I waited for them to order him to sit or move, but there were no commands and no warnings. In the space between heartbeats, the female guard squeezed the trigger.
I screamed Kyle’s name as he fell to the ground. I tried to reach for him but Serena held me back as he was hit by another Taser.
Kyle’s spine bowed and I thought I heard something crack before he fell horribly still. Other than the rise and fall of his chest, he looked dead.
Without giving either Serena or me a chance to fully absorb what had just happened, the male guard started toward us.
Serena panicked. Her hand shattered around mine, and I pulled free of her grip just in time to avoid being scratched. I scurried back on my butt as her body tore itself apart. Fur flowed over skin and then a coal-black wolf rose shakily to its feet.
My gaze darted to Kyle. He had recovered enough to push himself to his hands and knees. He was trying to force himself back up, to reach us.
Suddenly, he collapsed.
He and every other wolf in the room.
They slumped to the floor with their hands clasped to their heads. The bones and muscle in Serena’s body snapped and tore as she shifted back. The only people unaffected were the woman in the blazer, the man in white, and the two guards.
And me.
Unsure what was going on, I huddled on the floor like the other teens and watched the room from under my lashes.
“We had it under control,” muttered the female guard, holstering her Taser.
“Of course,” said the woman in the glasses as she slipped something into her pants pocket. “This was simply . . . neater.”
The door behind her opened and two men dressed like hospital orderlies stepped into the room.
The redheaded guard walked around us. I heard a sharp exhalation of breath and a small grunt as he lifted Serena. Every instinct I had screamed at me to do something, anything, as he carried Serena across the room, but if I moved, they would know I wasn’t like the others. They’d know I was a reg; I’d get kicked out and wouldn’t be any help to anyone.
There was nothing I could do but watch.
In a gesture that surprised me, the woman in the glasses shrugged off her jacket and draped it over Serena, partially covering her nudity as the guard eased her into the arms of the orderlies. Serena was too out of it to notice. She looked small and helpless and broken.
They carried her through the door. The sound of the latch catching slammed through me like a bullet.
Around me, the wolves began to stir.
Eve met my gaze from halfway across the room. A thoughtful expression crossed her face as she pressed the heel of one hand to her temple, but I didn’t have the energy or the interest to puzzle out what the look meant.
I crawled to Kyle as he sat up. His skin was ashen and his face was covered in sweat. “Are you okay?” I whispered.
“Think so. It felt like someone was driving an ice pick into my brain.” His voice was raw and his chest heaved as he pulled in a deep breath. “Serena?”
“They took her.”
“Where?”
I shook my head as I helped him to his feet. “I don’t know.” Saying the words made it hard to breathe.
“It’ll be all right,” said Kyle as he wrapped his arms around me. “You heard what they said. It’s just some questions. She’ll be okay.” The words were reassuring, but unease colored each syllable.
The voice of the male guard rang across the room. “Girls through the door on the left. Boys through the right.”
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. We weren’t supposed to be separated. I had conned my way into staying with Kyle and Serena and they were both being taken from me.
I pulled back. “Kyle, I . . .” I wanted to tell him that I loved him, but the words felt too much like good-bye.
He pressed his forehead to mine and let out a deep breath. “Me too,” he said, echoing the response I had given in the truck.
His hands ran over my shoulders and slipped down my back and then, suddenly, his lips were on mine, delivering a crushing kiss that tasted like honey and copper. My lips parted under his as he pulled me so close that I wasn’t sure where my body left off and his began.
I’d been scared to say the words aloud, but he had to know they were there: they were in every second of the kiss.
My eyes flew open as rough hands locked around my arm and pulled us apart.
More guards had shown up. Two pulled Kyle across the room. He wrenched free but went stone still as one of the guards pulled out a Taser and pressed it to his side.
A dark, animalistic look crossed Kyle’s face. For a horrible second, I thought he would fight back, but then the guard holding me drew her own Taser.
Kyle’s eyes locked on mine. Any hint of resistance drained out of him, and I suddenly knew they didn’t need Tasers or physical force to make him do what they wanted: all they had to do was threaten me.
He shot me one last, desperate look before letting them shove him through the door on the right.
The guard holding my arm pulled me to the door on the left.
I knew it wasn’t too late: I could tell her that I wasn’t really infected. It was what Kyle—even Serena—wanted. I could walk out the gates and call Jason. He’d pick me up and enfold me in a hug and never once say I had done the wrong thing. I would spend the rest of my life blaming myself, but no one else would blame me at all.
I didn’t have to go through the door.
I didn’t have to be here.
Choice doesn’t factor into things. I remembered Jason’s words in the parking garage and imagined the look of horror that would cross his face if he knew I was using them to justify walking into a camp.
But just because he had never intended for the words to apply to a situation like this didn’t make them any less true.
With a deep breath, I walked through the door.
8
WHITE TILE WALLS. BENCHES. LICKS OF STEAM CURLING out of an archway. Of all the things that could have been lurking behind the door, a locker room hadn’t been high on my list.
A folding chair sat in the middle of the floor and just behind it was a row of blue plastic bins—the kind Tess had for recyclables but forgot to use unless I nagged.
If we don’t get out of here, it’ll kill her.
And Jason.
The twin thoughts sent a stab of pain through my chest. Before I could dwell on them, however, a female guard and two women—one short and round, the other an escapee from a bodybuilding magazine—strode into the room.
The muscle-bound woman walked to the first bin and turned. Her tan polo shirt strained over biceps the size of cantaloupes and her skin had an orange tinge, like a faded self-tan. Her hair hung down her back in a braided whip. “One volunteer in the seat. Everyone else: line up.”
No one moved.
The other woman yawned and glanced at her watch. “Langley, just pick one. I’m exhausted.”
The woman with the orange skin scowled and gestured to Eve. “You.”
Eve walked forward with her shoulders squared and her head high, but when she turned to sit, she wiped her palms on her faded black jeans.
Langley withdrew a pair of electric shears from the first bin. They clicked and hummed as strands of Eve’s scarlet hair piled up around the chair. When it was over, Eve pushed herself to her feet and ran a hand through her now chin-length locks. A frown was her only concession to emotion.
Hank would approve, I thought, and then pressed my nails into my palm. This whole thing was his fault.
The other woman led Eve past the row of bins and raised her voice so we would all hear her instructions. One container for cell phones and electronics. Another for jewelry. The last for clothes. Nothing from outside was allowed into the camp.