TWENTY-ONE
WHEN I REGAIN CONSCIOUSNESS, I am lying on a cot, in a room that appears to be a combination of wood and rock, as though someone tried to build a space that would fuse with the land. The blond girl stands with her back to me, talking to a man twice her age and nearly four times her size. He looks worried, his arms crossed atop his bulging stomach.
“You shouldn’t have brought them back here, Bree,” the man says.
“Luke, just look at them. Tell me you don’t see it and I’ll admit I’m wrong.”
Luke says nothing.
“And he said ‘where I came from.’”
Still nothing.
“And they’re twins.”
“I don’t care,” Luke says, shaking his head. “They’re wearing Order uniforms. They’re a threat to us all.”
“One of them is unconscious. Possibly in a coma due to a head injury.”
“Even still.”
“Owen should see them,” Bree retorts. “If he wants them dead, too, then fine. But I want to be sure.”
“All right, but I’m getting Clipper first. He’s already dealt with the unconscious one, but I won’t have that boy here a moment longer until it’s out.” Luke eyes me suspiciously before leaving the room.
“Who’s Clipper?” I ask, sitting up. The motion makes me dizzy.
“He specializes in removing tracking devices,” Bree says. “Here. Have some water.” She hands me a crudely shaped cup, which I drink from anxiously.
“Tracking devices?”
“You do know where you are, don’t you?” she asks, hands on her hips.
“Mount Martyr,” I say. I have to be. Bree is with the Rebels and she has brought me back to their headquarters. “Where’s my brother? I want to see him.”
She sits on the edge of the bed. “What’s your name?” Her eyes lock with mine as if she could stare the answer out of me.
“What’s yours?”
“Bree.”
“Nice to meet you.”
She frowns. “I’d say likewise, but you still haven’t told me who you are.”
“I know. And I don’t plan to.” I don’t trust her. She thought of shooting me, and Blaine, too, who was unconscious, as harmless as a fallen tree trunk.
“You’ll tell us eventually,” she says. “We have ways of making people talk.”
There is a knock on the door and a small boy walks in. He is a scrawny thing, with pinched eyes and large hands. He can’t be older than twelve or thirteen.
“This is Clipper,” Bree says. “He’s going to terminate your tracking device now.” The boy smiles proudly.
“I have no clue what you’re talking about,” I say.
“Of course you don’t,” Bree sneers. “They likely said you needed some shots and pills and a haircut, called it a Cleansing. And then you woke up the next day with odd pains in your neck. They put a tracker in you.”
I look at her blankly.
“As long as you are breathing and the tracker is implanted, they will get an accurate reading of your location back in Taem,” she continues. “So what Clipper does is remove the device. Once he’s got it out of you, it will cease to work and the Franconian Order will lose their precious reading. In their eyes, you’ll be good as dead. I explained that right, didn’t I, Clipper?”
“Sure did,” he announces.
This is definitely for the best. If Frank thinks I’m dead, I can start a new life. I can search out Harvey and figure out how to free Claysoot. And then, when the time is right and Frank has forgotten about me, I can return to Taem for Emma.
“Here,” Bree says, passing me a wooden spoon. “You’ll want to bite it. It’s going to hurt like heck.” She turns a cheek to me and reveals a nasty scar running from beneath her right ear toward her collarbone. She must have served in the Order at one point.
Clipper cleans an area of my neck and takes an odd contraption out of his bag. He hooks up a few wires and positions some menacing-looking tools beside me.
“Bree? Are you sure Clipper is qualified to be doing this?”
She frowns. “Clayton has been doing this for years; it’s how he earned the nickname Clipper. And he did mine when he was only eleven, so he can most certainly handle yours.” She smiles viciously and adds, “Chances are you won’t even scar that bad.”
“Ready?” the boy asks.
“Count to three,” I say. “So I know it’s coming.”
Clipper holds something I can’t see alongside my neck. “Okay,” he agrees. “Here we go. One . . . two . . .”
Without warning, pain jolts through my neck. Everything burns. There is a piercing stab, like a hot iron drilling into the muscles of my neck, then a wrench and a pull and something breaks free from my body. I’m screaming so loudly, it’s hurting even my own ears. I’m certain I’ve bitten the spoon in half.
Clipper presses something warm to my neck, but it is not relieving. Instead, I feel as though my skin is melting, burning, blistering. A moment later, he pulls the instrument away, and the pain begins to subside.
“You said you’d count to three!” I shout at him.
