I could have sworn that Alexy did loops and large circles as well, though it was hard to tell exactly what she was doing, just that there was enough action to make me glad I was still belted into my seat.
A couple times we’d taken a turn so sharply that Jace had reached for my hand and clung to it. I realized for the first time how unnatural this must have been for him. He’d grown up in a cave, far from any technology or society, and yet here we were zooming through the sky in an airship capable of incredible speed. It must have seemed fantastical to him, and probably not in a good way.
Which was why, despite my earlier resolve to keep myself emotionally removed from him, I let him grab my hand when he reached for me. I even squeezed it back, hoping he’d somehow notice it through the metal that encased both our palms.
Abruptly, we dove back toward the earth, and Alexy was shouting at us again.
“If you’re out of your seats, get back in ‘em!” she snapped. “I don’t want anyone flying around the ship while I’m trying to land, understand?”
There was a lot of nodding around the ship, though no one said anything. We were pulling up sharply from the dive, the belly of the ship coming parallel with the ground once more. And then… we just hovered there for a moment.
“What are we going to do, just sit in the air and wait to see if anyone is coming?” Ant muttered. “Because that seems to me to be beyond stupid.”
“You’re right,” Jace answered. He strengthened his voice a bit and called, “This isn’t exactly subtle, Alexy, and we’re in the middle of a fairly well-populated zone. Are you planning on doing anything more than just…?” He gestured vaguely with his hand. “Hovering?” he finished.
Alexy shot him one narrow-eyed look over her shoulder, and suddenly the ship dropped out from under us. At least, that was how it felt.
Of course, we were all still in it, strapped to the chairs, but now we were suddenly on the ground, and… driving? Moving quickly forward from the field where we’d landed, into the small copse of trees we’d agreed upon as our secondary meeting place. I exhaled sharply and whirled around to the window, thinking that I must be going crazy, but sure enough, the landscape was moving past the window, and if it wasn’t exactly flying, it was definitely going more quickly than it would have been if we were outside walking.
“This thing can be driven?” Marco asked, his tone half confusion and half admiration. “The next time I’m at the controls, we are so doing more interesting stuff.”
“Did I tell you all to shut up?” Alexy said. “Because I’m pretty sure I told you to shut up. And if I didn’t, I meant to! I’m trying to listen for anyone in the forest, do you all mind?”
We all snapped our mouths closed and listened as well—for voices, for vehicles, for the sound of guns. With the noise of the ship itself muted by the noise-canceling machinery, we could hear most sounds around us.
Well, if there had been anything to hear. Any creatures that might have called these trees home had gone dead quiet with all the action taking place, and beyond that, there was nothing. No sound of our people creeping through the trees, waiting. No sound of our friends.
“They wouldn’t be here yet,” Ant whispered. “Right? There’s no way they could have beat us here. I mean, we’re in an airship. They’re on their feet.”
“And they’d be quiet, even if they were,” Jace added, the hope in his voice matching Ant’s.
My heart broke for both of them. For that hope that they still clung to, for the people they’d lost. I didn’t think I had to say out loud what we were all thinking, that they might not be here yet, but that didn’t mean they were actually coming.
Or that we could wait for them. We were only a little over a mile from where we’d raided the warehouse, and it wasn’t nearly far enough away to make us safe. It certainly didn’t give us enough distance to sit around and wait for any stragglers to show up.
If they were even going to show up at all.
It didn’t seem like I was the only one thinking that.
Alexy got to a point in the trees that she evidently deemed good enough, put the airship in some form of park, and hit the ignition. There was no change in the sound, but the constant vibration of the ship’s engines and propellers suddenly halted, and everything grew horribly still.
My skin still buzzed with the memory of having been on the ship for so long, though, giving me the feeling that there were a thousand ants crawling over me, and I couldn’t sit here anymore. I hit the release on my belt, jumped to my feet, and started pacing.
“So what do we do now?” I asked, keeping my voice low, as if someone was listening to us, because for all I knew, they still could be. “Where are we supposed to go? Are we just going to sit here and wait for our friends to show up, in case they do, or…?”
Alexy shook her head. “I don’t think we can just sit and wait,” she answered quickly, her voice also low. “It’s too dangerous. Too much chance of the Ministry deciding to explore.” She gazed around the ship, her eyes seeking out Zion’s, and then Cloyd’s. “Boys? I think we’re all open to suggestions, here.”
But it was Jace who answered her.
“You’re right, we can’t wait here,” he said slowly. “They’re… They’re obviously not here. And we can’t be sure they’re coming.” His voice broke on that last word, and I felt my heart crack a bit more for him—for the strength it must be taking to give up on Kory like that. “So, we go home. We have to.”
Ant exploded out of his seat.
“No!” he yelled. “I’m not leaving here without my brother! We don’t know if they’re hurt, or if they need help!”
Jackie rose too and laid her hand on his arm. “Ant, what good are we going to be to them if we’re taken?” she asked gently. “We can’t do anything if we’re sitting in a Ministry cell somewhere.”
“You think we should just leave them?” he asked brokenly. “Leave them to fend for themselves?”
