Bound to Ashes (The Altered Sequence Book 1) (3 page)

The humans recently had doubled their efforts in eradicating us... no way were they going to let this lead die. Ashton resigns and Jules gives up her counterpointing. They all three look at me. Waiting for my input. Cain’s fierce blue eyes, Jules’s brown, and Ashton’s hazel. I couldn’t stand to see all these lights go out. I take a deep breath and say, “I think Cain’s plan is the best option.”

And that did it. “Alright,” Ashton says begrudgingly.

“Nice knowing you guys,” Jules says.

Cain looks a fraction more smug than usual. “We should get ready. Their spy never replied. So they know we’re on to them. The quicker we move, the better.”

“Gotta get the jump on the guys gettin’ the jump on
us
,” Jules laughs.

The bags lie open on the floor near the food stores. Bedrolls, rudimentary, sit by the door. No weapons except for Cain’s rifle and Ashton’s hidden .9 mm. No communication devices. The bare essentials. Our home seems so empty without our things occupying it. It’s almost like we’ve already left. Or that no one had ever been here.

I pass cans to Jules, who packs them away. Can after can disappears into the backpacks. Who knows how long we have to stay camped out in the factory district.

Ashton looks down at a can held gently in his hands. It’s one we found a few days ago in the city. That particular can was under some heavy shelving units, buried and forgotten. I remember brushing grime off its label and stuffing it in a bag. All these cans and packages are familiar, there’s so few of them, I know each one’s history.

Ashton glances at the emptying food stores and says, “But this is
all
of the food.”

Cain looks over his shoulder and says, “Yeah.”

The bags aren’t even heavy by the time we’re done.

I flip mine over my shoulder and glance back at the empty missile silo, our home, our death trap. The zipper teeth ceiling lets dusty shafts of light in, but they just look like illuminated jail bars. Our sleeping things, the parts too unwieldy to take with us, are piled in the corner like bodies after the war. After a while people just had to stack them in alleys to get them out of the way. Everyone is vulture fodder at the end of things.

“C’mon Dev, let’s get this over with,” Jules says, lightheartedly punching me in the arm. I jump a little, it wouldn’t be the first time she used her abilities to play stupid pranks, but my arm feels fine. She just smiles weakly and starts climbing the ladder to the surface.

The sun is setting, and the air is cool and not quite as abrasive as during the day. Still dry, though.

“Goodbye, giant bullet casing in the ground,” Jules says, saluting the missile silo. “Good knowin’ ya.”

“Well.”

“Okay. Maybe ‘good’ is a little generous,” Jules agrees, smiling.

“It served its purpose,” Cain says.

“Yup,” Ashton says. He pats the area along his belt where he tucked the .9 mm. He never told Cain about it. I’m glad I didn’t take up his offer on taking the gun, they always seem like they’re ready to go off without reason. Too many little mechanical parts for my taste. If I ever hear another gunshot, it’ll be too soon. And, I smile weakly to myself, I have a feeling I’ll be getting my fill of gunshots soon, echoing through the dead factory streets.

We walk away from our metal coffin and head towards our new graves.

3
• mess hall

[Alessandra]

Sometimes, I wish we could have conversations without fear of being spied on.

“I’m trying to think of fish jokes, but for some reason, they’re just not coming,” Peregrine says thoughtfully.

Then again, maybe I don’t have to worry about spies. “Peregrine, usually I’m all for that, but is now really the time?”

She pushes her mouth up and glances at the ceiling, then closes her eyes and says, “Nah.”

“Then help me with these droppers.”

Dip the dropper in the little brown bottle, stop the end with the tiny pinch of clay, put it in the plastic bag. Dip, stop, bag. One bag, one vial of poison for every one of those grinning, callous men. One dropper in the bag, and I imagine the man with the tattoos that killed our friend Casey dropping dead. Another dropper, the bald one with the beady eyes too close together, clutching his throat and falling to the ground.

“Aless?

I glance up and Peregrine’s looking at me with pressed eyebrows. “Yeah?”

“You alright?”

“I’ll be much better when we finish this.” Dip, stop, bag.

Peregrine nods and continues working.

My mind’s racing a mile a minute and I blurt out, “You’re sure this’ll work.”

Peregrine smirks and says, “Yeah. It will. Mom used to work at that fish and pet store, right? They sold this stuff there. For euthanizing water critters. It paralyzes their gills and they drown, some kind of nervous system toxin. She had to euthanize all the fish that came in with fungus or mouth rot....” She picks up one of the bottles and shakes it back and forth. The remaining liquid swishes around. “Never did work on those shrimp, though. They were an invasive species, so we couldn’t sell them or—”

“Wait, it
didn’t
work on shrimp?”

