Breaking Point (34 page)

As I waited in line, Chase’s presence pulled at me, drawing my attention to where he and Sean had removed themselves from the others. Against the wall, behind a ripped curtain of gray insulation hanging from the ceiling, they conspired. Though I couldn’t hear what they were saying, Sean’s movements were animated, as if he were trying to make a point, and curiosity had me leaving my place in line to see what had set Chase’s shoulders in a defensive hunch and his thumb tapping against his thigh. Before I reached them, Chase broke the conversation and stalked away.

“What was that about?” Sean’s head jerked up as I spoke. He glanced after Chase, then, in a low voice, explained how we were to break into the facility.

When he was done, my head was throbbing even harder than before.

No one removed a patient from the premises without the presence of a Sister, so Tucker and Sean would claim that they were assisting me with transporting Rebecca to a Sisters of Salvation home, where she could dedicate her life to service. Tucker knew the soldier managing the facility and felt confident he’d let us through. Just as long as he hadn’t heard about the dishonorable discharge.

Chase was not going to be coming in with us.

“It took twenty seconds for an AWOL to make him,” Sean tried to reason. “Don’t you think there are soldiers at the base who still remember him?”

So now Chase was the liability, and the rescue plan depended on me.

He was going to love that.

Without a word, I sought refuge in the women’s bathroom. The minutes lost their meaning as I stood before a sink, knees locked, eyes unseeing. A blank expression fixed itself onto my face, and it was no lie. I felt nothing. Not rage. Not despair. Nothing. I’d placed a bucket of water in the bowl, and absently washed my hands, my arms, my hair, now crunchy with dried blood, and watched as droplets of red and black splashed the old, forgotten porcelain.

The mirror before me was marred by black, mutated roses of corrosion, and within one of them something moved— a reflection from the empty stalls at my back. I spun, and the world spun with me, forcing me to grip the sink behind with white knuckles.

Tucker sat on the floor, his legs bent at sharp angles, his hands clasped between his knees. He leaned back against a stall door, shrouded by shadow and so still he could have been a fixture in the room. Still, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed him.

We stared at each other for a long moment, until I finally asked the question ringing through my skull.

“What are you doing here?”

His shoulders rose with a long, drawn-out sigh, but his voice was weak. Defeated. “Same thing as you. Taking some much-needed me time.”

“What are you doing here?” I repeated. And when he didn’t answer, I asked again.

He looked down, and his legs fell straight.

“I don’t know.”

He crumbled forward, folding over himself like a discarded marionette, and began to shake. At once, conflicting desires rose within me. To leave. To force him, however I could, to tell the truth. To crouch down, and lower my voice, and say something soothing. And because they were all equally strong, I didn’t dare let go of the sink.

He is a liar.

He was with us in the tunnels.

I slowly dropped down, careful that I could rise quickly if necessary.

“Tell me something you do know then.”

He looked up, his eyes red and his face stained, and for a moment he looked so young I barely recognized him. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

“They cut me,” he said with a weak laugh. “I was everything they wanted, and they cut me.”

“The FBR,” I realized.

“Every test. Every level. I was perfect. But all they saw was Jennings. They wanted him. He screwed up everything, on
purpose,
and they still wanted him. It was unbelievable.”

Chase had told me he bucked the system trying to get home, but that had made his officers even more intent to break him. When he finally did comply, it was for my protection. It was unsettling to hear Tucker speak of it now.

“You know I enlisted early? Before my senior year,” he continued. “The first day I could. I was waiting for that day. I’d been waiting since I was nine years old.”

“What happened when you were nine?” I found myself asking.

“The War,” he said bitterly. He rolled his ankle in a slow circle, winced. “My dad managed a grocery store. It was a small place, not one of the chains, one of the first to go under when the economy tanked. We lost everything.” He looked up. “My dad’s car. Then our stuff. The house. My mom lost her job, too. We had to get rations vouchers and stand in lines for food we used to sell.”

