Contain (9 page)

“
Trouble isn't the word I
woulda used, but, yeah.”

“
Thanks for your
sympathy.”

I take the stairs two at a time,
trying not to make too much noise. After a moment's hesitation, he
follows.

Two flights down, we stop when the
door above us opens. I press myself against the wall, a finger to
my lips. My breath threatens to burst from my chest, but I manage
to slowly, quietly, let it through. Confusion and impatience flash
in Bix's eyes. It turns to anger the moment Jonah begins to
speak.

“
So, you agree then?
Abraham Bolles isn't fit to lead this group anymore. We need a new
direction.”

“
But how is
this
going to help?” a
second voice asks, male. He's speaking quietly, so I can't be sure
who it belongs to. I think it might be Dominic Green. “I'm not a
violent man.”

Bix's eyes widen.
Violence?
he mouths. But
I throw him another warning glance and hold up my hand to still
him. I need to listen to what else they're saying.

Their voices grow louder as they
descend toward us. Bix gives the door beside us a worried glance. I
gesture for us to keep going downward. I don't know where Jonah and
Dom are going, but I know I don't want them to see us, not now that
we've overheard them conspiring to do harm, presumably against my
father.

Jonah laughs. “Sometimes, Dom, you
have to break a few eggs to make an omelet.”

Bix's stomach growls. The
sound seems to carry all the way up the stairs. He gives me
an
I can't help it
shrug.

“
Everyone could use some
basic self-defense skills,” Jonah continues. “And offensive attack
skills. It's the only way we'll survive in a fight. A little
weapons training never hurt anyone.”

“
You can't fight
them.”

Jonah sniffs. “I'm not worried about
them, Dom, you know that. No, I'm talking about people who want
what you have and will do anything to take it from you.”

“
You think there are still
people like that?”

“
I think it's dangerous to
think there aren't.”

We reach Level Eight, and I pause with
my hand on the door handle. If I open it, they're almost sure to
hear us. We could keep going down, but eventually we'll run out of
stairs. There are only Levels Nine and Ten below us. Getting
cornered by Jonah in the dungeons is not my idea of a good time.
Especially if he's talking about violence.

I can see the concern in Bix's eyes.
He almost shrinks inside the dingy oversized tee shirt he's
wearing. It drapes over his bony shoulders and makes him look
undernourished. His normally curly hair is sleep-flattened on one
side, wild on the other. He looks pitiful, and now I'm beginning to
regret getting him up out of bed.

“
I hope you know I'm doing
this for you because I trust you,” Jonah finishes. “You need to
keep this to yourself.”

The door directly above us opens, and
Dominic's response is lost when it shuts behind them. They've gone
onto Level Seven, which makes sense. They'd need a lot of room if
Jonah's going to be teaching him how to fight.

Bix blinks like he's about ready to
cry with relief. Finally, he lets out a strangled breath. The sound
carries up through the stairwell, but no one is there to hear
it.

After a few minutes pass, we return to
Level Six. I pull the door open and step through, but Bix reaches
out to stop me. “Aren't we going to report him?” he
whispers.

I hold a finger to my lips to quiet
him. But I don't hear any voices drifting up from Seven. There's
only the rumble of the power plant's generators. I know they're
down there, but even if we can't hear them, I know they'll be able
to hear us.

I pull Bix close and whisper to him
that we will tell my dad, but I need to show him the food first.
That's more pressing at the moment.

He scowls, but follows me nonetheless
down the catwalk to the storeroom, though he keeps making these
little sounds of disgust, like he has to vent or else he'll
burst.

The moment the storeroom door shuts
behind us, he settles against the wall and lets loose with a string
of profanity the likes of which I've only heard come out of him
once before. It was after a particularly embarrassing verbal
smackdown delivered at Jonah's hands, maybe three months ago. I
forget what the subject was, just that he was killing
Bix.

The man can be infuriatingly logical,
which has never been Bix's strength.

“
First chance I get," he
spits, "I’m going to strangle that jerk. Let’s see how he likes it
when we’ve got him by the short and curlies.”

Now it's my turn to tell Bix to catch
his breath.

“
You want me to relax?” he
squeaks. “You heard what Jonah said. He's going around training
people to fight. With weapons! He's going to attack your
father!”

“
I've been thinking about
that, and I'm not convinced that's what he's doing.”

“
What else could it
be?”

“
I don't know exactly,” I
muse. “But with all his talk recently about leaving the bunker, I
wonder if maybe he's seriously thinking about doing it.”

“
So?” Bix says. “I say let
him go. And good riddance!”

“
Except I don't think he’s
just talking about himself or his family. I think he's planning on
taking everyone else with him.”

It's the multitude of voices rising from Level Seven and the harsh
clatter of wood and metal that convince me to confront Jonah now
rather than later. When we reach the stairwell door, I steel myself
for the inevitable altercation before pushing through. They're so
busy at first with their 'training' that nobody notices
us.

Check that. It's just me they don't
notice, because when I turn around, Bix isn't there. He's
apparently chickened out.

“
Finn?”

I spin around at the sound of Bren's
voice, and my heart nearly stops. “Whuh— what are you doing here?”
I demand.

