Renegade (29 page)

The cold water has made not only my limbs and body cold, but seems to have frozen my brain, too. I spin around in circles, little bubbles of air foaming around me as I look for anything that resembles storage. I refuse to even look at Gavin and see the panic and fear in his eyes. It won’t help me find the rebreathers, and will only remind me how hopeless things are.

Finally I see it: a little door on the floor. I swim down and start tugging on the silver handle. Gavin quickly realizes what I’m doing and swims next to me to help me pry open the door. Finally the whole door pops off and he tosses it to the side, where it slowly drifts back to the floor.

Inside are several rebreathers. They look like black vests, but there’s a tube that juts off to one side and has a mouthpiece attached to it. There’s a large red button on top of the mouthpiece.

Lungs screaming, I grab one and shove the mouthpiece into Gavin’s mouth, pressing the red button. Instantly, I doubt myself. It was the red button, right? But what’s that gray one? Red and black spots form in front of my eyes and I can hardly see to grab my own rebreather.

I have to breathe. Just one little breath. That’s all I need.

As I open my mouth to do just that, something is pushed past my teeth. I taste rubber and saltwater and only instinct prevents me from choking by shoving my tongue into the mouth piece when Gavin presses the purge button and a rush of saltwater tries pushing into my mouth, but when I inhale through my mouth, sweet, sweet oxygen pours into my lungs.

I greedily gulp in air, gently kicking my legs to keep me buoyant. When the spots recede, I see Gavin is watching me. He gives me a questioning look and a thumbs-up. I return it and he hugs me, his strong arms pinning me to his chest.

That’s when I remember the other people in the other cars. I yank on his arm and swim down the tube outside the train as fast as I can. My arm screams with the movement, but I don’t stop. If those Citizens didn’t get to the rebreathers, we may still have enough time to help them. With a mixture of relief and horror, I see there is only one car with people in it, and even then it’s only a handful. Unfortunately, none of them got to the rebreathers in time. They’re all just floating at the top of the train, their eyes glassy with death, the rebreathers floating next to them.

I share a horrified look with Gavin. How could she do that? How could she just kill people without a thought? These people had done nothing except get on the wrong train at the wrong time.

Gavin pulls me out of the car toward the end of the tube. I’m relieved for his help. My arm protests each time I try to use it to swim. When we get to it, the huge metal doors are locked tight. I don’t know how to open them.

I signal for Gavin to look for some sort of release on the left side, while I swim to the right, but it doesn’t really matter, I don’t know how Mother flooded the tunnels. Water could still be pouring in. And if it is, what happens if we do open the doors? Will we flood the Sector, killing more innocent people? And if we can’t open the doors, what happens? The rebreathers won’t last forever.

After a few minutes of swimming up the side of the main door, my fingers find some kind of lever. It shows a picture of a filled tube on the top of the lever and an empty tube if I pull the lever down. I yank the lever. And even though fire erupts in my shoulder, the lever doesn’t budge. Not so much as a millimeter. Then I notice the scanner on the side of the lever. Hoping Mother hasn’t gotten past the new security I placed in her computer and I’m still in the system, I place my hand on it. The pad blinks red as it scans my palm, then green.

I try pulling the lever again and this time it slides easily. The water slowly drains until I’m no longer able to swim and am standing on the tracks next to Gavin.

He pulls the mouthpiece out. “What’s going on?”

“I think we’re waiting for the tube to drain completely. Then the doors should open.”

As if to prove me right, the doors stutter open with the sound of grinding gears and clinking metal. Using the tracks as leverage, we climb up the slight embankment toward Sector Three’s Tube station.

When we get to the station, I collapse onto the platform. No one is around. Probably already in their new quarters, ushered there by Guards and Enforcers. My eyes and arm are on fire. I just want to curl into a ball until the pain goes away, but Gavin has other ideas.

“We should refill the tunnel,” he says, staring into it as if expecting monsters to crawl out at any moment.

Then again, it wouldn’t surprise me if there
was
something crawling through the tube. When Mother figures out we escaped without dying, she’ll send people to finish the job.

