Taem itself is growing restless. Elijah reports that fights are breaking out on the streets. Shops are being looted. A water conservatory was tipped as citizens overwhelmed guards in an effort to score a few extra gallons for their families. He says a few of these acts are our people, already at work stirring the pot. As for the others? They’re natural, cropping up among ordinary citizens. Sunder Day is meant to remind them of their freedom from the West, the day their lives became safe again, but this year, it’s doing the opposite. Before the Continental Quake and the War, there was always enough food, water ration cards didn’t exist, and the Order didn’t patrol streets all hours of the day. But Bea’s paper is the spark that started a wildfire. Stories that began in Bone Harbor crept east. You aren’t alone in wanting something better, those pages promised. And people are finally believing it.
Still annoyed with Bree, Clipper heads to bed early, and the rest of us pore over city maps and sewer lines late into the night. The Rally couldn’t be happening in a more central location. We have plenty of options to get there, but the sewers will be safest. Bree points out where we can split up, and we decide on a rendezvous point for later. By the time we settle into our cots, sleep does not come easily.
I close my eyes and try to conjure Blaine behind my lids. It shouldn’t be difficult, and yet I can’t picture him properly. A few features are off, foggy. I’ve forgotten the exact shade of his eyes and the angle his mouth would take when he’d shoot me a disapproving look. He’s already becoming a ghost, a memory, and yet the pain is as sharp as the day I lost him.
In the darkness a cot creaks.
I feel Bree beside me, lifting my sheet, sliding into my arms.
“What’s wrong?” I whisper.
She presses her face into my chest. I kiss the top of her head. The cot is not quite big enough for two, but that hardly seems like something to complain about.
“Nothing,” she responds. “Everything’s perfect now.”
We fall asleep like that—together. We’ll face tomorrow the same way. And if I have her—if we have each other—I know there is nothing we can’t face.
THIRTY-TWO
CLIPPER IS ALREADY GONE WHEN we wake. Bree bolts upstairs and peers out the windows with the hope she can still catch him.
“I wanted to tell him good luck,” she says, letting the curtain fall back into place. She glances over her shoulder at me, and her conflicted expression reeks of regret.
“Knowing Clipper, I doubt he’s still angry with you,” I say. “Don’t worry about it.”
She nods repeatedly, but I feel like she’s struggling to convince herself it’s true.
Elijah left sometime during the night to set up his post, but his cousin sees us off. He gives us extra scarves and hats to keep our faces shielded, and we head out as civilians file to the Rally downtown. We make it to the sewers without incident, and ditch our extra layers in the safety of the tunnels. Sammy breaks off first. Another block underground, and it’s Bree’s turn. My hand finds her wrist as she turns to leave.
“Are you okay? How’s your cheek?”
“Stitches itch, but I’m fine,” she says.
“Bree, I want you to know that—”
“No good-byes,” she demands. “I’ll see you in a bit.”
She kisses my cheek and is gone, her boots slapping against the water and waste. I watch her climb the ladder to the street. She doesn’t look back, not even as she pulls herself aboveground and out of sight.
It all feels too familiar, this sort of parting before the impossible. Last time she kissed my cheek and ran into Taem’s belly we left the city with her in my arms, unconscious and bleeding from a bullet wound to the shoulder. I put a fist to my forehead.
Nerves. Damn nerves.
When I was young, I was daring and bold and stupid. I jumped from high tree limbs. I loosened arrows too close to town. I wholeheartedly believed that I was invincible. But I see the truth now: I’m human. Frighteningly, fleetingly human. Like Blaine who is gone because of a bit of metal no larger than my pinky.
I count to ten and then make myself move. At the next junction, I hang a left. Exactly as planned, a ladder waits.
I grab a rung and climb.
My post is a top-floor office overlooking Taem’s public square from the southeast corner. Through the window, I can see the crowds beginning to gather, citizens and Order members alike. The raised platform I stood on last fall has been reconstructed since the fire, and its new beams look smooth as ice compared to the aged building at its rear.
I’ll have a decent shot. Maybe. It all depends on where Frank ends up standing. Stupid Rally security. If Order members weren’t posted on the roofs, in addition to the streets, this would all be a lot easier.
I lock the door even though the building is empty and climb onto the desk. I push away the ceiling panel directly above the computer. Reaching blindly, my fingers find the rifle Bree and Sammy planted when they arrived in Taem a few days earlier. Long barrel, attached scope, one magazine. A year ago I’d never heard of a gun, and now, while I still tend to mix up model names, I can list off basic anatomy. It’s a skill I’m not sure I’m glad to have acquired.
I crouch alongside the window and peer through the slats of the blinds. The wall behind the platform is alive with visuals of other domed cities. Similar squares. Steadily growing crowds. A group of Order members struggle to raise a canopy-like tent over Taem’s platform. Just what I need. Another obstacle to fire around.
I open the window, set up my shot in accordance with where I think Frank will sit onstage. Then comes the waiting.
I wish we were wired—me and Sammy and Bree. The silence gives me too much time to think about all the things that can go wrong. Did Clipper make the drop? Has Harvey uploaded the virus to override the alarm system? How many of the people filing into the square are on our side? When they burst into action, will others join, or will the Order silence them in a flash? And what about Emma? Emma, Emma, Emma.
Sometime around midday, the official festivities begin. The stage swarms to life, filling with high-ranking Order members and political officials. And of course, Frank.
I peer through the scope and mutter a curse.
Harvey is shielding Frank like a bodyguard. From the northwest corner of the square, Sammy won’t have a shot at all, not with the video-illuminated wall at the back of the stage and the canopy raised overhead. And Bree—at the other southern corner of the square—likely has the same shot I do: one that requires shooting through Harvey to get to Frank.
I can almost picture her reaching for the trigger anyway. Two in one, she’d say.
But what if he hasn’t gotten to upload the virus yet? I wait, breath held.