Abandon (26 page)

I thought he’d changed. I thought he understood our situation. I’d forgiven him for abandoning me once, but twice? Now I felt nothing but fury. At Zenn. At his weakness. But also at myself, for allowing him to be so intricately involved in the Resistance. For trusting him, even a little bit. I wished he didn’t know so much about our plans to take down Hightower. I wished he didn’t have the journal, which listed all of the Resistance codes and Insider safe houses.

Vi stepped in front of me, settling next to me to watch the sun rise. “But he does. So Zenn knows our plans. So what? Hightower knows everything anyway, right?”

Glad she had come to find me, I gathered her into my arms and held her close, relishing the fact that Zenn never would. Violet Schoenfeld was mine.

“And you’re mine,” she whispered, tilting her head up to kiss me.

“I wish you’d stop reading my mind,” I said, sliding my hands under the hem of her shirt.

“I can stop—if you want.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” I said, repeating what she’d said to me
last summer as we crossed the desert. That felt like so long ago, when we were just getting to know one another.

She slugged me. “Come on. My dad wants to discuss looking for my mom’s team.”

For thirty seconds it was just me and Vi, and the weight of the world had lifted. As soon as Vi pulled away, that pressure returned. At least the darkness was giving way to a new day.

But I’d only taken two steps back toward the hideout when an unmistakable sound carved fear down my spine.

Hoverboards.

42
.
Bodies littered the orchards. The camps. The green area surrounding Rise One. All clones. The men near Rise One were dead, and had been for a while if their smell was any indication. “Vi killed these men a few days ago,” I said, lifting the collar of my jacket to shield my nose from the offensive odor.

General Darke was silent. He flew away from the carnage and toward the Evolutionary Rise. Smoke billowed from the building, adding to the stench in the city.

The Medical Rise tilted dangerously to one side, and the Technology Rise still had coals glowing at its base. Rise One
seemed untouched, but I knew better. The metal and glass simply hid the damage we’d find on the inside.

I followed the General, unsure of how I was supposed to feel. Happy the Resistance had debilitated Freedom? Furious? Neutral, the way General Darke seemed to be? Better to let the General lead—he’d been doing it for decades. He slowly circled the Evolutionary Rise.

“We’ll rebuild,” he finally announced. “Citizens cannot leave their houses without authorization.” His voice sounded detached, as if it didn’t matter that people had died. A lot of people.

“I’ll get to work on the barrier and do a damage assessment,” he said. “You get rid of all these bodies.”

And that’s how I went from Director to grave digger.

43
.
“Vi-i,” I drawled. “Who are they?”

She cocked her head to the side before she spun and gripped my shoulders. “Refugees from Freedom.”

Hope leapt inside me. Could Pace be with them?

“How many?”

Vi shook her head, meaning she couldn’t tell. Four seconds later, the whine of hoverboards became a deafening growl. River Isaacs, her father, and a few others landed in front of us. Their hair and clothing were matted with ash.

River wiped her hair out of her eyes. I’d never seen someone look so tired.

“Hey,” she said easily, as if she’d shown up for a party.

“Hey.” I scanned the group of seven. No Pace. A figure lay prostrate on a hoverboard. Hope surged again. “Who’s that?”

A girl switched her gaze between me and the figure. “Gunner Jameson. We evacuated him from the Evolutionary Rise.”

I swallowed hard and nodded. “Anyone else?”

Vi put her hand on my arm, and I knew. No one said anything, and the people from Freedom shifted nervously. I turned away, angry that Pace wasn’t among them. Neither was Indy. I leaned against the doorway for support.

I felt like dying. Maybe then this pain wouldn’t hurt so much. Like somehow death would release me from this anguish. I couldn’t even cry. I just felt like someone was ripping my stomach out through my throat.

“Lighten up, Ivory. I know how he feels,” River said, and it sounded far away. “You guys got anything to eat?”

Such a normal question. Before I could stop myself, I started laughing. Vi glanced at me like I’d lost it. Maybe I had. But hey, it was either laugh or cry.

