My classes are quiet. If there are any Niners who survived the Great Hylan High Purge, they are keeping to themselves. Bullying has come to a complete stop. For the first time since day one, Bumper walks down the halls unmolested. And my locker is tag free. Unfortunately, Doyle’s utopia gives none of us solace. We’re all on high alert.
I dread seeing Fathom. Imagining his disinterested face when I enter our room is brutal. With every step closer to our meeting room, I feel my heart rate accelerate. I’m jangly and loose-limbed, sunburned on the inside, and nervous like a child who has lost the hand of her mother in a big crowd of strangers. And I’m angry, too. What wall fell down inside me that has now let this boy—this arrogant, angry, moody punk—charge inside and seize territory?
And I’m disgusted with myself. Disgusted with the jumble of confusion in me, my suspicions whispering the truth in hushes, explaining it all in a voice that’s just below audible. You are feeling that boy in every cell.
“I thought he was coming around,” Bonnie says to me when I arrive. Clearly my face is broadcasting what I’m trying to fight inside my head.
I shrug. “Every day is something new.”
“Today he’s sullen,” Terrance warns.
I take a deep breath and reach for the door.
Fathom is in his spot beneath the window. He doesn’t look up, just stares into the slightly-less-little tear in the paper and says, “I believe that we should stop meeting.”
I stand as still as I can, willing myself not to run away.
“I am uncomfortable with these meetings and—”
“We can’t.”
He sits up and looks at me, confused.
“Why can’t we?”
I shake my head, not so much at him but to myself. I can’t tell him why these meetings have suddenly become important.
“You’re being forced?” he continues.
I nod. Oh, yes, Lyric. Remember why you’re doing this? You’re trying to get your family out of town. Remember that plan, stupid?
“My father ordered me to come to this school so your people will stop harassing us. I have no choice either, but I believe Fiona will help me with reading just as well. Meeting with you further is tedious. It also threatens to poison my traditions with—”
“Poison?” It’s an ugly word, and the insult makes my face sizzle with anger.
“I do not want to be a human,” he says. “I know it’s your job to make that happen. I won’t let it.”
Pop!
“What was that?” he asks.
I raise my finger to my lips, hoping he understands the international gesture for “Shut the hell up,” then I move to the door and listen. I know a gunshot when I hear one. The guards are shouting into the radio, demanding information, while a voice barks back at them: “Shots fired. Shots fired. We have a hostile in the building. One minute to lockdown. All nonmilitary personnel and police must get out of the halls. This is a military action. I repeat, all nonmilitary and police need to get into a classroom now for lockdown.”
I hear another pop!
I open the door and tentatively step into the hall. “What is going on?”
“Get back into the room, Lyric!” Bonnie shouts. “There’s a shooter in the school!”
“How?”
“Get in the classroom!” she bellows. I turn to do what she asks, but Fathom is behind me, blocking my way.
The door closes behind him, and then we hear a loud buzzer. Bonnie rushes and tries the knob.
“It’s locked,” she shouts as she rushes to another door, but it’s locked too, as is the next one. She pounds on a door and demands to be let in, but no one answers. “The auto locks have activated.”
“Auto locks?”
“They’re part of the school’s security measures. In an emergency they lock automatically. It keeps a shooter from going room to room on a killing spree,” another of the soldiers explains. “We can’t get in unless someone opens the door from the other side.”
“We’ve got to find a place for these kids to hide,” Bonnie orders as she grabs my arm and pulls me down the hall. She jerks me so hard, my bag falls and everything spills out. I watch the contents skitter across the floor: pens, notebooks, tampons. I lean down to grab them, but Bonnie pulls me up.
“Leave it!” she yells. I look up and see a soldier shoving Fathom into a janitor’s closet.
“An Alpha does not hide,” Fathom argues.
“Whoever is firing that gun is dangerous.”
“I am dangerous as well,” he says as his black blades fully extend. Shnikkt.
“Hostile has a grenade!” a voice shouts through a radio.
“Both of you in here, now!” Bonnie barks.
There is an explosion, and a black, acrid smoke drifts up the stairwell.
“Suspect has discharged an ordnance and is heading up the north stairwell!” another person shouts on the radio.
“What is an ordnance?” Fathom says just as Bonnie pushes me into the tiny room too.
“Keep quiet,” she orders, then slams the door tight, plunging us into darkness.