Evolution (11 page)

But what she did was unforgivable. Skylar handed other people—
innocent
people—over to Commander Charlie in order to earn her freedom. People who should never have died are dead because of her.

“Thank you for helping me,” I say in a flat tone, picking up my helmet from the floor. “But don't think this means I've forgiven you for being a traitor.”

“You're welcome,” Skylar snaps. “And that's fine. I wasn't asking for your forgiveness.”

She leaves the room before I can, slamming the door shut behind her.

*   *   *

I don't remember falling asleep in my passenger seat, but I wake to someone shaking my shoulder. “What?” I mumble.

“We're here,” a soldier says. “Time to go.”

Blinking, I lift my head and take in the scene around me. The hovercraft isn't moving anymore. I must've slept the rest of the hour-long journey through the Pipeline.

Beyond the open doors at the back of the pod, I see transports of various shapes and sizes, and mechanics in orange uniforms pushing tool carts between the ships. We've landed in a flight hangar in the Core.

Most of the other passengers have already disembarked. The gurneys with Darren and Sam are gone.

I quickly unbuckle and get to my feet. My neck is stiff from the position I was sitting in, and the pain medicine is no longer doing anything for my ribs. I keep a hand on my chest as I follow the soldier out of the pod.

There's a group of people waiting for us at the bottom of the ramp. I immediately search for Commander Charlie in the group, but he is missing. There are only soldiers and a few nurses, one of whom is wheeling Darren's gurney toward the hangar exit.

Cadet Waller, the woman who oversaw my Extraction test and serves as one of Charlie's aids, is standing near Sam's gurney, next to Lieutenant Dean and Skylar. Waller's dressed in her usual scarlet uniform, wearing her hair in a slick, high ponytail, clutching the tablet she always carries with her. She steps closer to Sam on his gurney. He's babbling incoherent speech in his overdosed haze.

“Take the lieutenant to the health ward,” Cadet Waller says. She glances at me with no pity in her gaze. Then she looks over to Skylar and Dean. “Commander Charlie is waiting to speak with the three of you in the debrief room.”

My heartbeat picks up. I thought we'd all be taken to the health ward first. I thought I'd have more time to figure out what I'm going to say to Charlie.

“Clementine was hurt,” Dean says. “She has fractured ribs and a bullet wound. She needs rest.” He sounds wearied, exhausted; yet he isn't even mentioning the fact he's still feverish from poison.

Cadet Waller takes in my injuries—the blood-streaked bandage on my arm, the muddy spots on my safety suit covering up the bruises Sam gave me. All she says is, “She seems well enough to walk, so she's coming.”

There's annoyance in her expression, and distrust. She didn't agree with Commander Charlie's decision to send me on this mission.

I might've tried to kill Sam and help the Alliance rebels escape, but I failed. It's not my fault we were attacked by Mardenites. I hope the Developers will believe that.

Dean's eyes flicker to me, a question in them. I bet he'd continue arguing on my behalf if I needed him to, but this isn't worth a fight. I can handle the pain a little while longer. As nervous as I am, it's probably smart to get this meeting over with.

“I can wait,” I say, even as I wince from another flash of pain in my ribs. “I'll be fine.”

“Good. Follow me,” Cadet Waller says, leading the way out of the flight port.

*   *   *

The hallways look exactly as they did the first time I arrived in the Core: crisp and clean. That day I was nervous for a different reason, because I didn't know what to expect in this new life I'd won. Now I know the truth: I'm no safer in the Core than I was all those years I lived in the work camp on the Surface. I escaped the hard labor and the starvation, but I didn't escape the ruthless dictator and the lies.

But this time, I'm facing Commander Charlie with more strength and more knowledge. He's tried to control me with two serums now and failed. Giving me another injection won't work; I'll just break free of it again. He's lost the biggest power he had over me. And with the arrival of Marden's army, his mind is preoccupied with a bigger threat, so there's no time for him to create another serum. He's going to have to accept the fact I can no longer be controlled.

