked when the man doesn’t argue. There’s a camaraderie here, and Aspen is part of it. She takes my good arm, and we walk a few paces away.

  “What are you doing?” I ask again. I don’t like the intensity in her eyes. She looks different this way. Her youthfulness is replaced by something else—something bitter.

  “We’re shutting down the Watcher Barracks. Jace can get into the explosives arsenal,” she whispers. “We’re gonna do some damage. It’s only fair.”

  “Only fair…Aspen, you don’t understand what’s going on here. The Watchers…it isn’t what you think.”

&
nbsp; “Are you serious? You’re still doing that? Yes, I do understand.” Her whispers are harsh, angry. “Better than you apparently. Hannah, they killed Edan. Or did you forget that.”

  I glare at her. I think of Cash’s words, and now I see it. “They didn’t kill Edan. Jackson did that. The Council is torturing them, Aspen. Punishing their families.”

  I want to explain. I want to sit down and tell her everything, but the men are already pulling her away.

  The man with the scar, the one I assume is Jace, grabs my free arm hard. I try to pull away, but he’s too strong. I open my mouth to shout, but his hand clamps over it before I can. I scream into his hand, but the sound is muted by the wind.

  “What are you doing?” Aspen’s eyes fill with panic.

  “I can’t let her run back and tell the others,” he hisses by my ear. “She’s too close to the leaders. She’ll rat us out.”

  “She won’t,” Aspen insists, a hand hovering in the air, reaching. “Tell him, Hannah. Tell him you won’t.”

  But I will. And Jace knows that.

  “Are you with us or not?” Jace says to Aspen.

  “What are you gonna do?” She is so young. The way she’s looking at Jace, so full of fear—I wonder if it’s the same way she looked at her father. Tears leak from my eyes. His hand is too tight. Each breath into my nostrils burns from the cold.

  Jace is silent for a moment. I feel his fingers tensing over my mouth. Too tight. Can’t breathe. My lungs ache for more air.

  “This way,” he says, and I’m shoved forward, stumbling awkwardly as Jace drags me farther down the alley. Panic fills my chest and tears fall faster, until I can’t see. There are less soldiers guarding the streets tonight. Many of them are part of the team rescuing Workers. My throat tightens. My heart is tangled with the strongest of the men, but he isn’t here. He can’t stop this. For the first time in weeks, I feel alone.

  I’m dragged for several blocks before we stop in front of a door. One of the men catches a signal from Jace that I don’t see and pushes through the doorway. He pulls a gun from behind his back. My body goes numb. They will kill me. Silent guns, I remember Aspen saying. I thrash, trying to loosen Jace’s grip. His fingers tighten.

  “What are you going to do?” Aspen pleads in a whisper.

  Jace hauls me into the building. When the door is closed, the room around us is pitch black. There’s a click, and a single light beams through the space.

  “Look for a room with a lock,” Jace tells the man with the flashlight. To me he whispers, “You scream, and I will kill you.” His voice and his breath churn my stomach. “You might mean something to Cash, but you mean nothing to me. Certainly not more than taking down the Council.”

  I cry into his hand. We want the same things. We are on the same team. But this is what Takeshi meant. We can’t act on selfish impulse. Because if they do this, if they attack the Watchers, the Council will stop toying with us. They’ll stop toying, and they will attack.

  “Here!” the man with the flashlight says. I’m hauled through the darkness, tripping over toppled items. All of the wounded parts of me ache.

  “It’s empty,” he says.

  Jace stops in the doorway, leading to a room without a spec of light. He angles my head and leans close. “I meant what I said,” he snarls. “One scream, and I won’t hesitate to kill you. Do you understand me?”

  I nod. He lifts his hand. Air rushes through my mouth and into my lungs as I’m shoved into the room, and the door is shut and locked. I stand in the complete darkness, gasping. Jumping toward the door, my hand finds the smooth metal.

  “Aspen,” I whisper. “Aspen, help me.”

  But she is gone. They’re all gone. I press an ear to the door, and I can hear the last of them walking away. The exterior door closes. I am alone.

  I turn, sliding down the door into a crouch. I stare wide-eyed into the room, but there is nothing. I can’t see anything. I shake my head. My breathing speeds until I’m gulping in short, unsatisfying gusts of air. They will start a war. The kind where Sam and Ben and Aspen and her mother will die. The kind where Cash will be forced to kill the men he once called friends. Maybe this is inevitable, I think. Maybe this is what all of this was leading up to.

  “Cash,” I croak. But it’s pointless.

  How did Aspen get involved with these men? I rock, anger building in my core. They’ve lied to her. They’ve told her things that her young mind can’t fully understand. She doesn’t know what she’s getting into. We’re shutting down the Watcher barracks. I rise, pressing a palm to the door, my other arm trapped in a sling.

  She’s no match for angry Watchers. Panic seeps into my blood. She will die. Another memory to add to the list of people I used to know.

