“Is he sure?”
“He seems to be. But there’s something’s else. . . . Maude and Bruce are in danger. Abel’s going to take me to them tonight.”
Wren, who’s opposite Silas, leans in. “Huh?” she says, crumbs flying onto Silas’s plate.
“Give me peace,” Silas snaps, and Wren sulks back, turning her body slightly away. Silas slides closer to me. “Abel was the one who told us to stay.” He thumps the table and our cutlery jumps.
“Maybe he didn’t think any of us would become benefactors.”
“You aren’t to go with him. I don’t want you to end up out back in a fresh grave,” Silas says.
“Once we have Maude and Bruce we can go back and overthrow the Ministry. Isn’t that what we’ve always wanted?” It’s certainly what I’ve wanted.
Silas looks around. Quinn and Dorian are seated across the dining room with the other academics, but Maude and Bruce are missing. “Fine, go with Abel,” he says. “And as for going back to the pod . . .” he begins, but a hush swims through the room.
Vanya has risen. “I only have one announcement this evening.” She pauses and those still eating put down their knives and forks. “Our groundskeeper, Peter Crab, who is responsible not only for the land within Sequoia, but also for maintaining a semblance of order beyond the walls, is missing. If any of you see him, or have an inkling where he could have wandered off to, please inform Maks immediately.” Maks is scanning the room. Silas and I don’t look at each other.
Not even a glance. We know without saying a word that our time is running out.
I leave the lab feeling a bit twitchy from the EPOs. I haven’t swallowed the tablets, at least, and spit them out, hiding them underneath the runner in the hallway while I wait for Abel. He emerges from another room with Sugar, who is rubbing her upper arm. Her coarse blond hair falls over her face.
“I’m skipping meditation tonight, Sugar,” Abel says. “I’m not feeling well.”
“Really?” she says coldly. I don’t want to be jealous of her, but I can’t help it. She doesn’t even seem to like Abel, yet she gets to spend all day with him. And all night.
“Hurt my neck. Must have been the hike,” Abel says.
“Okay,” Sugar says. She looks at me suspiciously. “Feel better,” she says, and stalks down the hallway and out of sight, all the time rubbing her arm.
“What about Maks? Where did you say you’d be?” Abel asks.
“He has something to do for Vanya. He said he’d see me back in the room tonight. I’d say we have an hour.”
“Right,” Abel says. Without wasting another second, we scurry along the hallway and down a set of steps. When we get to a landing, he fumbles with a huge painting on the wall until it clicks, and he reveals a hidden hallway. “Follow me,” he says. We slip through and Abel pulls the painting behind us. I wait for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, but they don’t. The light has been completely shut out. I reach for him and he takes my hand. This doesn’t mean anything, I remind myself. I won’t be taken in again.
“Careful,” he says, and we start down the stairwell. My free hand slides along the brick wall, and I feel for the edge of each step with my feet.
“It was hard when you disappeared. They said you were dead. It was on the news,” I say. It’s easier to talk to Abel now we’re in the dark. I can be more honest—less afraid to be myself.
“I’m sorry,” he says, which is all I need to hear. But he continues. “My job was to learn as much about the Resistance as possible. Vanya heard you had developed new breeding programs, but the only breeding you lot were doing was with plants.”
That mission to steal clippings from the biosphere was the first important thing I’d done for The Resistance, but it meant nothing to Abel. He was just along for the ride. And because of his cold feet, we were almost caught. And because of that I had to flee the pod and involve Bea and Quinn in something they knew nothing about. I could keep going, tracing everything that’s destroyed us and brought our group here from that moment.
“So you never gave a damn about the trees.”
“I believed in what we were doing,” he says. “Growing trees was giving people hope. After that day in the biosphere, I so badly wanted to tell you who I was, but before I could, I was picked up.” He squeezes my hand.
“What did the Ministry do to you?”
“Beat the crap out of me. They were still waiting for me to spill it when the riot started up, and some minister chucked me out and expected me to choke. By the time I found The Grove, it was a mountain of sludge.” He pauses. “We’re at the bottom. Come on.” We scurry along a tight passageway. The floor feels greasy, but Abel doesn’t slow down.
“And Jo?” I may as well ask everything now, while I have the chance.
“I found her at The Grove. She was trying to escape Sequoia and that’s why she’s a benefactor now.”
But that isn’t really what I want to know. He lets go of my hand. A meager, gray glow fills the passageway and a gust of icy air rushes at me. “This way,” Abel says, and guides me outside and toward scattered splashes of light. The main house is at our backs, and Abel continually checks behind us. As we get closer, I realize that the spots of light are windows—narrow to the point of absurdity.
Soon we’re hunkering beneath a row of windows. “Take a look,” Abel whispers. My stomach tumbles. Whatever is through this window can’t be unseen. I press an eye to the light.
Inside is a bright hospital ward with metal beds down each side and people dressed in flimsy undershirts strapped to them. They all have tubes threaded through their mouths and noses, and IVs stuck in their hands. Everything is connected to hissing machines by their beds. A loud beeping fills the room, and a nurse jumps up from her desk and dashes to someone’s bedside, where she tinkers with knobs on one of the machines. The beeping stops, and a deep moan replaces it. The nurse looks down at the person impassively and goes back to her desk.
I slide down next to Abel. “I don’t understand,” I say.
“That’s the testing lab. Their oxygen’s being rationed and their organs are being monitored. Vanya wants to understand suffocation and what chemical conditions might prevent it.”
I look again to see if I can spot Maude or Bruce, but everyone is uniformly skinny, and I can’t make out any faces. “How long are they kept like this?” I wait a long time for an answer, and then it comes without Abel having to say anything. I stare at him unbelieving. “They experiment on people until they die?” It’s what I suspected, but knowing it’s true is different. It’s too horrible. “But what reason does Vanya give for why they don’t mix with the others and are never seen again?”
“You heard her in the orangery going on about benefactors dedicating their lives to meditation and how this energy mustn’t be contaminated.”
“People buy that?”
“Some do. Some choose not to think about it.” And why not? It’s no more far-fetched than the idea that trees will only grow in the biosphere. People believe what they’re told.
“There’s more,” he says, and crawls to another window.
This room is filled with cribs and playpens. A nurse sleeps in a rocking chair holding an infant. The children are crying, wheezing, or asleep. None of them are connected to tubes, but most are covered in Band-Aids and bruises. There’s a shriek and a toddler sits up in her crib, her eyes full of tears. The nurse opens one eye. “Hush,” she says.
“They’re pumping the air in at fifteen percent,” Abel whispers, “and they keep lowering it until a child looks like he might suffocate. Then they hook him up to an oxybox. They’re training them.”