It’s time. The rifle shots explode simultaneously in the distance—a dozen of them at least—and just like that, we are moving as one. We are running out of the trees, hundreds of us, drumming up mud and dirt, the rhythm of our feet like a single, swollen heartbeat. Two rope ladders appear over the side of the wall, then another two, and then three more—so far, so good. The first of our group reaches a ladder, jumps, and swings upward.
In the distance, a band is playing a wedding march.
Hana
Outside the laboratories, the guards—nearly two dozen of them, arrayed in spotless uniforms—fire off their rifle salute, signaling that the ceremony can proceed. The large windows of the conference room are open, and through them we can hear the band begin to play a wedding march. Most of the onlookers have not been able to squeeze into the labs and will be clustered outside, listening, straining to see through the windows. The priest is wearing a microphone so his voice will be amplified, so it will reach every member of the assembled crowd, touch them with his words of perfection and honor, of duty and safety.
A platform has been erected in the center of the room, just in front of the podium where the priest will conduct the ceremony. Two participants, both dressed symbolically, in lab coats, help me onto it.
When Fred takes my hands in his and lays them on top of The Book of Shhh, a small sigh travels the room, an exhalation of relief.
This is what we are made for: promises, pledges, and sworn oaths of obedience.
Lena
I’m halfway up the ladder when the alarms begin to sound. A second later there is another explosion of gunfire. There is nothing coordinated about these shots; they explode in rapid staccato, deafeningly close, and just like that the air is a symphony of shouts and shots and screams. A woman straddling the wall topples backward and tumbles to the ground with a sickening thud, blood bubbling from her chest.
Only a tenth of our number has made it over the wall. The air is suddenly thick with gun smoke. People are yelling—go, stop, move, stop where you are or I’ll shoot! For a second I freeze on the ladder, swinging, petrified—my hands slip a little, and I barely manage to right myself before falling. I can’t remember how to move. At the top of the ladder, a regulator is hacking at the ropes with a knife.
“Go. Lena, go!” Julian is beneath me on the ladder. He reaches up and pushes, jolting me back into my body. I begin working my way upward again, ignoring the searing pain in my palms. Better to fight the regulators on the ground, where we have a chance—anything is better than swinging here, exposed, like a fish on a line.
The ladder shudders. The regulator is still working feverishly with his knife. He is young—he looks somehow familiar—and sweat is matting his blond hair to his forehead. Beast has just made it to the top of the wall. There’s a crack, and a small yelp, as he drives his elbow into the regulator’s nose.
The rest happens quickly: Beast gets his fist around the man’s knife and thrusts; the regulator slumps forward, eyes unseeing, and Beast heaves him unceremoniously over the wall, as though he is a sack of garbage. He, too, thuds when he hits the ground: Only then do I recognize him as a boy from Joffrey’s Academy, someone Hana once spoke to at the beach. My age—we were evaluated on the same day.
No time to think about that now.
Two more strong pulls get me to the top of the wall. I slide onto my stomach, pressing hard into the stone, trying to stay as small as possible. Compact. The inside of the wall is crisscrossed with scaffolding left over from construction. Only a few portions of the stone catwalk, meant for patrols, are complete: There are bodies tangled everywhere, people fighting, locked together, struggling for the advantage.
Pippa is working her way grimly up the ladder to my right. Tack has dropped into a crouch on the scaffolding; he is covering her, sweeping a gun from left to right, picking off the guards who are rushing us from the ground. Raven goes behind Pippa, the handle of a knife gripped in her mouth, a gun strapped to her hip. Her face is taut, and focused.
Everything registers in bursts, flashes:
Guards running at the wall, materializing from guard huts and warehouses.
Sirens wailing: police. They’ve been quick to respond to the alarms.