If Charlie truly ordered Lieutenant Dean to protect me and bring me back here safely, my life must be worth something to him—something more than what he told me before. I'm going to find out what he needs from me, and I'm going to use it to get what I want: a truce. Freedom for Logan and myself, at least until the Mardenite army has been defeated. That will buy us time to figure out a more permanent means of securing our freedom.

I hold my helmet under my arm as Cadet Waller leads Dean, Skylar, and me down a narrow corridor in Restricted Division, the area of the Core where only the Developers, their personnel, and citizens granted special access are allowed to go. I've walked down some of these corridors before, but the first time I was about to be sent to Karum prison and the second time I was a mindless soldier. Now, I pay closer attention to the path we're taking, trying to memorize it so I can navigate these hallways on my own. We pass doors marked
ENGINE ACCESS, CREW QUARTERS,
and
HALL OF COMMANDERS.
Rooms that would allow the Core to function as a space station if the outer sectors of the planet were blasted away.

Ahead of me, Dean is talking to Cadet Waller about the Mardenite invasion. He asks whether she knows anything about the extent of damage to the Surface thus far.

“I don't have the latest updates,” she says. “Everything's been chaotic. I've been working with citizen control, so I haven't been able to hear any damage reports. But I'm sure the commander will inform you.”

Cadet Waller stops in front of a door marked
CONTROL ROOM A.
She presses her hand to an access panel on the door, and it opens. We step into a massive room filled with voices and the loud beep of monitors. Giant screens cover the walls and form partitions throughout the room. Each screen has a different label:
CORE, CRUST, MANTLE, LOWER,
or
SURFACE.
Images on the screen directly in front of me, labeled
CORE,
show me Recreation Division, the area of the Core with war simulations, antigravity machines, and other games Core citizens can play in their pastime. This must be the room where the Developers keep an eye on all the happenings in Kiel's five sectors, through the video footage from their security cameras and cam-bot patrols.

As Cadet Waller leads us farther into the room, my eyes jump to one of the partition screens playing a live feed from the Surface. There are more techs crowded around this screen than any other. They're sifting through images at lightning speed, but sometimes they pause long enough for me to catch a flash of something familiar: the education building in the Surface city, or a street in the work camp. Enough for me to see that the skyscrapers in the city are still standing. If the Developers had detonated the Stryker bombs inside the child workers, the buildings would've been completely demolished. Which means the Strykers haven't been detonated yet.

The child workers are still alive. I exhale in relief. Something must've made the Developers decide to abandon that strategy.

My relief splinters when another image pops up: the black shapes of four Mardenite raiders circling over the skyscrapers. The techs start talking faster into their ear-comms. Bits of what they're saying reach my ears over the hubbub of noise in the room.

“We have another sighting—four raider planes—”

“Circling over blocks ten, eleven, and twelve.”

“No sign of poison bombs, but we'll let you know.”

“This way, quickly now,” Cadet Waller says, ushering us past the screens.

I almost stop and wait to see what the raiders will do on the screens. But it's not like I can do anything to stop an attack from this control room, anyway. I can only hope the techs are communicating with a military squadron on the Surface.

Cadet Waller leads us to a door on the far side of the room. She pauses in front of the door and presses a speaker button on the wall. “Commander Charlie, sir, this is Cadet Waller. I have the survivors of the Alliance mission, as you requested.”

A moment passes before an answer comes through the speaker. “Bring them in,” Charlie says.

Just hearing his cold, hoarse voice sends a shiver down my spine. The words he said to me before I left for the Surface mission replay in my mind, burning in my memory:
The more you fight the serum, the more you will lose.

But it was nothing more than an empty threat, meant to scare me into thinking he still has power over me. I won't let him control me anymore, or hurt Logan or anyone else I care about ever again.

Cadet Waller opens the door and leads us into the debrief room, her high, black ponytail swinging behind her. I follow Dean and Skylar inside, hardening my jaw. Trying to control my breathing so the pain in my ribs won't distract me from what I have to do.

