We dry off and dress in the clean army-issue casuals that have been laid out for us. I twist my hair into a half-assed roll, held with the one elastic band I can find in the bottom of my pack. I end up with kind of a weird puff at the back, but it will have to do.
The boys have been waiting in the common area for some time when we three girls finally join them. I scan the other unfamiliar faces lounging on drab sofas or strolling in and out, noting with relief that at least I’m not the only brown girl here. But I don’t see anyone else I know. No one from the dojo, no friends from school, no one I recognize at all. Before we had our showers, they gave us a list of people here, but I didn’t see any familiar names there, either. Looking at the friends I arrived with makes me ache over losing Felix and Lochie, even Pip and David, whom I barely got to know. Maybe I shouldn’t make eye contact with anyone new for fear of losing them, too. I stare at my hands instead.
Liam appears through a door marked RESTRICTED AREA: PASS HOLDERS ONLY.
“Is someone in charge?” he asks, sitting on the edge of the sofa.
We turn to Sawyer. Even Liam looks at him, but he is hanging his head, eyes on the floor.
“We are,” Topher says, pointing back and forth between himself and me. Sawyer glances up, but says nothing. No one else comments, though I notice Xander’s little smirk.
Liam looks uncertain for a moment, but finally stands up and beckons us to the door. “Come on, then. Kim wants to meet you.”
He leads us down another long, sterile hallway. Again the lights flick on and off as we pass through a few unlocked doors. It’s disconcerting, like I’m being watched somehow, but Liam seems to be used to it.
“A lot of the security has been disabled for safety reasons,” he says. “We’re relying on trust to keep people out of restricted areas for now. But I have a pass, so I can go anywhere.”
Topher glances at me, eyebrows raised.
At the end of the hallway we reach a set of stairs.
“It’s nearly twenty stories up. Can you make it?” Liam says, a gloating look on his face. He’s daring us to say no.
Topher just grunts and takes to the staircase two steps at a time. Liam rushes after him. I could probably keep up, despite my hunger and exhaustion, but I decide it might be more effective to make them wait for me. So, plodding upward, I make my own pace and enjoy the anticipation of their impatience when I arrive at the top. Which I do, calm and unsweaty, about five minutes later. The expression on their faces is worth the climb.
“Good things are worth waiting for,” I say.
Topher sighs. Liam doesn’t know what to make of me, I’m sure, which is exactly how I want him. And it feels familiar anyway, something left over from the old world. I’m pretty sure we’ll have the whole what-are-you? conversation sometime soon. Or he’ll want to touch my hair.
He leads us along another corridor, this one with doors along one side. The doors are all open, and I can see daylight streaming through them.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“We’re halfway up the mountain,” Liam says. “These are observation chambers. Designed to be bomb and radiation proof, for watching . . .” His voice trails off.
“The end of the world?” I supply. Liam shows some of that uncertainty again. There are depths to him too, I realize. Perhaps ones I would prefer not to know about, but they’re there anyway.
Halfway down the corridor he leads us into a room. A woman and two men stare out the bright window, watching the featureless sky, and the jagged, forbidding mountains rolling away to the horizon. It drives home how hard getting out of here will be. I hope Topher has noticed it’s not a journey you’d want to take alone.
“Leave us,” the woman says to the men. When Liam lingers, she gives him a stern look. He backs out of the door, closing it behind him.
“Topher and Raven, I hear,” the woman says. “I’m the commander here. I’m a CAF officer, but you can call me Kim.”
I feel privileged. I was certain she would insist on being called “Your Majesty.” Listening to Kim and watching her makes me think of someone in a vise, as though something is squeezing her together, tightly, painfully, and the pressure is what prevents the pieces from falling all over the floor. She’s fractured, badly. And it takes one to know one.
She asks us where we came from, and Topher gives her a quick summary. All the while she nods approvingly.
“I can’t tell you what a relief it is to have some refugees with actual survival skills,” she says. “Most of the people here can barely tie their shoelaces without help. You have weapons training?”
“Some,” Topher says.
“Are you willing to use them?”
“Against the Nahx?” Topher says. “Are you kidding? Tell me when and where.”
Kim grins. She has the same vaguely parasitic smile as her son. Like someone who might lay eggs in you that will hatch and then eat you from the inside out.
“And you, Raven? How do you feel about shooting at our enemy?” The hate in her eyes is like a living thing. I’m afraid to answer. Afraid my answer won’t be sufficient. Her hate for the Nahx is in its own category. But when I think of them now, I think of the one in the trailer, and the strength of my hatred wavers. I’m not sure I have that kind of power for any emotion, not even love. Not even for Tucker.
“I’m a terrible shot,” I admit after a moment. I can’t think of a reason to lie at this point. “But I’ll do whatever is necessary.”
Kim looks at us, both smug and satisfied. “Good,” she says. “I know this looks like a refugee camp, but we are amassing an attack force here. You and your friends, if you’re willing, will see some action. We are not going to lie down and take this, you can count on that. And we’re not going to sit around until help comes either. The fight continues all over the world. We’ll take our planet back.”
Topher glances at me. “How many survivors are there? In the world, I mean.”
Kim frowns for a moment, and I catch a glimpse of that intractable sorrow I saw when we arrived. But her face soon hardens, like drying clay, and I can no longer read her. “Most of the coastal areas were relatively unscathed. That’s the report, anyway. Communications have all been cut. We get some videos though, and that tells us . . .”
“Wait,” Topher says. “You still get the videos?”