As my father’s footsteps retreated, the gloved hands came. They wiped my tears the way they always had. They released the bindings, carefully, with gentleness and friendship, as in the past.
When he finally lifted me from the table, Cannon wore an anguished expression. He pulled me to him, where the soft folds of his shirt would absorb my tears. “I’m sorry, Raine. I’m so sorry.”
Gunner
39.
Indy laughed, a sound without humor. “You want to go to the Centrals? Right. I don’t think so.”
I stood and headed for the front door. “I’ll go myself. I don’t need your rebels. Or you.”
She followed, her anger a swirling cloud around me. “You can’t go. If you get caught, you’ll compromise us all.”
I spun around. “Whatever. How does my getting caught compromise you? You’ll still have your Resistance, your—” I almost said “boyfriend,” but stopped myself. I couldn’t stand to be in the same room with her for another second. But I didn’t want to go into the empty forest/abandoned neighborhood alone. So I pushed past her and strode toward the staircase in the back of the living area.
“You have high-class voice power,” she yelled, following me. “We risked a lot to get you out of that city.”
I spun toward her. “Wrong. We all risked a lot to get Jag out of Freedom. And he doesn’t even have the journal.” My anger matched hers.
She deflated with the mention of Jag, confirming my suspicions of her fanboy crush on the guy. Plus, the air definitely held some weird lovey-dovey feelings. “We need you,” she said, softer, but with just as much conviction.
I couldn’t find any trace of betrayal in her emotions. I’d almost conceded her point when a loud bang landed on the front door.
I turned toward the sound. Indy took one step before the front of the house exploded into splinters and flames.
* * *
I lost three, four, five seconds of my life to complete blackness. A maelstrom of sound assaulted me, but I couldn’t see. Indy had landed on top of me, and we’d both smashed into the wall behind us.
When I regained my sight, strong tech lights beamed from the front of the house. A buzzing sound added to the crackle of the flames.
“Hovercopters,” Indy wheezed.
I didn’t speak as I struggled to my feet.
“Gunner.” Thane’s voice cut through the hovercopter hype, the sizzling fire, everything.
“They can’t have anything in the office,” Indy said. She darted forward, grabbed the edge of a burning rug. She dragged it down the hall and into a book-filled room. I watched, astounded by the strength she had to think clearly, and waited for Thane to swoop in and tase me.
Smoke and ash clogged the air. Gray plumes rose into the steaming night.
“Gunner,” Thane said again.
I took a deep breath just as Indy emerged from the now-flaming office. “I’ll come with you,” I said, my voice on high control. “But everyone else goes free. No discussion. No compromises.”
Time ticked by in crackles and crashes. Finally Thane stepped through the flames. “Done.”
I glanced at Indy, inclined my head in a universal gesture of get out of here.
She shook her head just once, forcing me to growl, “Go. I’m fine.”
She stepped closer, stood up on her tiptoe, kissed my cheek. As she did, I felt her slip something in my back pocket. Then she disappeared through a door that led to the back of the house, leaving me alone with the Assistant Director.
* * *
Thane led me through the spotlight beams of the hovercopters toward a long, rectangular contraption.
“Get in,” he said, lifting a panel on the side of the long box to reveal seats inside. The transport hovered several inches off the ground, adjusting to my weight as I sank into a chair.
Thane got in the other side and barely spared me a glance. “Two passengers to the Centrals.”
The craft maneuvered around a cluster of young trees, shot into the night.
“Slow,” Thane said, which only accelerated my pulse. The transporter responded, and I felt the weight of the darkness settle on my shoulders.
“Don’t talk. Just listen,” Thane said. I’d never heard this level of power in his voice. Something strange happened to my throat. It narrowed, making breathing difficult.
“I have to travel a lot for my line of work,” Thane began.
“By line of work, you mean brainwashing people?” I choked out.
Thane pierced me with a glance. Something flashed across his face. Something very much like anger. Just as quickly as it had appeared, it fled. “More like unbrainwashing them.”
Silence stretched the minutes into thin filaments until I wanted to punch through the windows of the transport just to let some sound in.
“I stayed the longest in the Goodgrounds,” Thane finally said, his eyes unfocused as if watching his life play out on the windshield of the transport. “I loved my daughters. I couldn’t leave them.” He looked at me again. “No matter what anyone says, I loved them.” It sounded like a plea.
“But Van Hightower is very demanding. He wanted me back in Freedom, permanently. I’d left Rise Twelve in the hands of someone Van didn’t like. When he was killed, I had to return.”
I pressed back into the unyielding seat, wishing it would swallow me whole. Killed?
But that didn’t compare to the realization that I had seen him that night, in Rise Twelve. I’d stood in his flat, touched his fluted mirror.
“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done—leaving my family behind in the Goodgrounds,” Thane was saying, and I forced myself to pay attention. “Especially Vi. When her talent was finally registered, Van hand selected her, and I was dispatched to bring her in.”
“I heard you killed your other daughter,” I said, the words a forced whisper.