It's not just Commander Charlie waiting for us.

 

13

Charlie sits on the other side of a large, circular table, between three men and one woman. All of them wear matching navy blue uniforms with small golden moons pinned to their chests. These are the five scientists and military leaders who rule Kiel.

The unease worsens in my stomach. Cadet Waller should've warned us they'd be here. This means I have to make all of them, not just Commander Charlie, agree to the truce I want to make.

The only other time I've seen all five Developers together was the day I completed my Extraction training, when I became an official citizen of the Core. I shook hands with each of them, and they offered me congratulations. Behind their warm, smiling exteriors, I'm sure they were celebrating that they'd soon have one more person to use as a pawn for their own purposes.

Right now, it seems we've interrupted them. They're in the middle of communicating with someone via a live video hologram on the table in front of them.

“If you want this to work, I'm going to need it as soon as possible,” the person on the video feed says. I can't see his face from this side of the table, but he sounds like Colonel Parker, the soldier Charlie sent to the Surface yesterday morning to oversee the transport of all the child workers from the internment camps into the resident buildings. The colonel must still be in one of the outer sectors or else he'd be talking to his commanders in person.

“You'll get it,” Commander Charlie says. “Be patient.”

He glances up at the others and me. The wrinkles around his eyes are exaggerated by tension. Whatever he's talking to Colonel Parker about, it's causing him stress.

“We'll talk again soon,” says the woman sitting on Charlie's left-hand side. She shuts off the video hologram as we approach the table.

The back of my neck prickles as the eyes of the Developers focus on Lieutenant Dean, Skylar, and me. There's a stark contrast between us and them—them in their navy blue suits and slick white gloves, us in our disheveled uniforms with the smell of war clinging to our clothes. They sit with their shoulders back and their hands clasped on the table in front of them, emitting authority and power. Commander Charlie isn't the only one who looks stressed; the others have sweat on their foreheads and tightness around their mouths.

I don't know what they've done so far to combat the Mardenite invasion, but I don't think they have a handle on the situation yet. They aren't confident they're going to win. That knowledge makes me breathe a little easier. Hopefully it will make them more willing to accept my help.

“Commanders,” Dean says, saluting them.

“Thank you for coming,” Commander Charlie says, clearing his throat. “We're glad you made a safe return. I apologize for not dispatching a rescue team sooner, but it took us some time to clear up the transmissions you'd sent. I hope you understand.”

“Of course,” Dean says, sounding calm. “Thank you for sending a rescue team, nonetheless. Without their help, we might still be stuck on the Surface.”

“I'm glad you were able to survive until our people found you.” Commander Charlie's gaze pauses on my face, studying my features. He's looking for a sign I'm still under the control of his serum. I don't have a smile painted on my face like I did the last time I saw him. “Clementine, did you follow the orders you were given?”

I stare resolutely back at him. But my palms are sweaty. “No, I didn't.”

He shakes his head, disappointed. “Even after we discussed what would happen if you disobeyed. I expected more of you, I must admit.” He makes a
tsk
sound.

He can't control you anymore. Don't let him scare you.

“I lost the extra syringes of your serum during the Mardenite attack,” I say in a steady voice. “And the serum wore off. It wasn't my intention to disobey you.”

“I can confirm she's telling the truth,” Dean says without hesitation.

“If you wanted me to follow your orders,” I say, “you should've made a serum that didn't have to be readministered.”

Charlie's jaw twitches. I have a feeling he's angrier than he's letting on. “We'll discuss this more later,” he says. He looks at Lieutenant Dean. “I understand the rest of your crew was captured during a Mardenite attack.”

“That is correct,” Dean says. “And at least four soldiers were killed.”

“Where is the mission commander, Lieutenant Sam?” the woman sitting next to Charlie asks. Her hair is a bob of graying brown, and her lips are painted bright red. Her skin has a tautness that makes me think she must've had operations to reduce her wrinkles.