Chapter 12 #4
“That hurts you more than it hurts me, and we both know it,” he says, stepping past me and heading deeper into the room. I
whip around, closing the door. Aware of the microphones, I click on the wall of screens, so a pleasant hum of my DopaMine
feed fills the room, covering our words.
“What the hell are you doing here, Hux?” I hiss as he makes a show of looking around the room. He toes open the bathroom, fingers tracing
along my dress where it hangs as if it could be hiding a masked assailant.
“Told you. There was a threat,” he says, pacing over and tilting to look under the bed.
“You know what I mean. You’re an eighteen-year-old”—I mouth the word I’m afraid to say out loud—“terrorist. How are you now in the president’s security detail?”
Hux looks up from over the bed, a grin spreading over his face. “One upside of paranoia? High turnover. You think it was hard
for me to fake a good résumé?” He stands. “Although I’m not sure if I’m as good at faking as you are.”
“What do you want, Hux?” I whisper. He makes a show of patting down my bed as he holds my gaze, fingers tracing along the
coverlet. His dark hair falls into his eyes, and he pushes it back as he stands up.
“I saw your face,” he says, stopping his search to put his hands on his hips. There’s a moment of silence as the playfulness
falls away from him. “I know you’re scared. It’s one thing to think about doing all this. It’s another to sit at the table with a monster. I figured once that happened, you’d want out. So I’m here. Consider me your getaway car.”
I don’t want to tell him he’s right.
But he’s right.
Or, he was before I talked to Callum. Callum, who refuses to lie to me. Callum, who I trust more than anyone.
Hux, on the other hand, I don’t trust at all.
“I call bullshit,” I say. Hux dips back into the bathroom, peering into the shower.
“Bullshit, you say?” he asks, the playful mask back up.
“Bullshit. Becka—who is here, by the way—”
Hux nods, and I feel a flare of fury. Of course he knew. He’s always one step ahead.
I continue, “Well. She already told me you guys were trying to recruit me. Or she was. Which makes me wonder: Do the Machs even know that you’re here?”
Hux kneels in front of the sink and opens the cabinet, still making a show of searching for the cameras.
“I outrank her. She doesn’t know my comings and goings.” He pulls out a tube of lotion.
“Cut the shit, Hux. You’re not here to protect me. What I can’t figure out is why you don’t just kill him yourself. You’re
here. In the White House.”
Hux pops the lid of the lotion and takes a sniff as he stands. After a few moments of consideration, he pulls a not bad face. “And make him a martyr? No way. Until we can clearly expose him as a villain, he has to live.”
When he compresses the tube, the smell of cedar and rose fills the bathroom.
“I’m not joining you,” I say finally.
“Right. Because blowing up boats is wrong, but becoming a propaganda princess for a tyrant is totally fine.”
I snatch the lotion out of his slippery hands. “I am not a propaganda princess. Callum has a plan.” Or will have a plan. He promised he would.
Hux seems to sense the half-truth. “Oh, a plan? And what might that be?”
“I’m not telling you.”
“Because you don’t know it. Because his plan is probably no better than Lyceum’s plan, which . . . do you know that yet, either?
Are they going to send you a message by carrier pigeon? Chisel their secret plans onto a clay tablet in cuneiform?”
I toss the lotion aside, not breaking eye contact. “I could out you, you know. Tell President Graves who you are. We’ve all
seen what they do to terrorists like you.”
Hux reaches up then, grabbing my wrist and holding it against his hard chest. I pull, but he only uses it to reel me in. “You
don’t have it in you, Hart. We already know that.”
I pull once more, but his grip is like a vise. “And maybe that’s a good thing.”
He keeps me against his chest, his pine-colored eyes boring into mine. I hate that my nerve endings spark at his touch. I hope he can’t feel my heart, which is beating so hard that it feels like it’s shaking my ribs.
“Leave with me now, Ripley. The Machs are going to make their move soon. Whatever is planned is already in motion. I can’t
stop it. And if you don’t come with me, I can’t protect you.”
My eyes bounce between his and his nostrils flare as he senses I’m close to figuring something out.
They can’t kill the president. But they could hurt people who make the president look good—people like his beloved son, or
me. If I’m with Callum, I’m in danger from the Machs.
“You can’t protect me? Or you won’t?” I whisper.
He tongues his cheek. “I won’t,” he says finally.
This time, when I yank my hand back, he lets me go.
“Are you going to hurt Callum?” I blurt. My voice breaks at the utter helplessness I feel.
Hux walks back to the door, stopping when his hand reaches the handle.
“No,” he says. And for a second, I wonder if I’m imagining the weariness in his voice. “We’re not going to kill Callum, Ripley.”
He twists the knob. “Speaking of, tell your idiot to grease that hinge before he tries to sneak in here again.” As he goes,
he flicks something at me. I know what it is even before it finishes its midair arc, but I can’t help but catch it anyway.
The poker chip.
I snatch the pillow off the bed and hurl it at Hux, instead catching the door as he closes it. It flops harmlessly against the wood and then bounces to the floor.
Something catches my eye as I turn back to the bed—
A book. Not just any book—the one I pulled from the archives earlier. Before Becka caught me.
The Lord of the Rings. Better than a carrier pigeon, I suppose. Maybe Lyceum isn’t as dead in New Washington as I thought. As Becka and Hux think.
I lift the book, spine cracking. A note falls out:
Saffron changed Orion’s mind.
Because once Orion joined Saffron at the library, everything changed.
This is their plan, then. They expect me to recruit Callum to Lyceum. The president’s son. To the rebellion.