  Do not scream, Jace said. But how would he know? He isn’t here. He’s left me, and when he dies trying to make things fair, I’ll be left here to rot. My open palm smacks the metal. Tension knots inside of me, and all of the anger comes flying from my mouth. I scream, fist beating the door. I scream and I scream, and I’m not trying to be freed. I’m not calling for help. I’m a burst pipe, too full of pressure. I’m a heart exploding from all the evil, all the death, all the times I didn’t say goodbye.

  Collapsing to my knees, I scream so hard pain bursts in my head. My throat dries, and my lips stretch and crack. I roll to my side, and curl in a ball—the way my mother used to when she cried at night. Cash will never find me here. He isn’t looking for me. He doesn’t know I’m gone. Takeshi can’t help me. Solomon is busy. I am alone.

  I’ll come back, Cash said. But I won’t be there when he does. I lie broken on the floor, cold seeping through my clothes, and my body trembles.

  When my knee cramps, I stretch my leg for relief. My foot hits something, and the object rolls. I rise to my knees and grope in the dark, searching for it. My hand finds a cylindrical shape, something smooth and cool to the touch. I try to lift it, but in this position I have no strength. Standing, I bend at the knees to reach for it. The cylinder is a foot and a half long and too wide for my hand to hold by itself. With a groan, I loosen the sling from my shoulder and shrug it off. It drops to the floor, invisible to me now.

  Each movement of my mending shoulder sends pain shooting through my back and arm. I grit my teeth, and with both hands I lift the heavy cylinder from the ground. I stand still, trying to reorient myself to the darkness. Where is the door? Holding the object against my chest like an infant, I scoot my feet in the direction I think the door might be. After a few seconds, I find it. Using my elbow, I feel for the handle. When I find it too, I draw in several long breaths.

  This will hurt.

  The first time I lunge at the door, the cylinder hits it hard, flying out of my hands and clanging against the floor. I cry out when pain tears through my shoulder. I scramble around the floor on hands and knees, searching for the object. The second time I attack the door, I hit the handle. The impact jars through my body, but I don’t lose my grip. I touch the handle, feeling for damage. It is small and round, no bigger than my fist, and now it leans slightly to the right.

  I lunge again. A cry rips from my throat as the object slams into the handle. I drop it and stumble back, falling into a wall. Behind my eyelids, where a dozen terrifying possibilities play out, everything is spinning. My body goes cold, and I slump to the ground, nauseous. My fingers carefully touch my shoulder, but the slightest pressure brings a burst of pain, and I’m on my knees—gagging.

  This is impossible, I think. I will never leave this room. I’m too weak. Too wounded. I crawl several feet to the left and lean forward until my forehead presses to the floor. The stitches closing the cut above my eyebrow sting at the pressure. It distracts me from the rest of the pain. Trading one pain for another, the same way I trade out fear.

  You can do this. It’s what Edan said to me. Takeshi said it, too. Then Cash said it, beneath the fire escape. You are very brave, is what Solomon said. But I don’t feel it now. I don’t feel br
ave, but I feel angry. I think of Aspen. She must be scaling the barricade by now—if they’ve made it past the guards. No one will suspect Jace. Maybe he’s walking out in the open, telling the others that he’s on an assignment. A knot sits in my throat when I think of Aspen face to face with muscles and guns and men with deep, dark emotions. It’s enough to get me off the ground; to have me searching for the cylinder again.

  I find it against the door, where it must have rolled after I dropped it. I fill my lungs to capacity, then slowly blow the air over my lips. I can ignore this pain.

  I’ll ignore it, my mother said. She’d twisted her ankle falling on the stairs after work. The next morning, she was preparing to leave, but could barely put pressure on it. I’d asked her how she would walk.

  When you have no choice, Hannah, you find a way. Today, I have no choice.

  Maybe if you tell them, I’d said. I was still too young to understand how the system worked. Maybe they’ll let you rest.

  Mother knelt in front of me, wincing. She touched my face, placed her hands on my shoulders, and said, I can ignore this pain. Tonight, when I get home, I’ll feel it. But right now, she stood, I’ve forgotten it completely.

  She smiled as she walked out the door. When she returned home that night, she was pale and sweaty.

  I tighten every muscle in my body. Pressing my lips together, I ram the door with all of the strength I have left. The pain is blinding. But I grind my teeth, letting the object slip from my hands. I touch the door, wiggle the mangled handle, and it pushes free of the frame.

  I step into another dark room and stand frozen, breathing back the pain. I swallow against the swirling in my stomach. There’s a door in here. Somewhere in this room is a door that will lead me to the alley.

  Sliding my feet, I inch my way to the right, stretching my right arm in front of my body to avoid all the toppled things I tripped on before. I find the wall and slide my outstretched hand along its grooves until I come to a corner. I feel the draft from outside, so I know I’m close.