Chapter 9
It’s both harder and easier to get into the server room now. As I feared, Ms. Astor has been replaced by a wide-angle lens
and a speaker that sits atop the desk. So it’s extremely easy to slip out of the classroom. However, the halls are still filled
with Hammers, who seem to enjoy projecting their obvious misery on everyone else.
One of them—a shorter, stockier one with a surprisingly deep voice—stops me and asks, “Where do you think you’re going?” Thankfully,
all it takes is me putting my hand lightly on my stomach and saying something about monthly issues to get him to hold his
arms up and back away like I’ve showed him that I’m holding my guts in my palm.
Big bad fascists are scared of periods. Noted.
Now, I sit in front of the screens, my boots up on the panel as I rip at an old piece of licorice with my teeth. One screen is dominated by raw footage of a draft dodger being dragged out to the data mines, eyes wide and almost animal in their fear, blood trickling from a wound in their mouth.
I look away quickly. The display in front of me is swallowed by Callum Graves’s face and my heart jumps into my throat. I
can’t hear the sparkly music, but they’ve added hearts and slow-motion effects to his war footage. He runs, brushes a hand
through his perfect golden hair. His lips pull into a smile, with animated glitter appearing over his perfect teeth. The clips
transition to slow-motion struts in a perfectly cut suit. And then—my heart stops—blurry beach footage, where he tugs a shirt
off and jogs along the sand.
I cover my mouth at the ridiculousness of it, even as another thought bubbles in the back of my mind.
Callum is stateside? It must be a furlough—maybe for political reasons? His father can’t run again, so it’s not like he’s
here for the campaign, but maybe he’s endorsing that senator from South Texas? I’m not sure why it makes me smile, to know
he’s not on the front lines anymore.
A flash in the upper right corner of the screen catches my eye. Orange flames engulf a yacht, the heat of the fire distorting
the air.
I don’t even notice that my boots have fallen to the floor, or that I’ve slowly pushed myself up to my feet as I rake my eyes
over the footage of the wreckage. The yacht is ripped open, lolling to one side as the ocean slowly reclaims it in real time.
Smoke billows upward, roiling and spinning up into the sky.
In the ocean, divers bob. Coast guard vessels. They only send those for search and rescue.
I hate that I lean closer, my eyes scanning the choppy waters as though I will be able to find a survivor out of sheer will.
Instead, the camera zooms in on the New Florida coastline.
My gut pitches. Hux pulled metadata from a file that looked just like this.
Battery acid, mercury, lead. Seven million tons, Hux said.
And two children.
A stillness fills me as I watch the yacht dip lower and lower in the water.
I hate that I feel a tug of conflict, like there are little metal hooks on my ribs and reason yanks on one side while empathy
pulls on the other.
The news will show this destruction, but I know full well that it would gloss over the massive damage these men do. If the
accusations are true and they were looking to dump poison into the Gulf of America, it would never reach anyone’s DopaMine
channels. I wonder if—when—they find the bodies, if they’ll call it an accident, or use it to demonize the rebellions even
more, to enact more laws that chip away at what world we have left.
Suddenly, I am overwhelmed by the need to find him. Hux. If we could talk—if I could explain, show him what Lyceum is doing—I
could get him to see that. He said himself he hasn’t killed anyone, and he doesn’t want to.
Once I’m sure the coast is clear, I slip out into the hallway and march back toward the classroom. It’s about time for weapons practice, so it should be easy enough to grab Hux.
I make a left just as two Hammers turn down the opposite end of the hallway. They walk in step, eyes set forward. The one
on the left is the one I saw before—the one who is terrified of menstruation. But as I clear the corner, their eyes snap to
me, and it feels like I’ve missed a step.
“I have a pass, if you need to see it,” I lie, hoping that they just take my word for it and keep walking. But they’re marching
toward me.
“Ripley Hart?” the smirking one says, and I’m caught. Animal terror seizes me.
They don’t wait for confirmation before they put their hands on me, one grabbing each arm.
“What the hell is going on?” I start, trying to keep the panic out of my voice—and failing.
“You’re coming with us,” the stocky one says.
I know resisting doesn’t matter. I know that.
But there’s something instinctual that happens when they dig their fingers into the flesh of my upper arm. I struggle, but
my flailing only makes them grip harder as they haul me down the hallway. Before I can say another word, I’m outside, the
bright light hitting me with a wallop.
