“What happened to the guy?” I couldn’t help asking.
“Oh, they shot ’im,” the Kid said, and snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”
“How do you even know this?” Nate asked.
“’Cause it was my dad,” the Kid said.
79
SO WE DECIDED TO FIND this tunnel, and to make sure the four of us got out. As a plan it wasn’t exactly a three-season, cell-wide, crop-rotation schematic, but it was all we had.
From memory we drew lines in the dirt to represent various halls, the ring, the mess hall, the classrooms. Of course, we each remembered things differently, and in the end our drawing looked like a chicken had been trying to scratch a worm out of the ground. We smudged it with our feet and tried to come up with ways to explore.
After about fourteen seconds we felt crushed by how hard that would be and how long it might take us. We might not have that much time. I wanted to cry.
“Look,” Becca said urgently. “This could take forever. I say we just commit! Let’s say we’re going to bust out of this hellhole tonight, no matter what!”
“Tonight? How are we going to do that?” I demanded.
My sister smacked her hand against the dirt. “We’re just going to break out! The bars on our cell are about rusted through. We’ll break them! Or we’ll knock our guard out, steal his keys!”
I gritted my teeth. This was sounding a whole lot like Ridiculous Rebecca, Queen of Fantasyland.
“It’s not that easy,” I said tightly. “There are other guards, other doors, alarms. And clearly we have no idea of how the hell to get out of here!” I pointed to the rubbed-out failure of a map.
Becca’s eyes narrowed. “Okay, Careful Cassie. How do you think we should do it? Or should we just stay in here like good kids until they kill us?”
“Of course not!” I snapped. “We need to get out of here as soon as possible, but—” A sudden burst of static made me wince as the loudspeakers in the yard crackled to life.
“‘The best-laid plans of mice and men…’” said Strepp, and as the words sank in I looked at Becca and Nate in surprise.
“Is the yard bugged?” Nate asked in an almost silent whisper. Eyes wide and heart starting to pound, I raised my shoulders in a “don’t know” gesture.
“Prisoners!” said Strepp. “Report to the ring!”
“Man!” said the Kid as we started to move toward the doors like a herd of milkers at sundown. “We better not be seein’ some other kid get offed. I hate this shit.”
“Me, too,” I said fervently as we passed beneath the hated PHYSICAL HEALTH LEADS TO MENTAL HEALTH AT THE UNITED! sign. “I do indeed hate this shit.”
Usually I paid attention to faces, low conversations, the discomfort of my jumpsuit, my hunger. This time I scanned every ceiling, every door, every crack everywhere, searching for a hint of the tunnel’s location.
At the door to the ring, a guard stepped forward and grabbed Nate’s arm.
“You!” he said. “Come with me!”
I grabbed at his jumpsuit, but he was hauled away. Nate gave me a last, freaked-out look, but I was helpless as he was dragged to the edge of the ring.
Becca and I stared at each other in horror.
“What’s happenin’?” the Kid demanded. “They gonna off ’im?”
“No,” I said in dismay as we filed into a row of the bleachers. “They’re going to make him fight.”
80
“HE CAN TAKE CARE OF hisself,” the Kid said confidently.
I let out a deep breath. “Not like this.” Nate hadn’t had time to be trained. He’d never seen a fight, to pick up tricks and moves. I remembered how bad my fight had been, and what Becca had told me of her first fight, and felt kind of sick.
I met Becca’s eyes over the Kid’s head. “Will it be better or worse if it’s Tim?” I asked her, and she shook her head, looking upset.
They clapped armor on Nate; he’d chosen not to wear his jumpsuit, which was good. His farmer’s tan showed beneath the armor, his arms and legs browned by the sun, and the rest of him milk-white.
It was all so surreal, so unbelievable. I closed my eyes, pointlessly praying that I could open them and it would be 6:00 a.m. and I would hear the hiss of the coffeemaker brewing downstairs. But when I opened them, Nate was standing on the canvas floor of the ring and someone I’d never seen before was climbing through the ropes.
