New World Order (31 page)

I eyed Teegan. I didn’t want to ask her. She was sick and scared. But I needed help.

“Do you think you could do me a favor?” She looked at me without moving. “I need you to help me cut through these ties. Do you think you can do that?” I held up the shiv.

She hesitated but scooted across the floor to sit in front of me.

“All you have to do is hold the sharp
side against the tie and saw back and forth, okay?”

“Okay.”

She took the shiv, and I positioned my hands to give her clear access to the tie. She started a light, gentle sawing motion.

“You need to put a lot of pressure into it, Teegan. Just like you had to push down really hard on the water pump, remember?”

“Yeah.” She put more strength into the sawing motion, speeding up as she did.
The edge of the blade cut through my skin in seconds and blood came to the surface. She stopped. “I cut you!”

“It’s okay, honey. I barely felt it,” I lied. It hurt like hell. My head hurt like hell. Sweat rolled down my face, and I raised my shoulder and wiped it away.

Her little face was screwed into a look of horror. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I’ll tell you a secret. I heal
really
fast. Like, super fast. So it’s totally okay if you accidentally cut me, but it’s really important that these ties come off.” I held my bound wrists out to her.

I could tell by the dim light filtering in through the cracks that dawn was on its way. The plastic tie was strong enough to keep a person’s hands bound yet thin enough to slice through skin should the prisoner try to break free. It
shouldn’t take long for the shiv to cut through.

With a shaky hand, she returned to sawing, but she didn’t put as much strength into it this time.

“Give it all you got,” I said. “If it hurts, I’ll let you know.” She applied more pressure and cut into my skin. Warm blood welled up onto my skin. “Keep going,” I said. The shiv was a quarter of the way through the tie. More blood. “Didn’t feel
a thing. Keep going.” She gave it all she had, and I could see the tension in her small frame. I started pulling my wrists apart, straining against the weakened tie. Between our two efforts, the tie snapped.

I immediately pulled Teegan in for a hug. “Good job.”

Then I held her away from me and put my hand on her forehead. She was burning up. I tried to keep my expression blank even as I thought
that there was no way I could take her with me. She would die long before I got her back to the Dome. I hated to admit it, but she was better off in the hands of Ryder’s wives and inadequate medical attention than on the road with me for two weeks with none.

“I’m going to try to get out of here. When they come looking for me, you tell them you had nothing to do with it, okay?”

She shook
her head. “I don’t want to stay here alone.”

I looked into her big, feverish eyes and second-guessed myself. No. I couldn’t take her. She was too sick. “The ladies in the house can take better care of you than I can, Teegan.”

Tears welled up in her eyes, and her mouth turned down. “But they don’t like me,” she said and sniffed. “They told me I’m not one of Father Ryder’s children and I don’t
belong there. And when I do stuff wrong, they hit me.”

My heart broke. This little girl was stuck. Would things get any better for her here? Would they be any better for her on the road with Naoki, Talon and me? The shed was brightening as the first rays of sun seeped through the cracks. Now I could see that thin red lines spidered out from the burn on her face. Definitely infected.

Maybe
Naoki would know how to get her infection under control. He knew about plants.

“Okay, you can come with me,” I heard myself say. It was crazy.

Picking up the shiv, I went to the door. Just like the exterior doors back at the Dome, the hinges were on the inside. It was a security thing, so no one could break into the shed from the outside. And it probably explained why they kept my hands tied.
I started at the bottom. It was a single-pin plastic door hinge that was crudely constructed and ill fitting. Fadi and Amos always had to give the door a hard tug to get it open, and now I knew why. The pin wasn’t precisely straight, so I had to work at wedging it out, and it was painstakingly slow. The shed was getting brighter by the second.

A distant voice calling out startled me.

“Hey,
you asleep on the job, Amos?” It was Fadi.

I put my fingers to my lips and gave Teegan the
ssshhh
sign.

“What?” Amos said. His voice was right beside the shed. The first pin was only halfway out, and I still had two more to go.

“Father Ryder isn’t going to be happy,” Fadi said, closer now.

“Ralph’s full of it. That man was shot with four arrows. He’s dead,” Amos said.

