Compliance (30 page)

No matter how angry Cal is, he wouldn’t do that. He’d never mock me. He’d never mock anyone, and I don’t even believe he told Stacy what she claims.

I won’t allow myself to believe her. I’ve got enough on my mind. I pull long, slow breaths through my nose, pushing them out through my lips.

Relax. Ignore Stacy. Ignore the pain. Relax.

I need to focus on one thing at a time, and the highest priority right now is getting Tobin and Jayma out of Haven and getting Scout of the Hospital…

I wake with a start. It’s dark. I fell asleep and have no idea how late it is. Stacy’s snoring so I grab the bundle of food I snuck at dinner and slide off the bunk, dropping silently to the floor. Fumbling in the dark, I discover my shoes haphazardly at the side of the room. Stacy must have kicked them over there.

Glancing at a clock, I wince. It’s hours later than I planned. I was hoping to search the storage room for a
tunnel entrance before bringing Jayma and Tobin there. A small part of me hopes I’ll find Burn, but after last night, I know I can’t count on him. I can’t be sure he’s alive.

I sneak out, and after I pull onto the Exec Building’s roof, I keep low and run across to the metal box.

I open the slat and slide through the gap. Jayma and Tobin don’t have a light on, so I wind up my torch, keeping it pointed down so the sudden brightness won’t hurt their eyes.

Once the beam’s working I lift my arm slowly. Strange. I expected to see Jayma sleeping against the wall opposite the entrance. I pan to the other side, and my heart races out of control.

I step into the center of the box and spin, dragging the light around me, striking all four walls, every corner of the space. But no amount of light will change the truth.

They’re gone.

I climb into my bunk less than an hour before the morning bell is due to ring. It’s not as if sleep would be possible, even if I had hours. My mind darts a million places, testing alternate plans and scenarios, and my body’s ready to spring, to run, to fight. I spent the entire night searching for Burn, for Tobin, for Jayma. I cannot, I
will not
give up until my friends are safe.

The storeroom where I meet with Burn was empty, as was the place where I used to meet Clay, and the tiny platform where Tobin was living before I found him. I checked the roof of our old building in the Pents too. They’re gone.
Vanished. I’m consumed with panic that they’ve been reported. I failed them. They’ll be expunged.

I have no idea who could be responsible for reporting them. I thought I heard someone behind me in the vent the other night. It could be Mr. Belando or Cal or Zina or Larsson—it could even be Stacy. But at this moment, who might have turned in Jayma and Tobin is moot. If the Comps have them, knowing the culprit won’t bring them back.

Unable to sleep, I get down off my bunk to pace the halls and think. On my third lap, Cal steps into the hall.

I stop, holding my breath. He looks down and backs into his room like he’s pretending he didn’t see me.

“Nice,” I say. “Run. Don’t even talk to me. You’re such a coward.”

He steps back into the hall and strides toward me. “I’m not a coward. I just don’t want to see you.”

My heart seizes. “Ready or not, we need to talk.” I stride toward the rec room and I’m relieved when he follows.

After we enter, he glares at me in the near-darkness, jaw twitching. “What do you want now? Do you have more secrets to spill?”

“I think Jayma was caught last night. If I find out you had anything to do with it—”

“I didn’t turn her in.” Genuine distress flashes in his eyes, then he looks away and his voice lowers. “But I’m not surprised they found her.”

My chest caves. “How can you be so cold? So cruel?”

“Do you think any of this is easy for me?” he asks. “With everything you told me—” He closes his eyes. “You hid her
on the Exec Building. No wonder she got caught.” He shakes his head. “Maybe it’s for the best.”

“How can you say that? We’re talking about Jayma. Someone you’ve known your whole life, my best friend, the girl your brother loves.” I gasp for air. “She’ll be exed.”

The color drains from his face, but he frowns. “More likely they’ve taken her to the Hospital to treat her depression. Maybe she’ll even be able to spend some time with Scout.”

My mouth gapes open; then I snap it shut. Cal still firmly believes his brother’s safe.

The morning bell rings and I jump.

Nothing’s resolved but we’ve run out of time, and although I haven’t asked Cal the questions I want to, our short discussion has clarified his position. He hasn’t forgiven me.