He was huge. He wasn’t a kid—he must be one of the grown-up guards. Nate was tall; his opponent was at least six eight. Nate wasn’t skinny; he had the muscles of a kid from a farming cell, despite his father’s job—but this guy outweighed him by at least sixty pounds.
“Why would they do this?” I whispered to Becca. “Why not just let him fight another prisoner?”
Her eyes were full of sympathy, and she reached behind the Kid to pat my shoulder.
“Oh, no,” the Kid murmured, his black eyes wide. He reached up and covered his face with his hands, not wanting to watch.
“Kid?” I murmured unhappily. “You should watch. And learn. You’ll need to know how to win when it’s your turn to fight.”
Slowly the Kid uncovered his eyes. He was such a tough little guy, but prison was starting to break him down in a way that even a hard life in a mining cell hadn’t. Becca was right. We needed to leave—tonight.
Nate’s face was pale beneath the bright lights. He clenched his jaw as the huge guy started to circle him.
Suddenly Nate shot forward with a harsh cry of rage and walloped the guy in the jaw. If it had been anyone else, they’d have been out cold. As it was, the giant staggered but rallied immediately. He was enormous and powerful, but Nate was nimbler. The big guy had a longer reach, but Nate was faster.
But his opponent had more experience, and it wasn’t long before his glove exploded against Nate’s metal helmet. Nate’s head spun as the punch lifted him a couple inches in the air, and then his arms flailed as he crashed to the ground.
“Okay, not too bad,” I muttered to myself. “If he doesn’t have a concussion, he should be—”
Nate rolled onto his hands and knees, shaking his head. I wanted to scream, “Stay down, you moron!” but didn’t dare.
After that it was bad. Nate’s nose was bleeding, so every time he got hit, a thin stream of blood whipped against his opponent. He got in a couple of good hits, but the other guy just destroyed him, his punches seeming like the unstoppable motion of a robot. Nate went down twice more and twice more got up, because he was a stupid freaking goddamn idiot.
We heard his ribs crack even from where we were sitting. I covered my mouth, hoping I wouldn’t throw up. His lip got split. His metal helmet smashed against his forehead and opened a gash three inches long. Deep, ugly bruises—the kind that continue to worsen over days—were blooming all over him.
But it was the last thing that made me gasp, made me feel like I really would hurl. It was that last kick, the one the giant aimed right at Nate’s knee. The one that shattered the bone, bent his leg nauseatingly sideways, and made Nate topple onto the canvas like a stork. That was the one that got me.
Strepp came into the ring. Nate, his face white, his eyes glazed and unseeing as incomprehensible pain wracked his body, lay at her feet. Strepp grabbed the mic and said, “‘It is our choices… that show what we really are, far more than our abilities.’ A woman named J. K. Rowling said that. Think about that.” Then she left the ring with the hulking guard following her.
Rage boiled inside me and threatened to erupt as a shrieking howl. Nate’s leg was broken, his knee destroyed. He wouldn’t be escaping from here any time soon.
What kind of choice did that leave me now?
81
BECCA
GODDAMNIT. BY THE TIME WE got back to the cell, Cassie was shaking with fury.
“Tonight was the night!” she hissed at me after we’d been locked back in our room. The Kid, all by himself, was across from us. Nate was in the infirmary, of course—that
last kick had been brutal. He’d be lucky if he ever walked again.
“We were supposed to try to escape tonight! Now what?”
What do you mean, Now what? I thought, but said, “What are you thinking?”
She paced our small room, her fists clenched. “I think we still have to go,” she said, sounding tortured. “But how? Nate came here for me—for us! And now we’re supposed to leave him here to be killed? I can’t stand it!” She crumpled to her knees, her hands over her face, trying not to cry. I knelt next to her, putting my arm around her shoulders. This was my twin: we’d been comforting each other our whole lives.
“What do you want to do?” I asked, carefully. “I hate leaving Nate, too. But the longer we stay…”
“The more likely we’ll be killed,” Cassie said. “I know. But… shit!”
“Psst!” Startled, I jerked my head toward the sound. A familiar silhouette stood by our barred door. I jumped up.
