Frozen (18 page)

I suddenly want to touch her with my hands and not the damp cloth. I want to feel her skin and pull her into my chest and tell her it’s okay to let her guard down. Just once, she doesn’t have to be so tough. I understand, and I won’t judge. She could even cry for all I care, because it won’t change how strong she is. Not to me.

“What is it?” she asks.

Her eyes are searching mine, clear and blue and hopeful, but I don’t know how to answer her. There are not enough words in the world to even begin to explain how I feel. Without thinking, I put a palm to her cheek.

She goes rigid. “Gray?”

I reach for her, and suddenly her face is cupped in my hands and I’m staring right at her, dumbstruck by the simple fact that I want to kiss her. Softly, so as not to cause her more pain. Passionately, because the pain will be worth it.

But then she says, “Don’t do it unless you mean it,” and I realize my life is one impulsive reaction after another. That what I want in this moment might not be what I want tomorrow, or the day after; and that kissing her now could turn out to be as good as stomping on her heart, just like she warned that night with the loons.

So I say, “Do what? I’m resetting your nose.”

Even when I reposition my thumbs, I can tell she doesn’t believe me. I push her bones back in place and she yelps.

The door is yanked open behind us.

“Time’s up,” Bruno barks, and then he is dragging me from the room. This time, I don’t struggle as he leads me. I count steps and turns and stairwells. I memorize the way back to Bree.

“I saw her,” I tell the team after Bruno reties me to my pole and wishes us sweet dreams with a ruthless smile. “She’s alive.”

“And?” Sammy asks through the dark. “What’d she say? Any ideas for getting out of this?”

It’s not until he says this that I realize I squandered my time with Bree. Instead of trying to devise a plan, I spent those five precious minutes focusing on all the wrong things. This is why I will never be half the leader my father was. I am selfish and careless and irresponsible. I am in over my head.

I roll onto my side without answering Sammy.

“Sure, take your time, Gray. It’s not like we’re being held against our will or anything.”

Moments later he’s snoring, as though a hostile argument is the best recipe for a good night’s sleep. And maybe for him, it is; he spoke his piece. But I dream up an unsettling sort of nightmare.

The sky is black with crows, their wings beating against the clouds, blotting out the sun. A red-tailed hawk tries to pass through, but he is no match for their numbers. Ebony beaks descend, and then there is blood. Everywhere. The sky ripples and suddenly it is the surface of a lake, dark beneath a sliver of moon, a single loon on its center. He’s bleeding, too. And crying. A sorrowful, lonely song.

He calls again and again and again.

The night passes.

And he remains alone.

TWENTY-THREE

WE ARE UNTIED AND LED
to a shared washroom by Bruno and Kaz many hours later. I assume it’s morning, but it’s impossible to tell in Burg’s windowless tunnels.

The men leave us with two lit candles before they step into the hall, bolting the door behind them. There is little water, just a bucket for the four of us, and we wash as well as we can. I clean the dried blood from my face and chest. I have a black eye from Titus, but I look phenomenal compared to Sammy. Bruises surround both his eyes, and his broken nose looks worse than ever.

“How are you feeling?”

“Like hell.” He turns toward a sliver of mirror on the wall and examines his nose.

“You want me to reset it?”

Sammy ignores me; just takes a deep breath, positions his fingers accordingly, and presses the bones back into place. His eyes are streaming by the time he’s finished.

“That seem straight to you?”

I nod, and he gives me a cocky grin.

“So what are we going to do?” Clipper asks. His eyes are heavy, like he didn’t get more than an hour or two of sleep, which could very well be true. I fill them in on the horrific slaughter of Group A’s people years ago and how Titus believes we are with the Order, or, as he likes to refer to them, the Reapers.

“I think the only way to move forward is if Titus truly believes we are on his side,” I say. “We have to earn their trust.”

Sammy sighs dramatically. “This means I can’t break his nose and even the score, then, huh?”

I shoot him a look. “Definitely not.”

“What about Bo and the others?” Clipper asks. “They’ll come for us, right?”

“I don’t think so. The plan was for them to give us a few days to warm up any survivors. Get them on our side. Find out how to restore power. Until you saw to the cameras and got the feeds looped, Bo and Xavier were going to stand watch.”

