Frozen (20 page)

I peer out the window, gazing in the direction of the Wall. I imagine Emma twisting a bit of hair around her finger—she always does that when she’s anxious. I wonder for a split second if Sammy is thinking about her too, and the idea makes my stomach tighten.

“What are ya doin’ in here?”

There’s a figure in the doorway. I squint and recognize him as the boy who brushed by Bruno earlier, complaining about working two jobs. His hands are stained with blood.

“I could ask you the same. Aren’t you supposed to be hunting?”

He snorts. “Puck and I already took down a deer. I gutted it. He went back fer smaller game.”

“But not you?”

The boy shrugs and moves silently past me, procuring a small book from a gap between the windowsill and wall.

“It’s a little dark for reading, don’t you think?”

“I’ll read when I can, and now is the only time I get. It ain’t like it’s allowed below.”

“Titus doesn’t—”

“No. My ma taught me, cus her ma taught her, and on and on cus someone once knew how, only that person is long gone.” He runs a hand over the cover. “I don’t really need to read it anymore—I got the whole thing mem’rized—but I like comin’ here on nights I catch game early just to hold it. So I don’t forget.”

“How to read?” I ask, because I don’t think it’s a skill a person can lose when they fail to exercise it.

“No,” he says, glancing up at me. “I don’t want to forget what it says. It’s a journal. Some girl’s. She talks ’bout what she sees each night when she’s dreamin’: a world bigger than Burg, with mountains and oceans and peace. Where there ain’t no fightin’. Where the sleepin’ are buried in graveyards and the livin’ walk together and their children chase their heels. She sees this all when she climbs the Wall. She dreams it e’ery night.” He looks down at the journal in his hands. “I wish I could thank her. She keeps me sane. E’ery time I have to go back under I ’member that this journal is here, that I can return and relive her dream.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

He screws his face up for a moment. “Reaper or not, yer from out there. Her dreams are real in a way, ain’t they? Ya’ve seen ’em.”

“Yes,” I say, even though the world beyond Burg’s Wall is nowhere near as peaceful as the one in the dream journal. “You can see it, too. If you climb.”

“I tried makin’ a ladder once,” he says, shaking his head, “but Titus caught wind of it and beat my ma senseless. So I made somethin’ smaller, easier to hide. Sawed off the handle to a busted hayfork—its prongs are bent so badly they’d be more useful fer hookin’ somethin’ than movin’ hay—and I tied a rope to it. With a good throw I could pro’ly hook the top of the Wall and scale the thing, but I . . . I keep losin’ my nerve.”

“We might be leaving soon,” I tell him. “You could come with us.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” But he doesn’t sound convinced.

“We also might be staying, depending on what we find in the Room of Whistles and Whirs. I guess what I’m saying is either way, you could stick by our side. You don’t owe Titus anything.”

He runs a hand over the spine of the journal absentmindedly. Sighing, I grab the cloth bag at my feet and move for the door. I’ve wasted too much time.

“What’s yer name?” he calls after me.

“Gray.”

“I’m Blake, but e’erybody calls me Bleak.”

“Why’s that?”

“Cus I’m so negative all the time. Cus I hate Burg and those tunnels and our jobs and my life.” I’m thinking how the name does indeed fit him when he adds, “But I don’t see what’s so bleak ’bout wantin’ something better. ’Bout hopin’ for more.”

I shoot him a quick smile and duck outside, then skirt back up the alley. Before pulling the cellar door open, I take a deep breath. The wind is whipping over the ground, picking up the snow, twisting it, throwing it. It dances until the wind tires and then the town is as still as a tombstone. Just moonlight and clouds and skeleton buildings.

I think about Bleak and his journal, how those small words recorded by a complete stranger are the things that have kept him hopeful when everyone else sees nothing but his negativity. So much power in those words. So much in dreams.

I drop down the stairwell, shutting out the world.

TWENTY-SIX

BRUNO AND KAZ EMPTY THE
cloth bag onto Titus’s table to root through my supplies. They grunt and point and mumble questions to each other. Titus eventually nods at his men and they stuff the contents back into the bag. Bruno turns to me and starts patting at my shirt, my pants. He checks each and every pocket, but never removes my boots.

