inDIVISIBLE (31 page)

He pulled me closer, his mouth moving as if speaking but no sound coming out. He dragged me closer to him, holding me so tightly my hand ached.

T scrambled toward us, pulling out his knife and holding under the man’s chin. “Don’t hurt her,” he said.

The man’s eyes only flickered to T before they rested on me again. His hand loosened but he continued to work his lips.

“It’s okay, T. He doesn’t have the strength to hurt me.” I leaned toward him. “What?”

“Run,” he whispered, voice raspy, eyes turning wild. “Run.”

He released me, his eyes going back and forth between the two of us until T pulled me to my feet. “We’ve got to go,” he said.

I hesitated. “What about him?”

“His best hope is the Alliance … they’ll be here to get him soon.”

I backed away, the man’s
green eyes following us, the golden specks in them spurring a memory—but a memory of what? His limp body looked so different than when I’d seen him before—and that’s when his face registered. “You were there,” I began. “The day my father died, I ran to his building and you were there guarding it.”

He didn’t move, his eyes intense and alive even if the rest of him looked like he was dying.

“You know what really happened,” I whispered.

The officer lifted his hand again, placed his finger on his bottom lip and swiped it across his cheek.

Tears filled my eyes and I backed away. “I can’t leave him here like this,” I whispered to T.

He took my hand, cast one more glance at the officer and pulled me through the trees. “We have no choice, Brynn. People are coming for him. They’ll get him medical and he’ll be back on our trail before we know it.”

I jerked him to a stop. “Don’t you see, T? He’s not like them.”

T placed his finger over my lips. “There are bugs all over these men, Brynn. If you want to protect that officer, you’ll remain quiet until we’re far away from here.”

I knew there was nothing more for me to do if I wanted to live, but I had to get a name. I scanned his uniform, his embroidered name on his chest above his pocket—
J. Prusa
. I turned my back on Prusa. “You’re right,” I whispered to T. “Let’s go.”

We returned to the place we’d woken and retrieved
the water bottle the Freeman had left. T picked it up and tossed it to me. “Drink it,” he said.

I took a swallow before I handed it back. “You finish it.”

He looked from the water to me and back again.

“Now—o
r we won’t go.”

He finished the water
, smashed the bottle in his hand and dropped it to the ground. I dropped the cap next to it, leaving it in nature to spoil the earth. I snatched up our pack and slung it over my shoulder after checking for my father’s books and the hard drive. At least he’d not had the sense to scavenge any further than the map.

I stepped through the trees where the
Freeman had gone minutes before. Casting my eyes back into the trees, I prayed the officer would be okay.

CHAPTER 36

“Did you see the PCA special about the terrorists who killed your father?” T asked, his hand still clinging to his side as sweat dampened the hair at his temples. He only risked a quick glance at me before turning back toward the hillside, measuring each step.

I’d watched every video, seen every picture. I nodded.

“Then you saw them execute the ‘terrorists.’”

I remembered the look
s on their faces, the shock, the fear and resignation. Then I’d seen it all disappear as holes opened in their foreheads and their eyes went blank. I nodded again, not trusting my voice.

The wind continued, picking up in intensity so that the leaves roared as they whipped against one another.

“They were carried out by drones,” T said.

             
I’d seen those drones in PCA news segments—quad-rotor machine guns that whipped through trees, hovered, blew people into pieces too little to capture on film. Satellite cameras recorded every second of their flight, including full color replays of every execution, which were broadcast over PCAs all over One United to prove how much the Alliance was doing to protect the Citizens from terrorists. I tripped on an exposed root.
Would I become one of those video highlights?

“They want us alive,” I said.

T shook his head. “Not after they believe we’ve killed their men. Besides, their men are close enough to the Freemen settlement that the Alliance will find it one way or another soon. They no longer need us to lead them.”

“You’re saying we’re leading them right to it?”

He shrugged. “Maybe.”

I stopped walking and scanned the mountain. “I didn’t want to put anyone else in danger.”

He stopped beside me and breathed his shallow breaths. “You’re not. The Alliance is, and they will continue until someone stands up to them and stops it. Besides, you’re the one who can do it. You have your father’s research and you have—”

“But, that man,” I
interrupted, rubbing at my sore wrists. “If he was a Freeman and he left us there to be captured by the Alliance, how can we trust any of them?”

T took my right hand, held my fingers lightly between his. “He’s not a Freeman. He has no scar.”

I looked down at my own ugly scar, a scar I’d have for the rest of my life. “You mean he still has his sensor?”

             
T nodded and grabbed my hand, keeping me beside him as we picked our way up the hillside. With his free hand on his ribs, he’d slowed and I felt like I pulled
him
up the incline now. I ignored the jitters that accompanied the thought and asked,              “How can that be? He’s way outside the public hiking boundaries. The Alliance should have picked him up by now.”

T shrugged. “Maybe he’s a spy.”

“Who kills other officers?”

T
’s limp became more pronounced as he favored his side. “What I wanted you to understand is that the Alliance may have had a plan for us, but we’ve proven we’re not open to discussion. The next plan of action will be death and I suspect drones.”

Chills coursed from
my fingertips to spine and all the way down my back. I’d seen too many deaths by drones to underestimate the threat. They picked off the enemy as easily as playing video games—only, the enemy usually had no recourse. “How do we fight drones?” I asked.

