“You okay, honey?” a man asks, his Texan accent thick. I can barely see him in the dark, moving toward me out of his cell. “Y’all get caught in that mess out there?” I don’t even have to answer him. He sees the gun and knife and backs away, retreating to his cell.
Once I can breathe normally again, I check my chest for damage. Pete stabbed me maybe a half dozen times, and my shirt is shredded, but the synth-suit held. I’ll be bruised, but there’s no real injury. Amazingly, Ken’s notebook is still in the pocket of my sweatpants.
I discard my ruined shirt and am wondering what to do with Pete’s knife—I already have my Guardian knives in their sheaths on my thighs—when the man’s voice comes out of the dark again. “You sure you don’t need nothin’, honey?”
I sigh and glare into the dark at him.
“A shirt, mebbe? You can’t walk around like that, I wouldn’t think. I got a shirt, if . . .”
I take a breath, letting down my guard slightly. He just wants to barter. And he’s right: I still have to get back to Cellblock B, where Jacks’s cell is, and I have no idea where Tank and Pete have gone. It would be good to get something that covers my arms and head. Something that would make me less recognizable.
“If what?” I ask him.
He takes a step into the muddy light of the entryway. He’s a little man, tucked inside a hoodie. He nods at the knife. “That looks like a mighty fine blade.”
I look at the weapon still in my hand, then back at the man again. “I’ll trade for that sweatshirt,” I tell him.
“Yes, ma’am.” He peels off the hoodie and holds it out to me.
“Drop it on the floor. I’ll leave the knife.”
He looks doubtful.
“Do you want it or not?” I push. He drops the hoodie and backs away. I take the knife and throw it far down the hall, where it clatters to a stop on the concrete floor. The man shakes his head, then moves slowly to retrieve it.
I quickly snatch the hoodie off the ground, pull it on over my head, and push up the hood. I crack the door, then put my hand to my ear and turn on my sound amplifier to check if the coast is clear outside. It all sounds good until I catch a snippet of conversation from the Yard.
“. . . I know I stabbed her.” It’s Pete’s voice, raspy from my punch to his throat.
“I told you, she was mine,” Tank’s voice cuts through. “Anyway, you must’a missed her. Did you see how fast she ran off? No one with a knife in their gut could move like that.”
And that’s what I should do again now—run. Run to my cell and lock the door. I know where Tank and Pete are now; it would be easy to avoid them. But then what? Live in constant fear? I scan the Yard for either of them, but they’re out of my line of vision. I tense my body up, ready to bolt for Cellblock B. Then:
“It doesn’t matter anyway. It’s not like she has a lot of places to hide.”
“But we can’t do it when Jacks is around,” Pete croaks. “He says . . .”
I pull the hood down lower over my face and walk outside, heading in the direction of their conversation. Maybe their attack was motivated by something more than Tank’s bloodlust.
“Well, doing it when Jacks isn’t around is going to be tough. She’s always with him or in their cell.”
“But that’s how Doc wants it,” Pete insists. “When she’s alone. He said the Warden will have our asses if sumpthun’ happens to his nephew.”
Spotting them across the Yard, I duck behind a trampled tent, my heart racing. So Doc wants me dead. Is it because I found out about the testing and he thinks I’ll tell everyone? Or is this coming from New Hope, from Dr. Reynolds? Or from Ken?
I peek out behind the tent and see Tank and Pete still walking, their backs to me. They haven’t seen me, so I continue to trail them. It looks like they’re headed for the front wall, to the guards’ quarters.
“Doc also said to get it done by the end of the day,” Tank says, “but that ain’t gonna happen.”
Pete looks up at Tank, giving a panicked little hop as he hurries to keep up with him. “What are we gonna do? Doc’s gonna be pissed. You saw him angry, what he done to Freddy that one time.”
“I saw him.”
“Made him into a damn Florae!” Pete shouts.
“I said I saw him. Shut the hell up.” Tank looks around. “Everybody in this place is going crazy ’cause they think one of those things got inside, and you’re gonna go around shouting about what we saw Doc do?”
That’s what Doc meant when he said sometimes he had to “create an opportunity” to test the vaccine. Poor Jacks. He has no idea what kind of monster his father actually is.
Pete nods. They’re almost at the wall. “I know, I know. Sorry. But if we don’t make this happen, we’re the ones gonna end up dead.”
“It’ll happen. Trust me. When Doc came to us and told us what he wanted done, I thought it was my damn birthday! I ain’t gonna let that little bitch slip through my fingers,” Tank assures him.
He opens the door and nearly collides with the Warden. “Oh, sorry, boss.”