“Hey, what’s
that noise?” Fadi asked. He was by the shed now.

“I don’t know. It’s the same noise we heard the other day.”

Holding my breath, I strained to listen, but it was hard to hear inside the shed. Could it be Ted? Or was I just being hopeful? I abandoned the hinges, knowing I was already too late to break out of there, and pressed an ear against one of the cracks in the wall. The sounds of the small
city waking were the only thing I heard at first until I made out a faint background noise that sounded mechanical. An aircraft? A vehicle? Or just wishful thinking?

Then I heard footsteps approaching. “Have you checked on him? Is he alive?” It was Ryder.

Teegan’s eyes grew wide with fear. I shook my head at her, willing her not to start crying.

“No, Father,” Amos said. “I was waiting for
you.”

“He fell asleep,” Fadi said.

“Is that so?” Ryder said in a threatening tone. “I’ll deal with you later. Open the door.”

Someone fumbled with the lock. The shiv was still in my hand, and I scrambled to drop it in the darkest corner of the shed, and then returned to my usual spot against the wall. I put my hands behind my back. I knew they were going to figure out eventually that my
hands weren’t tied, but I didn’t want Teegan around when they did. If I was going to be punished, she didn’t need to witness it.

The door swung open. My heart thudded against my chest, but I forced my breathing to remain even. Ryder stepped into the open doorway. For a man well practiced at maintaining a smile on his face at all times, this was the closest I had seen him to losing his cool.
His mouth gaped open, his eyebrows raised and drawn together. It was almost comical. Then his mouth clamped shut and his eyes darkened.

“Where did Ralph say he found him?” Ryder asked.

“I don’t know,” Fadi said. “Up north, in the mountains somewhere.”

Ryder pulled his lips into a tight line and glared at me. “You mean in the forbidden area—where the pile of rotting bodies was found over
fifteen years ago.”

I raised my eyebrows, as if I didn’t know what he was talking about. But I knew. The people from the Pit that we had Culled every year for almost three hundred had accumulated into a mountain of skeletons and rotting corpses. Yugo the giant from the scorchedlands was one of the fables created to explain it. I didn’t know what Ryder believed, though.

Ryder didn’t take his
eyes off me. “You’re not a scorchedlander. You’re not a miracle. And you’re most certainly not a god.” He motioned for Fadi to take me.

I stood up before Fadi had the opportunity to come in the shed and pull me up by the arm. I wanted Teegan out of there before they knew I was free. The girl stood too and hid behind me.

“There’s only one thing devil’s blood doesn’t work on, Jack, and that’s
a devil.” He gave me a hard stare. “I knew you would eventually come here to try to stop me from doing the will of the gods. I just didn’t want to take action against you until I knew for certain what you were. Now I know.” With a sneer of disgust, he turned away from me. “Take him to the square, and call everyone to witness. We’ll see how long a devil lives after he’s been disemboweled. I want
Ralph in the square too. He should’ve known better than to go into
those
mountains and bring evil to our city.”

Disemboweled?
Not good. I wasn’t really confident Doc’s nanobots could fix
that
. Fadi stepped inside the shed and grabbed one of my arms. Gripping my wrists with my hands, I locked them together. Having my hands free was the only way I was going to be able to save myself.

Teegan
started crying.

“I’ll be fine,” I told her. A voice inside my head screamed,
You’re about to be disemboweled. Of course you won’t be fine!
But I ignored that panic-stricken, irrational voice and concentrated on looking for a way out of my predicament.

Fadi and Amos flanked me on either side, and I deliberately walked slowly, not wanting either one of them to catch sight of my untied hands.
Teegan was ordered to the square with us, and she trailed behind me. She was small, but her figure would block anyone from seeing my untied hands from a distance.

Shouts rose up in the community. I heard the order to set up the table in the square, voices calling everyone to the event, but there was something else going on too—some kind of kerfuffle at the gate.

I looked skyward, hoping
to hear the mechanical drone of an aircraft. Even if Ted were out looking for me, which was a farfetched thought, how would I signal my position? The constant fire raging at the plastic factory would be my only hope. Throw something on the flames, like the black slurry I had seen, and send up black smoke.

