Taken (Erin Bowman)

THIRTY-SIX


THE BLOOD COMES SLOWLY AT first, soft and delicate, and then spreads over the fabric of her shirt like fire swallowing dry leaves. Bree lies on her back, eyes looking up at the ceiling, and draws short, panicked breaths. I drop beside her, not bothering to check if the threat has been eliminated.

“Bree?”

“I’m okay. I’m okay,” she gasps. Her hand finds mine and grips it tightly. The bullet has hit her upper arm, and as she lies there, panting violently, I realize how much she means to me. My chest starts pounding. I stand up quickly, my hands moving of their own accord. I aim my rifle down the hallway, but it is empty.

There is a body lying on the concrete floor. Bo has gone into self-preservation mode at my side, rocking and tapping and humming his song about berries. Emma stoops to examine Bree, and I leave them, cautiously approaching the fallen Order member.

He is young and his breathing rapid and shallow. Bree’s bullet hit him square in the chest.

“You won’t . . . get out . . . of here . . . alive,” he pants.

I look down at his chest, damp with blood. “Are you alone?” He keeps panting. I move my rifle before his eyes. “Answer me. Are you alone?”

He nods, and then forces out more words. “You won’t . . . make it . . . back,” he gasps. “Frank . . . will kill . . . you all . . . All the Rebels.”

I clench my teeth, push the rifle against his cheek. My finger reaches for the trigger.

“Do it,” he begs. “Please.”

I don’t.

“Please?”

I sling the rifle across my back and run the other way. I drop to my knees beside Emma. “Will she live?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “It only hit her arm, but there’s a lot of blood. And she’s going into shock from the pain.”

I scoop Bree into my arms and nudge Bo with my boot. “Come on, let’s go.”

He keeps rocking back and forth, his hands covering his head, humming.

“Bo, please,” Emma urges.

He snaps from his panicked trance at Emma’s touch, and again we are moving. We duck into the garage and stay out of view, our backs pressed against the rear wall. The place is racing with activity. Vehicles maneuver about the troops, making their way toward the exit and the riot downtown.

“Bree’s not going to be able to drive us,” I say to Bo. She has grown heavy in my arms, and her blood is sticky on my skin. I look at the various cars before us. “Which ones do you know how to operate?”

“I don’t,” he says. “But how hard can it be? Your hands steer and your feet handle the stop and go. I’ll figure the rest out as I need to.”

I’m skeptical but in no position to argue. We slink toward a deep green car. Bo pulls the back door open and I lay Bree across the bench seat. She shudders as I transfer her to the leather.

Bo finds keys under the front seat and Emma and I climb into the back. I look at Bree. Her chest is still heaving.

“Can you fix her?” I ask Emma. She looks so unsure it nearly breaks me. “Please, Emma. I need you to fix her.”

The car lunges forward. No one stops us. We are just another vehicle heading to the riot. As we break into the now dark evening, Emma bends over Bree, and opens her bag.


By the time the last ounce of light has been leeched from the night sky, we enter the woods.

Bo’s driving is turbulent at best, and Emma fights the lurching and abrupt movements of the car as she works on Bree. She fishes out the bullet—a skill she must have learned during her time working in Union Central’s hospital—and makes a bloody mess of both Bree’s arm and the car seat in the process. Bree loses consciousness along the way, but Emma stitches her up, dresses the wound, and tells me she’s done the best she can. Bo takes us as far as possible, following a dirt road that weaves through the trees, which grow thicker and thicker, until we finally have to abandon our vehicle.

I gather Bree in my arms, and lead the way, hiking in what I believe to be the right direction. I’m slow, carrying her like that, and it gives me too much time to think about Harvey. We left him. We didn’t know if he was dead or alive or taken captive and we left without him.

Eventually, Bo claims we should rest. “Only Bree knows how to get back,” he points out. “We should make camp for the night.”

Taem’s dome is barely visible in the distance, and the occasional explosion or gunfire can be heard. It makes me uncomfortable, being so close.

“What if someone’s following us?” I ask.

“They’re not,” Bo says. “They are fighting a bigger battle right now.”

Bo makes a fire and Emma and I sit on opposite sides, staring at each other through the flames. Bree sleeps, her head in my lap. I say nothing to Emma. I don’t even know where to begin. I want her beside me, and yet I want her far, far away, hurting as I do.

“Gray?”

I look down to see Bree’s eyes flickering open. They are blue again. She must have ditched her contacts at some point.

“Hey, Bree.”

She tries to sit up, but winces. “What happened?”

“You got shot.”

“I know that, stupid. What happened after I got shot?” She speaks slowly, but I can tell it’s meant to have fire in it. Her stubbornness makes me grin.

“We got to a car. Bo drove us to safety. And Emma fixed you. We’re camping in the woods now.”

“Emma? The Emma you never told me about? The girl you risked all our lives attempting to save?”

“Yeah, that one.”

She frowns. “She means a lot to you, doesn’t she?”

“Yes. But so do you.” It’s a complicated response, but an honest one.

Bree lies there for a second, looking up at me. “Your eyes are still blue. I like them better when they’re gray.”

“Why?” I ask, thinking of how gray is so dull, and not even a color at all.

“They remind me of cloudy skies over Saltwater. And morning waves. That color is familiar. Comforting.”

