Enemy Inside (Defectors Trilogy) (15 page)

“I don’t know.”

I shivered. “You didn’t see those videos they were showing. And the problem is that stuff is in his brain. I don’t know if removing his CID —”

“You really removed his CID?” Logan’s eyes widened. “I thought you made that up!”

“They inserted it in the back of his head. It was like they wanted it closer to his brain.”
 

“Or somewhere he couldn’t remove it himself,” she reminded me.
 

I nodded, feeling strange that Logan was taking the role of the voice of reason.

Finally, she asked the question I had been dreading most. “Is he different now?”

I shook my head. But even as I did, I knew it was a lie.
 

“I don’t know,” I said. “He’s —”

I faltered, listening intently. Outside, I could hear people yelling. Logan sprang to her feet and flew out of the tent. Struggling to stand, I pulled myself up with the tent supports and limped out into the snow. Several tents down, I could see two figures sprawled in the snow fighting, one on top of the other.

People were emerging wrapped in their sleeping bags, rubbing their eyes and looking less amused by the second interruption of the night but still curious to see what all the commotion was about.
 

As I hobbled closer on my crutch, I saw Amory on his knees pummeling another man I did not recognize. His eyes were cold, his muscles taut with exertion and rage. I watched in horror as blood spattered the fresh snow on the ground, and Amory brought back his fist again, knuckles red and cracked. He wasn’t the Amory I knew. That Amory was gone.

It was like watching a movie.
 

This couldn’t be happening.

But it was.
 

Amory was pummeling a man into the snow. I could hear the man’s soft grunts of pain as Amory’s fists connected with his flesh.

He had that look in his eyes again, and I felt the familiar ripple of fear in my chest.

“Amory!” I yelled.
 

He did not look up.

Ignoring the stares of the onlookers, I limped over toward them and was alarmed to see blood spattered like paint across Amory’s face.

“Amory. Stop!”

I drew closer, and he still did not seem to see me. Again he brought his knuckles down to collide with the man’s jaw.

I passed Logan, and she grabbed my arm. Her face was ashen. I shook her off and hobbled through the snow. Holding on to my crutch, I bent down and pulled Amory roughly around by the shoulder.
 

He turned abruptly and, before I could react, shoved me backward into the snow. Amory didn’t stop pounding the man. Shock and anger coursed through me like venom, and I aimed a hard kick at his shoulder with my left leg.

“Amory!” I growled.

He turned, panting with exertion. His face was still screwed up in anger, and he was even bloodier than before. Snow was starting to fall. He froze.

His eyes cleared first. They focused on me and immediately wrinkled in pain and regret.

“Oh god,” he murmured.

He struggled to disentangle himself from the man he was fighting. Silently, he crouched down to pick me up out of the snow. I cringed away, glaring at him. Even though I knew his outburst was the result of whatever the PMC had done to him, I couldn’t stop the anger and distrust pouring off me.

I realized everyone was staring at us.
 

The man on the ground pulled himself into a sitting position, looking much worse for the wear.

“What the hell was that?” I whispered to Amory.

He opened his mouth to speak but wouldn’t look me in the eye.

“He started it,” Greyson panted. I hadn’t even noticed him standing off to the side, holding back one of the man’s friends. He stepped around the beat-up man on the ground, looking down at him with disgust.
 

“He came at Amory . . . said he was going to drag him and you back to the PMC himself.” Greyson muttered. “He started shoving him, and Amory
snapped
.”

“I just lost it,” muttered Amory, rubbing the back of his neck.

I tried to meet his gaze, but he was avoiding it expertly. He looked ashamed.

“You need to see Shriver,” I said.

His wounds looked bad.

Reluctantly, he followed me past the mob of angry onlookers back toward the med tent. Me — the traitor — and Amory the psycho. What a pair we made. It was slow going, and I cursed Jared for making me sprain my ankle. I just wanted to get away from all these people as quickly as possible.

