Frozen (7 page)

“There are still cameras watching it.”

“Once we get the survivors on our side, Clipper will see to them. Remember his discussions with Ryder before we left—that idea to take several hours of video footage and loop it indefinitely? To anyone watching from Taem’s control room it will
look
like Group A is as deserted and dead as always, only we’ll be able to start recruiting beyond the survivors still there.”

“And the Forgery?” I ask.

“We’ll get rid of him as soon as we’re through the Outer Ring. The Order will think we’re anywhere but Group A ‘extending our reach,’ and he’ll be dead before he’s able to discover and give them headquarters’ location.”

I nod silently. I heard these plans, all this logic, a dozen times over—mostly in meetings before we left Crevice Valley. I’ve even repeated some of them to Bree when her reservations about the mission get the best of her. But now, as I sit here listening to my father, thinking about Blaine’s body back in the snow and how quickly life can get thrown off course, I catch myself feeling doubtful. There are so many details in our plan that could go wrong as easily as they could go right.

Owen turns toward me, his features extremely calm given all that’s happened. “You positive you’re okay?”

No.

But I don’t say it. Because I want to be unfazed like him. I want killing that Forgery to have no weight on my conscience.

“If you decide you want to talk about it,” he says, “or about anything, ever, you just say the word. I’ll make time.”

If he were Blaine he’d know I want to talk right now. He’d be able to read my silence as well as my words. But my brother is not here. And right then, another fear hits me.

Frank wanted Harvey back in order to make the limitless Forgeries. That was always his goal—a Forgery that could be replicated over and over. But when I brought Harvey to Taem in the fall as a decoy, Frank casually mentioned that he didn’t need Harvey’s help anymore. Which makes me wonder if he’s already accomplished it. The limitless variety.

“What if I have to kill another Forged version of Blaine?” I blurt out. “I don’t think I could do it.”

“You can,” my father says. “You will do what you must and you will do it without hesitation.”

“An order; how reassuring.”

“It was meant to be a compliment. I’m saying that you are a stronger person than most because you do what needs to be done even when those actions are unpleasant.” Owen scratches at his chin, stares into the sea of trees before us. “It’s supposed to hurt,” he adds. “Seeing something like that.
Doing
something like that. If it didn’t hurt, you’d be no better than a Forgery yourself.”

He stands and drops a square of cloth into my hands. “Clean yourself up.” A smile flickers beneath his beard. “You look like hell.”

EIGHT

THE NEXT DOZEN DAYS PASS
as imitations of one another. We wake in the morning and break down camp. We walk for hours that seem as endless as the Wastes itself. Xavier guides Jackson now, who spends half his time staring off into the trees like he might run for it and the other half eyeing our team members with a look so vicious it gives me chills. I can’t figure him out, though, because each evening after raising our tents, the first thing he does is play a round of Rock, Paper, Scissors with Aiden. One night Rusty even calms long enough to let the Forgery scratch him behind the ears. It makes Jackson smile—a true, genuine smile—and for a split second it’s like I’m seeing through the replica and into the real Jackson. The one who must have grown up in Dextern, seeing as neither Bree nor I recognize him as one of our people.

Emma continues to lead the horses, but Sammy will sometimes lift Aiden from the saddle and carry him on his shoulders. It always sends the boy into a fit of giggles. Watching the three of them together reminds me of a funeral in Claysoot. Emma stood at my side, and Kale slept in my arms, and something about it felt right, made me think I might actually want a family of my own someday. Not yet. Definitely not yet. Although when Sammy glances at Emma and gives her his goofy, joking smile, I start thinking I could be ready if I had to. I could be whatever Emma needed, so long as she would stop smiling back at him the way she currently does.

I fall in line beside Bree when we hike. She’s back to her old self, the bitterness from the archery match and the surprising tenderness that followed it that evening both replaced with constant heckling. I mention that I have blisters from my boots and she tells me to stop whining. I offer advice in a team meeting and she counters it just to watch me frown. I climb a tree to check the trail behind us for pursuers and she criticizes my form, shouts out grip advice from the snow below like I can’t see the handholds myself. The only time she doesn’t seem to have something to say is when I bring up my showdown with Forged Blaine, wondering aloud how doing something right can also feel wrong. She just squints at me, her face somewhat pained, before turning to stare off at the horizon.