“If there’s one thing Van doesn’t understand, it’s human emotions,” Thane said, spinning the gold ring on his middle finger. “It’s his greatest weakness. It’s what has allowed me to Think over Rise Twelve, unbrainwashing everyone who comes through the door, for the past ten years. It’s why I can work in the office down the hall from him, sending instructions to the Insiders all over the union, and he doesn’t know. He truly believes that I would never go against him. I’ve made sure he believes that by killing my first daughter and bringing him my second.”
The thought of living that kind of life sickened me, mostly because I’d been watching Raine do it for a year.
He held up his hand, something that looked dangerously like tears shining in his eyes. “I wear this ring in remembrance of my daughters. One lost, one wandering in the dark. One day I’ll pay for what I’ve done.”
He said it so simply that I couldn’t respond.
Thane dropped his hand and looked out the window. “Van Hightower also can’t see beneath the surface unless he looks,” he said. “I brought Vi to Freedom to protect her. My options were to bring her in or kill her.” He drummed his fingers on his knee, as if nervous. If he was, that was the only sign.
“He doesn’t look under my surface anymore. He trusts me. I’ve spent two decades earning that.” Thane’s last word felt final, like he was done talking.
But at what cost? I thought. I didn’t know what to say or how to proceed from here.
He exhaled loudly, like it lifted a burden from him, and turned back to me. “So, Gunner, these last few weeks have been very trying, to say the least. Once Van put you on his short list, I’ve been doing everything possible to get you Inside.”
I stared openly at him now. “You? You wanted me on the Inside?”
“Or assigned to me. I accomplished both.” He sounded so pleased with himself. A momentary flash of annoyance mingled with the raging disbelief I had storming inside my chest.
“See, if you were my student, I’d have access to your cache. Then I could guide you, help you …” He let his words hang there, screaming with implications.
Holy could it be him? no way.
The voice had been so garbled sometimes. Or too low or too high. But always there. I should’ve known Trek couldn’t do that. He was still in school—and he hadn’t missed a class in forever.
“You’re the assistant? You’ve been in my head?”
A flicker of movement turned his lips upward. “Me. Or Starr, who I finally managed to secure as my protégé at the end of last term. She’s in line to Think over Rise Twelve should anything happen to me.”
Starr. Oh my hell, Starr. My head spun with all they might have seen or learned over the past couple of weeks.
“What about Trek Whiting?” I asked.
Thane half-smiled. “He doesn’t live out in the camps for fun. He has more tech out there than we’ve got in Twelve. A whole communication hub. But he only helped a couple of times, right at the beginning.”
I didn’t want to talk about Trek he’s so awesome Whiting.
“Why Starr?”
“She’s your match, and then when she came on board with me, Van wouldn’t think twice about her comm-ing you all the time. We were able to cover up the most serious of your protocol issues. With her set to Think over Rise Twelve and your voice, we were ready to begin the overthrow. It was perfect.”
“Perfect,” I murmured, my brain simultaneously full and empty at the same time. Thane must have sensed that, because he gave me a few minutes to process.
Thane = the Insider-sympathetic Thinker of Rise Twelve. Holy heavy.
Starr = helping me sneak out to meet Raine or break into the Confinement Rise for a quick chat with Jag. No wonder she’d been so angry with me and my rash choices. We really were in this together.
“So now that you know all this,” Thane said, his voice lowering and finally a wisp of sadness emanating from him, “I’ll need you to do something for me.”
For some reason I was nodding. “Name it.”
“After we get to the farmhouse, after you have the journal, you’ll need to tase me.”
Raine
40.
My name is Raine Rose Hightower. My name is Raine Rose Hightower. I am seventeen years old. I live in the city of Freedom. My best friend is Cannon Lichen. I am in love with Gunner Jameson.
My name is Raine Rose Hightower …
I sat on my bed, my knees drawn to my chest, rocking back and forth. As the sun settled into the ocean, I repeated the facts of my life over and over and over. I felt like if I didn’t, my vitals would slip away into oblivion.
I’d forget.
The truth would be erased, just as I’d seen so many other things in my life wiped away.
In the kitchen, Cannon bumped around every now and then. I almost called out to him just so I wouldn’t have to endure the silence of my bedroom alone. He’d come. He loved me in a different way than Gunn did, but it was love nonetheless.
And I loved him too, the way only two people who know each other’s every secret can. I’d watched him pour the postdrain meds down the drain. He’d tucked me in bed with another apology and said he’d be here whenever I wanted to talk.
I didn’t want to talk. Not yet.
My flatmate’s name is Violet Schoenfeld. Her match is Zenn Bower, but she’s in love with Jag Barque.
My name is Raine Rose Hightower. I am seventeen years old.
My name is Raine Rose Hightower …
Gunner
41.
Fifteen silent minutes later, with the sun cresting the mountains in the east, the transport halted a safe distance from a lonely farmhouse.
I got out. “So I’m going to tase you?” I asked Thane, who stood on the opposite side of the craft, looking toward the tall buildings smashed against the horizon.
“Above all, Van must think I’m with him. And besides, I’ve already reported you to the Greenies.” He turned his attention to the house. “Come on, we don’t have much time.” His boots crunched on the snow. “I’ll take the basement; you search the main floor.”