She looks at me, eyes wide, and says, “Er, well, only on fish and the little water frogs—”

“Pere,” I breathe, setting the dropper down and trying not to crush it in my fist, “Tell me this is going to work.”

Her voice cracks and she says, “Aless, it’ll work. Listen. She told me they had to stop selling it because some lady bought a bottle and killed her husband with it.” Her soft eyes linger on me.

My exhale feels cleaner than the last, relaxing my whole body. “Sorry. This just... has to work.” I hate getting cross with Peregrine.

Peregrine smiles softly and says, “Yeah. I know.”

The little brown bottles standing on the brushed metal lab table catch the fluorescent lighting and gleam like gold. A little pile of brown bottles with peeling labels represents almost an entire year of searching. It seems so insignificant. One brush of an elbow and they could all go careening to the floor, shattering, promising another year of waiting. Only we might not have a year left. Time’s wasting. An opportunity like this doesn’t come around every day.

It was like clockwork. The error messages telling us we had about six months left in our dome before the artificial sun burns out and the crops die. And Heydrich hears everything. My attendance on this mission isn’t by luck of the draw, he’s hoping something will happen. The supersoldiers, drawn out, will kill us on sight. Now that the dome is dying, I’m expendable.

I love how wrong he is.

“Alright, let’s go through it one more time,” I say, zipping the last plastic bag and setting it on the table.

She knows what to say. “Tomorrow morning, first light. Heydrich will take you, James, and two of his guys on skimmers for the search party. You’ll do,” she fumbles her words, “You’ll do
your
thing and James will take out Heydrich and the other two.”

“Did we get anything for James to use...?”

Peregrine sighs and says, “Just the tranquilizer guns. They were the only things we could get.”

“We’re gonna need to save the ammunition, anyway. He won’t need anything more. Just the Detomidine.”

Peregrine nods and works on tucking her hair back under her bandana. “Yep. Thankfully, he’ll have a lot to work with.”

“And you and Vinder?”

“As soon as you leave,” she smiles, “we’re on lunch lady duty.”

“Perfect.” That means she changed the names on the chore lists. “You sure Vinder is up for this?”

Peregrine closes her eyes and says smugly, “I’m confident.”

“Then I trust you.”

“Well I’d hope so, we’ve been through all this shit together! If you can’t trust me by now, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.” She grins and I can’t help but laugh.

[Vinder]

Oh man. Oh crap. This is really happening. Peregrine’s sharp elbow in my ribs makes me jump and she hisses, “Focus, dude.”

“Huh, yup, focusing,” my own voice sounds stupid and jittery.

I dip the ladle in the giant pot full of sloppy stew. Behind the pot, I plop it in one of the bowls. I swear the guy, one of Heydrich’s guys, is like eight feet tall and staring down at me like I’m going to screw up putting stew in a bowl. “Extra spices today,” I choke out, reaching to the left for the little container of chopped green onions. I spoon in a pile of onions and— don’t screw it up Vinder, don’t screw it up—with the same hand, squirt the dropper in. He didn’t see. Maybe my hand won’t shake like a leaf handing it to him.

He grabs it, gives me one last glare, and walks away.

There’s never a lot of people in here when Heydrich’s men come in for food. A few stragglers. A couple walks in, holding hands, watching the backs of Heydrich’s men carefully. It’s like they’re walking between sleeping guard dogs. They pull closer to one another as they walk. Peregrine has their bowls ready, filled a little extra. She holds her finger to her lips. They bow their heads and smile in silent thanks.

Heydrich’s guys are almost all bent over their stew, shoveling it in. I pat my pocket and the bag flattens and crinkles. “You really think it’ll be enough for them? They’re like... huge.”

Peregrine eyes me, making sure whatever I said didn’t give away our plan. The onions, Pere, I was talking about the onions of course.... She says, “They all get the same amount.”

I can count the number of guys sitting in the cafeteria. Each one’s dropper, each one’s dish of stew sits fresh in my mind. Each one plays like rehearsed scenes in my mind.

Except one. “Uh, Pere....”

She follows my look and glances at the guy. Average sized, the one with a thick accent from... somewhere... and eyes you’re afraid to look at for too long. Big and blue and crazy. A cloth laid out on the table in front of him has a bunch of little gun parts lying on it, he rubs another with a rag in his hands. “Did you serve that one...?”

Peregrine shivers and whispers, “Shit. He didn’t get any.”

“Why didn’t he get any?!”

“I don’t know, Vin, maybe he’s not
hungry
,” she whispers through her grit teeth. “Dammit.”

“What do we do?”

