Firebrand (19 page)

I
tried to roll out from under my attacker, but our legs got tangled. I couldn't see to punch, and I didn't want to make a sound in case other guards came over.

“Thom?”

“Alice? Why did you attack me?”

“I didn't even see you,” she whispered. “Although I probably should've been able to smell you.” She leaned away. “All the guards left the peninsula when you created that diversion. So we climbed the wall and jumped over.”

“Where's Jerren?”

Someone else landed beside us. “Good work,” said Jerren. “How did you do it?”

“I didn't. Ananias did.”

“How?”

“By getting himself shot. Don't worry, he'll live,” I added. “But he won't be pleased if we waste this chance, so we need to think. Griffin wasn't with him. Neither was Dennis or Marin. Ananias shouted that Griffin's in the gunroom.”

Alice sighed. “And I suppose you know a way for us to get in.”

Jerren ran a hand through his wet hair. “I do.”

Near the main gate, guards were drifting away from the scene of the shooting. No one had died and Ananias had worked alone, so there was nothing more they could do. They returned to their stations, torches giving out a steady light as the rain eased off.

We sank to all fours and crawled along the battlements, keeping to the shadows. After ten yards we reached the sheer wall of the battery.

“There's a fence at the top,” said Jerren. “Watch tower's a few yards behind it. Get on my shoulders and I'll lift you up.”

He tried to get Alice up first, but she hesitated. “What'll
you
do?” she asked.

“I'll be taking the route around the outside. Lethal if you don't know what you're doing.”

“And you do know, right?”

He snorted. “Are you worried about me, Alice?”

“Fine,” she snapped. “Fall to your death for all I care.”

“That's more like it.”

He lifted her onto his shoulders. She grabbed the metal fence and pulled herself up. With another breath, he readied for me.

“Are you sure you can lift me, Jerren?”

“Stop talking and climb.”

I stood on his shoulders and joined Alice on the battery roof. She was lying on her side, face turned away from the men and women carrying torches less than twenty yards away. I was certain they would see us, but the torchlight must have blinded them.

Jerren seemed to take forever to arrive, but I couldn't blame him for that. It was a miracle he'd been able to climb the wall at all. We hustled into the empty watch tower so he could catch his breath.

“Lucky we decided to come at night,” he said. “This would've been occupied all day.”

“We did something right, then,” replied Alice. “Now all we need is for everyone to surrender and let us leave on our ship. What are the chances of that?”

“Unless we get some help, pretty slim.”

“Thought so.”

We left the tower and crossed the battery roof, keeping low and pausing behind walls whenever someone drew near. Finally we reached the top of the stairs above the gunroom. Two armed guards stood sentry at the door, talking in hushed tones, unaware of how close we were.

“What now?” I whispered.

“Follow me,” replied Jerren.

He ran over the roof to the far end. Dangling his legs over the side, he slid onto a fence below. From there he swung onto the walkway that led to our room. Alice and I followed, our descent slow and awkward. At least there was no one around this part of the fort to hear us as we landed.

When Jerren entered the corridor that led to our room, I grew suspicious. By the time he entered our room, I wasn't the only one. Alice had stopped walking too.

“You're going to have to trust me,” he called out from the darkness.

Alice didn't move. “Why?”

“Because you weren't the first people to be put in this room.” He pried open the door. “It's where they put Nyla and me after our parents died. They didn't want us around everyone else until they were sure we could be controlled.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I heard them say so. There's a vent at the top of the wall. Behind that, ductwork runs along the ceiling. It would've provided hot and cold air back in the old days. Doesn't work now, but it connects with the gunroom next door. I used to stand by the vent cover and listen to the voices. They were faint, but I knew what was going on. Knew what was at stake. That's how I was sure they'd killed my parents.”

Jerren moved through the pitch-dark room confidently, having memorized every part of it. There was the faint sound of something scraping across the floor, and then he called us toward him. “Help me with the bunk. We need to take the mattress off and lean it against the wall. We can climb up the slats like a ladder.”

We wrestled the bunk into place. Jerren climbed up first and pulled the metal screen away. He handed it to me and I placed it against the wall. By the time I reached up to check that he was all right, he had gone.

“You go next,” said Alice.