“Why are you here?” I asked Tim, and he put his finger to his lips. Then he unlocked our door as quietly as possible, opening it just enough to let me through.
“What are you doing?” I whispered. “I won’t leave my sister!”
“You’ll be back in a minute,” Tim promised, and led me down the hall. Most of the rooms here weren’t occupied, and about halfway down the hall Tim ducked into one, pulling me in after him. We went to the far corner where it was completely dark and we were hidden.
“Listen,” Tim began softly, but I launched myself at him, slamming my mouth against his, holding him as tightly as I could. This, this was the only comfort I’d had in this hellhole, just this human touch, the warmth of his arms around me. I wanted to feel like a teenage girl with a crush on a boy, instead of a prisoner or a fighter or a rebel. I knew if we were caught we might both be killed; at any second an alarm might sound that meant the death of one of my friends, or some nameless kid, or my sister, or me. I didn’t care.
Minutes later, when I felt human again, I rested my head in the shallow of Tim’s shoulder, hearing the quick-paced thumpthumpthump of his heart beneath my cheek. He was warm and solid—maybe the only thing in my life that was. It felt like heaven.
“Listen,” he murmured again, his lips against my hair.
“Mm?” I said, my eyes closed.
“Later tonight there’s going to be an execution,” he said softly. “So everyone will be in the auditorium.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, wondering why he was telling me this. Unless he knew who it was going to be. Maybe me?
“Here,” he whispered, and pressed something into my hand. My fingers closed around it and I looked up at him, startled.
“What’s this?” I asked.
He told me.
“Huh,” I said as ideas started to tumble through my brain. We talked very quietly for another minute, and then he said, “Babe, I gotta take you back.” He gave me an apologetic look. “I’ll see you later.”
He locked me back in our room. I pressed my face hard against the bars so I could watch him walk down the hall. He’d said he’d see me later. Had that been a promise?
82
CASSIE HAD FINALLY FALLEN ASLEEP, curled up on the damp, decaying concrete floor. I let her rest as long as possible, but had to wake her a little after 1:00 in the morning.
“Wha?” she said sleepily.
“It’s time to go,” I whispered into her ear. “We’re going to grab the Kid and start looking for the tunnel.”
She blinked owlishly in the dim light. “Don’t be dumb. That plan is nowhere.”
I dangled a ring of keys over her head, and her eyes widened. “Tim gave them to me. Keys to the crazy house. If we can get out of here, he’s going to steal a truck and get us back to our cell.”
Cassie’s mouth opened in an O of surprise.
“’Course—we still need a master key, and only Strepp has that,” I told her. “We’ll have to cross that bridge when we get to it.”
Cassie was on her feet, rubbing sleep out of her eyes.
“In a minute the execution alarm is going to sound.” I had no sooner finished saying the words than it did sound, loudly and harshly, a horrible Klaxon of death.
We waited for the barred door to slide open, and as soon as it did, I nipped across the hall and got the Kid.
“Ain’t we supposed to go?” he asked in confusion.
“Not this time,” I said, and drew him back into our cell to wait for the sound of shuffling feet to fade. We were so conditioned to follow the crowd when the alarm rang that not following made us all jumpy and tense, like rats that weren’t being allowed to run the maze.
At last it was silent—our hall was empty.
“Let’s go,” I breathed, trying to sound like I knew what I was doing. In truth, I was so tense and keyed up that it took all my concentration to not start babbling at any second. I was quivering with cold and fear—was I leading Cassie and this kid into certain death? Or was I seizing our only chance?
“And the plan is…?” Cassie asked.
“We’ve got the keys to get us through most of the hall doors,” I explained. “Everyone’s in the auditorium. So we’re going to search for this tunnel like our lives depended on it.” I gave a sardonic smile. “Because they do.”
Cassie looked at me. I was pretty sure she was remembering the time I dared her to jump off the rope swing into the river. She’d broken her collarbone. Or the time I’d convinced her to take the long way home so we could watch the last of the geese streaking southward as winter approached. We’d been late for dinner and had gotten our hides tanned by Pa.