“But you radioed them,” Clipper says. “You only managed to say Xavier’s name before Titus smashed the thing, but if he heard it, he’d know how panicked you sounded. They’ll suspect something is wrong. Try to break us out.”

“They’re smarter than that,” Jackson says. I’m surprised not only to hear him chime in, but to have him share my point of view.

“Exactly,” I say. “They won’t come barging into Group A blindly. Not when they don’t know what they’re up against. We need to be patient. Make Titus see that we really do want to help his people, that we’re not here to ruin them the way the Order did years ago.”

“You know,
Reapers
has a better ring to it,” Sammy says. “Much more threatening and ominous. Frank really missed the mark naming his army.”

For some reason, this is the comment that sets me off. “Is it impossible for you to be serious? Ever?”

“Me?” he says, looking both innocent and furious at once. “You’re the one who got us into this mess.”

“This is
not
my fault.”

“Oh, really? Funny, seeing as you’re the one in charge.”

“I didn’t ask to be!” I snap back.

“So man up or let someone else take over!”

“Fine! You want me to start dishing out orders? Here’s one: Quit it with the endless sarcasm!”

We have gotten very close in the shouting. I realize for the first time that Sammy is slightly taller and I have to look up at him. I don’t like it.

“I’ll be serious, Gray,” he says slowly, “soon as you stop dragging Emma around like a rag doll.”

“What, exactly, does that mean?”

“It means all she does is talk about you. That she’s torn up about everything and yet you’re still stringing her on, acting like she has a chance when it’s perfectly obvious where your mind’s at. Why don’t you sleep with Nox and get it over with? Break Emma’s heart so she can move on already!”

I shove him as hard as I can. He throws a punch that I barely manage to dodge and before I get a chance to throw one back, Jackson launches himself between us.

“God, you and Nox deserve each other,” Sammy spits over the Forgery’s shoulder. “You’re both selfish, bitter, and completely crazy.”

I lunge at him, but Jackson holds me at bay.

“Are we actually doing this?” Clipper says. “This is a really dumb thing to be fighting about right now.”

I quit straining against Jackson, drop my arms to my side. Clipper is right. We can’t be fighting now. Not about this, not about anything. If we are not united, there is no way we will get out of this mess.

I wipe my palm on my shirt and offer it to Sammy even though I still feel like clocking him. “Same team?”

He stares at my outstretched hand, and finally takes it. “For now.”

Clipper looks nervously at the door and all I want is for him to trust me, but I don’t know how to do this
leader
thing. I need my father here. Or Blaine. They’d probably say something inspirational, or at the very least, reassuring.

“I’ll crack Titus,” I announce, trying to sound sure of myself. “I don’t know how, but I’ll get him to believe our story. I just need a few days.”

“What if he decides something else first?” Clipper asks, his face pale with worry.

“Like what?”

“He thinks we’re with the Order, that we are the same murderers that killed his people. You really think he’s going to keep us alive long enough to come around? Untie us? Let us start searching this place for its power source?”

I knock on the door, letting Bruno and Kaz know we are done.

“Well?” Clipper says, but I don’t answer him.

There are hundreds of survivors in Burg after all. We’re standing in a hallway with them, waiting in a line that twists out of view beyond a corner.

A girl who can’t be much older than I am is just ahead of us. She has her hand on the shoulder of a small boy of three or four. Resting on her hip is an infant and, by the looks of her bulging stomach, she has another on the way. Her skin is dark—not as dark as Aiden’s, but it has an almost tanned quality to it, as though she spends her days in the sun. It’s her eyes that give away the truth, though: bloodshot and squinting, downturned to avoid the glare of torches that line the hallway. Her hair hangs in clumps like Titus’s.

“What are we waiting for?” I ask her.

She pulls her son to her side, as if I might harm him by breathing on him. “Yer the Reapers that came durin’ the night,” she says. “The ones they’re keepin’ in the boiler room.”

Bruno shoves the girl’s shoulder. “They ain’t got no need to know where we’re keepin’ ’em.”

“What’s a boiler room?” I ask, but the girl is already turning away from me. I know it’s not even worth trying Bruno.

“It’s a mechanical room,” Sammy explains. “Full of water heaters, pumps, generators. It probably powered this place once.”