When we reached the tent, I didn’t even call for Shriver first. I ducked inside with Amory trailing several feet behind me. Shriver wasn’t there, but I knew she couldn’t be far. In the rebel camp, news of the fight would spread within minutes, and she would be back to tend to the wounded.

When he saw we were alone, Amory finally looked at me. His expression was pained.
 

Before I could say anything, he drew me into him and took both my hands in his.

“Haven, I’m so sorry. I didn’t even see you. I had tunnel vision or something.”

I tore my eyes away. It was too much.

“It’s just like with the carriers. It was like . . . my instincts took over. I just wanted to end that guy. I was
disconnected
.”

“I shouldn’t have gotten between you two in that fight,” I said. “I know that was stupid.” I looked down at my hands and saw they were shaking. “But if you
ever
touch me like that again . . . we’re done, you and me.”

He nodded. “You have to help me, Haven.” His voice broke. He shuddered, as if struggling to form the words. “Something is seriously wrong with me. There’s this . . .
monster
in my body trying to get out. All the bad stuff is just too much sometimes.”

We fell silent for a moment, and I focused on the warmth of his hands on me. It was hard to believe they were the same hands that had shoved me aside moments ago.
 

“I would never hurt you,” he said. “I know that seems like a stretch, after what’s happened today . . . but that’s not just me making an empty promise.” He took a deep breath, and his face glowed red. “I’ve noticed . . . this
feeling
that I get only takes over when I’m afraid. Not normal fear . . . I don’t think there’s been a day when I
haven’t
been afraid since the Collapse. I mean that cold fear that grabs you and leaves you paralyzed. That’s when I lose control.”

As he spoke, he turned my hand over in his palm, studying the soft skin between my thumb and index finger rather than looking me in the eyes. “The night before when all those carriers came . . . I thought they were going to kill us. I mean, honestly, I didn’t think we’d make it. That’s the fear that got me. That’s when I lost it.”

Finally Amory looked up at me. His bright gray eyes stood out sharply against the dark bruised flesh around it.
 

“It’s all right,” I whispered. “You don’t have to be afraid. I’m here.”
 

He opened his mouth wordlessly, but I pulled his face down to mine and brushed my lips against his.
 

Just as I felt the warmth of his kiss, I heard the crunch of footsteps outside the tent, and we sprang apart.

Shriver was standing in the opening, looking harried. “You again.”

“Yeah . . . sorry. We came here hoping you could treat Amory’s wounds.”

She let out an irritated stream of air from between pursed lips and rolled her eyes. “Fine. But if you get in another fistfight, I’m going to start charging you.”
 

Impatience pouring off her, Shriver snapped on a fresh pair of latex gloves and grabbed a bottle of antiseptic. Moving methodically from head to torso, she quickly disinfected Amory’s wounds and bandaged the deep ones. When she swabbed a deep cut on his arm, he tilted his head away in a grimace. She grabbed his chin, twisting his head around none to gently to examine the site where I had removed the CID.

“You do this hack job yourself?” she asked him.

That stung.

“No. I couldn’t reach it. Haven did it.”

Shriver sighed in exasperation. “This should really have stitches. And rolling around on the ground when you have a fresh wound like this isn’t smart. I need to open it up to clean it properly.”

“Haven had it bandaged,” said Amory. “But I ripped it off when the PMC showed up.”

Shriver didn’t say anything, and I took her silence to mean she didn’t care what the reason was.

“Are you a doctor?” asked Amory, not unkindly.

“I was a paramedic,” she said.

Amory grinned. “At school, the kids who trained as paramedics knew everything. They’d already been in the trenches, you know?”

“Med school?” she asked.

He grunted in assent, wincing as Shriver opened up his wound. “Never had the chance to finish.”

When she next spoke, her voice was kinder than I’d ever heard it. “Well, if something awful goes down and we have a whole mess of wounded people, I could use your help. Nobody else around here knows what’s what.”

She cleaned and sutured the wound quickly, slapping a new bandage over her work with a glare at me. “You stay away from here. You can’t make a clean incision to save your life.”

“I was using a kitchen knife!” I said, feeling defensive.

