Rebel (21 page)

They hadn’t killed me. I met his eyes as I realized this fact. Was I still valuable to them, after I’d caused all this trouble?

I shifted slightly and Officer Mayer watched my face closely. He looked down at my leg, which clearly was going to take hours to heal from those drugs they’d given me. Longer, if I wasn’t able to put the bone back in the right place. He was
almost eager as he searched my face.

“Does it hurt a little, One-seventy-eight?”

I snorted. Was he kidding?

The shuttle began to descend and I tried to twist around to see where we were. The pilot’s door was closed.

We landed and the shuttle door slid open to reveal four guards, weapons pointed at my chest. Suzanna Palm, chairman of HARC, stood behind them, her face excited.

“All four of you,” Officer Mayer said, gesturing to the guards. “Two carrying her and two keeping a gun on her at all times. You can’t let her out of your sight, even for a minute.”

One side of my mouth hitched up into a smile. It was flattering, how scared they were of me.

A guard unchained me and handcuffed my wrists together. He grabbed me underneath the arms, hoisting me to my feet, and the pain screamed through my leg. Another guard snatched them up and I had to clench my fingers into fists to keep from crying out.

The guard holding me by the boots wrinkled his nose, turning his face away from me. I was cold to him, dead and gross.

For a moment, I saw Micah’s point about getting rid of them all.

They carried me out of the shuttle and I twisted in the human’s arms, trying to catch a glimpse of where they were taking me. I didn’t recognize the large, brick building. It wasn’t Rosa. Or Austin.

As we passed through the entrance, the cold artificial air hit me and I shivered. The floors were white tile, the walls a nice cream color.

“Downstairs,” Suzanna said. She glanced back at Officer Mayer. “Is she prepped already?”

“She is.”

“Good. Put her in the cell for now.”

The guards took me inside an elevator and we dropped several floors before the doors slid open again.

It was not as nice down here.

Rows of empty cells stretched out in front of me. HARC cells were usually glass and white and sterile, but here they were dirty little rooms with bars.

They dropped me on the floor of one in the middle, and I pressed my face into the concrete floor to distract myself from the pain.

The bars slammed shut behind them and I struggled to a sitting position. There wasn’t even a bed in the cell. Just a toilet in the corner. The cells in front of me were empty, and silence engulfed the room.

I scooted back against the wall and looked around the tiny space. No windows anywhere. There was no way to tell what time of day it was. And judging by how many floors we’d dropped in the elevator, we were well hidden.

My heart sank as I took a deep breath. If I accepted I was going to die here maybe that would make it easier. Only a few
weeks ago, I’d lived with the possibility that I could die at any minute and would certainly die within three years. I needed to get back to that place.

But that place was gone, apparently. That place was taken up with Callum, and my chest kept tightening as I wished I’d given him a better good-bye. I had no idea what that good-bye would be, but the one we had seemed inadequate.

I moved my legs slightly, forgetting that one was still broken. I closed my eyes against the blinding pain, trying to push it back to where I couldn’t feel it. It was getting harder the longer I went without healing. I wasn’t used to having to deal with broken bones for more than a few minutes. Even in training, when Riley had broken multiple bones a day, I’d had a short recovery period between each one. This pain was constant, and I didn’t like it.

I leaned back against the wall, examining my mangled leg. What if it never healed? What if they figured out how to stop healing altogether one of these days? What if each shot was worse, and that leg healed all wrong and ugly? It would probably look worse than my chest.

I started laughing, a hysterical laugh that got louder as the panic began to fully set in.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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THE AREA BEYOND THE WATCHTOWER WAS QUIET ALL NIGHT, AND
still except for the occasional swaying tree. I found the tower closest to the rebels’ tunnel and paced alone in the small space all night. When morning came, I trudged past the fence and scouted the area, but there was nothing.

It was time to go find her.

“Leaving my post,” I said into my com. “Coming in.”

“Got it,”
Riley’s voice replied.

I headed over the hill and past the outskirts of town to the slum wall. The city was starting to move, and there were a lot more humans out and about today. Their attitude seemed to be one of avoidance, like they were going to ignore the Reboots
and pretend none of this was happening. Whatever worked for them.

I hoped my parents and David had come back last night to the house, otherwise it was probably in the process of being claimed by someone else.

I reached the wall and hopped over, landing softly on the other side, then I started down the dirt path in the direction of the schoolhouse. I wondered how much equipment HARC had left in the Austin facility. Any transport vans or shuttles? Maybe I could snag one and head out to look for Wren and Addie. Screw what everyone said about it being too dangerous. She would search for me, even if there was a high likelihood of HARC spotting her.

A Reboot ran across my line of vision, and then another. I frowned, turning to see where they were headed.

I could see nothing but houses and trees, but beyond that was the HARC fence.

I broke into a jog.

There were no shuttles, no shooting, no panicking. It wasn’t HARC at that fence.

“
Reboot at the south fence
.” Riley’s excited voice came through my com.

I ran faster as a clump of Reboots came into view. They were standing in front of the fence around someone. I couldn’t see who but—

I stopped. It was Addie. And she was alone.

I rubbed a hand across my forehead and tried to breathe. The air was stuck in my chest, unable to get past the lump in my throat.

Wren had been captured.

“She pushed me over into the river to save me,” Addie said, pulling the blanket one of the Reboots had given her tighter around her shoulders. She sat on the grass in the middle of a circle of Reboots, not far from the fence where she’d come in. I was across from her, trying not to panic. I was not succeeding.