“Sorry.” He actually sounds sincere. “It only works if the person is relaxed. If I’d counted to three, you would have braced for it, and then it would have failed.”
“It’s true,” Bree says. She smiles as though she’s happy I suffered.
“Look,” Clipper says, holding out a mirror. “You barely even scarred.”
There’s now a pale red line on the side of my neck. He’s right. It doesn’t look nearly as bad as Bree’s. Hers looks as if Clipper got into a knife fight with her neck.
“Can I see the tracker?” I ask.
Clipper holds out a bowl. In it rests an insignificant metal strip, no longer than my thumb. I feel dirty, knowing they had planted something in me without my knowledge.
“All right, Clipper, that’s enough,” Bree says. “We don’t need to give him a full-blown lesson. I’m not even sure he’ll be staying around.”
“You’re kidding!” Clipper flings the tracking device into his bag. “I just went through that entire process so that you can kill the guy later?”
“What?” I reach for the knife tucked in my waistband, but it’s gone. I’m still too weak to fight even if I wanted. I think I need more water.
“We have to take precautions,” Bree says, shrugging. “And in the end, it’s not my call.”
“Whose decision is it?” I ask.
“Owen’s.”
“Who’s he?”
“Why don’t we go find out?” She points her gun at me and nudges my shoulder.
With my hands once again held up in surrender, she guides me from the room. We head through a series of narrow rock hallways, encountering no one along the way. I think of jumping Bree and making a run for it, but I’d probably wander in circles and be captured by someone before finding an exit. That, or collapse from exhaustion. And I can’t leave without Blaine.
We come to a halt and Bree wrestles a door open. “Inside,” she says, motioning with the gun. “Owen will be in momentarily.”
I don’t bother arguing. I walk through the doorway into a dark and dingy room. Rock surrounds me. It reminds me of the prison cell I shared with Bozo back in Taem, only it doesn’t smell quite as foul. A single overhead light renders the far side of the room visible. Against the wall is a lone chair and I drag my tired legs over to it. As soon as I sit, a man enters.
“Stay where you are,” he says, his voice oddly familiar. I slump further into the chair. From where I sit I can make out only his shins and feet—he wears thickly woven pants and a pair of strong boots—but the rest of him is in shadows.
“Bree said I should see you before we dispose of you,” he says. “Do you know why that might be?”
“She feels guilty murdering someone who had his hands up in surrender?” I suggest, my eyes still on his feet.
The man grunts. “Very clever. You Order folk have an odd sense of humor.” He shifts something from his shoulder and sets it on the ground. It looks like a bow, but I can’t be sure. Then he walks to the corner and grabs a tall slender pole and positions it before him. After flicking something on its trunk, brightness floods the room and he adjusts the light source until it is practically on top of me. It’s blinding and I drop my head further into my chest.
“Look at me,” the man demands. Again, his voice sounds familiar, but I can’t place it. I keep my head in my chest. “I said look at me,” he orders.
It’s too bright, but I lift my head slowly. I squint, opening one eye at a time. He takes a step backward when the light hits my face.
“You . . . ,” he starts, but then his voice fades out. “What’s your name?”
He sounds like Bree. “I don’t see the point in telling you if you’re going to kill me anyway.”
“Maybe we won’t.”
“Maybe you will.”
“Boy, just tell me your name. Please?” His voice has gone from demanding to kind, as if nothing could be more important than learning my name at this particular moment. But I’ve kept it to myself for so long now, it seems foolish to give it away just because someone’s asking nicely.
“Are you Blaine or Gray?” he offers when I remain silent. Those words make me flinch, open my eyes wider in an attempt to see him. How out of all the names did he pick these two to pair together?
“Neither,” I spit, but I know my reaction has proven otherwise.
“No, you’re most certainly one of them. I would bet my life on it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Why won’t he step into the light and show his face? The coward.
“Of course you don’t. You never knew me, but I knew you.”
The man is making me uncomfortable. I shrink as far as I can into the chair as he moves toward me. There is a moment when he changes from a black silhouette to a person with such recognizable features that I believe my eyes are tricking me, that the dehydration has altered my vision. Dark hair, wild as mine was before it was cut. Broad shoulders. Deep, blue eyes as bright as Blaine’s.
“I’m Owen,” he says when he finally stands before me. He stretches out a hand in greeting. “Owen Weathersby. You are?”
“Gray,” I say, struggling to stand. “I’m Gray.”
He pulls me into his chest, clutc hing an arm tightly around my back, and whispers, “Welcome home, Gray. Welcome home.”