“Right. Mother won’t be too happy when she realizes we outsmarted her, which won’t take long. So, this will at least buy us a little time.” Though I’m pretty sure she already knows we’re out of the tube anyway. Something doesn’t feel right about how easy this has been, but we don’t have any choice but to keep going. We’ll just have to deal with whatever Mother’s planning when we get to it.

He holds out a hand to help me up and at first I reach for it. But then a wave of anger pours over me and I yank my hand away.

“Don’t touch me,” I say with clenched teeth.

He raises his eyebrows and slowly withdraws his hand. “Sorry,” he mumbles, hurt and anger pooling in his eyes.

I close mine as the anger fades. Where in the world did
that
come from? “No,” I say, holding out my hand to him. “I’m sorry. I … I don’t know what came over me.”

“It’s okay. We’re both under a lot of stress.” There’s something in his eyes when he says it, but he helps me up and into the booth, where I study the control panel.

Since I know what I’m looking for this time, it doesn’t take long. I press my hand to the glass plate and wait for it to do its thing. Then press the lever up. The doors close with a clang, and then there’s a silence that’s almost as deafening.

Exhausted from the pain and everything else, I lower myself back to the ground and Gavin kneels next to me. “You okay?” he asks.

“Yes. There’s a manual lock on the doors. It’s a red switch. It’s there in case of a Surface Dweller attack.” I laugh at the irony. “Just press the button. It’ll ensure Mother can’t send anyone through the tunnels.”

When I hear him step away, I glance at my shoulder. For some reason, it hurts even worse when I see the blood soaking the bandage. Turning my head away, I close my eyes again.

Gavin returns and kneels next to me.

I keep my eyes closed. “I don’t think we need to clean the wound now.”

“What do you mean?” he asks. I can hear the frown in his voice.

“The saltwater,” I say.

“Oh, shit!”

He yanks off my rebreather, pushes the dress strap down my shoulder, then slowly removes the soaked bandages. Even though he’s being gentle, I wince and have to bite back a scream.

He grabs the antiseptic bottle from the first-aid kit on the wall, then pours it over the wound. This time I can’t hold the scream back. I look over to make sure I still
have
a shoulder—it feels like the lava flowing over it dissolved it. The wound bubbles with pinkish-white froth.

Gavin watches the wound and pours more antiseptic over it when the froth turns dark red.

“Why is it still bleeding?” he mutters. “It should have stopped by now. It’s been almost twelve hours.”

“Well,” I say with a forced smile, “it’s not like we’ve given it time to heal.”

After what feels like forever, but is probably only a few minutes, the pain ebbs until it’s only a dull ache.

He studies the wound carefully before rebandaging it. “You okay?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Let’s get going. I want to get the hell out of this living nightmare.”

He helps me to my feet and I bristle, nearly snapping at him that at least it’s better than the Surface, but I swallow the words and the irrational anger.

Knowing it doesn’t matter what we do to hide from this point forward, since we’re soaking wet and they’ll find us by our trail, we stay in the open and make our way through Sector Three’s vestibule. This Sector has several floors and there are several stories above and below us, so there is no view of the ocean in the ceiling. We have to settle for floor-to-ceiling windows.

But something is wrong. Everything is deserted. We should have run into
somebody.
Even with the leak and even if everyone was evacuated, there should still be Enforcers and Guards to make sure no one comes back here until the leak is fixed. And what happened to the workers fixing the leak?

We turn the corner that will take us to the elevators. And stop in our tracks.

Littering the ground are bodies. Women, men, children. About fifteen or so.

Slowly walking forward, I examine each body we pass. There’s a bullet hole dead center in each of their foreheads. Each and every one.

A memory flashes in my head: Me, aiming a gun. Pulling the trigger.

“Enforcers,” I whisper.

“What? How can you tell?” Gavin asks, kneeling beside a woman who’s holding a child to her chest. Her eyes are open and staring. He closes them before gently touching the downy hair of the toddler.

It breaks my heart to watch him. How careful he is with them. And they aren’t even his people. It was their own people who did this to them. It’s obvious now Mother was wrong about Surface Dwellers.