“The boy starts workin’ on the door first thing tomorrow,” Titus says. “Now, Bruno, get this Reaper outta my sight.”

“Hang on. I want to see Bree first.”

“Yer here, and ya weren’t slow. She ain’t been touched.”

“I’d still like to confirm that.”

“Ah,” Titus says, his lips curling playfully. “So that ya can touch her
yerself
, maybe?”

My jaw tightens. “Bring me to her or Clipper doesn’t open the door.”

“Perhaps I should give ya some blankets, too,” Titus jeers. “So ya can have yer moment in luxury.”

“Now!”

He bursts out laughing. “Yer so easy to rile, Reaper.”

I hate being called that, being associated with Frank and his Order, with the people who have ruined my entire life. I wonder if this is what Jackson felt like when we called him Forgery.

“Give him another five with the girl,” Titus says to Bruno. Fingers clamp down on my elbow and I’m tugged from the room. When we arrive at Bree’s door, Bruno smiles. “Have fun. I’ll try not to listen.”

I shoulder past him. Bree is sitting in the far corner but the door is slammed behind me and she is immediately swallowed by darkness. I might as well be blind for how much I can see.

“Bree?”

“Here,” she says. “I’m here.” And she repeats herself, calling out to me as I crawl through the darkness toward her voice. My hands find her knees and I sit next to her, back against the wall. She is right beside me, and I still can’t see her. We are lost in a sea of black, floating.

“Why don’t you have the candle lit?” I ask.

“It burned out. They haven’t brought another.”

“Have they been feeding you?”

“Yes.”

“And the washroom. They let you out to visit it?”

“Twice a day, after meals.”

A pause. Silence except for my pulse beating in my ears.

“And a few nurses visited once,” she adds. “Stripped me of my clothes and examined me.”

“Did they hurt you?”

Another pause.

“Bree, did they hurt you?”

“No,” she snaps. “They just prodded me like livestock and left.”

“And now?”

“And now nothing, Gray. This is it. Me and these walls. The darkness. My eyes burn every time they open that door. How did this happen? How did we get stuck down here?”

“I’m fixing it.”

I tell her about the Room of Whistles and Whirs, and Titus’s belief that his people can escape Burg through it. About the deal I struck and how Titus agreed to free us so long as Clipper opens the door.

“That sounds too easy,” she says. I can’t see her face but I’m positive it’s dressed in doubt and furrowed eyebrows and the most stubborn sort of scowl.

“Why are they keeping you separate from us?”

She snorts. “If I knew, I’d do something about it.”

The darkness is so thick I’m starting to grow dizzy. If it weren’t for the floor beneath me, I might not know which way is up.

“Gray?” she says, and her voice has this quaver to it I’ve never heard before. “What if we actually can’t get out of this one? What if Titus doesn’t honor the deal and what if this is it, us stuck down here? I mean, I don’t want to think that way. I keep telling myself not to. But I have this terrible feeling that—” I feel her shoulders shake next to me. She takes a deep breath. Another. “I’m scared we’re actually in over our heads this time. I’ve never felt that sort of doubt before. Not once. But then they close me in without you guys, and I’ve got nothing but walls and darkness and all these hopeless thoughts that won’t stop rocketing around my head. No matter how damn hard I try to silence them, they just get louder and louder and—”

I reach for her. Her hands are rough like mine, calloused from working a knife and throwing spears, but still so delicate. Thin. Small. I squeeze her palm and she lets out a sob.

“Bree?”

But her head is already against my chest. She’s crying, letting these giant, shameless sobs escape her. I don’t say anything because I somehow know she doesn’t need words. She’s not looking for reassurance, or for me to promise her everything will be okay. She just needs me to be here. With her. Sitting. One hand in hers, the other on her back. That’s all she needs and all she wants.

So that’s all I do.

A moment later she pulls away from me. “If you tell anyone about this, I swear I will kick the crap out of you.”

“Like you could.”

“I mean it, Gray. Don’t tell them I broke. I couldn’t bear it.”

“Who broke? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I would give anything to see her face right now. In my mind, I picture her smiling.