“Ant, be reasonable,” I said sharply, already getting nervous at how long this conversation was taking. I walked over to him and stared up into his eyes.
“Your brother’s a smart guy, right?” I got a grudging nod at that and continued. “And he was there when we talked about this spot. He knows where it is. And he knows what to do if he gets here.”
I was right about that, and the plan had been simple. Everyone get to this bit of forest, which was conveniently near a train station. The station had tracks leading in virtually every direction, and thanks to the government’s public transit program, the trains ran twenty-four hours a day, and were usually free to citizens. From here, we knew people would be able to get home, even if they’d had to leave their previous transportation near the warehouse, for one reason or another.
This had been the perfect spot for that reason, and Abe had been in on the plan. We all had.
“He’ll get here and find his way home on his own. They all will. Or are you saying your brother’s not smart enough to follow directions?” I lifted one eyebrow, daring him not to smile at the jab at Abe, and was rewarded with the crooked grin I’d been waiting for. I nodded and started shoving him toward the door. “Right, well, that settles it. Everyone out. We’re going to get home, where we’re at least on familiar ground. And then we’re going to figure out what to do. Right?”
There was a chorus of agreements, which sort of surprised me, given that this was the first time I’d tried giving orders to the entire group, and then we were piling out of the airship, into the dark, damp night.
9
My control over the situation lasted until we’d been out of the plane maybe thirty seconds before everything exploded again.
“I can’t believe we’re just leaving them,” Ant muttered. “They’re all alone back there, and we’re running out on them!”
I was about to remind him that we’d just been through this—had the exact same conversation, in fact—but then I paused, realizing I probably didn’t have a right to say anythi
ng. Getting him to leave his brother behind was more difficult than any of us had realized, although we should have. I already knew how I felt about Nelson, and she was my friend. Granted, she was an important piece of the plan I had in mind for the future, but she still wasn’t blood of my blood, bone of my bone.
Abe, on the other hand, was a part of Ant. Were we really going to get him to see around that, even if our reasoning was good? If I had a twin (or even a real sibling), wouldn’t I do the exact same thing?
In the absence of any action, Jace turned toward Ant and grabbed him by the shoulders.
“Ant. Do you think I don’t know? I have a sister and used to have a brother too. And that guy back there, Jack? I love him like a brother. I know how that pulls at you. I know exactly how hard it is to be leaving him behind. But think, man. Think. He needs you to be brave right now, and what Winter said is absolutely true: they need us free so that we can break them out. They need us back home, figuring out where they are and how we can get them back. We’re going to be of zero use to them if we’re standing around in this forest arguing or if we’re lying dead, courtesy of those Ministry soldiers.”
Ant opened his mouth to protest again and was immediately silenced by five of our voices hissing at him. I didn’t think any of us were using real words. We were just trying to get him to shut up. I wasn’t sure it would matter what we said at all.
To my surprise, Ant closed his mouth and looked around at us, blinking owlishly. “I guess you’re right,” he eventually concluded, his shoulders slumping in defeat.
I stared at him, stunned at how easily we’d won, but we didn’t have time to stand around doing more thinking. We were within five hundred yards of a small town, and though it was the middle of the night, there was no telling who might be out on a night like this. We needed to get out of here—quickly.
“Okay,” I said firmly, taking another stab at the leadership role. “So, what are we doing tonight? We’re just heading back to our various houses, to go to sleep like none of this happened?”
It seemed like an underreaction, honestly, but at the same time, I would be grateful to get back to my house, even for the night. At least there, I knew what to expect and who had a key to the front door.
Alexy stared at me for a moment, then nodded.
“I think that’s best. Get back onto familiar ground before we try to do anything else. Seems to me everyone could use a good night’s sleep in a safe place.”
“But how do we know which places are safe?” Jackie asked, stepping forward into the circle we’d subconsciously formed outside the ship. “How do we know any place is safe anymore? I mean, we thought that warehouse was safe, and…” She gestured vaguely to the left, her voice fading off, and I realized that her eyes were shinier than they should have been—with unshed tears.
Of course they were. Now that I thought about it, I was shocked that we weren’t all dissolving into tears. Though maybe that was an aspect of the adrenaline we were surviving on at the moment. Maybe the second we got out of the situation, we’d all collapse into heaving heaps of panic. If we were going to do that, I would prefer that we do it in our own homes.
Unfortunately, Zion was already shaking his head.
“She’s right,” he said gruffly. “We can’t know anything right now, certainly not in regard to what’s safe and what’s not.”
“It’s not as though they know who we are, though,” Ant cut in. “We were wearing masks, double masks. Sure, they had cameras, but they couldn’t have seen anything but our eyes. They couldn’t have figured out our identities.”
Zion whirled on him so quickly that it took my breath away, and I took several steps back, ending up against Jace, who had inexplicably been standing directly behind me. He reached up to grasp me around the shoulders and keep me from falling over, and I cursed the suits one more time for the clumsiness they imposed.
“What do you mean they can’t possibly?” Zion snarled at Ant as I regained my balance. “What do you mean they definitely couldn’t have done something like that?”
He took a menacing step toward Ant, who shuffled back to maintain the distance between them.