Still, she comes to my tent each night to fall asleep beside me, and each time I return from my watch she’s gone. There’s always a sting in my chest when I find my sleeping bag empty. I start wondering if she’s leaving me, drifting away just like Emma. Before I can ever make sense of it, a new day will break—one where Bree and I are back to our typical banter, as comfortable and familiar as a pair of worn gloves, wearing each other thin.

The landscape grows flatter and sparser, forests trading themselves for rolling plains and valleys. The snow thins beneath our feet until we can finally see earth again. Frozen earth, but visible. I think it is warmer, too, but I’m so numb after weeks of exposure that I could be tricking myself into believing it. I pull off my hat and let my jacket hang open, relish in the fact that it no longer hurts to draw a deep breath.

“We
are
heading a bit south these days,” Clipper says when I ask him about the temperature. He shows me on his location device, which he’s been using sparingly to prolong its battery life. The Wastes ends soon, butting up against a massive chunk of blue that spreads north through about two-thirds of the country. Clipper calls it the New Gulf. The AmEast–AmWest borderlines run along the Gulf’s western shore, and at its northernmost end, the water forks into two bays, long and narrow, like rabbit ears. Group A is supposedly located somewhere between them, in AmEast’s Western Territory.

But for now, our destination is Bone Harbor. I spot it on the eastern edge of the Gulf, miles south from where the water forks into those two ears. No one has said anything in days—not even Clipper, who sees how close we are—but we can all feel it: hope.

Reaching Bone Harbor means a good meal and a bath, but above all, it marks a crucial turning point in our trek. We will be over halfway to the end, the hardest part behind us. I’ve never been on a boat, but I’m excited for the experience, if only to give my legs a rest. Bree warns that the passage across the Gulf could make me ill, and I laugh in her face.

“It’s only water. I’ve swum in it. Why would sailing on it be any different?”

“I’ll remind you of that when you’re throwing up over the side,” she says.

The evening before Clipper estimates we’ll arrive at the Gulf, I have my only conversation with Bree that doesn’t include her arguing with me or criticizing my faults. In fact, it’s rather civil, completely void of judgment.

The team is relaxing around the fire after dinner when she sits down next to me and says, “It’s terrible afterward. The feeling. You walk through it again and again and wonder what you could have changed, how you could have acted differently, if you missed something that would have spared them.”

It takes me a moment to realize she’s talking about killing someone, finally responding to my comments about the Forgery of my brother.

“That is exactly what I’m going through,” I admit. “Every day I reanalyze it.”

“The analyzing will stop eventually. The nightmares might not. I still dream about my first sometimes.”

“What happened?” She’s never told me the details and I’m suddenly curious. “Unless you don’t want to talk about it.”

“No. It’s fine.” But she stares at the flames for a long while before she speaks again. “I was on a scouting mission with the Rebels. We’d all split to go our own ways and had orders to meet up two hours later. I got turned around and couldn’t find my way back to the rendezvous point, so I dropped my gear and climbed a tree to get my bearings. When I came down, there were two Order members standing there. I don’t know how I didn’t see or hear them coming.

“They had their guns on me and one of them pinned me against the tree. I’ve blocked out what he looked like, but I remember his breath was hot when he said—I’ll never forget the words—‘She’s awful pretty, Mack. Maybe we should have some fun with her first.’”

I can’t believe she’s never told me this before. I’m gaping at her, horrified for what comes next.

“The instant that guy reached for his belt, I kneed him in the gut, pulled a knife from my boot, and slit his throat. The second guy ran off as soon as I snatched up my rifle. I didn’t even bother following him because I was too busy crying like an idiot and staring at the man who was bleeding out at my feet.

“For weeks I kept blaming myself for being so careless, leaving my weapon in plain sight, not hearing them coming. I visited the hospital in Crevice Valley a couple times for meds; my headaches were so bad I couldn’t sleep. I just wanted a do-over. I wanted to repeat the whole day so it could turn out differently.”

