“That’s different,” I say, glaring at him. I can tell he’s making fun of me, and I don’t like it. “That was a question of survival.”
Julian raises his eyebrows but doesn’t say anything. He blots my cut one more time with the cotton ball, and this time I grit my teeth and bear it. Then he squeezes a thin line of ointment onto the bandage and affixes it carefully to my neck. Alex fixed me once, just like this. It was on raid night, and we were hiding in a tiny tool shed, and a dog had just taken a chunk out of my leg. I haven’t thought about that night in a long time, and as Julian’s hands skate over my skin, I feel suddenly breathless.
I wonder if this is how people always get close: They heal each other’s wounds; they repair the broken skin.
“There. As good as new.” His eyes have taken on the gray of the sky above the grates. “You okay to move on?”
I nod, even though I’m still weak, and pretty dizzy.
Julian reaches out and squeezes my shoulder. I wonder what he thinks when he touches me, whether he feels the electric pulse that runs through my body. He is unused to having contact with girls, but he doesn’t seem bothered by it. He has crossed a boundary. I wonder what he’ll do when we finally get out of here. He’ll no doubt go back to his old life—to his father, to the DFA.
Maybe he’ll have me arrested.
I feel a surge of nausea and close my eyes, swaying a little on my feet.
“Are you sure you’re okay to move?”
Julian’s voice is so gentle, it makes my chest break up into a thousand fluttering pieces. This was not part of the plan. This was not supposed to happen.
I think about what I told him last night: You’re not supposed to know. The hard, unbearable, beautiful truth.
“Julian”—I open my eyes, wishing my voice sounded less shaky—“we’re not the same. We’re on different sides. You know that, right?”
His eyes get a little harder, more intense: even in the half-light, a blazing blue. But when he speaks, his voice is still soft and quiet. “I don’t know what side I’m on anymore,” he says.
He takes another step toward me.
“Julian—” I can barely squeeze out his name.
That’s when we hear it: a muffled shout from one of the tunnels, the sound of drumming feet. Julian stiffens and in that second, when we look at each other, there’s no need to speak at all.
The Scavengers are here.
The terror is a sudden jolt. The voices are coming from one of the tunnels we came through last night. Julian scoops up the backpack, and I stuff my feet quickly into my sneakers, not even bothering with socks. I grab the knife from the ground; Julian reaches for my other hand and pulls me forward, past the wooden crates and to the far end of the platform. Even fifty feet away from the grates, it’s almost impossible to see. We are swallowed again in murk and darkness. It feels like stepping into a mouth, and I try to beat back the feeling of terror winging through me. I know I should be grateful for the darkness and all the chances to hide, but I can’t help thinking of what the darkness could be hiding: stealthy, silent steppers; bodies swinging from the pipes.
At the far end of the platform there’s a tunnel, so low Julian and I have to stoop to enter. After ten feet, we reach a narrow metal ladder, which takes us down into a broader tunnel, this one studded with old train tracks but free, thankfully, of running water. Every few feet Julian pauses, listening for the Scavengers.
Then we hear it, unmistakably, and closer now: a voice grunting, “This way.” Those two words knock the breath out of me, exactly as if I’d been punched. It’s Albino. I mentally curse myself for putting the handgun in the backpack—stupid, stupid, and no way of getting it now, in the dark, while Julian and I are pushing forward. I squeeze the handle of the knife, taking some reassurance from the smooth grain of its wood, from its weight. But I’m still weak, dizzy, and hungry, too; I know I won’t do well in a fight. I say a silent prayer that we can lose them in the darkness.
“Down here!”
But the voices grow louder, closer. We hear feet ringing against the metal ladder, a sound that makes my blood sing with terror. Just then I see it: light zigzagging against the walls, flashing yellow tentacles. They’re using flashlights, of course. No wonder they’re coming so fast. They don’t have to worry about being seen or heard. They are the predators.
And we are the prey.
Hide. It’s our only hope. We need to hide.
There’s an archway on our right—a cutout of even blacker darkness—and I squeeze Julian’s hand, pulling him back, directing him through it, into another tunnel, a foot or so lower than the one we’ve been traveling, and this one dotted with puddles of stagnant, stinking water. We grope our way through the dark. The walls on both sides of us are smooth—no alcoves, no piled wooden crates, nothing to conceal us—and the panic is building. Julian must be feeling it too, because he loses his footing, stumbles, and splashes heavily into one of the narrow beds of still water.