I approached the building with caution. I wasn’t sure what I expected to find. Trails had been tamped in the snow leading from the back porch to a sagging outbuilding. A clothesline stretched from the leaning roof of the smaller building to a leafless tree. A sense of peace I couldn’t describe accompanied the scene.
I followed a path in an indirect route to the back door so I wouldn’t leave footprints. I didn’t knock, just went inside with Thane right behind me. The little kitchen where I stood looked functional yet not extravagant, just like all controlled societies.
“Find the journal,” Thane whispered as he passed me and disappeared down a dark stairwell.
A single glass sat on the weathered table, half full of cloudy liquid. The living area appeared neat and tidy, with a homewoven blanket tossed over the arm of a rocking chair. Down the hall, one door lay closed on the right, but an open door on the left revealed a bedroom with an already made bed.
I didn’t question whether the bed had been slept in or not. The house felt alive. Someone definitely lived here, took care of the place.
Another door stood ajar in the corner of the bedroom, revealing a small anteroom stuffed with papers and books and letters.
I went in and simply stared for a few minutes. The existence of all this paper felt like evidence that this house belonged to someone in the Resistance.
Had my dad owned a room like this once?
I fingered a long instrument, obviously used for writing, what with the sharpened tip. I measured the weight of it in my fingers. I breathed in the scent of old wood and something that smelled sharp, colored. When I uncorked a flask of black liquid, I found the source of the smell. Ink.
So wrapped up in the joy/love/beauty of the papers and books and writing supplies, I didn’t notice anything. Until my eyes landed on a brown leather book. A tremor of excitement zipped through me. Fear accompanied it, as I remembered the dream where I’d opened the journal to only blank pages.
I reached for it, and it seemed to take forever for my fingers to brush the cover. I lifted it, registered the weight of it in my hand, made to open it.
“Who are you?” someone asked in hard, even syllables.
I turned around slowly. I slipped the journal into my back pocket, disappointed and relieved I hadn’t been able to look inside.
Jag stood there, gripping a shovel. His bright blue eyes burned with liquid fire. His hair stuck up at just-slept-on angles, but he wore clean clothes and a thick bandage around his right arm.
“Oh, hey Gunner,” he said, like nothing had happened between us. Like he hadn’t left me clipped into a nourisher, alone in the unknown city of Castledale. “You could’ve just knocked. I’d have let you in. Did Indy tell you where I was?”
I took in the sharpness of the shovel before speaking. “You left me in Castledale. What gives?”
He half-smiled and propped the shovel against a dresser, where it fell to the floor. “Sorry. But Fret took care of you, yeah? He said he would.”
“That’s not the point.” I folded my arms, but before Jag could explain properly, footsteps behind him caught my attention. Jag bent to retrieve the shovel as Thane stumbled into the room.
“Leave it,” Thane commanded. He took a step to the right as if circling his prey, never once looking at me. I swallowed hard, wondering how long we’d have to play before the Greenies showed up.
Jag straightened, shovelless. “I would not have let you in,” he said to Thane.
I made to move, but Thane held up one hand. “Better stay there, Gunner. We don’t want any of these barbs to hit you, now, do we?” He raised a taser, activated it, aimed it at Jag.
I looked at a point above Thane’s shoulder. He had the taser, but I needed it if he wanted me to zap him.
I couldn’t detect any emotion from either of them. They both buried their true feelings deep, deep, deep.
Thane took another sideways step, taser still locked onto Jag’s chest. “So.”
Silence followed. Thane lic
ked his lips as if he didn’t have his speech prepared and wasn’t quite sure what to say next.
So maybe I should speak first. “Drop the weapon, Thane.”
The taser fell to the floor, sparked, sent techtricity up Thane’s pantleg. He bent to retrieve it.
I worked up a mouthful of saliva and tried to swallow away the tightening in my throat. Jag’s left hand flicked toward the door, a gesture meant for me to leave.
Like that was gonna happen. I’d spent the last three weeks running away from people when they needed me most.
Instead, I glanced toward the doorway to judge how far Thane had migrated.
Jag wore a look that scared me enough to take a step backward. “Thane,” he said. Then before Thane could even turn around, Jag nailed him in the nose with his fist.
Everything else in the room faded into the background, a blur of black and blue and white. All I saw was the silver taser flying in a perfect arc toward the bed. It hit the floor with a loud clack!
Around me, too many things to catalog happened. Grunts, curses, a scream, the scratching of furniture being slammed around.
I dove for the taser, wrapped my fingers around it.
When I stood up again, I simply stared at it for another moment.
“Gunn! Help me out here!” Jag’s voice came out muffled.
I looked up from the silver object of death in my hand to find him on the floor. Thane knelt on his spine, twisting both of Jag’s arms behind his back. The hurt on Jag’s face made me ache.
I pushed a button to activate the taser. “Release him,” I commanded Thane. “Release him now. Stand up. Move to the window.”
My voice came out in a tone I’d never achieved before. Barely suppressed anxiety skipped through my bloodstream. What I might say scared me, scared me, scared me.
I didn’t know how much Jag knew. I didn’t know how much I could say.
But I did know we all heard the distinct buzz of hovercopters.
Raine
42.