Amory grinned. “She did a really good job. She didn’t pass out or anything. Lots of people pass out the first time.”

I looked away, feeling my cheeks grow warm at the look he was giving me. He thanked Shriver and helped me out of the tent. We turned to go back to my tent, but Logan was already coming toward me with a serious look on her face.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

She looked at Amory. “Rulon’s called an all-hands meeting.”

My heart sank. I could think of only one reason for Rulon to call a meeting. He wanted to discuss Amory, possibly me and Amory.
Was he planning to kick us out of the camp? Have us killed?

When we reached the enormous bonfire, people were already milling about the mess line, waiting to get their breakfast. Even after our long hike through the night, I didn’t feel hungry. Greyson motioned us over to a log where he sat near the back, and we joined him.

“Do you think we should be sitting here?” Logan muttered to him, staring straight ahead. “We could get some stuff together and be on the move before they realize —”

Greyson sighed. He looked tired. “How far do you think we’d get before either the rebels or the PMC caught up to us?”

Logan looked wounded. “We’re smarter than they are. We could do it.”

“Where would we go?” I asked.
 

“If it’s me they want, I’ll leave,” said Amory.

We all turned to look at him. His face was set in a hard line, but I could see the fear flickering behind his eyes.

“No,” I said. “If it’s you they want, we’ll all make a run for it.”

Logan nodded, and to my relief, so did Greyson. I felt a twinge of guilt. A little over a month ago, Greyson had just wanted to go west and find a way to bring his family over. After he was captured, he wanted to fight for the rebels. I had dragged him into our problems, and because of that, they would never trust him as they trusted their other soldiers.

The people sitting around us fell silent, and I looked up to see Rulon approaching from the tent block. He was fully dressed now, and he looked hardened and intimidating.

He stepped into the center of the group with the fire blazing behind him. “Comrades.” His voice boomed out across the crowd. “I regret to inform you that I have just received intelligence that our position has been compromised.”

An anxious murmur rippled through the crowd. Logan met my gaze, and I read the fear there. If Rulon was telling the truth, there was a good chance he was going to assign the blame to Amory and me.
 

“Apparently, one of the guards at the bridge became suspicious on our latest extraction mission and sent out a satellite rover. Fortunately, it identified Jared and two other undocumented illegals a good five miles away from camp, so our exact location is unknown.
 

“We should prepare immediately to fortify our ranks and take out the officers they send to investigate. I will lead a small group of soldiers out to their target location. Hopefully we can contain the situation. Any soldier who wishes to fight should meet back here in ten minutes ready to go.”

Rulon nodded once and strode back to his tent. The crowd erupted immediately.

“How do they know that?” Amory whispered.

“They’ve been listening in on the PMC forever,” said Logan. “The camp is so close to Sector X they can pick up the dispatch radio frequency on a regular scanner.”

Greyson snorted. “That’s pretty stupid of the PMC.”

“They think this area is secure,” said Logan. “That’s why they treat this threat so seriously.”

“Well, I’m going,” said Greyson.
 

“What?” I turned to him.
 

“I’m going down there to fight them.” His expression was set. “This is what I signed up for.”

“It’s not what
I
signed up for!” My voice was higher than usual, and I could feel the panic rising in my throat. “I didn’t come all the way out here so you could get yourself killed.”

Greyson met my gaze, and I recognized that look of determination on his face. That was the look he got when his mind was made up and he was not open to negotiation. “Things changed for me when I was locked up. I have to serve a purpose. Dying in a fight is better than sitting around here, waiting to be killed. When you’re afraid, they own you. I’m sick of it.”

“Well, I can’t go with you!” I said, gesturing to my ankle.

Greyson met my gaze the same way he had done when we were teenagers having one of our telepathic conversations. “I wouldn’t want you to.”

I stared at him, letting it sink in.

“I’m going, too,” said Amory.

“No, you’re not!” Logan and I said in unison.

I shot Greyson a deadly look. Not only was he going to put his own life in danger to play the hero, but he was dragging Amory with him.