She looks at me, then holds both her hands up and says, “Hold on.” She swings around the serving tables and back into the kitchens, clanging some stuff around. Her hair swings by her face like the coiled wires of a bridge collapsing. She rushes back out with one of those plastic... um....

“What is that?”

It’s some kind of weird cup, with holes at the bottom and a coffee filter on the top. She smirks at me, one of those smirks she uses for when she says, ‘You’re too young to get it,’ and says, “Coffee. Offer him coffee.”

My body freezes up. “Wh—me?!”

“Yes, you!”

“Why me?”

“You’re less in cahoots with Aless, that’s why,” Peregrine says. “They don’t trust me as much.”

I frown, because she’s right, and the thought of walking over there and standing close to that maniac is enough to make me want to fight one of the guys for their death-stew.

“Fine.”

I stare into the black coffee, the nutty smelling, amazing coffee, that isn’t mine... and sigh. “It seems wrong to do this to coffee. I feel like I should say a few words or something.”

Peregrine pushes on my back gently, ushering me out from behind the serving table, and says, “We’ll hold a memorial service for it later. Just go.”

“But what do I say? I can’t pretend I’m just being nice out of nowhere, he knows we all
hate
them—”

Peregrine stalls and can I catch my breath. She says, “I dunno, Vin, just make it seem like it’s in his best interest. And come on, it’s coffee! Coff-ee! No one says no to coffee.”

I hope she understands that my staring means, ‘I will get you back for this someday.’ But she just smiles and makes little ‘go on’ motions with her hands.

The dirty, awkwardly quiet cafeteria makes my skin crawl. The little plastic mug full of black gold shivers in my hand. This sucks. This
sucks
.

With every step I feel like the floor is going to cave in under me. Soon I’m standing right by him. I suck in a shaky breath and say, “Sir.” Because we’re all supposed to call them sir.

He looks up lazily, away from the pistol taken apart in front of him, and says, “What?” With that weird accent, it makes him less approachable. Like he was some kind of animal tamed from the wild, trained to kill and follow orders....

“Uh, orders from—” I swallow. What’s he thinking? That I’m lying? Come on Vinder, you’re not being very convincing. No, don’t look at Peregrine. You can do this.

The guy just stares at me with those freaky eyes.

“Heydrich’s orders, sir, those not served their rations need to keep their strength up.” I frown. He expects me to frown because I hate wasting coffee on a guy like this. That much, at least, I don’t have to fake.

The guy glances at me, at the cup, back at me. “Leave it.”

I set the cup down too quickly and back away. Don’t run, Vinder, just walk... back to Peregrine, back behind the serving table, into the kitchen....

“Did he take it?” Peregrine whispers as she scrubs out the inside of one of the stew pots.

My breath falls out of me, guess I was holding it in. “I think so.”

“Go watch him!” She says, waving at the kitchen window. I lean out a little.

Thank god. He took a sip. My relieved sigh makes Peregrine say, “Okay. Man, that was too close.”

The cafeteria is quiet. The couple was smart enough not to stick around and some of Heydrich’s men are standing to leave. They never take their bowls back. Jerks. They’re really just... bullies. But instead of pushing around other kids on the schoolyard, this is real. What they do... it’s hard to look at them and not remember all the stuff they did. I glance at Peregrine, watching her watch them, looking for a shred of triumphant revenge for what they did to her. My stomach turns. The tall guy, the last one served, finishes his stew and stands up, moving off to wherever he’s stationed today. Soon, there won’t be any more stations or schedules. My heart beats harder thinking about what’ll happen to them.

“Pere,” I say. “How long does the... how long will it take to work?”

Peregrine glances at her watch and says, “Any second now.”

I go to stand by the window to watch, but my eyes turn away immediately. My appetite is painfully absent. I turn around and slowly lift myself onto the counter. “I’m....”

“It’s alright,” Peregrine says. She looks up at me, sets the pot down, and comes and sits next to me up on the counter. “Let’s just... wait.”

She scoots closer to me. For a while the only sound is her boot heel tapping against the cupboards. From outside in the cafeteria; stifled grunts and shuffling feet. “Wonder how Aless is doing,” I say, just to have something else to think about.

“I’m willing to bet she’s fine. She’s always fine,” Peregrine says.

Aless might be doing the same kind of thing we are... but she’s got it way worse. Hiding in Heydrich’s shadow, using his own plan against him. So many things could go wrong... the deadly kind of wrong. I can’t even think about what’ll happen if Aless isn’t fine.

Hushed voices. I turn around and glance out the window.

There are more people in the cafeteria now, I recognize most of them. They huddle in big groups, leaning in and whispering. They’re crowded around the bodies of Heydrich’s men. Their voices slowly rise.