Taken (Erin Bowman)

THIRTY-FIVE


FEET RACE ABOUT MY BODY. I can hear the gunfire erupting, but in a distant way, my ears ringing so intensely that everything simply hangs in space. I clutch my stomach, the place where I felt the bullet strike. I ache. I burn. I squint through the smoke. Harvey is gone. Flames lick across the platform, racing up the stake that held him just moments earlier. Someone has started a fire in the madness—as a distraction to help Frank escape the now violent square, perhaps. Or maybe it was Bree. But why?

The crowd is a slew of panicked shouts.

“Rebels are here! Undercover!”

“No, it’s AmWest!”

“They’re trying to kill the boy.”

“They’re trying to save Harvey.”

Not a single accusation is true. And there are certainly no Rebels in the square. None other than Bree and myself, although perhaps it is possible she was trying to take me out. But why? Was this the plan devised behind closed doors? That I should die so Harvey and Bree could return? Or maybe it is just another diversion, Bree making things up as she goes.

I continue to hold my stomach, but the heat is intensifying quickly. I’m pretty sure my arm is on fire, but I am too stiff to shed my shirt. The platform is empty. I am alone, burning. I’m trying to come to peace with it, trying to accept that this is where I will die, when a pair of arms hook beneath my shoulders and drag me from the flaming stage. I can’t see who they belong to, and I don’t care. I let them pull me down a deserted alley and to safety. Hands rip the canvas bag holding the vaccine from my back and strip me of my shirt. Strong feet stamp out the flames that eat the material. I lie there, my back slumped against a stone wall until my senses return to me. The stinging in my eyes fades, my lungs cease screaming for air. And then my rescuer comes into view.

“You?” I mumble. “Why are you helping me?”

“You think you’re the only one who’s in on what’s happening here? You don’t think there have been others helping your crazy mission?” Bozo stands before me, his body hunched at an awkward angle as if he’s forgotten how to stand up straight.

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s a lot of people on the Rebels’ side in Taem. Just because we didn’t know about the virus doesn’t mean we weren’t ready to help when Ryder made the calls.” He seems stronger out of his cell, his voice more steady, his limbs looser. His fingers still race in odd, twitching patterns, tapping at the wall he leans against, but without his tattered prison garb, he could almost pass for a civilized member of society.

“But . . . why would Ryder call on a crazy prisoner for help?”

“Ryder and I grew up together. We tried to run from Frank together once, too. I was stupid and got myself hurt. Had to tell Ryder to go on without me.”

“You!” It’s suddenly so clear. He knew about the test groups the first day I met him, I’d just thought he was talking about something else. How had I not seen it? He’s not crazy, not Bozo at all.

“You’re Bo Chilton!” I declare.

He shoots me a wild grin. “Guilty.”

“How did you get out of the prison?”

“Bree had her own set of orders from Ryder, and she paid me a visit while Mozart was playing, broke me out on the spot.”

I should be happy about this. This plan helped me avoid shooting Harvey. This plan led to my being saved from the fire and yet I am furious. Livid.

“She kept me in the dark. That lying, back-stabbing, stubborn . . . And she shot me!”

“Oh, quit your whining,” Bo says. “She shot you with a rubber bullet and it was necessary. The others Ryder called on are fighting right now, keeping the Order busy so that you can get out of here. It’s a cover, don’t you see? A fight breaks out, the square goes up in flames, and you guys run in the thick of it.”

I look down at my stomach, the place I had been clutching in pain. There is blood, but not nearly as much as I expect. Beneath my sweaty palm is a nasty welt, red and raised and already blossoming into a bruise. Painful, yes, but not deadly. If anything, the wound I should worry about is my burned left arm, blistering from the shirt I have since shed.

“Nothing is more convincing than authentic shock, and you wouldn’t have acted the same if you knew the true plan,” Bo continues. “We only get one shot at this, and Ryder thought this was the best chance at getting all three of you out alive.”

“Harvey!” I exclaim, looking back toward the square. “Where is he?”

“He got hit by some crossfire—I saw that much. And then someone dragged him off the stage. I was told to get you both, if I could, but I think we’ve lost him. And if you and Bree want to get out of here, we have to move. Now.”

And right then, when her name is not included, I know I can’t leave without her.

“We have to go back for someone,” I say.

“Yes. Bree,” Bo agrees. “She is meeting us back at Union Central. We’ll hop a car from there.”

“Of course Bree. But Emma, too. I have to go back for Emma.”

He smiles a crooked grin. “Emma. She spoke about you.”

I pause, confused. “You know her?”

“We were cell mates for a few days, until they discovered that she was handy with a scalpel.”

“And she talked about me?”

“Wouldn’t shut up. I had to launch into real dark stories to keep her quiet. Stories about the Laicos Project and Claysoot and Frank’s Heists.”