I climbed the slats and slid into the crawlspace. Jerren was just inside too, so we moved to either side to make room for Alice. I figured she'd find it harder to pull herself in, as she was shorter than us. But when I offered her my hand she batted it away. She vaulted up and in, taking her place between us.

Now that we were still, sounds drifted along the metal duct: voices, and a low, faint hum. The voices, I'd expected, but the hum was unlike any sound I'd heard before, completely unchanging in tone and pitch.

“You'll have to lead, Thomas,” Jerren whispered. “No room to change places.”

I shuffled along on all fours, trying to glide instead of lifting my limbs so that we'd keep the noise down. Alice and Jerren were behind me, but I couldn't hear anything except their breathing. The duct occasionally bowed under our combined weight. Ahead of me, the hum grew louder.

I concentrated on the men's voices, which is why I didn't feel the metal edge. Or the gap. My hand slid into the room below. Though I tried to rein it in, I gasped.

The men in the gunroom stopped talking. The hum was the only sound, resonating along the metal duct.

Gradually the voices returned. Still, I waited for clues: occasional pauses in the conversation, something that suggested they were suspicious. But the exchanges were rapid and the voices were raised. Whatever was happening was reaching a climax.

I reached into the gap but couldn't feel the bottom. It was at least half a yard across and there wasn't much room to move about. So I flattened myself and stretched both hands across the gap, waited until my arms were safely on the other side, and pushed off with both feet against the edge. My knees rubbed against the duct, but the noise was drowned out by sounds from the room.

Alice and Jerren followed behind me, each wrestling with the gap. The duct was wider here, but after a few yards, it split left and right. In either direction, the new ducts were much smaller.

The voices were coming from the right, so I chose that way. But I'd only gone a yard when I felt the metal shifting beneath me. With three of us, it would be impossible to stay quiet. More likely, the whole duct would give out and send us crashing to the floor.

“You'll have to wait here,” I whispered over my shoulder: “It's not strong enough for all of us.”

Alice huffed. “Then what'll we do?”

“There's vent covers in every room,” offered Jerren. “This duct must lead to one. Tell us what you see through it.”

I slunk forward. The voices felt so close. One of them was Chief's. He was usually so calm, but now he spoke quickly. “He'll be back soon, so let's get moving.”

Another flurry of activity, but no more talking.

I pushed on a couple more yards. The hum was loud, but I still held my breath, desperate to stay quiet. Just ahead of me, light filtered through the vertical spaces in the duct vent. I pulled alongside it and rested on my elbow so that I could see down into the room.

It was the largest room in the fort. The walls were black, lined with flameless lanterns. The solar generators must have been powering them. They cast overlapping circles of light on the dark floor, and on the group of four men who stood together. But the strangest sight was the space beneath the lanterns, where several guns were propped against the wall in orderly rows, just as Dennis had told us.

The hum seemed to come from a large machine to one side of the room. There was a table beside it, with an assortment of old-looking knives and other ominous metal objects arranged neatly on a white cloth. And a chair, with crisscrossing leather straps.

“Is the generator charged?” demanded Chief.

A man beside the machine nodded. “It's ready.”

“Let's start.”

I shifted position so that I could watch Chief as he moved creakily toward a rail. Below him was a giant glass cube, showered in even brighter light than the rest of the room. Two men stood beside the cube, dressed in bright white clothing that covered every part of their bodies. There was someone inside too.

Griffin.

He leaned against one of the walls. On the other side of the cube, separated by a glass divider, the floor was black.

Suddenly a door burst open. Out of my line of sight, someone strode across the floor. “What's going on, Chief?” the new arrival demanded, silky smooth voice tinged with venom.

I couldn't see him, but I didn't need to. I'd have recognized Dare's voice anywhere.

A
ll's well with the natives, I assume.” Chief addressed Dare without looking at him. “Or are they getting restless?”

“One of your trigger-happy men just shot Ananias,” replied Dare.

“Such a waste. We'll never get that bullet back.” Chief gave an exaggerated sigh. “All the same, it hardly concerns you. You said yourself that you have no connection to those people. Although,” he added, watching Dare from the corner of his eye, “from the way you just burst in here, I'm wondering if maybe that's not the case.”

Dare's expression didn't change at all. “Where are the children, Chief?”

The old man
tsk
ed. “Why? Are you getting sentimental in your old age?”

“I told you to imprison
all
of them.”