My calves were falling asleep, and reluctantly I kneeled, feeling a strange connection to his story.

“It takes a toll,” he said, and his jaw twitched. “That’s what my mom used to say.
It takes a toll, Tuck
. That’s why he drinks so much. That’s why he beats the crap out of us. Because it takes a toll.”

I didn’t want to hear this. I didn’t want to feel sorry for
him,
of all people.

“And then the soldiers came to town.” He was wistful now. “And Dad got a job with Horizons, and things got all right after that. His boss knew a recruiter, and he’d come over to the house and talk to me about joining up. It made sense, you know? This officer, he had everything we used to have. Cars and a house and nobody screaming at each other. I made up my mind right then that that’s what I was going to do.”

“And when you saw what they did? What
you
did?”

His eyes blazed into mine with a sudden sharpness, and he stood, as if suddenly remembering who we both were.

I stood, too, and asked one more time. “Why are you here?”

He looked uncertain. “Because I’m a soldier,” he said. “If I’m out there, I’m not anything.”

The door swung open, making us both jump. Chase walked toward me, hands clasped behind his neck. They dropped when his gaze flicked to his old partner.

Without a word, Tucker left the room, but the doubt remained, deep in my chest.

“Everything all right?” Chase asked.

I nodded, but he stared at the closed door as if willing my answer to be different.

By now he’d have heard the plan. I knew he was going to argue. Say we couldn’t do this. Say that I wasn’t going without him. He was going to fight tooth and nail until we found another way, and I was going to tell him there
was
no other way. This was our window. It was a matter of time before the MM figured out I wasn’t dead.

I placed my hand on his chest, steeling myself for a fight, but when our gazes met, I faltered. I remembered those minutes trapped beneath the table; how the question of his survival drove me to live. How panic and despair stalked just beyond the border of our memories. Maybe he was thinking of the same things, because he cast his gaze away, as though he couldn’t look at me any longer.

He pulled a silver key from his pocket. “Chicago keeps a spare key to an FBR van at the hospital. Truck gave it to Jack before he left in case they needed a set of wheels before he got back.” He shoved the key back into his pocket. “Looks like we’ve got our getaway car.”

“Okay,” I said.

Without further discussion, we left.

*   *   *

REFORMATION
Parkway was only nine blocks west from where we’d left the others. The hospital was easy enough to find; it was right beside the FBR Recruit Barracks, where Chase and Tucker had lived during basic training.

I’d known our stakeout would be there before I saw it. I’d known because Truck, Jack, and the Chicago medic had told Sean and me about it in sick bay. This abandoned building, just across the street from the hospital and rehab center, was where Mags had been when she’d sniped off her own man.

We entered through a weakly boarded door in the back and climbed to the seventh floor, where we could spy on the five-story facility below without anyone catching a lateral glimpse of us across the street. As the hours passed we kept watch on that building, as if Rebecca might appear in any window, hip cocked, arms crossed, wondering what was taking so long.

Tucker sketched a layout of the building on one of the walls with a jagged piece of glass, identifying all exits and stairways. We split our meager rations. We slept in shifts. Chase woke me every half hour to check my pupils; it was like when we’d first joined the resistance, when he’d been healing from a concussion, only now our positions had been reversed. The disruptions didn’t matter; after a couple hours I couldn’t fall back asleep anyway. No one could. When Sean got too restless, Tucker agreed to relocate with him to the bottom floor to watch the rehab’s entrance, leaving Chase and me alone.

*   *   *

“YOU’LL
be fine. Tucker can’t do anything to you once you’re inside, not with all those soldiers standing around. He was right; he’s got nowhere else to go if he screws this up.”

Chase was already in uniform, methodically taking apart the gun Jack had given us, and cleaning it with the ripped remains of his T-shirt. I turned back to face the window, because it wouldn’t do much good to mention he’d already cleaned it twice, or that we’d reviewed tomorrow’s plan double that. I let him talk because he needed to, and I needed it, too. It eased the pounding in my head.