“One shot to the forehead. This is an assassination. They were ordered to kill and do it quickly.”

It was quick. For that much, at least, I can be grateful. Most of them probably had no idea what was going on. No time for fear or pain.

We continue walking through the pile. Gavin insists, in case there are any survivors. It doesn’t take long to figure out there aren’t any.

Suddenly, there’s laughter from my left, and I whirl around to see the holograph of Mother standing there. I didn’t even know Sector Three had holographic capabilities. I do a quick scan for the cameras and holograph projection unit and sigh when I see the shine of lenses in the upper right corner.

There it is.

Mother claps her hands in that slow way people do when they’re mocking you. One side of her mouth is twisted into a smile. It makes me shiver.

“Smart girl. Getting out of that tube alive. Not that I had any doubt you would.” She spreads her hands out. “Like your welcome gift, honey?” she says, with a little tinkling laugh that makes me want to shudder.

“What do you want, Mother?” I ask. I make sure my voice doesn’t reflect any of the outrage, guilt, or disgust I’m feeling. I keep it as emotionless as ice.

“Long life, beauty, power. A daughter that listens to me. You know. The basics,” she says.

Gavin snorts, but it’s filled with derision. Mother doesn’t even spare him a glance.

I glare at her. “Well, it appears you’ve got three of the four. Isn’t that enough?”

Mother lifts one of her shoulders. “In normal circumstances, I suppose. But I cannot let you leave with the Surface Dweller.”

“Why?”

“Because you are the Daughter of the People. The Citizens look up to you.”

This time I’m the one who snorts. “No one looks up to me, Mother. Especially now that you’ve told the whole city I’m a murderer.”

She narrows her eyes at me. “That is no one’s fault other than your own. No one told you to kill all those Citizens.”

“You know very well I didn’t kill Macie.”

“You don’t deny the others? I’m surprised.”

I don’t say anything. I only cross my arms over my chest.

She huffs out a breath. “Besides,” she says, “if you escape, what will prevent the others from trying to do the same? A society only functions if all the parts work together toward a common goal.”

“What goal? Yours? Where you experiment on your own people?”

Her face turns hard. “I’m making them better. I’m helping them rise above themselves.”

“Right. That’s why Nick killed Macie. Because he rose above himself.” I roll my eyes toward Gavin.

She spreads her hands out in front of her. “He was not an appropriate subject. I’ll admit that. His testosterone levels were too high. Occasionally, a subject’s response to Conditioning is … unpredictable.” She shrugs. “However, all great discoveries require sacrifices. And there is always collateral damage when ruling.”

“Is that what Macie was? All these people? Me? Collateral damage? How very forward thinking of you, Mother.” This time some of the disgust seeps through.

She must hear it, because her face becomes drawn and pinched and her eyes flash. “Sniveling little brat. I gave you the gift of being an Enforcer, spent precious time and resources on making you better than the rest—making you
perfect
—making you my own when you failed and this is how you treat me? Running off with the first man who crooks his finger?”

Gavin surges forward. “If you’re so perfect, why did you have to adopt Evie, huh? Why didn’t you just have your own daughter? Wouldn’t the child you created be more perfect than someone else’s? Can’t do it, can you? You infertile? Missing your girl parts? What?”

Mother’s face turns dark with rage, but I have to wonder if he’s right. Is Mother infertile? Is that why she adopted me instead of making her own child? Either way, now is not the time to pick a fight.

I push him back. It surprises me how hard it is to force him to stop. “Leave it alone! She can’t hurt me,” I say to him, then turn back to Mother. “Did you hear that, Mother? You can’t hurt me anymore. I’m not under your thumb anymore. I don’t care that I was an Enforcer. He doesn’t care. You can’t brainwash me and you can’t threaten me. I’ve made it this far. We’ll make it the rest of the way.”

Mother starts laughing and I stare at her, baffled.

“You think so, do you?” She smiles, and it gives me chills. “Well, then I guess you won’t worry that I’ve
let
you get this far. That I’ve known every move you’ve made and every move you will make. That I’m completely unconcerned about this little … escape attempt. That I know you will fail.”