Jonah bullies his way through the
gathering, pushing people aside. The Rollins boys shrink away,
clearly wary of his strength. Hannah pulls them close to her, and
her presence there also startles me.

I scan the faces. It's not just the
young ones here, nor is it all of them, as neither of the Largent
kids is present. Their parents are. Everyone's holding something in
their hands, metal rods, long pieces of wood. For some reason, it
makes me think of that scene in Frankenstein, when the townsfolk
bear their pitchforks to hunt down the monster.

And right now I feel like the monster,
unprotected, misunderstood, alone.

Damn Bix.

I glare at Jonah as he draws near. I
just want to turn and run, but I have to know what's going on.
Especially now that Bren's a part of it. So I stand my ground and
wait for him to make the first move. I brace myself and—

He brushes right past me and instead
thrusts open the stairwell door and reaches inside.

Bix tumbles out, a tangle of lanky
arms and legs topped by an unbalanced mop of black hair. He tries
to catch himself, but then trips over his feet and lands with a
loud clatter and a painful sounding crunch on the metal
grating.

For a moment, nobody says anything.
They're shocked at the sight of him crouching in his briefs. Bix
tries to casually pull his tee shirt down to cover himself, but his
face is beet red. I hear someone behind me utter a surprised “Oh!”
And I know without looking that it's Hannah.

“
Nice whiteys, Blackeye,”
Jonah says. He thrusts his hand down at Bix's face. Bix flinches,
but then refuses the assistance.

“
Suit yourself.”

“
You want to tell me what
the hell's going on here?” I demand. I turn toward the crowd and
call for Bren. She steps forward, but she won't look straight at
me. She refuses to meet my gaze, and it's this very act that
confirms her betrayal. She knows this is wrong.

I turn back in time to catch a glimpse
of puzzlement in Jonah's eyes. It quickly vanishes and is replaced
by his usual bored facade.

“
I asked what you all are
doing down here.”

“
You first,” he counters.
“Spying? Sneaking around? That's so unlike you, Bolles. Or did your
father make you do it?”

“
Leave him alone, Jonah,”
Bren whispers. The meager gesture only makes me angrier.

Bix finally stands up. At five-eleven,
he's taller than many in here, and his skinniness makes him look
even taller, but he's puny next to Jonah.

“
Jesus, cover yourself up,”
Jonah says. He holds a hand out to block his view of Bix's bony
white legs and knobby knees, which practically glow in the gloom.
“You're blinding everyone.”

But Bix is past humiliation. His face
is still flushed, though less so with embarrassment now than with
rage. “We heard what you said to Dominic. You're training people to
fight Finn and his dad.”

Jonah frowns a moment, then chuckles.
“Fight Finn? Has that little gerbil inside your head fallen off its
squeaky wheel again?”

The Rollins boys twitter in
amusement.”

But Jonah's face darkens. “If I wanted
to fight Finn, I wouldn't need this.” He holds up the wooden dowel
in his hand. It looks like it might have once been the handle of a
broom. “And I sure as hell wouldn't need anyone else's help to do
it.”

“
Do you deny you’re
training people to fight?”

“
No.”

“
I knew it.”

“
To be honest,” he says,
“you two could both use a little more help in the self-defense
department. And by a little, I actually mean a lot.”

I ignore the jibe and turn to Bren,
hoping for an explanation. But it's Hannah who steps forward to
offer one. “We're training for when we leave.”

Bix sucks in a sharp
breath.

Jacob Rollins nods. “In case there's
any more Wraiths out there.”

“
I keep telling you people,
there are no more Wraiths! But there are other things a lot more
dangerous.”

“
Bears?” Jareth
asks.

“
People,” he
replies.

“
And when were you planning
on leaving?”

He shrugs. “I don't know. I have no
definite timeline, Bolles. All I know is that we can't stay here
forever.”

Once more I turn my gaze to Bren.
“Does your father know about this?”

She shakes her head.

“
Well, nobody's leaving.” I
look back at Jonah, who cocks an eyebrow at me, as if he knows
better and is just humoring me. “My father has the door
codes.”

“
Door codes?” He sniffs.
“You really think that's going to stop us if we decide to leave?”
His voice rises in exasperation. “You can't hide in here forever.
The food's going to run out and—”

“
Ah ha! I knew it was you!”
Bix shouts. He steps forward and grabs Jonah's shirt and shakes
him. “You're the one who stole the food! Admit it!”

For the first time, Jonah looks
surprised. His face blanches and his mouth pops open. But he
doesn't give us the satisfaction of confessing. Instead, he plants
a hand on Bix's chest and pushes him away.

“
Stolen food?” someone
behind me asks. “What are you talking about?”

I sigh and shake my head. I hadn't
planned on announcing it. I'd wanted to speak with my father about
it first, come up with a plan for figuring out who might be taking
it and why. But the revelation that Jonah is planning a mutiny
actually does provide a reasonable explanation for the missing
food.

Jonah clearly is following the same
line of thought, because he shakes his head. “This has nothing to
do with any stolen food, Bolles,” he growls at me. Bristling from
the accusation, he edges closer, probably wanting me to react and
attack him like I did up in the common room. But I won't give him
the satisfaction. Not this time.

“
Let's go, Bix,” I say, and
grab his arm. “Let's get out of here.”