Frozen (17 page)

She looks at the weapon, now an empty piece of metal. Her jaw clenches. She lunges at him, but someone along the wall jumps to restrain her.

Titus wraps the chain back around his palm.

He’s struck Bree all of three times when I’m blindfolded and dragged from the room.

I’m shoved to a sitting position, the ground beneath me cold. Pain flares through my shoulders as my hands are pulled behind me and bound. Then my shirt’s being torn open. A moment later comes the sting of a needle, stitching the cut on my chest but not bothering to be gentle about it. A gag ends up in my mouth when I won’t stop yelling for Bree and the others.

When the wound is dressed and the blindfold finally pulled off, I find I’m in a dingy room filled with pipes and poles and oddly sized metal containers. The view is engulfed by darkness as the healer leaves, pulling the door shut behind him. My only company now is a flickering candle set far out of reach.

“Hey!” I shout through my gag. My voice echoes through the dark room. I scramble to stand up and find my arms are not only tied behind my back, but around a pole as well. I twist, attempting to free myself, and feel the stitches strain from the motion.

“Hey!” I shout again. “Untie me!”

“They’re not coming,” someone says. Jackson.

I flatten myself to the floor and peer beneath a metal vat behind the pole I’m tethered to. I can just barely make him out on the other side, sitting with his back to me.

“Jackson. Can you untie me?” The gag is muddling my words, but he seems to understand me well enough because he laughs.

“Why would I help you? And besides, I can’t. I’m tied up, too.”

“Where are the others?”

“Sammy and Clipper were dragged off somewhere. I don’t know where they took them.”

“And Bree?” I ask, my voice catching. “What about Bree?”

“Titus beat her until she passed out. Then I was dragged here, but you were too busy screaming to hear them bring me in. I don’t know anything else.”

My mouth goes dry. How did this happen? How did I manage to botch our mission, get my entire team caught? And Bree. It’s completely my fault. I told her to put the gun down. I told her to surrender her only way of protecting herself.

A loud screech echoes through the room and torchlight floods in. I shrink away from it. A man dressed in furs and leather enters, dragging Sammy and Clipper behind him. Sammy’s blond bangs are slick with blood and his nose is swollen to double its normal size. It’s broken for sure. I feel a small surge of relief when I see Clipper unharmed.

The man binds Sammy to the pole in front of me, and Clipper to the one behind Sammy. Then he notices me watching and shouts back toward the doorway.

“Did he wanna see the leader next?”

“Bring him,” comes the reply.

I’m promptly untied and dragged from the room. We go up a flight of stairs and through a series of hallways. Some have cold, concrete walls; others are nothing but frozen dirt tunnels. Not once do I see a window. We are still underground. Even stranger, I don’t see a single person. There have to be more than the handful Bree and I saw after falling through the trapdoor.

We make a quick turn, and I’m shoved into a room. A hammock hangs between two poles. A bedpan rests on the floor. Several candles sit on the surface of a crudely fashioned table. Titus steps from a corner and into their glow.

I’m pushed onto a crate serving as a chair, and while my arms remain tethered behind my back, at least the gag is removed.

Titus waves at my escort dismissively. “Put the damn torch out or get gone, Bruno. It’s hurtin’ my eyes.”

Bruno grunts and leaves. As soon as I’m alone with Titus, I spit out the first thought that comes into my head.

“Where’s Bree?”

His lips spread into a thin smile, which looks wicked in the candlelight. “You ain’t here to talk about yer woman.”

“Where is she?”

“Tell me yer name, and maybe I’ll tell where she’s at.”

“Gray,” I say immediately. “Gray Weathersby.”

He says the name back to me, like he’s trying it on. Then he runs his fingers absentmindedly through a candle’s flame.

“I gave you my name. Now where is she?”

“I’ve changed my mind.”

I writhe against my bindings. “You said—”

Titus picks up his knife and drives it into the table. It stands, wobbling upright, light bouncing off the blade. “What’s it this time?” His lips are pulled back in a snarl, his chest heaving. “What do ya want?”

“This time? We came to help you.”

He folds his arms across his chest and laughs. “That’s what yer people said last visit, and ’member how that went?”

I’m trying to make sense of his words, but they don’t add up. I run through everything I know about Group A.