If she was smart, she’d back away from me and sit down in our cell. And I wouldn’t blame her.
Instead she gave a glimmer of a smile and nodded. “I’m with you.”
And damn if that didn’t practically make me cry.
Nodding, I eased out of our cell. And of course we’d only gone as far as the very next prison room when Strepp sprang out at us, her face aglow with triumph.
“Not so fast,” she crowed.
83
CASSIE
I’M THE LEVELHEADED, SENSIBLE, RULE-FOLLOWING one. I had doubts that this tissue-paper-thin plan would work, and was pretty sure we’d all end up even more on death row. The smart thing to do was leap back into my cell and insist I knew nothing about any of it, they were making me, etc.
Instead I balled my hand into a fist, jumped forward, and slammed it into Strepp’s face as hard as I could. To tell you the truth, it probably hurt me more than her; I heard a snap and my hand exploded in pain.
Strepp went down like a shock of wheat in a windstorm. Her eyes fluttered closed and an angry red blotch appeared on her temple where my knuckles had left imprints. I dropped to my knees, staring at my hand in amazement: I hadn’t known anything that small could hurt that much. It dangled in front of me like a dead thing, radiating ungodly pain.
Becca gave the Kid a brisk order. “Search her. We need any kind of key she has on her.”
Hesitantly at first, the Kid started rifling through Strepp’s pockets. I got to my feet with difficulty. When the Kid pulled out a handkerchief, I took it and bound it gingerly around my throbbing fingers.
“Here!” The Kid held up a key ring and shook it excitedly.
“None of them are marked—that would be too easy,” Becca muttered, examining them. “We’ll have to try them all.” She gave me a grin. “Excellent work, Killer.”
I gave a tight-lipped smile.
“Kid, help me out here,” Becca instructed. They each grabbed a foot and dragged Strepp into our room, stepping out quickly and hauling the barred door closed behind them.
“You just signed your death warrant!” Strepp’s voice, angry but weak, floated out to us. Becca hurriedly began jamming key after key into the lock, trying to find the right one.
“More of a death warrant than being on death row?” Becca countered, working fast. She snapped a key sharply to the left, locking Strepp in, and stepped bac
k triumphantly.
Getting unsteadily to her feet, Strepp put her hand in her pocket. “You forgot I have a panic alarm.” A slight frown creased her forehead as she tried another pocket.
“You forgot you was out like a light, lady,” said the Kid, and pointed to the contents of her pockets, piled on the hallway floor.
For the first time, Strepp looked scared. “You don’t understand,” she said, licking her thin lips.
“I understand that you’re lost in the weeds without a hoe,” said Becca, starting to stuff Strepp’s belongings into the pockets of her jumpsuit.
“No,” said Ms. Strepp. “Girls—be careful.”
That made Becca snap her gaze to the older woman. “Be careful? A bit late for that, isn’t it?”
Ms. Strepp pressed her face against the rusty bars, like we always did. “Think about this, girls—we aren’t drugging you. We’ve been getting you off drugs—the drugs they put in every cell’s drinking water.”
We stared at her. She looked oddly sincere.
“You’re only seeing part of the picture,” Ms. Strepp went on. “I promise that if you saw the whole picture, you would understand.”
“Mostly I sees you, stuck in that jail,” the Kid said.
“Really,” Becca said, crossing her arms over her chest.
I couldn’t listen to another minute. I didn’t want to stand here and yap with our enemy, I didn’t care what the big picture was. While they were still arguing, I faded off down the hall.
84
BECCA
WAS THIS WOMAN BATSHIT CRAZY or was she telling the truth? Was this a trap or was she possibly trying to help us? Jesus. Of course it was a trap! What was I doing, standing here?
“Come on, guys!” I said, and that was when I noticed that Cassie wasn’t right next to me.
I strained to see up and down the dark hall. “Cassie?” I hissed as loudly as I dared. To my shock, she didn’t immediately pop out of an empty room, didn’t appear out of the shadows.