The tires squealed. I glanced up as we cut through the parking lot. Tucker was carving a straight line toward the exit. Soldiers and rebels alike dove out of our way.
The gate was unlatched, but not wide enough for the van.
“Tucker?”
“Hang on,” he said. The engine revved, then jolted forward, ramming hard into the side of another car sticking out in our path.
“Hold on!” I shouted to Chase as we punched through the opening.
Outside, on the road, men in uniforms were retreating, gunned down by the prisoners that chased them. A bullet pierced the back window, likely from one of the rebels—I’d forgotten we were in an MM transport—but though we swerved, we didn’t slow.
Tucker had said there was a clinic north of here. I hoped it wasn’t hard to find.
We finally hit a straightaway. Our speed increased. Chase forced himself up on one elbow despite my efforts to hold him down. His face was pale in the dark van, and gleaming with sweat.
He was staring at Tucker.
“He was in on it,” he said between clenched teeth. “At the mini-mart. He knew.”
“I know,” I said.
“Did he really let you go?”
“Yes.” I waited a beat, then pressed him back down. “Chase, keep talking.”
“Why?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I think…” Tucker swerved up onto the highway, following a sign with a white H for hospital. “I think maybe he’s trying to make things right.”
Silence.
“Chase?”
His eyes rolled back. Closed.
“Chase!” I screamed.
CHAPTER
26
I PACED through the small hospital room, ignoring the wet hair that dripped onto my borrowed scrubs. Tucker leaned back in an orange padded chair against the wall, his eyes drifting shut. Every time his head fell to the side, he jolted awake and rubbed his eyes.
“The doc come back?” He asked this every time he woke up.
I shook my head. For the twentieth time, I retied the waistband of my oversized pants. They were huge and wouldn’t stay up.
Five hours had passed since we’d burst into triage of the small medical clinic demanding care. Four hours since the doctor on call, a man about Jesse’s age with thinning hair and serious eyes, had performed surgery. I’d stayed in the room the entire time, convinced they might try to hurt him. Convinced they would just let him die. Even after the doctor showed me the three parallel scars on his shoulder.
Two hours ago they told me Chase would pull through and placed him in a recovery room. I’d finally agreed to take their clothes, clean myself off in the sink, and let a nurse dress my wounds. The doctor had given me a shot of penicillin in case any of them got infected. I’d never left Chase’s side.
The rebels had taken over the clinic. Men and women I recognized from Endurance kept guard around the perimeter, while many of the prisoners kept watch inside. Tucker told me the staff was patching up MM officers—men Three would later make prisoners and use as collateral. He stayed close after that; he’d traded his uniform for scrubs and thrown the jacket in the trash. I thought maybe he’d make a run for it, but he hadn’t.
DeWitt had yet to show up. Neither had Wallace. I wasn’t hopeful either had made it.
While I watched Chase sleep, the slow, consistent beep of the monitors measured his heart rate. I kept one ear tuned to the hall, and when footsteps pattered by our room I tiptoed to the cracked door. Four rebels—the doctor who had completed Chase’s surgery included—were gathered around an old black box radio in front of a window, where outside the sun was just beginning to rise.
I lingered in the background, ready to unhook Chase and move us on if I had to.
“Rumors of a massive explosion at the Chicago base have been confirmed,” reported the familiar voice of a woman who liked to annunciate her words. “The detonations, which occurred just after midnight, were originally claimed as accidents—a misfiring from the base’s weapons storage—but soon after, the prison and rehabilitation hospital also reported explosions, leading our sources to believe that this was in fact the work of rebels. The base has since been overrun with people carrying what look to be the Moral Statutes. The same is said to be happening at the FBR base in Knoxville, Tennessee, which fell less than an hour later.”
I leaned back against the wall, mouth agape. Civilians overtaking the bases. Carrying Statute circulars. My story had reached people in time.
Jesse’s words returned to me from Endurance: “When a government becomes destructive, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.” It may have been my name on those Statutes, but it was the people who took action. A revolution had begun, and for the first time I finally felt as if my part in it was over.
“Since the attacks, former president Matthew Stark and members of his administration have released a statement calling for current political leaders to relinquish their power so that it may be rightfully returned to the citizens. He demands that officials explain their stance on the Expungement Initiative, a government protocol intended to reduce noncompliance by the execution of innocent civilians imprisoned for Article violations. President Scarboro has yet to comment on these accusations, or the recent claims that the late Chief of Reformation, Chancellor Reinhardt, offered bribe money to the insurgents during the War in exchange for acts of terrorism. Stark asks that citizens demonstrate tolerance and patience during this precarious time until peace can be established. With more on these stories as details emerge, this is Faye Browne.”
I pictured the narrow woman with short, curly hair and wondered where she’d landed. I hoped she didn’t plan on using her real name in public. That kind of thing could get you killed.
I snuck back into the room, pulling the chair close to the side of Chase’s bed. Gently, I threaded his fingers through mine. Too cold. Normally he was like a furnace, but since we’d arrived he’d been unable to warm up. I pulled the blanket higher over his bandages, careful not to put too much pressure on his chest, and kissed his shoulder.
Tucker was chewing his thumbnail and staring at his boots.
“I never gave my C.O. those posts,” he said quietly. “I gave them Knoxville and Chicago. I told them where to find the sniper, then told all of you she was dead. I even gave them the safe house when we were in Greeneville. But after the bombs in those tunnels, I stopped. They thought I was dead anyway.”
He scratched his short hair down over his forehead, and I thought of how distraught he’d been after we’d survived the bombs in Chicago. He’d probably never thought the MM would take the place down with him still in it.
“I thought I had to. I thought, I don’t know, I was doing the right thing.”
I snorted at this.
“The right thing,” I said, listening to the beep of Chase’s pulse on the monitor. “What’s that again?”
Raised voices in the hall drew our attention, but lowered a few seconds later.
“What happens for you now?” I asked Tucker.
He dropped his hands over his knees. “Not sure.”
I regarded him carefully. He wasn’t the same guy I’d first met at my house during my mother’s arrest, what felt like years ago. He didn’t even look the same. His green eyes weren’t as sharp as they had been, and he slouched as though he could barely hold up his shoulders. He was beaten, lost, and on his own. But despite that, he felt real, more real than I’d ever seen him.