There is a shift in the hallway before I can thank him. The line quiets, and then: a humming. Deep and cavernous. Unearthly. There’s no variation to the drone, no change in pitch, but I
feel
it. In my bones, on my skin. It’s like the world vibrates slightly under its power.

The line starts to move, shuffling forward.

“That almost sounded like a furnace kicking on,” Clipper says. “A big one.”

The young boy ahead, who still stands with his mother’s hand on his shoulders, twists toward us. “It’s the Tollin’,” he says.

Sammy looks baffled. “Tolling?”

“E’ery mornin’, e’ery night,” Bruno explains. “It means food.”

When I was younger, Ma sometimes rang a bell to tell Blaine and me that it was dinnertime. We’d be off in the livestock fields, or goofing around on the Council stairs, and we could always hear it ringing. It had an unmistakable tone, and carried more clearly than her voice ever could. We’d come running home, feet flying and bellies growling.

But this noise is not a bell. It sounds unnatural, like an endless exhale from a sleeping giant.

“Where’s it coming from?” I ask.

“The Room of Whistles and Whirs,” the young boy says.

I laugh lightly, expecting the mother to acknowledge her son’s creativity, but she only turns and says, “It’s true. That room ne’er sleeps. There’re always noises behind the door. Soft whirring noises, the purr of a monster.” Her baby starts to cry and she bounces him on her hip. “Who knows what’s in there, though. It can’t be opened, that door. Ne’er has.”

“You base your entire eating schedule around a noise that comes from a room you’ve never actually entered?”

The girl’s eyes bulge. “Don’t go insultin’ the Room of Whistles and Whirs. It’ll hear. It’ll know.”

Sammy rolls his eyes. As the line starts moving he leans toward me and whispers, “We are so screwed.”

I cringe, knowing he’s right—that Fallyn’s original assumptions were right, too. We have hiked across all of AmEast for a mission that may be doomed. Even if we do manage to escape our bindings long enough to find a way to repower the town and see to the cameras, the survivors here won’t join our fight. They won’t leave, either, so long as Titus is in charge, and there is no way Burg can become a secondary Rebel base without their cooperation.

Coming here was always a risk, but I never expected to be in this deep, this trapped. I get a sinking feeling in my stomach when I realize that in the course of one day, our mission has completely changed.

It is no longer a rescue mission; it is a breakout. For us.

We need to escape Burg.

TWENTY-FOUR

BREAKFAST IS TWO STRIPS OF
dried meat and a small crust of bread, and it is not enough to quiet my grumbling stomach. We are brought back to the boiler room as the line disbands, Burg citizens scattering as soon as they retrieve their food. Bruno has nearly finished securing us when Kaz calls in.

“Titus wants to see the young one again.”

“If he hurts him—”

“Ya’ll what?” Bruno snaps at me. “Hit him? Kill him? Spit in his eye? Yer threats don’t mean nothin’ unless ya can free yerself from those ropes, Reaper.”

He yanks Clipper to his feet and leaves, shutting us in with the darkness.

When I close my eyes, I see Titus with chains on his fists, and Clipper trying to shield himself with lanky hands. I work over escape possibilities to distract my thoughts, but I need to win over Titus first and foremost, which will be impossible if he refuses to see me. I start worrying that Clipper’s concerns could come to fruition: Titus may dispose of us.

“Sammy?” I call, hoping he can help me brainstorm. “Sammy!”

But he’s snoring ever so lightly.

“Funny, isn’t it?” Jackson says behind me. “We’ll soon be sleeping forever and he felt the need to get one more nap in.”

“Sure, Jackson. It’s downright hilarious.”

“My name. You’re still calling me by my name.”

“We’re on the same team now.”

“Amazing how that happens.” Only he doesn’t sound amazed. He sounds smug, like he knew it would come to this all along.

“Did you know about these people? That they’d be crazy?”

“How could I have known?”

“We climbed the Wall and you said we shouldn’t go into the town. You said it was bad.”

“I knew nothing. I still know nothing.”

I wish I could read his face for lies, but I can only stare ahead from where I sit, in the direction of Sammy’s snores. I wonder how bad Clipper will look when he comes back. I wonder
if
he’ll come back.