T stooped and picked up a rock. He tossed it in the air and caught it before shoving it in his pocket, making it bulge. He picked up another and another. “Ever played baseball?”

CHAPTER
37

If my survival rested in my ability to throw a proper fastball, the odds were definitely against me. I didn’t like the idea but hadn’t come up with anything better so I picked up rocks as we passed them, adding them to my pockets or backpack. All the while I prayed T would be a good enough shot that we wouldn’t have to rely on my athletic ability.

I excused his pain, hoping that when the moment struck, his adrenaline would carry him through and he’d forget about his broken rib until our lives were saved.

“How soon do you think they’ll come for us?” I asked.

T glanced behind us, searched
the sky and shrugged, grimacing with the strain on his ribs. “I thought they’d pick up their men by now.”

“
Me too.” My thoughts went back to the injured man, and I wondered if he was still alive. He couldn’t hold out too long with the blood he’d lost, and I worried for him, even knowing he’d tried to take our lives. But, there’d been something different about him, a humanity I hadn’t seen in any of the other men. “Do you think he’s still alive?” I asked.

T shrugged. “
They’ll come for their men. I just have a feeling they’ll come for us first.”

“And leave their own to die?”
I picked up another rock and smoothed it between my hands.

T scratched the back of his neck. “I don’t know.”

My conflict echoed in his voice, and I dropped the issue. “Do you remember the way, without the map?”

T nodded. “Mostly.”

             
Mostly
. I tried to think of the word in positive terms but it left my gut heavy. “What part don’t you remember?”

He laughed
, and my stomach eased a bit. “If I knew that, I don’t think I’d be saying ‘mostly.’ Do you?”

“At least we still have the journals,” I said. “They may help some, right?”

“Not without the map.”

I turned this idea over in my head as we continued, the sun pounding down on us, making the sweat run between my shoulder blades. I rolled my shoulders, my shirt sticking to my back—itching.
“What about the map without the journals?”

T held a branch out of the way as I passed and said, “There were a lot of false marks on the map so that it wouldn’t help without the interpretation.”

“So that man may not find the settlement?”

“I doubt it.”

“How long before he realizes it, do you think?”

T lifted his shirt and adjusted the bandage around his ribs. It had loosened and I moved in to untie it, cinching it tighter to keep the pressure where he needed it.
“I wish I knew.”

“Because he’ll come looking for us again.”

T dropped his shirt back down, and I wondered if my ribs poked through my skin as badly as his. I lifted my hem to look when he turned and asked, “What are you doing?”

My face reddened
, and I dropped my shirt. “Nothing.”

“Jealous of my wound?” he teased, his dimple on the verge of exposure.

I smiled despite our circumstances and said, “Yes. Then I could be the one to limp around.”

T’s mouth dropped open like an O and he feigned hurt. “Are you calling me weak?”

I started ahead again. “I’m calling you slow, a cripple.”

“Feisty’s right,” he said, catching me easily and falling into step beside me.

Birds chirped, and I felt a fraction of my tension slip away as my shoulders settled. Animals could detect trouble faster than people so if we listened for them, we’d have a warning—however slight—that something was amiss.

T pointed off into the distance and said, “Just past those trees we should reach some cliffs. We’ll cross along the top, find a dead branch, walk twenty steps and drop it over the edge of the cliff. Then we circle around to our left, over that ridge … then things get sketchy.”

“Throw a dead branch over the cliff?” I asked. “Are you messing with me?”

He smiled
, and I took his hand without thinking. He squeezed my hand and shook his head. “Serious.”

“I guess it’s no stranger than dropping rocks on the path.
”

He caught his bottom lip between his teeth for a moment, gazing up the mountain before he said,
“I wonder where they’re watching from.”

“You think t
hey’re really watching for us then?”

“Not for us,” he said, “for anyone.”

“Do you think they’ll help if they see us under attack?”

T’s thumb moved across the back of my hand. “No.”

“Because they don’t know us.”

“Because they have families to consider and if the drones caught a bunch of Freemen on tape and sent it ba
ck to control, they’d be found—massacred.”

“And the Alliance would be heroes for wiping out more terrorists.”

              He shrugged. “I doubt they’d even put it on the news. In fact, I think we’d be surprised by how much they
don’t
put on the news.”

We reached the trees he’d motioned to earlier and the sha
de beckoned me to stop and sit—to try and soothe my burned face and arms.

“Five minutes,” T said, bracing himself as he lowered to a rock. Sweat ran in rivulets
down either side of his face, his skin red like the tomatoes we used to get at the market. My stomach clenched and grumbled.

“When we get there,” he began,
pulling out his knife and cutting away a chunk of bark from an aspen, “we need to eat, but only a little at first. Too much will make you sick.” He peeled the outer bark away and placed a piece of inner wood in his mouth to chew. He handed me a piece and I copied him, the wood bitter but oddly comforting.

A little s
aliva formed and I could swallow again. “How do you know these things?” I asked.

“I’ve trained hard. Eating too much after intense training teaches you a lot about pacing yourself.”

That made sense, but I wondered about the other things, the things he seemed to know about maps and the woods. “What about this, the bark?”