It was well after curfew, but the power across the street remained on at the hospital and rehabilitation center, as it did at the massive base behind it to the west. The triangle was completed by the prison across town. Three twinkling lights in the darkness. Their glow filtered in enough light to throw long, condemning shadows across the room.

I gazed down at the stone entranceway of the facility, wondering what lurked inside. I found myself imagining the strangest things—if the floor was tiled or linoleum, what color the walls were painted—grasping for something.

Did my mother know, walking into that jail cell, that she would never again come out? It seemed impossible that she couldn’t have felt mortality breathing down her neck, as I did now. I wondered if she’d felt brave. I wondered if tomorrow I would be.

A chill took me despite the warm temperature in the room.

Before I realized what I was doing, I’d begun a list. An inventory of all the things I wanted to do before I died. There were trivial things, of course. Take a hot shower. Eat ice cream, like in the days before standardized power. But there were more important things, too. Find Billy, and if I could, get him to the safe house. Put up a memorial for my mother.

Be with Chase.

Hold his hand without keeping the other on a weapon. Have long talks about nothing important, but everything essential, like we used to. Not just fight, but
live
. We had to live fast these days, because we died fast, too.

I slid the uniform scarf over my head and let it fall to the floor, then opened the top buttons of my blouse, finding it suddenly too tight around my neck. I took a deep breath, then another.

Chase trailed off, and for an instant I thought he might be preoccupied by the weapon, but then I heard the click of the metal atop the table and the rustle of clothing when he stood.

He approached slowly, like a stalking wolf, or maybe it was the nerves burning low in my belly that seemed to exaggerate each second. Before he reached me he stopped, close enough that I could feel his warmth. Feel his eyes traveling over my reflection in the window, more intimate than any touch.

He shook his head and glanced back at the table, as if he’d forgotten how he’d arrived here. Then he swallowed. Raked a hand through his hair. Tried to conceal an embarrassed smile behind a serious mask.

“Are you paying attention? Or just trying to distract me?”

“Trying to distract you,” I said.
“Obviously.”

His amusement swelled, then faded, leaving me anxiously awaiting his next move. It came slowly: his tentative fingertips found the back of my jaw and trailed down the nape of my neck, stopping right before my collarbone. Making me aware of nothing but the feel of him.

“I remember you used to like to be kissed here,” he said, voice thick. “Do you still?”

I had to concentrate in order to respond.

“I don’t know,” I whispered. “No one has since you.”

In the reflection I saw his lips part slightly. My heart beat so loudly in my chest I wondered if he could hear it. If he knew it beat that way for him, and no one else.

He leaned down, the tip of his nose skimming my earlobe and lowering, until his lips found that spot,
his
spot, that made my knees weak and my whole body tremble.

He turned me slowly, fingers weaving through my hair. He came closer, until we shared the same breath. His lips were warm and soft and full of restraint, but as the seconds melted together his arms pulled me tighter, and his mouth became more urgent, hot breath and grazing teeth, and the firm, soft feel of his lower lip between mine. He felt it, as I did. The moments counting down, pulling us apart, and if we didn’t hold on to each other fate would beat us, separate us, and we would be lost to each other forever.

His large, calloused hands surrounded my ribs, untucking the coarse blouse, sliding gently down to my hips. Each place he touched lit with goose bumps and sparks of heat.
Remember that,
I told myself.
How his hands feel right now. Remember every second with him.

Our breathing became ragged and uneven. I grabbed the hem of my blouse and pulled it over my head, expecting to feel self-conscious or too skinny or too plain, but his lips parted, and his eyes grew round, and all of those thoughts disappeared. His fingertip slid just under the waistband of my skirt, circling my belly, and I grasped at the round wooden buttons of his canvas jacket, feeling an unquenchable thirst to be close to him. When my injured wrist made the task cumbersome, he tried to help, but our nervous hands fumbled. We laughed at our lack of grace.

Then, I took a step back and laid his jacket on the floor, spreading it out like a blanket. He watched, silently realizing the weight of my intentions.