“Yes. But you didn't tell me
where
.” He adjusted the sleeves of his tunic. “The children are on Moultrie. Behind bars, exactly as you requested.”

“There are rats on Moultrie. You're giving them the Plague.”

“Indeed, I am. Think of them as my security. Just to make sure everything goes to plan.”

“Why wouldn't it?” Dare's eyes did a measured sweep of the room. He had the look of a man on edge. “I don't like to see children suffer, Chief.”

Chief stifled a laugh. “You might have wanted to think about that before you handed me Griffin.”

Dare stepped forward. In response, the guards raised their guns. “Your men seem anxious.”

“As do you.” Chief sighed deeply. “I'd given you up for dead until last night, Dare. But your arrival doesn't change anything. You're our
guest,
and we have plans for young Griffin.”

Dare continued past the older man and surveyed the room with the glass cube. “What's going on here? Our agreement last month was for an injection.”

“I told you that could never work. Anyway, what does it matter? He's the solution.” Chief stepped beside a large machine. He ran a hand across it gently, as if he were reacquainting with an old friend. When he turned a dial, the hum became a high-pitched whine. “Anyone might survive a small dose of Plague. But there's only one person who could survive a massive dose, and we both know it's that boy in there.”

“You may as well torture him. This is inhumane.”

Chief spun around. “When was this ever
humane
? Is that what you thought all those years ago, when we stood in this very room? Did you convince yourself that an injection of the Plague bacterium was somehow more humane than direct contact with the rats themselves?”

“Of course it's different.”

“Let me remind you that you claimed to have delivered the solution to me. You promised me the Plague years were over, and I threw all our resources into making it so. But she wasn't the solution, was she? And in the end, the only reason that woman survived is because
I
gave her the therapy,” Chief roared. “You offered her up for slaughter, and
I
cured her. Not you. Don't ever forget that.”

Chief strode toward the rail. He regarded the glass cube proudly.

Griffin didn't look up. All his attention was fixed on the other side of the divider, where the black floor began to shift. Only, it wasn't a floor at all. The floor wouldn't move, wouldn't ripple like that. The floor wouldn't make a sound.

It was rats, and they were desperate to get to Griffin.

I couldn't take my eyes away. On Hatteras, the Guardians had told us to keep our distance from rats, and to warn someone if we came across a dead one. They were easy instructions to follow because the rats were shy creatures, more frightened of us than we were of them. But these rats were like the ones on Moultrie—violent and hostile.

“Alice,” I whispered loudly, but there was no response.

“You don't get it, do you,” said Chief, voice calmer again. “Twenty rats won't just prove that Griffin is resistant. Such a large dose of Plague will boost his antibody titers. It'll help
him
in the long run.” He opened his arms wide. It was a gesture I'd seen more than once, and which I'd trusted to be genuine. He pointed to the machine as if coaxing Dare to join him over there. “The plasmapheresis unit still works. My technician has been testing it on himself. In a matter of days, we'll be able to extract antibodies. Because Griffin's titers will be so high, we'll need less of his blood to treat everyone. Think about it, Dare: For the first time in a generation, we can passively immunize people.”

“Your people.”

“No, Dare.
Our
people.” Chief wore the expression of a disappointed parent. “I know those colonists are related to you. Same birthplace. Same ability to survive against all odds. I saw them all for elementals the moment they arrived. That's why the adults are imprisoned in Sumter, where we can keep an eye on them. Someone saw Marin catching a fish, you see. Lured it toward her and caught it barehanded. There's no way I'm taking any chances against an element as strong as that.”

A strange transformation overtook Dare then. “Tell me, Chief. Exactly whom did you send to lock up the children? Was it Kell?”

“The fate of the children on Moultrie rests in our hands now,” replied Chief, ignoring him. “Griffin's blood
will
save them.”

“Kell hasn't returned. Has he?”

“Enough!” Chief rapped his knuckles against the machine impatiently. “You don't have your cronies around you anymore, Dare, and I've tolerated your questions long enough.” He raised a hand and gave a signal to the man across the room. “Raise the divider.”

Dare strode toward Chief until a guard stepped in his way. “You thought it was adults you needed to worry about, didn't you? But elements peak in late adolescence. Kell wouldn't have stood a chance.”