She looked at me and swallowed. “I’m sorry.”

I shook my head. “Don’t be. It’s not your fault.” That sounded exactly like Wren, actually. In the midst of fighting for her life, she saw an opportunity to save Addie so she took it. I cleared my throat to push back the sudden urge to cry.

“I tried to get here as fast as I could but I walked the wrong way for miles and had to circle back.”

“Did you recognize the HARC officers?” I asked.

She shook her head miserably.

“But they wouldn’t kill her, right? If they wanted to kill her, they would have done it then,” I said. “They had an opportunity, didn’t they?”

“Definitely.” She nodded. “They were holding us, and the guy told someone he had her.”

Hope bloomed in my chest as I turned to Riley. “Where would they take her?”

“My first guess would have been here. Suzanna Palm uses the Austin capitol as a place to interrogate criminals. But with the way things are now, they’re not going to risk flying a shuttle into the city.”

“So Rosa, then. Right? That would be their next choice.”

“Maybe,” Riley said. “But Tony said they’re taking all the Austin refugees to New Dallas. HARC could be setting up shop there.”

Addie squinted at something behind me and I turned to see Tony and Gabe running for us, excitement on their faces.

“Oh, thank goodness,” Tony said with a sigh when he spotted Addie. “Your dad would have killed me.” He took a glance around. “Where’s Wren?”

“A group of HARC officers captured her.” I got to my feet, running a shaky hand through my hair. I wanted to freak out. I could feel the urge starting to close in, making it hard to think, and I looked around wildly for someone to step forward with an idea.

Riley frowned in thought, but everyone else was staring at me, clearly having already decided
I
was the one who was supposed to know what to do.

And they were right. If I wanted Wren back, I needed to step up and organize everyone before it was too late.

“We need to find out which facility she’s in,” I said, turning to Tony. “Can you get word to Leb in Rosa? Do you have someone in New Dallas?”

Tony nodded. “We’re already trying to communicate with the other cities about what happened here. I don’t have many people in New Dallas, but I can try.”

“Do you know what they would do with her?” Addie asked. “That could help, right? If we know what they want?”

Tony cleared his throat, dropping his gaze to the ground. “HARC has always wanted to know why some kids take so long to Reboot. Why they’re strong like Wren. I’d say it’s likely they’re going to experiment on her.” He winced and spoke softer. “There may not be a lot of time to find her in, um, one piece.”

My stomach lurched into my throat and I tightened my hand into a fist. The thought of them taking Wren apart and dissecting her made the world swim in front of my eyes.

“And if I were going to guess, they took her to Rosa,” he continued. “We never had much of a rebel presence there, and they might know that.”

I took a deep breath, trying to push my worries about Wren under the surface for a moment. That’s what she would do. She’d launch into action and then get upset about it (maybe) later, in private.

“You think you can maybe find out for sure?”

“I’ll do my best.”

I gave him a grateful look and turned to Riley. “Let’s start getting a group together to go after her. We’ll wait until tomorrow to see if we can get confirmation of where Wren is, but I’m heading out either way. I can’t wait anymore.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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I WOKE UP STRAPPED TO A TABLE. I HAD A HARD TIME OPENING MY
eyes again, but when I did the lights on the ceiling were too harsh and bright after my dark cell.

I wiggled my ankles. They were chained to the metal table, like my hands, and there was no way out of them, even though my leg had healed. How long had it been? I didn’t even remember someone coming into the cell and giving me something to knock me out, but they must have.

I turned at the sound of voices beside me. It was Suzanna and Officer Mayer, heads bent close as they talked to each other. Suzanna gestured to me and the commanding officer straightened. He still had that smug expression on his face I so
desperately wanted to wipe away.

I scanned the room. It looked like a smaller HARC medical lab. I was on a table in the middle of the room, a tray of sharp instruments to my left. A computer hummed in the corner, next to a cabinet of vials filled with liquid. Maybe they were going to make me crazy like Ever.

Suzanna crossed her arms over her chest and squinted at me. Maybe not crazy. Ever had seemed stronger when she was crazy, and I couldn’t see that situation ending well for them. I swallowed as my eyes flicked over the equipment. This seemed bad.

Officer Mayer pulled a chair up next to me and sort of smiled. It wasn’t a real smile. He’d actually given me one before, when I’d completed a mission to his satisfaction. He’d even liked me, in a way. Maybe that was part of the hate I saw in his eyes now. I’d let him down.

I smiled back.

Suzanna shuffled around the room, picking out a few vials. I cursed myself again for not asking Micah more about the experiments he’d been through at HARC. What had he said about them? There was one that made everything look purple?

I’d already encountered the one that made me heal slower. That one was not fun.

Suzanna was at my side suddenly, and something sharp pricked my neck. The liquid she pressed in burned, a little at first, and then so badly I clenched one of my hands into fists.
The burn started to scream down my entire body and I swallowed hard, resisting the urge to yell.

Instead I closed my eyes. They’d never specifically trained me to withstand torture, but they might as well have. Perhaps I hadn’t realized it before Callum, but what they did to all Reboots was a form of torture.

When I opened my eyes, Suzanna was above me, her face crinkled in confusion. “Which expression means she’s in pain?”

“That’s the only expression she has.”

“Hmmm . . .” She cocked her head, her gaze skipping down my body. She pointed at my clenched fist. “Oh, that looks like she’s in pain. Good.” She gestured at something. “Hand me the next one.”