“That creep had it coming, Bree,” I say firmly. “He deserved what he got.”

“So did the Forgery you killed, but that doesn’t mean you wanted it to happen.” She turns so that she is looking directly at me. Her blond hair is dark with sweat, her cheeks caked with dirt. She looks wild in the firelight. “I’m not happy you had to kill someone, Gray. But I am glad you did it before he killed Emma. Or worse, you.”

She stands up quickly, and before I can say another word, she is gone.

We’ve been keeping up a blistering pace since dawn, and it is at midafternoon the following day, when my feet feel as though they might dissolve to dust, that the land before us stops. We crest a bluff and the earth drops away, revealing pebbles and sand and blue. Blue, as far as the eye can see.

The New Gulf.

Its surface is darker than the sky and speckled with white rifts that build and surge and throw themselves at the shore as though they are alive.

“Waves.” Bree sighs, and she opens her arms to the wind. It is salty when I breathe and the air feels wrong against my skin, but Bree seems so at home in these elements.

“This is the best birthday present ever,” she says to no one in particular. I realize I have again lost track of the days. It is the twenty-third already, a year to the day after her Heist from Saltwater. Today she is seventeen.

“We’re only a few hours from Bone Harbor,” Owen announces, “but let’s set up camp for the night. We’ll head in tomorrow morning with the traders to draw less attention.”

By the time the tents have been raised and dinner eaten, the group is in nothing short of good spirits as we sit around a dying fire.

Sammy and September are singing in harmony from across camp, him tapping out a rhythm on a piece of driftwood while Emma bobs her head to the beat. Even Bree hums along as she cleans her rifle. To my left, Bo has fallen asleep with his feet dangerously close to the fire. Jackson gives Aiden a piece of tall grass to tickle Bo’s nose. Each time Bo bats at it like he’s swatting a fly, Aiden descends into a fit of giggles.

I catch myself smiling.

Because there’s a sense of tranquility among us, an optimistic current you can’t ignore.

We’ve almost made it. We’re nearly there.

NINE

AS THE TEAM BEGINS TO
retire, Xavier takes his post for evening watch. Sammy guides Emma to her tent, his hand on the small of her back. She smiles, looking shy, but not trying to avoid the contact either.

I glance away and catch Bree stalking from camp. She slides down a bluff, disappearing from view as she makes for the ocean. I dart after her.

“And they say you’re a quiet tracker,” she says, turning on me almost instantly. “I heard you coming a mile off.”

“What are you doing? Everyone’s settling in for the night.”

“That’s exactly what I
am
doing.” I stand there, confused. “Come on,” she says. “I’ll show you.”

I scramble down the bluff. The moon is waning but the sky is cloudless, and being free of the forest, its light seems to go on forever. There’s a dark shadow on the beach. Bree’s tent. It’s facing the water, far enough back that the surf can’t swallow it, but close enough that the ocean is an endless roar that ebbs and flows.

“That’s your tent,” I say.

“Good work, genius.”

I’m about to ask her why she chose to set up camp so far from the others when something she admitted during a game of Bullshit hits me. “You haven’t been able to sleep well since your Heist,” I say. “You miss the sound of waves.”

“You remember that?”

“I remember everything you said that night.” Her lips press into a sly smile, like she’s impressed. Or amused. “So you’re planning on falling asleep with the ocean, then?” I add quickly.

“Yup.” She raises an eyebrow, jabs me in the chest. “You should stay with me.”

“Does this mean you’ll be sneaking out of your own tent before dawn, then? Or am I supposed to go back to mine after my watch?”

Bree frowns. “I really don’t want to argue tonight.”

But that’s what we do best,
I feel like saying.

“Let’s just sit for a while,” she offers. “Deal?”

I have plenty of time before my watch and since I’m not terribly tired, I agree. We start a small fire and sit facing the ocean, the tent at our backs. The salt is strong on the air and the waves endless. They seem too restless to help a person sleep. Just when one has fully died out, a new one comes crashing against the land: a constant disruption.