So she knows. Emma knows everything. I picture her now, somewhere in Union Central, walking around with that burden of knowledge. Knowledge she can’t share with anyone. Her only proof is the word of a crazy man; if she spoke up, she’d be deemed as insane as him. Emma is free of her cell but still locked in a prison. I may not be ready to forgive her, but I love her too much to leave her stuck in that state.

“We have to get her. After we meet up with Bree.”

Bo taps his fingers frantically against the wall. “We can try.”

And in that moment, trying is enough.

I am on my feet quickly, ripping an undamaged section from my discarded shirt and wrapping it around my burned arm. I sling the bag holding the vaccine on my back, Bo hands me his rifle, and we take off down the deserted alley.


Union Central is once again in an uproar, the alarm jarring people into action. Workers who had vacated the shelters since the previous Code Red now scurry to get back in them. Order members race to organize troops and head downtown. It is not hard for Bo and me to blend in among them. People are too panicked to really look at anyone’s face.

We meet up with Bree near the dining halls. When I see her, a million thoughts fly through my head: relief, hatred, betrayal. It’s confusing, and not knowing which one to act upon, I simply glare at her. She, on the other hand, runs to me and throws her arms around my neck with such force that I stumble backward.

“You’re okay,” she gasps, as if she doesn’t believe it’s possible. Her mouth hangs open, as though there is something important she wants to say, but she settles on an emotionless command in the end. “Let’s go. The garage is this way.”

But I can’t. Not yet. “I have to make a detour first.”

“We don’t have the time,” she argues.

“There is time for this.”

Not waiting for her answer, I take off down the hallway. I hear Bo and Bree fall in line behind me. Given the panicked state of Union Central, someone has overridden the access panels so that workers can run freely between corridors and rooms. Taking the stairs, I sprint until I get to Emma’s quarters. Her door is already open. She runs from the room, and I collide with her.

“Gray!” Emma exclaims. “I was just heading to the hospital. What are you doing here?” She holds a medic bag in her arms. My eyes connect with hers and I lose myself in their color. I forget what I had wanted to say.

“Who is this?” Bree erupts behind me. “And why does she know who you are?”

“It’s okay,” I say, without turning around. “I know her. She’s from Claysoot. I left her here when I ran to the Rebels.”

Bree steps between us. “Was this your motive when you volunteered for the mission?” she asks. “Are you risking all our hides right now for some girl none of us have ever heard of?”

“I can’t leave Emma again. I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to get her out of Taem, and I wasn’t going to ignore my chance when it finally arrived.”

“Please, I want to come,” Emma says. “Take me with you. I can’t stay here any longer.”

Bree snorts and steps closer to me, so close I can feel the warmth of her breath as she exhales. She presses a finger into my chest. “She can come if she’s that important to you, but we are not spending another moment bickering in this hallway.”

I look over Bree’s head at Emma. “She’s coming.”

Bree scowls, but then motions for us to follow her. “This way.”

Bo tails Bree, and as I move to do the same, Emma grabs my arm. “Thank you,” she says. “For my second chance.”

For a split second I contemplate kissing her, grabbing her face and pulling it to mine. But then I think that the last hands holding her face were likely Craw’s, that his lips were the last to press against hers. Something hardens in the pit of my stomach.

“Second chances are not the same as forgiveness, Emma.” I shake her hand from mine. “Don’t slow us down.”

We race on, following Bree down a stairwell. On the bottom floor, we find ourselves in what must be Frank’s surveillance quarters. Screens split the room into a variety of aisles, each display showing a different corner of Union Central: corridors, bedrooms, fields, the dining hall. It’s eerie, the visuals flickering solemnly as we watch Order members sprint through the frames. Some even show select areas of downtown Taem. Fighting and smoke fill the ones focused on the public square. As we pause to catch our breath, I see a dark flash move beyond a series of screens.

“Someone’s here,” I whisper. We steal silently down the row, moving away from our pursuer. From behind us, another pattering of feet. We cut down a different aisle. Soon we are so deep in the rows that Bree becomes uncertain which way we came from and which way leads to the garage. The feet keep trailing us, flicking around corners and tracking our moves.

“Here,” I whisper, pointing to a room off one of the corridors. We step in quickly and bolt the door behind us. It flattens the alarm into a duller echo. Emma leans against the wall in relief and lights click on.

The room becomes visible, bluish lighting flickering overhead. It is a lengthy room, much like the aisles we’ve left, but its contents are far more important. It doesn’t take long for us to know what we are looking at. There must be hundreds of screens, but their visuals are unmistakable. Dirty streets. Island sand. Huts and livestock fields and town squares.

“This is the control room,” Bree says, her hand running over a screen that shows two young boys playing along a sandy shoreline.

I step up to a screen that houses familiar visuals: the steps leading to the Council building in Claysoot. Kale is hopping up and down them, pulling her wooden duck behind her. There is no sound coming from the screen, and she could be a memory, a daydream, something not even happening. It has been just three months, and yet I feel I’ve been gone for decades longer. So much has changed since I called those clay streets my home. Kale hears something, and hops down the steps and out of the frame.

