He draws an X over his heart, grinning. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
“Careful what you wish for,” I mutter.
The tent door flips open. People begin to pour in, one by one taking their seats around the room. I wait patiently.
When Trent and Ryan step in, I smile.
“Ten fingers?” I ask Ryan.
He grins. “And ten toes.”
“Yes!”
I raise my hand for him to give me five of his fingers. Trent goes to step past me to sit down, but I raise my leg to block him.
“You too, buddy,” I tell him. “Ten fingers? Ten toes? Six eyes? Seven brains?”
“I’ll add anatomy to the list of classes you’ll be taking from me.”
I drop my leg with a thud. “Sit down,” I grumble.
He does, but not before he covertly gives me his knuckles to bump. I don’t look at him when I do it, but I know he’s smiling. It’s then that I realize his smile doesn’t creep me out like it used to. I’ve seen it enough to make it normal, and the fact that anything about Trent seems ‘normal’ to me is a very disturbing fact.
“Is everyone here?” Alvarez asks, taking his position behind the central table. He glances around the room, looking annoyed. “Where are Bishop and Haskins?”
“Who’s Haskins?” Ryan whispers.
I shrug.
“Ali is…” a woman begins before faltering.
We all stare at her expectantly. My gut is clenching with nerves. Was she hurt? There wasn’t any real fighting and she didn’t even go to the Colony.
“She’s…” the woman tries again, glancing around at each of us nervously.
Alvarez nods curtly. “Got it. We’ll move forward without them.”
“Is Haskins Sam?” I whisper to Ryan.
He nods, his brow creased. “I think so, yeah.”
“The operation went well. Better than expected,” Alvarez says, but he doesn’t sound happy. “Conditions inside were worse than we thought and a depressed population is an easy one to overtake. They’re passive. Any change in their government seems like a ray of hope. The southern Pod won’t be as easy.”
“Do they live differently?” my commander asks. I think his name is Roberts, and I’m beginning to wonder if I shouldn’t have known his name before following him into a fight. I’m getting complacent. Comfortable.
It makes my skin itch.
“The living situation in the south is vastly different from the one we’ve just seen. I sent scouts to eyeball it before we made camp here. They’ve come back with reports of electricity, lots of it, and more than one building. They’ve taken over a park on a peninsula in Lake Washington as their main hub of operation. They’ve built a small warehouse along with a few other buildings, but most of the people are living in homes farther out on the peninsula, surrounded by the water.”
“Homes as in shacks?”
“Homes as in homes. Mobile homes and manufactured homes.”
Someone chuckles. “They took a page from our book.”
“They’ve taken a lot of things from us,” Alvarez agrees darkly. “There are fields there, but not many. Hardly any farming, very few animals. A lot of it is green open spaces. The standard of living in the south is light years beyond what’s going on in the stadiums, and that’s a problem for us.”
“They’re comfortable,” Trent agrees quietly. “And they’re happy.”
“Dead on. We can’t surround them and take them peacefully like we did here. They’ll fight back because they have somewhere to hide and they have something worth defending. Crenshaw,” he says, catching the old man’s eye, “we’ll need more than just a light show this time around.”
Cren nods slowly. “I shall summon the whole of my powers. They are at your disposal.”
I’m surprised when Alvarez bows slightly. “Thank you.” He stands to face the rest of us as like nothing weird just happened. “They have boats that regularly cross the channel, but we aren’t sure exactly where they’re going yet. My guess is that this Pod is acting as a hub in the supply chain coming from the stadiums and the MOHAI. It’s taking a cut and sending the rest to another location across the water. We haven’t been to see it yet, but we’re assuming it’s on Mercer Island. We think Westbrook has built himself a mini-Vashon.”
“One he’s not sharing,” someone says bitterly.
“No.”
“He really is following in your footsteps, then, isn’t he?”
Everyone turns to the open tent door. What we find there shocks only a few of us, but that’s only because the others don’t know enough yet. They will. And when they do, they will not be happy.
Andy stands next to Elijah, both of them looking completely unhappy. When I glance at Alvarez, he looks the same.
“Uh oh,” I mumble.
“Everyone,” Alvarez says tightly, “this is Elijah and Andy. They’re going to be joining us on our next operation.”
“Twist!” Trent whispers to me.
I scowl at him. “What?”
“This just got interesting. Shhh.”
“Don’t start that again.”
“Shhh.”
“I will cut you.”
Trent reaches for his belt. “Here’s my knife. Shhh.”
“Who are they?” Todd asks.
I’m impressed when Alvarez answers without hesitation. “Cannibals.”
Cue chaos.
People are so angry. It’s ugly. They don’t riot or throw chairs—they have too much respect for their leader for that—but they do shout out protests that leave my ears ringing for a minute.
I’m impressed again when Alvarez calls for silence and they almost immediately give it. It reminds me of Vin and his Colony, and when I look over at him I’m not surprised to see him staring blankly at Andy.
Vin shooting you daggers—that’s a slip in his calm. It’s a rare moment of mistake that he’ll quickly correct.
Vin watching you with silent calm—that’s deadly death danger. That’s a lion biding its time and planning its attack. Get your affairs in order, ‘cause you’re already dead.
“If we go in by boat, they’ll see us coming,” Alvarez says sternly. “If we go in on land, they’ll see us coming. We’ll never break through their narrow gate out onto the peninsula. Elijah and his people have offered to help us with a different strategy.”
“More tunnels,” I groan.
“That peninsula used to be a city park,” Elijah tells the room. “There are water lines. Sewer lines. Drainage lines. There are ways into their compound that they won’t see coming.”
“What’s the price?” Vin asks.
Elijah looks at him with tired eyes. “The price?”
“Yeah. There’s always a price. What do you want in return for this guided tour of the underworld?”
“They want the MOHAI once it’s retaken,” Alvarez says.
Vin’s nostrils flare slightly, but he holds perfectly still. “Is that all?” he asks, his voice low. Deep. Dangerous. “And we’re giving it to them?”
“That’s the plan, yes.”
“I have a better one. Kill them.”
“That doesn’t exactly help us.”
“All right, then just kill this one,” he says, nodding toward Andy. “He’s a traitor. He’s Hive.”
Andy snorts. “As much as you are, brother.”
“Do you have him fooled?” Vin asks coolly, pointing to Elijah. “Does this guy trust you the way Marlow did? Until the bloody end?”
“I would never betray—”
“Let me stop you there because you’re a liar, plain and simple. To be a member of Marlow’s inner circle means you swore an oath, and if you lied to him you’ll lie to these people too.”
“You openly betray everyone who has ever trusted you and you have the nerve to throw stones at me?” Andy growls through clenched teeth.
“I’m open about it. You’re a lying coward.”
“You’re a selfish prick. You’re worse than a traitor because you never had the balls to belong to anyone or anything in the first place. You’re nothing but a cocky little boy playing at being a man when what he really should be doing, what would benefit us all a little more, is if he’d disappear. And that’s what you’ll do someday. You’ll die, you’ll vanish, and no one will care that you’re gone.”