But she’s not, because right then the door is yanked open and as light floods the cell, I can see her. Bruises paint her skin in angry shades of purple and yellow. Most of her minor cuts have closed to dry, ragged scabs, and the bad gash above her eyebrow is now held together by stitches someone was kind enough to administer. Her eyes are puffy from crying and the blue of her irises is brighter than I remember. She looks scared. I’ve never seen fear on her face before and it freezes my heart.

Bree’s grip tightens on my hand. Her eyes glisten. Bruno drags us apart before any more tears can fall.

We’re locked in just as we were the previous night, with a lone candle that will burn through its wick long before morning. The gear I gathered sits near it, far out of reach.

Once Bruno’s and Kaz’s footsteps fade down the hall, I kick off my boot. I feel my way in the dark, peeling back the insole, finding the knife, flicking it open. It takes forever to saw through my ropes, but I manage. I grab the candle and gear bag, and untie Clipper. He digs through the supplies until he finds a spare radio. Leave it to Clipper to have extras of everything, even if it did make his pack heavier during our travels.

He fiddles with the thing for a few minutes and then hands it to me. “That should be the right channel. Reception could be poor—I’m not sure how far underground we are.”

“Xavier? Bo?” I ask hesitantly.

There is a crackle from the unit and then Xavier’s voice, slightly choppy. “Gray? Thank goodness. Bo was just about to head in after you—it’s been silent for way too long. What happened?” There is a muffled noise in the background. “Yeah, he’s fine, Emma.”

I give Xavier a quick rundown of our predicament, explaining how Clipper needs to open the Room of Whistles and Whirs to secure our freedom.

“If it’s not a control room like we suspect, we probably won’t be able to convince Titus to join our cause,” I explain. “But we’ll be able to leave so long as we get the door open. And that’s why I wanted to talk to you. If you don’t hear from us by nightfall tomorrow, something went wrong.”

“Wrong how?” he asks. “Like being held against your will wrong?”

“Probably.”

The unit crackles a few times and I can’t hear all of what he’s saying.

“. . . found more fuel in the back of the car, stored under the seats. Must have been why those other two exploded so easily when you shot them from the
Catherine
. Point is, we’ll have the means to run for a while if it comes to that.” Another crackle, muffled voices. “Emma, he’s okay. We’re speaking right now . . . No, you can’t talk to . . . Fine.”

“Gray?” Emma’s voice is so soft and delicate it is as if she stands beside me. “What happened?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I should have been there.”

“No, I’m glad you weren’t. Trust me.”

A pause. “Are you going to be okay?”

“Yes,” I say firmly. “We’ll be in touch tomorrow, and everything is going to be fine. I swear it.”

She lets out a tiny laugh. “You shouldn’t make such lofty promises, Gray. You might not be able to keep them.” It’s quiet for a moment and then her voice reaches me as a whisper. “I love you, Gray.”

That word. I would have given anything to hear her say it over the summer, to have had the chance to say it back, but now, more than ever, I understand its true power. How it can make you ache as much as it can make you soar. How it shouldn’t be said in return unless you mean it as deeply as the speaker. And that’s not something you can ever know. Not truly. There’s too much blind faith involved and that word is always,
always
a risk. You’ll get hurt. Or the other person will. You’ll stomp on someone’s heart without meaning to. Loving is foolish and risky, like trying to raise a building in a bog. Emotions don’t make strong foundations.

So when Emma says my name, repeats that word, asks me if I’m still here, I only tell her she’s breaking up, that she should put Xavier back on before the connection dies.

I end up getting Bo instead.

“There’s something else,” he says. “I was switching radio channels last night, wondering if you were trying to reach us on the wrong one, and overheard a staticky message:
Friends of the Resistance, please repeat: The phoenix thinks you should engage the enemy.
Then today, I came across it again. Different voice, different channel, same message. Clearer this time, too, like the source was closer.”

“The phoenix,” I say, puzzled, and I can feel my face screw up in concentration.

“Come on, Gray. Don’t you see? I thought that Ryder . . . maybe . . . because Owen said he was going to radio September when we were on the boat.”

And suddenly it is obvious.

“She got through to him! September somehow reached Ryder from Bone Harbor, told him all of our suspicions about AmWest, and this is his response, being passed on by Rebel supporters who stumble upon it. Ryder
Phoenix
thinks we should reach out to the Expats! Unless . . . Couldn’t
engage
mean battle as much as conversation?”