As we rounded the big house and the commons came into view, I looked down the street to
the factory. I couldn’t get a clear view because two bear-drawn wagons were traveling up the street. The carts were packed with men, and as we approached the square from opposite sides, I spotted Naoki and Talon.

“Where are they taking them?” I asked Fadi.

“I don’t talk to devils,” he said.

“You talked to me yesterday. I haven’t changed since then.” He didn’t respond.

People were already
starting to gather at the square. The bear-drawn wagons left the street and entered the common area. I saw Naoki leaning forward, trying to get a better look, and then his eyes found me. Shrugging, I gave him an apologetic look and mouthed,
Save yourselves
. He shifted in the cart, as if he was trying to stand, and I shook my head. Heroics would only get him killed too. The wagons continued past
the town square and headed for the gates leading out of the compound, but two men halted them before they could continue down the street.

Shouting to my left distracted me, and I looked to see a very reluctant Hollywood being dragged to the commons. Two men had him by each arm with another two following behind. Tables were being set up inside the fenced-off square.

To my right, where the
wagons were detained, someone came jogging up to the big house.

“Father Ryder,” he said.

Risking a glance, I looked behind me and saw Ryder walking about twelve feet away. Thank goodness Teegan was there to block the view of my untied hands. I had no intention of dying by disembowelment. If I couldn’t escape, I would force them to kill me quickly and painlessly.

“Can’t you see I’m busy?”
Ryder said.

“It’s important, Father. There are missionaries at the gate I don’t recognize—”

“Then don’t let them through,” he said, cutting the man off. “You know the rules.”

“But Father, they have cargo I’ve never seen before. Technology you wouldn’t believe. And people like...” The man paused. “Like him.”

I didn’t need to turn around to know he was pointing at me. My head swung in the
direction of the gate, but traffic on the narrow street was too congested to see very far.

“If they’re like him, kill them,” Ryder said.

The man didn’t respond to Ryder. He just broke into a run, returning in the direction from which he came, on his way to give the order to kill. I watched him go until he disappeared around the corner.

Was Sunny at the gate? If she was, I needed to get
to her. But I couldn’t abandon Teegan, Naoki or Talon. Somehow I had to get us all together in the same spot.

“Hey, Teegan,” I said. “You see those carts over there, with the men in the back?”

“Yes,” she said in her quiet little voice.

“Run to them.”

Sunny

Just breathe
, I told myself as I did my best impression of a prisoner. Pinpricks of sweat
broke out across my forehead and I fought the urge to wipe it away with the back of my hand since they were supposedly bound to the rails.

Breaching the perimeter, as Hayley referred to it, turned out to be the longest walk of my life, and that included the time I had posed as Leisel in a bridal gown. We had to cross one mile of barren ground, the only people on the plain, under the vigilant
watch of several archers poised along the top of the fence. From a distance we probably looked like any other recruiting party coming home from a raid, and I prayed that all the armed men at the gate were just a routine security measure.

Eli was doing all the talking, which, he said, would be normal for a “rig captain.” He sounded like he knew what he was doing, so we went with it. And as he
predicted, the recruiters were agog at the sight of the bikes. For a few hopeful seconds, I thought they were going to let us through without a problem, but apparently permission from the head honcho, Father Ryder, was required before allowing strangers entry into the city. Someone had been dispatched to go find him.

We waited at the gate, under the watchful guard of the archers, for word that
we were allowed to enter. Our exoskeletons were impervious to their arrows, but Jin, Eli, Hayley, and Zach, who walked alongside our wagon posing as recruiters, were vulnerable to attack. And I was getting worried.

“If you would just let us take these to him, I’m sure you would be well rewarded,” Eli repeated for the third time.

“I already told you, if he’s interested, he’ll let us know,”
the gatekeeper said. “We wait.”

A curious crowd was beginning to form inside the compound, many of them children. I wanted to shoo them away. Tell them to run home. If we could get in without bloodshed and just take a look around for Jack, Naoki, and Talon, then that would be the best scenario. But it wasn’t the only scenario. We would use force if necessary.