Chief spat on the ground. For a moment, I saw his fear. Even in a heavily guarded fort, he was scared of the one thing he couldn't control. “I said, raise the divider!” he yelled.

I scanned the room, searching for weakness. The guns against the wall were well out of reach, and Chief had the advantage of numbers. I tried to get Alice's attention again, but there was no response.

One of the men beside the cube flicked a lever. The machine's whine grew louder. There was another sound too: the grinding of a pulley coming to life, a wheel turning slowly, and the divider inching upward, pulled by a series of thin, strong cords.

I could barely breathe in the confines of the ductwork. I needed to stop this, but three guards carried guns and I didn't doubt they'd be willing to use them. Griffin was so near to me, but he may as well have been on another island.

The men in full-body outfits slunk away from the cube, terror written in their jerky movements and rapidly exchanged glances. They exited the area and sealed the door behind them.

Rats snuffled at the gap appearing beneath the divider, and pawed at it furiously. Maybe they'd been starved to make them more desperate. Or maybe this is what they'd been driven to become.

Then they were through.

It happened so quickly. They scattered across the floor, sliding toward Griffin. He tried to move away, but it was futile. His hands and feet were bound, and there was nowhere for him to hide. In a heartbeat, they smothered him, biting and clawing, and now there was a new sound: Griffin screaming so loudly, the noise of the machine seemed to fade away completely.

Blind fury overtook me. I pressed my back against the rounded side of the duct and my legs against the vent cover. Then I kicked off.

The cover flew out, hitting one of the armed guards. As another looked up, I launched myself from the duct and stretched my arms out to make sure I took him down with me. We collapsed onto the ground together. With the wind knocked out of me, I couldn't move at first, but I caught a glimpse of Dare disarming the third guard. He sent the man to the floor with a single swing of the gun. Chief responded by kicking the gun from Dare's hands. It landed right next to me.

I grabbed it and stood.

The scene grew still. I pointed the barrel at Dare, then at Chief. When a guard approached the gun rack against the wall, I swung around to face him. My hands were shaking. Griffin's cries still filled the air.

“Good boy, Thomas,” said Chief, edging toward me. “I can take that from you now.”

I jabbed the barrel at him, making him flinch. “Stay back.”

“What do you think you're going to do?” he chided. “Kill us all? Escape?” He wiped his sleeve across his mouth and smiled triumphantly. “Tell him, Dare. Tell him how close we are. How we've waited years for this. There's a new world coming, Thomas.”

I just wanted to stop Griffin's screams, but lowering the divider wouldn't achieve anything now that the rats were all over him. “Let my brother go.”

Chief shook his head. “I can't do that. This isn't about Griffin anymore. It's humankind's last chance at survival.”

He moved closer. So did Dare. As I retreated to the railing, the guard edged toward the gun rack again. My legs bumped against the railing. I spun around and fired at the cube's glass panels. Griffin's cries were drowned out by the sound of shattering glass. Dare and Chief sprinted toward me as the rats scattered.

I braced for the attack. Instead, the duct rattled above us and Alice jumped out. She landed on Dare and both went sprawling onto the ground. The suddenness of it made Chief hesitate.

Behind him, another guard was arming himself. He ran toward me too, but Jerren launched himself from the duct just in time. He landed on the guard, crushing him.

Chief turned to face me again, fists balled at his sides and jaw twitching. “Shouldn't have done that, Thomas,” he said. “This has nothing to do with you.”

“It has
everything
to do with me. He's not a solution. He's my brother.”

I swung the gun at him, but Chief leaned back. Before I could bring the weapon around again, he lunged at me. He wrapped me up from behind, one arm squeezed against my neck.

On the far side of the room, something banged against the door. I flashed a quick look. Someone was attempting to force it open. More than one person, most likely.

“My reinforcements,” Chief muttered.

He had me in a chokehold. I couldn't breathe. I flailed my arms behind me, trying to land an elbow, but it was pointless.

Below us, Griffin shuffled away from the broken remains of the cube. The rats scurried around the perimeter of the room, searching for a way out. It gave me an idea.

With my last breath, I placed one hand on the rail and the other behind me, pulling Chief tight against me. He was so hell bent on strangling me, he didn't resist.

I swung my right leg over the rail. With our combined momentum, it wasn't difficult to swing the other leg over too. Before Chief could react, we were over the edge and falling toward the glass.