The Farm (5 page)

He stared at me for an instant and I got the impression he was trying to decide just how much to tell me. Finally he turned away, stalked over to the windows on the far side of the room, and stared out for a long moment.

I’d just started to wonder if he was going to answer at all when he spoke.

“When I left Richardson High, my parents sent me to this military school, way out in south Texas. The guy who ran it had some pretty unique military experience.”

“You mean he’s, like, a Green Beret or something?”

“Yeah, something like that.” He spoke in a flat voice, the way people do when they’re trying to sound bored but aren’t doing it very well. “When everything collapsed, we hunkered down and held out. No one was much interested in some boys’ school. So we hung on until . .
 
.”

He let the words trail off like he didn’t want to say anything else.

“Until?” I prodded.

“Until we didn’t.”

The stark simplicity of the statement chilled my blood. He turned back to face me, all traces of his smile gone. Somehow, he looked both less and more like the boy I’d known.

“And now you’re here?”

“And now I’m here.”

“All of you?” I asked, but he just stared blankly at me, so I added, “All of you from the school are here?”

He looked out the window again. “By the time they were done with us, there weren’t enough of us left for the word ‘all’ to apply.”

“Oh.” Hell, what else could I say? “I’m sorry.” It seemed inadequate, but I said it anyway. “But I don’t see what that has to do with me.”

“Don’t you? You’re the first friend I’ve seen in months. Since being sent off to that hellhole.” His voice was edged with frustration, so I decided not to point out that “friend” wasn’t the word I would have used to describe us. “Could you just—I don’t know—take pity on me or something?”

I could have told him to go find someone else he’d known in the Before. Sure, out of the thousands of Greens on the Farm, most were strangers, but there were a couple hundred Richardson High alums scattered around. Last I’d heard, there was a group living over in Baker Hall. A few had even become Collabs.

In the end, it was his vulnerability that made me cave. Carter had been a bit of a badass in school. Hell, he’d stolen a car and been sent off to military school. The fact that he was acting all emo now was what wore me down. Because if one of the toughest guys I knew was asking for help, then how could I turn him away?

“Crap,” I muttered. This was just the last thing I needed.

He must have realized how close I was to giving in, because he took a step forward and said, “At least let me stay here for a couple of days. You and Mel can show me around.”

I studied him, still trying to pinpoint the source of my anxiety. “How did you know Mel was with me?”

“Why wouldn’t she be?”

I didn’t like that he’d been following me, even if it had been only for a few minutes. Even if it was only because I was the first person he knew from Richardson High. On the other hand, at least I no longer had to worry about some faceless Green selling us out to the Collabs.

“Where have you been sleeping until now?”

“I haven’t been. I spent most of the last two nights sitting in the hall in one of the dorms. I slept about thirty minutes the first night. Someone stole my backpack, so I’ve stayed awake since then.”

“You haven’t slept?” He
did
look tired, but he hadn’t slept at
all
?

“Military school,” he said simply. “We learned survivalist stuff like that.”

I had the feeling I was going to regret this, but I couldn’t just kick him out. I mean, besides the fact that I couldn’t
actually
kick him out. Our little tussle had proven that.

“Look, I can’t make you leave, even if I wanted to.”

He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Hey, I’m not going to force my way in here. I don’t have anywhere else to go, but if you want me to leave, I’ll leave.”

“Okay, leave,” I said, trying to be strong enough to send him away. And partly just to see if he would go, because I didn’t like being backed into a corner.

“I—” He blinked, looking surprised. “Okay. I’ll go.” He glanced around the room, like he was looking for anything he might have left behind. I looked, too, for a second, before remembering that he didn’t have anything. Everything he owned had already been stolen. He gave his shoulder a little shrug and then headed for the door. “Guess I’ll see you around.”

I gritted my teeth, shaking my head at my own idiocy. “Look, there are plenty of empty classrooms. I’ll loan you a blanket.” I knew I’d regret that later, but I couldn’t just boot him out entirely. Not when he looked so lost all of a sudden. Not when it was Carter. Maybe he and I hadn’t really been friends, but he’d always been so nice to Mel. I had a natural soft spot when it came to people who were nice to Mel. The least I could do was loan him a blanket and let him stay nearby. I’d slept on these floors myself and I knew how hard they were. “I probably even have an extra bag you can use. There’s an office two floors down with a wooden chair in it; you can carry it up to wedge under the knob. It’s enough to keep people out.”

