“How did you find us?” I ask.
“Harvey.” Clipper’s driving is rough and twitchy. About as horrible as mine. “The Order thought the shooter was moving by the sewers, and they wanted to guide him toward Union Central. Harvey told me where to get you.”
The gas must have been a last resort, thrown in by the Order after the signal from Bree’s Forgery stopped transmitting.
I twist around. Through the rear window, I watch another few Order vehicles skid to a stop and surround the sewer access point. The drivers glance in our direction right when we turn a corner. They could assume our vehicle is filled only with other Order members. Then again, I feel like we’re bound to run out of luck eventually.
“You should see the feeds, guys,” Clipper says. “Everyone’s rioting. Not just in Taem, but the other domed cities, too.”
“But the alarms,” Bree says as the vehicle swerves around another corner and onto the main road. It’s eerily deserted. Union Central looms ahead, looking stoic behind its majestic gate.
“They’ll update,” Clipper promises. “It takes a few minutes.”
“Harvey never mentioned a delay.”
“That’s because—”
A cobweb blooms over the windshield and Clipper slumps forward. The weight of his arm yanks the wheel left and we collide with a building. My head hits the seat in front of me. Smoke billows from the front of the vehicle.
“Clipper!” Bree shrieks. She leaps from the car and pulls open the front door. “Clip. Dammit! Help me, guys. Help me!”
Sammy is clutching his middle and drawing shallow breaths. He’s not bleeding—not that I can see—but he seems incapable of moving. I crawl over him and am in time to help catch Clipper’s weight as Bree pulls him from the front. There’s a gurgle of blood at the boy’s lips, a surge of it on his chest.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Bree mutters.
“Clipper, you hang in there.” I put a palm against his chest. The blood doesn’t slow. “You stay with us.”
I glance up at the bullet hole in the windshield. The angle, the aim . . . There’s a gunman in one of the nearby buildings right now. Probably with us still in his sights.
I take Clipper’s hand in mine. He tries to tell us something, but coughs instead. Bree screams words my ears don’t register.
Clipper looks young. He looks so young.
“We’re going to make this okay, Clipper. You’re going to be fine.”
But already, his grip on my hand is slipping.
Damn, he looks like a kid.
Cars screech to a halt behind us. Order members spill into the streets. I yank the twine bracelet off Clipper’s wrist.
The boy’s head is slack against his chest as we’re dragged away. He looks directly at me, but there is no light in his eyes.
THIRTY-FOUR
BREE CLENCHES HER JAW AS the car speeds up the street. The bandage on her cheek is dark and wet, stitches pulled from her screaming.
I feel the coarse weave of Clipper’s bracelet with the pad of my thumb.
Thirteen.
I was just coming into my own as a hunter at that age. I spent my evenings terrorizing Maude by pulling the Council Bell and my days flirting with Emma. I goaded Blaine whenever possible but silently wanted him to think the world of me. Anything was possible. Even in a world where life ended at eighteen, I thought I could do anything.
All the things Clipper could have done, all the things he might have been . . . They’ve been taken from him. Stolen. Stripped right out of his hands.
He was a kid. A damn kid. Still growing. Looking a little different each day.
Thirteen.
The rage in my chest threatens to take over.
I reach for Bree, thread my fingers through hers. She squeezes back.
It’s just enough to keep me from shattering.
In Union Central, the alarm flashes red, its cry as standard and plain as ever.
We are dragged not to a holding cell, but to the enclosed and vacant training field. The oblong stretch of grass is surrounded by screens, each filled with chaos. In the downtown square, flames dance from building windows and smoke trails domeward. Where people have fallen, their bodies are trampled by those still fighting. The forces wearing dark uniforms outnumber the rest. Additional vehicles are driving into the square. From every angle, the Forgeries look endless.
Though I don’t recognize all the locations, I see similar uproars on other screens. Haven, perhaps. Radix, Lode.
We are outnumbered. Outsmarted. Outmatched. Without the fail-safe, the people are doomed to be overrun.
The Forgery guiding me pushes between my shoulder blades, urging me to walk faster. We are brought to a line painted on the grass and told to kneel.
“I can’t . . . breathe,” Sammy gasps, “let alone . . . kneel.”
He is kicked in the back of the knees. Bree and I submit without a fight.
From an observation deck, Frank and Harvey watch the whole thing. The scientist’s shoulder is bandaged from Bree’s misfired shot, and when he sees us kneeling and beaten, his mouth twitches. Into a smile? A grimace? I can’t tell.
“Traitor,” Bree snarls.
I’m about to admit that she was right all along, that Harvey was never working with us. His plan existed to pull all the Rebels and Expats from hiding, to draw us out for the slaughter. But then . . .
The alarm changes.
The blaring cuts off and morphs into a staccato mess. It is not a song but a cacophony. The notes seem to surge and soften in all the wrong places, to pulse and spasm. Frank clasps his hands over his ears. The Forgeries do the same. I would, too, if they hadn’t bound my hands together upon exiting the car. The noise is nothing but a deafening, convulsive fit.
“What the hell is wrong with it?” Frank yells.
“Not sure, sir.” Harvey tilts his head as he listens, like he’s admiring the madness of it all. “I’ll go check.”
He slips inside. Frank returns his attention to the Forgeries on the field and draws a finger across his neck.