With everything else going on, I’m ashamed at how much that hurts, at how painful it is to see the change in the way he looks at me. Not only do I no longer have a dating partner, I no longer have a friend. No allies in my corner.

The door into the rec room swings open to reveal Stacy. Seeing me with Cal, her eyes narrow, then her self-satisfied smirk appears, and she turns back into the hall. “I found her. She’s here.”

Thumping comes down the hall—the unmistakable sound of Comp boots in formation. Stacy steps out of the way and holds the door open as the first men plow through, their Shocker guns raised and pointed directly at me.

My lungs collapse.

Larsson comes into the rec room behind the Comps.
“What’s going on here? Why are you arresting one of my recruits?”

One of the Comps turns toward him and lifts his visor. “She’s a terrorist.”

“You have evidence to support this?” Larsson asks. “You’re not taking one of my recruits until I see evidence.” He crosses his arms over his chest and stands firm.

As much as I’ve despised Larsson, I could hug him right now. Not that his support will do me much good if the Comps have evidence of my hiding Jayma and Tobin.

The door swings open and Mr. Shaw steps in, bright red spots on his cheeks. “The charge is now murder.”

“What?” I can’t draw breaths. They can’t possibly know about my mother. My knees want to crumple. I don’t let them. “Please… Explain what’s—”

“Silence,” one of the Comps yells.

“Who was murdered?” Larsson asks. “Someone tell me what’s going on.”

“Last night, this recruit tampered with the food in the Exec Dining Room,” Shaw says. “Seven members of Senior Management were poisoned this morning and it was just confirmed. Mr. Belando is dead.”

A collective gasp sucks the air from the room, and my terror turns to a sharp pain. Mr. Belando’s dead? I never liked him, never trusted him, but the thought that he was poisoned is horrible. And they think I did it.

I look up. Larsson is staring at me, eyes wide and questioning as if he thinks I’m guilty. My stomach turns somersaults. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t do it. I swear.”

“Shut up.” The big Comp slams the butt of his stun gun down on my shoulder and forces me back into a chair. Searing pain races down my arm and up my neck.

“Hey,” Cal says, but another Comp grabs him.

“Why would you think it was my recruit?” Larsson asks. “Recruits aren’t allowed out of the barracks at night.”

Larsson’s defending me even though he knows full well I’ve been out of the barracks at night. Maybe there is one person left I can trust, assuming it’s not too late to matter.

“We have proof.” The head Comp turns on the display screen in the rec room, and after going through a short series of menus and passcodes, a grainy image of a kitchen appears on the screen. The date and time are displayed in the bottom corner, the seconds and minutes clicking away at about 0230 this morning.

A small person, about my size and shape, steps up to a pot of porridge and empties the contents of a small bottle into it. She turns her head and I gasp. The image is grainy, it’s hard to be sure, but it does look like me.

Zina. It has to be Zina.
I didn’t kill a VP like she ordered, so she took matters into her own hands.

Terror clamps my throat, my heart, my belly. She’s found a way not only to carry out the assignment I refused, but also to carry through on her threat to kill me. She might not be driving in the knife herself, but I’m as good as dead.

“That image.” Cal steps forward and points to the screen. “It can’t be Glory. It looks a bit like her, but it’s not. It can’t be.”

“How do you know?” Larsson asks.

“I know because she was with me last night. We were together the entire night. In the gymnasium.”

“Do you swear that she was with you?” Larsson asks. “Because if you’re lying, you’ll be arrested too.” The warning in his tone is clear. He’s telling Cal to stay out of it.

“Glory was with me the entire night,” Cal says, his voice strong. “That video image is grainy. It could be anyone. But it can’t be Glory. She was with me.”

“No.” Stacy bursts in. “You weren’t together last night. You two broke up.”

Cal steps to my side, crouches down, and takes my hand in his. “Last night, I begged Glory to take me back. I love her. We were together last night. All night.”

I risk a quick look toward Stacy but she’s backed into the corner and I can’t see her face.

A Comp grabs me by the arm and pulls me out of my chair. “We’ll check out your alibi, but right now, I have orders to take you into custody.”

“Y
OU
’
RE GOING TO
wear a path into the floor.”