I fish the contacts from my eyes and flick them aside. “Better?”

She smiles. I return my attention to the fire, admiring an especially hot patch of blue flames.

“Gray?” Bree whispers again.

“Yeah?”

“Do you remember that night in the Tap Room, when I drank too much?”

“I remember you threw up on my boots.”

“No, not that.” She shakes her head slowly. “Before that. Do you remember what I asked you?”

I nod. I’ve never forgotten.

“If I asked you that again, right now, would you turn me down?”

“No,” I tell her honestly. I’ve been fighting anything I felt toward her because of Emma—Emma, who didn’t fight a thing herself.

Bree tries to sit again, and grimaces. She won’t give up, though; she’s far too stubborn. She locks her good arm behind my neck and pulls until she’s upright in my lap. Her face is dangerously close to mine. I’m positive Emma is staring at us, watching my every move through the fire, but I am bitter and hurt and angry. A part of me wants her to hurt, too.

Bree leans in a little, her arms still behind my neck. “Kiss me?” she asks.

And I do.

As Bree’s lips meet mine, as her arms latch more tightly behind my neck, something washes over me. Guilt, maybe? Confusion? I try to stifle it, because even with it stirring in my gut, Bree tastes so good. I let it go from one kiss to many. I kiss her several times over, then her nose, her neck.

Bree is warm. She is soft. She clings to me as though her life depends on it. I am hungry for her, but I am also hungry for revenge. And the more of it I get, the worse I feel, because I can’t pull away. I am crashing, tumbling, gathering speed and unable to stop. I don’t know how far it would have gone, the two of us—even with Emma and Bo sitting on the other side of the camp—if the celebration hadn’t started.

There is one at first, a whiz of noise followed by a burst of blue light overhead. The second is red, a third yellow.

“Fireworks,” Bo says.

The battle in Taem is over. We watch the show in silence. It is beautiful, an explosion of colors against a blanket of black. And then a projection lights up the sky. It is an image, as dark and dismal as any.

Harvey, dead.

He is tied to the wooden pole in the public square. They’ve stripped him naked and painted a red triangle atop his chest. His head hangs toward it, as though he were trying to kiss its peak.

The fireworks continue in the distance, covering Harvey’s projection until he fades out completely. In the midst of Harvey’s sacrifice, my revenge on Emma suddenly feels juvenile and foolish, completely unwarranted. I am focused on all the wrong things. Getting even with Emma doesn’t matter. Not in the slightest. It’s not even making me feel any better.

What matters is that while we have succeeded in one mission, we are far from finished. If Frank is not overthrown, Harvey’s death will be for nothing. The battle with Frank and his Forgeries—limitless Forgeries, given what I’ve learned in Taem—trumps all. Only then will Harvey’s death have been worth it. Only then will Claysoot and the other test groups be free. And only then will the people of this odd country be able to decide their own fate, their own rules.

Later, when the fire dies out and Bo and Emma have fallen asleep, Bree curls up at my side. She kisses me long and hard, so confidently that I know she means it, that she wants to be with me, and I am overwhelmed with another wave of guilt. She drifts to sleep as I run my hand along her back.

Halfway through the night Bo wakes and takes over watch, but I still can’t sleep. The best I do is nod in and out of consciousness, my arms always hugging Bree, but my eyes lingering on Emma, who shivers while she dreams.


Morning breaks and no one has tracked us. Bo claims it’s because they got what they really wanted. “Harvey’s dead, and that, at the moment, is enough. But they’ll come eventually, especially once they discover we’ve broken in and stolen from their medical center.”

As the sun rises between the tightly packed trees, Bree radios Ryder and shares the news. We walk in silence the first day. I look over my shoulder occasionally and find Emma in conversation with Bo. Her lips are pursed and her eyes, sleepy. Bo seems to do most of the talking. He taps on his skull with twitching fingers and tries to coax conversation from her. Emma just gazes at the medic bag in her arms.

That night, after catching rabbit and cooking the meat over a small fire, Bo approaches me. “You should really talk to her,” he says. “She’s sorry. And confused.”

“I don’t have anything to say.” But as soon as the words leave my mouth I know it’s not that I don’t want to talk to her but that I’m afraid to. I’m terrified because I do feel something for Bree, and what I did with her makes me no different from Emma, who acted on her feelings for Craw. I want to apologize and tell Emma the birds still exist, and, yes, some people really do live that way, but I don’t know how to put it into words.

It doesn’t make sense, this mess of emotions. I always follow my gut, find my path with such little deliberation. But this, with Emma, is crippling. How is it possible that I can feel so much and still not know what to do?


Just past noon a few days later, Mount Martyr emerges from between a dense throng of trees. We climb to the base of the Crevice, and find Elijah waiting with his back against the stony facade. He is drinking from a standard water canteen, but when he congratulates us on a job well done, hugging us each in turn, he smells like alcohol.

“I still can’t believe you guys pulled it off,” he says, beaming. “We’ve been celebrating since Bree called with the news.”

He jiggles the canteen at us in offering and when no one takes it, he continues. “We owe Harvey so much.” At that, we stand in silence for a moment; there are no words that could possibly do Harvey justice. Elijah lowers his drink, eyes the bloodied state of Bree’s uniform, and adds, “We should get moving, I suppose. There’s still a vaccine to administer.”





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