“So I can stay?”

“Just try to stay out of our way. Mel doesn’t like strangers and I don’t want her to get upset.”

“I’m not a stranger,” he pointed out. “I know her.”

Back in the Before, Mel had been . . . not normal—never that—but her ASD symptoms weren’t so severe. She’d been mainstreamed into some classes at school. She’s talked, socialized, joked. Yeah, her jokes were usually stiff misfires, but I’d gotten them.

I missed that Mel, almost as much as I missed the person I’d been in the Before. I missed my sister. I missed having someone to talk to.

“Fine. You can walk down to fourth meal with us. I’ll see how it goes. But if she can’t take it, you leave, okay?”

“Okay.”

“There’s something you should know, though. Since coming to the Farm, she’s been . . . different.”

He frowned. “How?”

I could see his curiosity. “When you knew her, she had her ASD symptoms almost under control. I mean, yeah, she was Mel, but she was . . .” I cringed. Why did this seem so awkward? So I just blurted it out. “When we were kids, she did this thing where she only talked in nursery rhymes. Her therapist thought she did it because she was just repeating everything I said. Or maybe because they’re so rhythmic and she loves music. But she grew out of it and by the time you knew her in high school—”

Carter reached out like he was going to grab my hand, but then he didn’t.

I looked up at him.

“Hey,” he said. “You know I’m okay with Mel. I’m not going to do anything to upset her.”

“I know.” Strangely, I did know that. He kindness toward Mel was one of the reasons it had been so easy to crush on him. Even when he was a jerk to me, I knew he was a nice guy underneath.

“I just thought I’d tell you. That way you won’t be surprised. Because she’s not like she used to be.”

Not that any of us were.

Carter nodded, like he got it. I didn’t bother to tell him that he probably wouldn’t have to
do
anything. Mel was already freaked out. Between me being gone earlier and my long absence now, who knew what kind of shape she’d be in?

“Go down and get one of those chairs I mentioned. I’ll leave the blanket here.” I patted my hand on top of the nearest lab table. “For now, stay across the hall. I’ll come wake you when it’s time for fourth meal.”

“Thanks.” A slow smile teased his lips. “Then I’ll see you at dinner.”

I crossed to the door to the storage closet, but glanced back over my shoulder. He was watching me, hands shoved deep into his pockets, looking almost smug.

“And try to find a razor and shave.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You don’t like the beard?”

“It makes you look too old. You don’t want to give any of the Collabs a reason to give you a hard time.” Or maybe I just wanted him to look more like I remembered him looking in the Before. Though why that should matter, I didn’t know. He wasn’t that person anymore. None of us were. “You should try a little harder to blend.”

I shook my head, thinking of all the things he didn’t know about surviving on the Farm. I had a lot to teach him and not much time to do it.

Plus, I had a lot more questions I wanted answers to. Like how had he escaped from the Ticks attacking his school? From what I’d seen on the news before Mel and I had been shipped off to the Farm, the Ticks were insentient monsters. Yeah, they’d been human once, but exposure to the Tick virus had destroyed their ability to reason and to control themselves. If they’d attacked Carter’s military school, they would have eaten everything in their path. Ticks didn’t take prisoners and ship them off to Farms. There was something Carter wasn’t telling me. Were there adult Collabs on the outside who rounded up kids and forced them to come in?

I needed to know everything that had happened to Carter between the moment his school had been attacked and now. If his story didn’t make sense, then I’d worry about whether or not I could trust him. For now, I had to work under the assumption that he was the same basically good guy who’d always been nice to Mel.

That guy may not have been on our side, but he sure as hell wouldn’t be on the side of the Collabs and the Dean.

Of course, if he could explain how he’d gotten caught and ended up here, then I had to figure out where he’d gone wrong.

He’d been on the outside and now he was trapped again. I needed to learn from his mistakes. I couldn’t let the same thing happen to us.

CHAPTER SIX

Carter

Carter breathed out a sigh as he watched Lily shut the door behind her with a resounding click. From where he stood in the science lab, he couldn’t tell if the room she’d disappeared into was an office or what. He walked close enough to the door to hear the unmistakable murmur of voices, which meant Mel was in there with her.