I spin back to see Larsson at the small, wire-covered window in the door to my four-by-four cell. It’s small, but not that much smaller than the apartment I shared with my brother for three years after our parents were gone.

The lock clicks, the door swings open, and Larsson steps inside. “We only have a few minutes before they realize I disabled the camera and sound surveillance for your cell.”

“Do you know what happened to my friends?” I ask. If he doesn’t already know about them, I have no choice but to tell him.

“What friends?” He leans against the rough concrete wall.

“Did someone from the rebel group find them? Are they safe? Has anyone been exed?”

“No one’s been exed, but I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I was hiding a Deviant boy and a friend who was falsely accused of sabotage.”

He shakes his head. “They’re probably still wherever you hid them.”

They’re not where I hid them, but I don’t think Larsson’s lying, and I’ve got so many other questions, so many other problems to solve. Today is the President’s Birthday. I need to get out of here. I need to do something to stop the bombing.

“Why did you poison Belando?” he asks. “The guy was a jerk, but why target him?”

“That wasn’t me.” My knees tremble so I start pacing again as I ask, “What happened to the hole in the sky? Why did you help me? Why were you at that rebel meeting? Who are you, really?” A million other questions run through my mind, but those seem okay for starters.

He grabs my arm. “Calm down.”

I pull away. “Calm down? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Being frantic won’t help anything. Calm down and talk to me and I’ll answer your questions.”

I back up, then slide down the wall to sit.

Larsson’s knees crack as he sits down beside me. “Hang in there.”

“You said you’d answer my questions.”

“I reported the dome breach. It got repaired quickly and quietly using a special crew of workers that Management trusts.” He cracks his knuckles. “Now it’s my turn for a
question. How did that Shredder smash the sky? Did you see it? Why were you at that meeting? Are you a Deviant?”

I raise my eyebrows. “That’s a lot of questions.”

“Answer one.”

“Which?” My heart is thumping hard. Larsson seems sincere—so different from how he was during training—but I don’t trust him.

“I know your father was a Deviant,” he says. “Are you?”

“Do you think I am?”

He shakes his head. “No. If you were a Deviant, I’d have noticed it during training. We put you under plenty of stress. I assume you support Deviant rights because of your dad?”

I nod, but my neck feels stiff.

“Were you really kidnapped?”

I snap my gaze toward him and slowly shake my head. “No. Burn helped me rescue my brother from the Comps. My turn.” But what to ask first? “Why did you pick on me during training?” I can’t figure him out. Perhaps this will help.

He frowns. “You’re too small to be a Comp.”

“So you said. A million times.”

He bends one leg and rests his elbow. “I didn’t want you to get killed. You’d never have lasted your first rotation Outside. I figured if I made you quit, I’d save your life.”

“And Cal?”

“I put pressure on him to up the pressure on you.”

I nod. His answer seems honest, and what I suspected.

“My turn,” he says. “Why were you at that rebel meeting? Are you working for that Freedom Army? How did you meet them?”

“That’s more than one question.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“I met the FA when everyone thought I was kidnapped. I went to the rebel meeting to try to stop them from bombing the Hub.” I twist away from the wall and sit cross-legged facing him. “Did you have anything to do with that last bombing in the Factory district?”

He shakes his head and relief floods me. “Why?” he asks.

“Mr. Belando said they found a training tag from a Shocker in the place where the rebels built the bomb.”

“Ah.” He nods and blows air through his lips. “I was there. I tried to talk them out of planting that bomb.” He shakes his head. “I can’t believe I dropped a tag.”

“Why are the rebels setting bombs? Why are they hurting innocent people?”

Larsson shakes his head. “Adele’s driving it. She believes the only way to weaken Management is to undermine their authority and prove the Haven Equals Safety slogan wrong. She thinks they can get people on their side that way.” His brow furrows. “What’s your relationship to Mr. Belando? Why did he push you into the COT program?”

I study his face for a moment and decide to tell him the truth. “Mr. Belando recruited me after my kidnapping. He figured that either I wasn’t telling him everything or that I’d forgotten details and would eventually remember more about where I was held. He wanted me to work undercover for him and betray Deviants. He figured that I could reconnect with Burn, convince him I’d become a sympathizer, and betray him. But I would never—” I stop myself, still
unsure of how far I can trust the COT Captain.