I shut my eyes hard against the pain, an overload of sensation and panic that almost feels loud.
Thwacka thwacka thwacka—
I squint, chancing a look around. Ahead of me, a giant hovercopter sits perched on the dead grass outside the training ground.
It looks out of place, a jet-black beast of war sitting where a playground once stood.
Where I met Nef, where I first told her stories about my life Before, a blend of fact and fantasy, about saving the world and falling in love with a boy.
“What is this?” I yell, but they don’t answer.
Because there is no good reason why they’d be putting me on a hovercopter. In fact, there’s no bad reason, either. It’s worse
than that. If they know about the server room or my involvement with Lyceum or my birthday, they would just put me in a shuttle
that would take me to an airport so I could be shipped off to Europe to fight with the next batch of army recruits.
If I’m worth all this trouble, something even worse is happening. I’m going to be an example. I’m going to be the cautionary
tale beamed into everyone’s DopaMine feeds.
The sound is deafening as they half drag me to the door, wind whipping around me, pulling strands out of my loose braid. Two
more masked guards pull me up into the craft.
One makes a buckling motion with his hands, and I understand. There’s no point in fighting, but my body hasn’t gotten the
message. It practically vibrates with my heartbeat as I sit back, fingers fumbling to secure the seatbelt across my chest.
I’ve barely clipped it in when the copter shoots off the ground.
The sound is so deafening it hurts, and I clap hands over both ears as the ground below us seems to yank away. I shut my eyes tight. This is much faster and higher than the hovercar, and turbulence buffers us until my stomach roils.
Something taps my knee, and I open my eyes to see the masked guard holding out a pair of earmuffs. I take them, tentatively,
and then put them on.
The sounds around me muffle into a low hum, and I swallow as I try to steady my breathing.
I can’t see the faces of the guards around me. They all have headsets on their helmets, and I can see their lips moving. They’re
talking to each other, and to the pilot. But I can’t hear what they’re saying, and I can’t ask questions.
Like always, I’m with people, but completely alone.
I look out of the window. We’re headed east, but I know nothing more than that.
I press my forearms hard into my chest, like the outside pressure can slow my thundering heart, as I wonder if I’ll ever see
the smoggy West Coast sunset again.
I wonder if I’ll ever see any sunset again.
I don’t mean to fall asleep, but the sensory deprivation and sheer amount of panic adrenaline my body has endured over the
past seventy-two hours have left me with no choice.
We land with a lurch that wakes me. Lights from high surrounding buildings blink like stars against the darkness, but there is no distinguishing landmark that I can see, even though I’m still not sure I’m fully awake.
Someone rips the earmuffs off my head as another person opens the door.
I check my chin for drool as I half fall out of the hovercopter.
Find a way to run, my mind tells me, and I blink against the hurricane of the copter blades as the engine dies down. We’re high up, I can tell
that. But short of jumping and hoping for the best, I can’t think of an escape plan.
I focus on not tripping over my own feet as I make my way to the edge of the hoverpad, where a small group of people have
assembled as if they’re waiting for me. One woman in a red pantsuit leans into a man in a soft gray sweater, lips moving ceaselessly.
When we approach, she snaps a sharp gaze up.
“You’re late,” she barks at the guards behind me. Before anyone can reply, she motions crisply. A nightstick taps into my
back and then we’re walking.
“You couldn’t have given her a helmet or something?” the man in the sweats gripes. I’m too slow to flinch away as he reaches
for the matted blond mess above my left ear. His fingers, at least, are gentle. “It’s going to take ages to figure out this
hair and we needed her camera-ready an hour ago.”
And then I’m awake again, suddenly, another rush of adrenaline to make me hyperaware.
Camera-ready. What are they going to do to me?
I stumble down a set of stairs—the Hammers helpfully grip at my arms past the point of pain, so I barely need to hold up my own weight—into a hallway with white speckled linoleum and fluorescent lights.
Massive racks of clothes line the right side, and a woman with a headset and a clipboard steps back to let us pass her.
“Seriously?” Red Pantsuit asks the Hammers, jutting a manicured fingernail to where they hold me. “If she bruises, I’m making
you put on the body makeup.”
Thankfully, the mention of makeup is enough to disperse the guards. In their place, plainclothes people rush in, the room
transforming into a hive of activity.
“What’s happening?” I ask, trying to remember how to breathe.