“We’re talking about the Ministry, do you understand? Do you have any idea what that means? It means they have more money than us, better equipment than us, and who knows how many people dedicated to doing exactly what you think they couldn’t possibly do. We just managed to find our way into something that they obviously didn’t want found. Do you think they’re just going to let it go? Think they’re just going to smile and nod, expect that they took us out—when they know for a fact that they didn’t—and go on about their business? Think they’re going to assume that they’ve scared us away, and leave us alone?” He turned away again, toward the ground, as if he was ashamed at the scene he’d just caused, and then threw a look over his shoulder at Ant, who was looking rather worse for wear after the speech.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to frighten you, but I’m frightened myself. I don’t think any of us can count on being safe after this. I don’t like seeing people I consider friends in danger.”
At the last statement, the anger I’d been feeling at him melted a little bit, and I took a deep breath.
“He’s right,” I said quietly. “They aren’t going to leave well enough alone. So what do we do?”
We all looked toward Alexy, who, over the course of the night, had become the one we trusted to have answers. She stood completely still, then brushed her bangs out of her eyes to stare at the rest of us.
“Why the hell are you all looking at me? What did you do, take a vote while I wasn’t looking and decide that I had to be the one to answer questions?”
“You’ve had answers all night, Alexy,” I answered. “Just wondering if you have a suggestion right now. Because it seems we’re all a bit shell-shocked and are having trouble coming up with solutions. We could… We could use an idea here.”
She glared at me, but then she gave me a slight grin and nodded her head.
“Okay, if you want me to lead the pack, I guess I’ll do it. As long as the boys don’t mind.” She shot a glance at Cloyd, then at Zion. When she didn’t get a response from them, she shrugged. “Alexy to the rescue, then. Gotta say, I don’t like the idea of any of us going home alone tonight. Think Zion’s right—the Ministry will have it out for us, and they stop at nothing when it comes to defending their territory. Whether they know who we are or not is a pointless argument. They might, they might not. We have to assume that they do, so that we can take care of ourselves. With that in mind, my orders are these: no one travels alone, anywhere. Going home, getting on the train, going to the grocery store. I don’t even want any of you making a trip to the kitchen by yourselves, got it?”
Dead silence met her statement, and she looked at each of us in turn.
“Got it?” she asked again, tilting her chin in expectation of an answer.
Finally, the rest of us started moving again, our heads swiveling from one person to the next as we all did the mental gymnastics required to figure out who we wanted to pair up with.
Jace put a hand up and coughed to get everyone’s attention. “According to your geographical locations,” he said quickly, his eyes moving from one person to the next. “Who lives where?”
“Alice and I live very close to each other. That’s how we met,” Ida said, quickly moving to stand next to the other girl. “She can stay at my house until we… until we get things sorted out.”
Samuel took a step forward as well. “I live just down the street from them. I’ll see them home. Make sure nothing happens.”
James, who I had barely noticed up until this point, came from the shadows. He’d go with them also, and a quick conversation between the four of them confirmed that they could stay in the same house rather than splitting up.
“Think that’s safe?” Ant asked. “Think it’s a good idea to put so many of us in the same spot? After all, it makes it easier for the Ministry to tak
e out an entire group in one blow. Seems to me that it would be better for us to split up. Hide out on our own, so to speak.”
Jackie shook her head and latched onto his arm.
“And that’s exactly why I’ll be staying with you,” she murmured. “To make sure you don’t have any more of those stupid ideas. I don’t want you running off to try to save your brother by yourself.”
When Ant opened his mouth, undoubtedly to tell her that she couldn’t stop him if she tried, Jackie brought her hand sharply down on the back of his arm.
“And don’t you dare tell me you wouldn’t do it, because I know you would. Or that I couldn’t stop you from doing it, because you know I could.” She cast a look at Cloyd and grinned. “Boyd can come with us to help me hold you down, if you like.”
Ant pressed his lips together and narrowed his eyes, but I noticed he wasn’t arguing with her. I grinned to myself. We were standing in the dark in an unknown forest, discussing whether or not our lives might be in danger, but there was something homey and familiar about their arguments. I let myself sink into it for a moment, needing the warmth of it. The normalcy of it.
My blood froze again a few moments later, at Zion’s next words.
“The rest of us will split up into groups then. We better get a move on. I hear engines in the distance.”
We grew still, straining our ears, and soon enough the rest of us could hear them as well.
Engines.
Big engines.
Trucks or something, and there were several of them. I didn’t know if they were coming for us, but I also didn’t know how often trucks drove through the outskirts of small towns in the middle of the night.
If there was even a chance that they were coming for us, it meant we had to get moving.
Alexy jumped to it first.
“Okay. Julia, Marco, I know you two best, so I’ll take you. I have security in place that will keep us safe. Zion, you’re with Allerra. She’s little, so try not to squish her while you have her. That leaves…” She turned toward me and Jace, who still had his hands on my shoulders, and lifted her eyebrows in question. “Is it safe to send you two home together, or is there going to be some sort of awkward sexual tension that will ruin this wonderful group chemistry we’ve got going?”