He’d found them. Lily was alive.

After years of thinking about her and months of praying she was safe, after all the crazy stuff he’d been through trying to track her down, he’d actually found her. She was alive—breathing and unhurt—not forty feet away from him.

He nearly laughed out loud as relief flooded him. Hell, he’d practically wrestled with her. A second later his laughter died out as reality set in. Yeah, she and Mel were alive, but earning her trust was not going to be as easy as he’d hoped. The fact that they lived in this building, isolated from most of the other Greens, said a lot. They obviously kept to themselves. He couldn’t slowly ingratiate himself into their circle of friends—not that that tactic was possible now that she’d tackled him and he’d had to fight her off. That had not exactly set the tone for the kind of friendly trust building he’d wanted for their reintroduction.

To make matters worse, he’d seen that plastic case she’d accidentally dropped in the quad. If that blue case was what he thought it was, then she was either very smart or very stupid. Either way, carrying that crap around could get a girl killed. What the hell was she thinking?

Of course he couldn’t ask her that. For now, he was stuck playing dumb and vulnerable.

He could tell she hadn’t bought his story about how things had gone down at the military school. He had hoped to have a few days to work himself into her good graces before telling her the whole truth. He hadn’t counted on her being so tough. So suspicious. But he kind of admired her for it, even if it made his job harder.

He was going to have to handle the next few days very carefully. If she knew why he was really here and what he really wanted from her . . . if she knew he was playing her, she’d probably slit his throat in the night. For the first time in his life, his motives were selfless and noble—he was trying to save the world, for cripe’s sake—but since saving the world involved manipulating Lily, he didn’t think it would win him any points with her.

For now, he was just happy he’d found her. After months of searching for her, he’d found her. She and Mel were in the next room. They were both alive and safe. And now that he was here, he could protect them.

Still, lurking outside her door like some sort of pervert probably wasn’t the best way to convince her to trust him. So he left the lab room. Out in the hall, he considered his options. Leaving her alone wasn’t one of them. It had taken him too damn long to find her. He wasn’t going to risk losing her again.

Tonight while they were asleep, he’d find the fuse box and get the elevator shut down so no one could sneak up on them. Then he’d have to rig an alarm on the doors to the stairwells. That should be easy enough.

Later, he might figure out a way to rig her door so he’d hear it if she tried to sneak out, but for now, he’d settle for simple line-of-sight surveillance from the room directly across the hall.

It was a lecture hall, with maybe fifty seats mounted to the floor, set up stadium-style behind rows of narrow desks. With the door to his room open, he sat, back propped against the lectern, arms clenched around his knees, and drew in a series of long breaths, until his heart rate slowed.

Sebastian may have been full of crap about a lot of things, but when it came to taking the edge off an adrenaline rush, the guy knew what he was talking about. Of course, Sebastian would have told him to twist his body into some crazy full-on yoga pose to meditate. Carter, however, wasn’t quite ready to risk taking his eyes off the door to Lily’s room.

He’d try quieting his mind and being receptive to the universe and all those other Jedi mind tricks some other day. Someday when he hadn’t just had his ass handed to him. By a girl.

He’d have thought that the eighteen months of combat training he’d had in military school might have given him an edge, but no, he’d had to resort to playing dead like a frickin’ possum. Ah, Sebastian would be so proud.

Though, in Carter’s defense, she’d been trying to kill him and he’d been doing his damnedest not to actually hurt her, because if he was right and Lily Price really was the key to defeating the Ticks, he sure as hell didn’t want to be the one to accidentally kill the savior of all humanity.

When he felt sure he could talk without Sebastian reading his emotions in his voice, Carter pulled up the right leg of his jeans to where he had a cell phone case strapped to the ankle of his boot. All the cell towers had been knocked out when the Ticks first took over, but his satellite phone still worked. Thank God he hadn’t broken it in the fight. Or worse, lost it. The last thing he needed was for her to know he had it. She was smart enough that his phone would have raised a major flag for her.

He had a tiny mirror in his survival kit strapped to his other leg. He set it up on the ground beside the lectern, angled just slightly. Then he retreated to a corner of the room, sitting on the floor with his back against the far wall. If the door to Lily’s room opened, he’d see it in the mirror.

