“Is there any way to fit everyone with a tank as a precaution?” Alina asks.
“And we need cuttings,” Silas adds. He can’t look at my father, and I don’t blame him. I can hardly look at him myself after what he’s done.
“We keep tanks at the Research Labs.” My father rubs his forehead. “Is it just a zip they have?”
Alina shrugs. “We didn’t stay long enough to find out. But their troops are strong.”
The ground shakes again. A soldier rushes toward us. “General, some of the units are breaking up. We’re awaiting orders.”
“Make sure the south station is covered. It’s the control tower,” my father tells her. He looks at us. “D-day,” he says.
“Shall I come with you?” Ronan asks me.
“He can handle it,” Alina says. “Can’t you?” she looks at me with steely eyes. “Give us guns,” she tells my father.
“Gladly,” he says, and hands his rifle to Silas, who looks at the gun, then at my father, and nods. My father takes the steward’s gun and gives it to Alina.
He holds out his hand to me. I take it and we shake, staring at each other. “However this ends . . .” He pauses. Silas walks away. Alina follows. “You’re a brave person, Quinn,” he says. It’s not an apology, but it’s as much as he can give.
“Don’t be so dramatic,” I say, kind of joking. I pull my hand away and run into Zone One.
49
BEA
It must be at least a day since they threw me into this windowless, airtight cell. I’ve had nothing to eat or drink and my arms and legs are tied to a chair. I wet myself a couple of hours ago. The smell is odious, and I keep shifting in the chair to ease the discomfort of sitting in damp underwear and pants. I won’t snivel and give them the satisfaction of thinking they’ve broken me.
But I cough and my throat is so dry it comes out like a sandy wheeze. I’ve also managed to dribble down my own face. I try to yank my hands free but just tear another layer of skin from my red-raw wrists. I stop struggling at the sound of scraping as a guard opens the cell door.
He holds it open for Niamh Knavery, who stalks in and looks at me as though I’m something someone’s puked up. “It reeks in here,” she says. “Did you piss yourself?” I’d sit straighter in the chair if my limbs didn’t burn, to show her I’m not embarrassed. They’re responsible for the smell in here, not me.
After a brief pause, Lance Vine appears. He covers his nose with his arm. How ironic that he finds me disgusting. “Give us five minutes,” he tells the guard, who nods, the keys tied to his belt jangling as he retreats down the hallway.
“I haven’t done anything,” I say.
“Don’t give me that,” Niamh says, bristling with contempt.
“Your father killed my parents. I have every reason to hate you,” I tell her, though then I’d hate Ronan, too, which I don’t. Neither of them is to blame for who Cain Knavery was.
Vine stands next to Niamh and rubs his nose between his thumb and index finger. “If you ask me, there isn’t any point in delaying things. I’ve heard from Jude Caffrey that it’s getting worse. Time to act.” He steps in front of Niamh and grabs my face, his sweaty hand over my mouth. “We thought we hacked most of you down when we destroyed The Grove. So who’s attacking us?”
“Is there another riot in the pod?” I ask. And is Quinn a part of it? Could he be here? Hope trickles its way back into my body. “If you’re so tough, why aren’t you out there battling the bad guys yourself?”
He smacks me hard across the face. The chair teeters on its back legs and crashes to the floor. I land on my hands tied to the back of the chair and clench my jaw to stop myself from whimpering. I roll to the side and try moving my wrists.
Niamh presses her lips together. “Was Wendy behind all this?”
“Or was it Ronan?” Vine adds.
Niamh shudders. “And Wendy’s helped these new terrorists attack us, I suppose,” she says, not giving me time to answer his question. “Let’s just shut off the air to the cell and let her choke,” she says. Vine stands over me and shrugs. He couldn’t care less what happens to me.
A noise in the hallway makes me tense and another steward bumbles in. He looks at me and gulps. “They’re waiting to start the chamber meeting, sir,” he says.
Vine turns to Niamh. “Tell them I’ll be there shortly.”
“Yes, Pod Minister,” she says. She pokes me with her foot.
“I’m no different from you, Niamh,” I say. I don’t beg or plead with her to help me, I simply give her a chance to do the right thing.
“No, Bea,” she says. “We’re innately different, and that’s part of the problem: you and your RATS think we aren’t.” She leaves the cell, slamming the door shut on her way out.
Vine crouches down and strokes my face with the back of his hand. I try to bite him. He pulls his hand away and laughs. I’m like prey, and it feels far too familiar. I scream as loudly as I can, to startle him if nothing else, and only stop when an alarm blares from the speakers in the wall and a red light on the ceiling flashes and spins. “It can’t be,” he says.
“What can’t it be?”
He looks down at me. “You know very well, it’s the air siren. The Resistance must have damaged the tubing. You’ll pay for your involvement in this.”
“The tubing?”
“They should have remembered that the first places air is siphoned from is the Penal Block and auxiliary apartments.” He heads for the door.
“You’re leaving me here?” I ask. I’m not scared of dying—I’ve been faced with the prospect so many times I know it’s inevitable, and suffocating is the most inevitable thing of all—but I don’t want to die alone. Someone should witness my last moment. I deserve that, at least, don’t I?
Vine sneers and presses a bell on the intercom. He waits several moments, then pulls on the door handle, but it doesn’t budge. He clears his throat and tries the intercom again. “I’m ready to leave now,” he says into the mouthpiece, furrowing his brow.
I cough because the air in the cell has already thinned. “What if no one comes?” I ask, goading. “If there’s trouble, wouldn’t everyone be recruited to fight? Wouldn’t the stewards run scared if they thought the air was being siphoned?”
He puts his hand to his chest then thumps the cell door with his fists. “Let me out!” he bawls. He clutches his chest and thumps that too. I focus on stretching out my exhalations. My breath sounds like the ocean. Vine kneels on the floor next to me and puts his ear to my mouth. “What kind of trick is that?” he asks. His breathing is rapid.
“No trick,” I say. “I have all the air I need.”
“Get me out of here!” He blanches, going back to the door where he cranes his neck and opens his mouth wide to catch all the air he can. “It burns,” he croaks and starts hacking.
He tries his finger against the button one last time before sliding to the floor panting and then kicking the door and yowling incomprehensibly. And soon he is on his knees hyperventilating, and with very little warning, passes out. I watch his chest rise and fall. He’ll live a while longer. But only a while.
And I stay as still as I can on the floor preserving my oxygen. The air is very thin, but it’s enough to live on. For me at least.
For now.
50
ALINA