*   *   *

After I’d led the new arrivals from Freedom across the street and into the hideout, I found Raine sitting at the table. “Starr’s awake.” She searched my face, looking for an answer about
Gunn. I nodded toward the infirmary before I announced, “Breakfast.”

The twenty people remaining in the Resistance introduced themselves as we used the food-generating cube to produce breakfast. We ate waffles and sausage, and drank milk (always Vi’s first request) and soda, and finished the meal with cake and ice cream.

Nobody spoke about the attack here in Castledale. No one reported on what had happened in Freedom.

For that one hour, we were friends. Not rebels.

All too soon someone bustled the dishes off to the kitchen. Trek took Starr by the hand and disappeared into the tech wing. Vi delivered breakfast to the infirmary, where Raine refused to leave Gunner’s side.

Thane talked quietly with the new arrivals from Freedom, then he assigned them bedrooms and returned to the table while most of them went to catch up on sleep. I wanted to rest too, but first I needed to hear Mason Isaacs’s report.

They’d taken down Freedom. Set the Technology Rise on fire. Reduced Rise One to a skeleton of rafters. The Evolutionary Rise had toppled, and while the Medical Rise hadn’t, enough damage had been done to deem it structurally unsound.

“Ivory’s a genius,” Isaacs said. “She had this patch that dissolved
walls. The whole wall! That’s how we gutted Rise One.”

“Nice,” I said.

“We should get her set up with Trek after she’s rested,” Thane said.

I nodded. “Continue.” Vi had returned from the infirmary, and I rubbed slow circles on her back as a way to distract myself from thoughts of Pace and what might have happened to him during the attack on Freedom.

Hightower hadn’t expected a second wave in Freedom. Elsewhere, yes. But not in his city. And certainly not with his clones guarding every major Rise and forming a humanoid perimeter of the city.

Hightower also hadn’t anticipated anyone else being able to control the clones, especially with Vi out of the picture. Isaacs had activated his team in Rise Twelve but hadn’t been able to gain access to the Technology Rise. Good thing his daughter was a genius with creating fake identification credentials.

They’d simply walked into the Evolutionary Rise with fake badges and wide-brimmed hats. There, Ivory had modified a piece of tech that would make the deaf clones hear.

They found Gunner in the Evolutionary Rise and busted him out. Since he was the only one with a voice, Gunner took out the clones, despite his weakened condition.

I shivered at the voice power and mental fortitude that must’ve required. People without voice talent didn’t understand the gravity of using it. Or the responsibility—and the guilt—that accompanied extreme verbal persuasion.

I made a mental note to talk to Gunner privately when he woke up. He’d need the emotional support, and he’d need it from me.

“Did you see my brother?” I couldn’t bring myself to say his name.

Isaacs studied me for a moment, his mouth turned down. “I’m sorry, Jag. Pace did not survive the experimentation. I think the only reason Gunner did is because of his adaptability to tech. That, or Van was keeping him alive because of his multiple talents.” He cleared this throat. “I’m sorry,” he repeated.

“And Indy?” Vi asked.

“No sign of her,” Isaacs reported. “The records show that Modification had not occurred before our attack, so . . .”

I would not give voice to my hope, though my mind screamed,
She could still be alive!

“Once the clones were gone, the rest was easy,” Isaacs continued. “Van had no defense. We took out his Technology Rise, which forced the techtric barrier to fail, and then
we hightailed it out of there.” He sat back in his chair, finished.

“Where’s Van?” Thane asked, as if he was the leader. Annoyance bolted through me, but I held my tongue.

“Dead,” Isaacs said. “He did not survive the collapse of Rise One.”

I wasn’t glad for anyone’s death—not even Van Hightower’s, as his daughter sat just down the hall, and someone would have to tell her. That someone would most likely be me.

“Our team had considerably less success,” I said.

“We lost Zenn,” Vi added from beside me, her eyes closed.

“We didn’t
lose
Zenn,” I argued. “He abandoned us.” The words made me ill. The four waffles I’d eaten and the half gallon of milk I’d drunk swam in my stomach. “He’s a traitor. He
chose
to go with Darke. He’s—”

“We lost Zenn,” Vi repeated. She put her hand on my leg under the table, and some of my anger drained out through her touch.