He scrubbed a hand down his face. Jesus, he was tired. He hadn’t lied to Lily about how little sleep he’d gotten in the past few days. He’d only lied about why.

There was only one number programmed into the sat phone and it didn’t take him long to pull it up and dial it. The phone was clunkier than the old iPhone he’d had in the Before, but he’d been using it so long it was second nature by now. Sebastian answered on the first ring.

“You found them.”

“Didn’t you tell me not to call until I had?”

If Carter hadn’t been calling with such good news, Sebastian probably wouldn’t have put up with the attitude. Today, he just asked, “What’s their status?”

Grumpy. Pissed off. Suspicious. Bruised, if his own status was anything to go by. “Fine,” he said aloud.

“Were you right about her?” There was a tension in Sebastian’s voice that Carter had never heard before.

If he’d thought—even for an instant—that Sebastian might be capable of emotion, Carter would have called it excitement.

Carter rubbed a hand down his face and considered the question. Was she the one? It had been a long time since he’d last seen her in person. There’d been a chance—a damn good one—that his memory had played tricks on him. That maybe there was nothing special about Lily at all.

He let himself think about her now, not the girl he’d known back in the Before, but the girl she was now. Suspicious. Wary. Tough as hell. But she’d always had a sort of leery reserve to her. Yet even in their brief conversation, even bracing himself against it, he’d felt the pull of her personality. Felt the sway she had over his emotions. He thought of the desire he’d had to comfort her. The way he’d constantly wanted to touch her. The way he’d actually offered to leave if she asked him to.

What had
that
been about? And what the
hell
would he have done if she hadn’t told him he could stay?

He guessed he would have left. He’d have set up surveillance outside her building and prayed like hell he didn’t lose her. But the very fact that he’d
offered
was proof enough. She made him feel things no one ever had. In short, she made him feel things that
she
felt.

If anything, his memory had diminished the effect she had on him. If she could control his emotions without even trying to, then, yeah, she was the
abductura
Sebastian was looking for.

Once she learned how to control her power, she would be able to control the emotions of everyone around her. She was the one person who could turn the tide in the war against the Ticks.

Finally, Carter said aloud, “Yes. We were right.”

“Excellent.”

“Look, I have them under surveillance. I don’t want to leave, but I need a few things.” He rattled them off quickly. “I’m up on the seventh floor of the Walker building. A couple floors down, there should be some wooden chairs in one of the offices. Can you have someone bring one up, leave it in the stairwell? Also some sort of motion-activated camera that I can link into my phone, so I’ll know if they try to leave. And see if you can find me a razor and some shaving cream.”

“Certainly,” Sebastian said, his accent even more droll than usual. “Do you need anything else? Fresh towels? Maybe some hot cocoa from room service?”

Carter pretended not to hear the sarcasm. There’d been few enough times when Carter actually had something Sebastian needed. “Yeah. See if you can find some bubble gum.”

“And why would I do that?”

“Because Mel likes it.” Back in school, she’d had special permission to chew gum in class because it was quieter than her Slinky. It had always seemed a little unfair that she could chew gum
and
blow the curve on every math test. “If I’m going to worm my way into their life, I need every advantage I can find.”

“You told me you were their friend.”

“I said I knew them. And if you’ve anyone else who can give you that, then you’re welcome to cut me off and do this without me.”

He could practically hear Sebastian grinding his long incisors in annoyance. A second later, he ended the call and slid the phone back into the case on his leg. Sebastian would text him when things were in place. He was clearly too annoyed to bother calling Carter.

Alone with his thoughts, he was suddenly exhausted. And achy.

Not wanting to get too comfortable and risk falling asleep, he pulled his hoodie off and then a moment later also took off the plain white T-shirt he wore beneath it. It was cool enough in the room to help keep him awake.

He just hoped that Lily didn’t try to sneak out on him. He wasn’t a hundred percent sure he’d win round two.

When he’d known her in the Before, Lily had had a natural suspicious prickliness to her. What she’d been through since then had only reinforced those qualities. He was going to have to work hard to win her over. She wouldn’t easily trust him. That was okay. He had all the time in the world.