The test subjects became uncivilized. They were fighting, killing one another off, completely out of control. Frank turned off their electricity, hoping they would perish. They did; Bo overheard the confirmation years ago, a report from one Order member to Frank. But then we saw survivors, just months ago, darting in and out of the Group A screens in Union Central’s control room. I must be missing a detail—a crucial detail—because nothing Titus is saying makes sense.

“Yer men gave me the same lie when we questioned ’em,” Titus says. “
We’re here to help.
The blond was partic’ly useless. Refused to say a damn thing. Claimed ya wouldn’t want him to.”

I feel a surge of gratitude at Sammy’s loyalty.

Titus sits on the crate opposite me and pulls his knife from the table. He points it at me.

“Now ya listen, and ya listen careful. Yer not wearin’ those black uniforms, but I know what yer plannin’. And even if I weren’t alive the first time Reapers crossed our Wall, I know the stories well ’nuff. I know the sufferin’ ya sow.”

The truth hits me like a blow to the gut. Bo interpreted the report about Group A dying off the way the way anyone would. But now, I think I know. I don’t want to believe it, but I think . . .

“Titus, what happened the last time someone visited?”

“Ya know perfectly well what happened,” he spits. “It was yer people, and it was a massacre. E’erybody livin’ above was slaughtered.”

TWENTY-TWO

MY MOUTH FALLS OPEN. IT’S
impossibly cruel, but it makes sense. It explains how so many of them survived, why they stay so cautiously hidden even now.

“Your people had been fighting back then,” I say. “It was a war. Those who didn’t want any part in the bloodshed must have gone underground. The others continued to battle above, in the open, for months. And then . . .” I think back to the word Titus used to describe what must be the Order. “And then the Reapers arrived.”

“I see yer finally ’memberin’. So I’m askin’ again: What do ya want this time?”

“We aren’t with them,” I say. “Those men . . . the Reapers. They’re part of the Franconian Order, a group that serves Dimitri Octavius Frank.
He
is your enemy—not my team. He put you inside this Wall and when things got too out of hand for his liking, he decided to clean up the mess he started by slaughtering your people.”

“Ya know an awful lot ’bout our history.” Titus’s eyes narrow in thought. “Too much.”

“We are like you, Titus. I grew up inside a Wall, too.”

He grunts doubtfully. “Yer lyin’.”

“Why? Because anyone that climbs the Wall ends up burned to death? Because it would be impossible for me to be here if I climbed?”

He looks up. “Course ya know that detail. Any Reaper would.”

“I am
not
a Reaper. My team has nothing to do with the Order.”

He cocks his head at me and blinks those bloodshot eyes. I get a sickening feeling he’s deciding how to dispose of me when our meeting is complete. He doesn’t believe a word I’ve spoken.

“You said you want answers and I have them,” I say desperately. “I’ll explain why my team is truly here, but only if I can see Bree afterward, confirm she’s okay.”

He considers this, and eventually nods for me to continue. I start the way the truth was once told to me.

“This place, your home. It’s part of a project. The Laicos Project.”

I tell him everything.

I explain how Frank set up five test groups across AmEast. How he forced societies under various living conditions to create his own brand of soldiers. How he Heisted boys at eighteen, and in the case of Saltwater, the occasional girl at sixteen. I tell him about the Forgeries, Frank’s plan to replicate each Heisted subject for his ongoing battle with AmWest, and his end goal of limitless replicas, an expendable army of soldiers, which I fear he’s finally accomplished. I end with how the Rebels spotted Group A’s people on the screens in Frank’s control room and decided to investigate.

“We want your help rebooting the power here. Then we could get in touch with our people back east, fight Frank from two directions. You can help us. Or you could leave, climb the Wall, and start a life somewhere else. Whatever your people want. The point is that you don’t have to live like this anymore. The Rebels are willing to help you.”

“Anybody climbin’ over that Wall ends up dead,” Titus says firmly.

“I just told you: Frank doesn’t even know you are here. He thinks he killed everyone. Nothing will happen if you climb.”

“Lies! We all ’member the tales of our grandparents, stories ’bout Reapers dressed in black, whose sole purpose was gatherin’ the dead. Death claims all climbers.”