Another screen is eerily labeled Group C: Maude. Within its borders I can see the inside of her home: the simple wooden table, the faucet that could be pumped for running water. But what’s most unsettling is that these things are in the background, visible beyond her bedroom doorframe. The bulk of the image is focused on Maude’s bed, on the place I saw her standing the night I ran from Claysoot, the place she had discussed things with a voice I’m now certain belonged to Frank. If she was talking to him that night, does that mean she was in on it all along?

Bo moves to my side and taps at the corner of Maude’s visuals. I think it is his customary twitch until I notice the objects beneath his fingers: five strawberries, lined up with precision on the nightstand beside Maude’s bed. He’s not tapping. He is counting.

My voice comes out a whisper. “Five red berries in a row.”

“Sown with love so that they’ll grow,” Bo sings. But this time doesn’t stop.

“The first for when your throat is dry

The next for under rainless skies

If suns are strong, eat the third

Need one more? Just say the word

When water’s scarce, please have the last

Drink its juice and drink it fast

And when the thirst has stricken me

Please sow five new berry seeds

With luck and faith we’ll watch them bloom

Else thirst will drive us to our tomb”

He breaks into tapping again, fingers dancing over Maude’s video.

“We both knew that song when we woke up in Claysoot,” he says. “Maude said our mother must have sung it to us, even though neither of us could remember her. Or a home that we shared with her, even.”

“She knows there’s more out here, doesn’t she?” I ask.

“Yes, and it’s my fault.” He sinks to the floor and leans against the wall, knees pulled in toward his chest. “When the Order caught me running with Ryder, I told them I’d found a way to alert Maude of life beyond the Wall. It was a lie and a foolish one. I thought that if the Order believed Claysoot knew about the project, it all might stop. But that’s not what happened. Someone in the Order made contact with Maude. They discovered she knew nothing, but after revealing themselves, they had to ensure she’d keep quiet. Frank told her I was in his custody and promised to kill me if she let the truth slip.

“She demanded to see me first. I remember the video session. We saw each other for no more than ten seconds, and she started crying in half that time. After that, they used her as a resource, asked her all sorts of questions, still do I think. She is their eyes behind the Wall. And she goes along with everything, all because of me. She’d do anything for me; it’s her greatest weakness.”

I’m now positive Maude is the reason I was saved from the Outer Ring. She likely worried Bo would be hurt if Frank believed her responsible for my beating the Heist, for keeping my birth date secret. She must have told him the truth as soon as I admitted it to her.

“And the berries?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I’m guessing she leaves them there in case I were to reappear, to show that she’s never forgotten me.”

“We should go,” Emma says.

I nod and move for the door, but something catches me off guard. Something odd in one of the topmost screens labeled Group A. “Wait! Did you see that?”

“See what?” Bree asks, looking at the screen I point to. We wait, and again there is movement, a shadow darting through the frame.

“That, just there. Did you see that?” Bree nods. So does Emma.

We spread out in the control room, locating the other screens labeled Group A and wait. While each screen shows havoc—charred buildings and trampled livestock fields—we begin to see life among them: the faintest of silhouettes, darting through the frames. You would miss them if you weren’t deliberately looking for life, which would be easy to do when the screens sit beside the lively pictures of groups B, C, and D.

“I thought Group A was gone,” I say.

Bree shrugs. “Our journals are incomplete, so I’m not sure.”

“No, they killed each other off,” Bo says. “I heard it reported. Occasionally, in the early weeks after I was captured, I became Frank’s favorite test subject. He hated Ryder for escaping and he took that anger out on me. I spent hours on his workers’ tables. Each time I prayed that I would die, but I never got quite that lucky.

“I remember the day Frank received the report that Group A had died off. They thought I was unconscious, but I heard the whole thing. Dead. Extinct. Gone. Every last one of them.”

“Maybe Frank’s wrong, though,” Bree says, looking back to the images. “Maybe a few of them made it.”

“And maybe our eyes are playing tricks on us,” Bo says. “Whatever is left of that ruined place, it is not an area that could easily foster life.”

“True,” I say. “But even if they were fighting at one point, all it would have taken was a handful of people who had hope, who wanted to keep going. Claysoot formed out of nearly nothing. So did Saltwater and Dextern. These people in Group A had electricity and shelter. If they decided they wanted to live, they did.”

Bree and Bo nod in agreement, but Emma has grown distracted by a display that shows Carter hunched over medical scrolls in the Clinic.

“Come on,” Bo says. “We need to keep moving.”

He checks the door, and after deeming it safe, we open it. The alarm is still blaring and we skirt through the rows of screens, red light dancing over our faces. Up ahead, the hallway opens into the garage.

And then there is a voice behind us. “Freeze.”

Bo, Emma, and I do, but Bree reacts so instinctively I don’t have time to stop her. She spins on her heels, brings her rifle up to her chest. She aims and fires.

But I hear two shots.

And then I hear two bodies crumpling to the ground.





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