But I didn’t apologize. Zenn
was
a traitor.

Thane shot me a glance. I nodded for him to continue. Without Indy or Zenn, Thane might as well act as my second-in-command.

“Okay, so there are twenty-five of us,” Thane said. “We
have two tasks: find Laurel and her team—and anyone else who might be out there in the city—and evacuate. I think our window of opportunity for both is shrinking. We need to be in the sky by nightfall.”

As much as I didn’t want to, I agreed. I said so, and then assigned everyone four hours of sleep—Thane included.

We’d face the city at noon.

44
.
It took thirty men three days to rid Freedom of the bodies. At my directive, they dug shallow graves in between the wall and the barrier. In the rubble of Rise One, I found Van Hightower’s body.

For some reason, I couldn’t look away from his face. Director Hightower looked peaceful, but for the gash across his neck. A strange sensation filled me from the toes up. Grief.

“So much death,” I murmured. The crew collected the body and took it to the gravesite along with the others. We filled the shallow troughs, covered them with dirt, and began the process of restoring the techtric barrier.

General Darke still hadn’t figured out how to do that. Little more than ash, the Technology Rise and all its capabilities were history. Rise One had been gutted. All medical records and scientific evidence had been lost. Runners had been sent to Grande and Arrow Falls to ask their Directors for any tech they could spare, but they hadn’t returned yet.

All transmissions had been silenced for the past three nights. I wondered when the people would shake off their brainwashed haze. How long before they’d realize they could leave their houses without an alarm going off or even receiving so much as a citation?

Even the cache system had failed. General Darke and I had to speak aloud to communicate. He’d found a pair of empty town houses with minimal damage, and we’d moved in next door to each other. Today the city’s remaining Thinkers were gathering for a meeting of the minds.

We sat in General Darke’s kitchen-converted-into-war-room, waiting for him to arrive. When he did, we stood as one, each of us lowering our chin slightly to acknowledge his superiority.

I used to dislike these little acts of subservience. Now they allowed me to breathe without worrying about who I was to report to and what I’d need to lie about. Now I didn’t live a lie. I simply lived.

The light coming in the skylight flickered. Lightning. A few minutes later, as General Darke spoke in his steady, controlling voice, rain pelted the glass.

I couldn’t help thinking of Saffediene caught out in the thunderstorm. My mind wandered, imagining her wet clothes clinging to her chilly skin. Her hair slicked off her forehead as she frantically searched for somewhere to ride out the storm.

Briefly, that somewhere had been my arms. My breath shuddered on the way in, and General Darke cast me a knowing look. I buried my emotions deep, deep.

I hadn’t been able to save Saffediene in Castledale, and I certainly couldn’t now. I didn’t know if she’d been rescued from the electro-net, or if she’d been captured. She had told me to work things out with my father, when really she meant I needed to figure out if functionality overrode freedom. Too bad this city—and this government—was no longer functioning.

I fingered the single-use teleporter ring in my pocket, part of me desperate to put it on.

Where I would go, I didn’t know. It didn’t matter.

Anywhere away from this conflict and dilemma would suffice.

Instead I made eye contact with General Darke. I wanted him to know that I was paying attention.

“We’re a bit crippled without technology,” he said. “We can’t get our cache system to work, and the barrier is still down. None of the runners have returned.” He turned to the Transportation Director, a Thinker I knew little about. “Marco, have you heard anything?”

“No, sir,” Marco said. “The runners are trained to be fast. They have ways of communicating with the Directors without dealing with barriers and rules.”

Three days had passed. They definitely should’ve been back by now, especially since both Grande and Arrow Falls are within a half-day’s ride of Freedom. If General Darke was worried about their tardiness, he didn’t show it. But Marco did. His hands twisted over and around each other; he glanced from one face to the next.

I caught his eye and made the slightest motion with my right hand.
Calm down.

Insider Tip #9: Never show your agitation. Agitation is usually a sign that you have something to hide.

Which made me think Marco totally had something to hide. I’d need to position myself next to him before he left. Find out everything I could. That’s what Directors do. They know everything that’s happening in their city, and I needed to know what Marco was hiding.