“Oh, really? When was the last time anyone tried to cross the Wall?”

“They ain’t climbed in decades, and there ain’t gonna be climbin’ anytime soon. We go above only at night; dark is safe, day is danger. Nothin’ good comes from up there.”

“No, plenty of good exists. There is bad, too, but I’m offering you help. Hundreds of us,
thousands
of us, are on your side. We want to make it right. We want to overthrow Frank so no one fears him anymore, including your people.”

He twists his knife on the table, the point carving out a tiny divot. “This is a complicated lie yer weavin’, Reaper. Do ya think I’ll fall for it cus it’s so layered?”

“I’m telling you the truth!”

“The Heists ya mentioned, the whole point of this s’posed Project. They ain’t happenin’ here. They
ne’er
happened here. Yer story is full of contradictions and I ain’t buyin’ it.”

“Of course they don’t happen here! Frank thought your people were unstable. He didn’t want to use them as a base for Forgeries. He thought you were so wild, he came in and murdered everyone aboveground just to put an end to his own mess. And now, even if he
did
want to Heist from your pool, he couldn’t because he doesn’t know you exist. You’ve been hiding down here for years, terrified to show your faces.”

Titus slams his palms on the table. “Ya weren’t here to witness the slaughter. Ya didn’t hear the screamin’, the pleas for mercy, the Reapers tearin’ our people apart.”

“Neither did you! This happened years ago.”

“I don’t have to live somethin’ to know it!” he shouts. “We’ve ne’er forgotten the dangers that live above, and I ain’t walkin’ outside with ya. I ain’t helping ya power nothin’ neither.”

“I want to talk to the person in charge.”

He smiles. “Yer looking at him.”

“There’s no one older?”

“There’re many, but we ain’t got much use fer a person can’t no longer hunt, or scavenge, or make new life. The elderly got no power in Burg.”

“Burg?”

“Don’t act like ya don’t know where yer at, Reaper.”

So Group A finally has a name. “How many of you are there? In total?”

“I ain’t giving my enemy more information,” he says, standing.

“We have the
same
enemy! How many times do I have to say it?”

But he’s beyond listening. “Bruno! Kaz!”

Bruno reenters the room. In the candlelight, I can see him clearly for the first time. He has a patchy beard and beady eyes and he can’t be much older than Sammy. The second man looks the same age and wears a wool sweater reinforced across the elbows and shoulders with leather.

“Take him to the holdin’ cell,” Titus says. “Give him five, then put him back with the others.”

“Wait!” I shout. “You have to listen to me. You have to—”

But Bruno and Kaz are already dragging me from the room. I lose track of where we are going because I’m struggling so much. We take a sharp turn and stop before a solid, ominous-looking door. One of them opens it as the other unties my hands. Then I’m shoved inside, bolted in with the darkness. There is a lone candle on the floor. It takes a minute for my eyes to adjust, but when they do, I realize Titus has kept his word about one thing.

He’s let me see Bree.

She’s lying facedown on the hard floor, head resting against her forearm. A small bowl of water, practically empty, sits nearby.

I crawl to Bree’s side, put my ear near her face. A warm exhale hits my cheek.

I roll her over and cringe. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her in worse shape. Her lip is split in two places, and her nose, like Sammy’s, is far larger than it should be. A gash on her forehead from Titus’s metal-laced punching has left her hair traced with blood. There’s an even nastier gash above her left eye. It needs stitches. Badly.

“Bree?” I shake her shoulder gently.

She moans, forces her eyes open. They go wide when she sees me, and my name is laced with pain when it falls from her lips.

I rip a section of cloth from my shirt and dip it in the water bowl so I can attempt to clean some of the blood from her face.

“I’m gonna kill him for this. He thinks this proves something—beating someone whose hands are held.”

“Don’t waste . . . your energy,” she says between sharp inhales.

I raise an eyebrow.

“I’ll kill him myself,” she clarifies. “I don’t need anyone fighting”—she winces as I press the cloth to the gash above her eye—“my battles.”

I grin at her stubbornness. “It’s good to know he didn’t break your spirit.”

“And that surprises you? You thought I’d break from a few punches?”

“No. Definitely not. I just—”