Frozen

TWENTY

I HANG FROM THE STRUCTURE, dangling a moment before finally letting go.

For the brief slice of time that I’m in free fall, I imagine I’m returning to Claysoot, that when my feet hit the ground I’ll find clay earth beneath them and a familiar hunting trailhead nearby. But inside this Wall, the land is as barren as its Outer Ring. Any trees that grow are saplings, rare and spread out over the snow-covered ground. I think I can make out the silhouettes of buildings in the distance, but the steady snowfall prevents me from being certain.

There is a soft thud and Bree is beside me. Clipper comes next, followed by Jackson and finally, Sammy. I move to rebind Jackson’s arms, and he stumbles away from me, resting a hand on the Wall for support.

“I feel sick,” he says.

I’m positive it’s part of an act so that he can run for it, escape the fate we have planned for him, but then he loses his dinner in the snow.

“Come on,” I say, tugging him.

He looks at the Wall and jerks his head to the side as though dodging a punch, then pinches the bridge of his nose and starts muttering.

“What’s with him?” Bree hisses.

“Hey, pull it together.” I shake Jackson and his eyes fly open.

“We can’t go in,” he says. “It’s bad. This place is bad.”

He keeps muttering, twitching. Clipper looks absolutely terrified, and I can’t have the Forgery putting on a show over nothing, scaring the wits out of my team.

“Hey!” I slap at his shoulder. “Jackson!”

He freezes. “You said my name.”

“If I knew it would make you easier to control, I would have stopped calling you Forgery a long time ago. I’m retying your arms and if you can’t stay quiet, I have no problem breaking your nose again before we find a place to strand you. You want to starve to death with a broken nose, or just starve?”

He offers me his wrists. “I think . . . I need . . .” His head falls into his chest and he cringes again, like he’s experiencing a jolt of pain. “I don’t know anymore. I don’t know anything.”

“Let’s go,” I say to the others, startled at what a good actor Jackson’s becoming. “He’ll be fine.”

Sammy grabs Jackson by the elbow to escort him. “A Forgery wasn’t enough. We had to land one having a nervous breakdown.”

Bree snaps at him to be quiet and we fall into a steady march. It’s difficult to see through the flurrying snow, but I can make out barren crop fields and livestock corrals as we head into town.

Group A was the most well stocked of the test groups, supplied with electricity and running water until Frank cut them off. I’ve known this since the day I read his documentation of the project, but I never truly comprehended those living conditions until now, as we step into the town itself. How this group managed to revolt and attack one another, nearly dying out when they had so many resources at their disposal, is beyond me. Building after building stand pressed together, rooflines caved in. Some are mere skeletons, their frames exposed. Others have intact walls but look moments away from collapsing. Even given the deterioration, it is obvious they were once immaculate. And modern.

I squint, peering through the shattered windows of a structure to my right. School desks sit inside, some tipped over. The next building is a hospital, far more advanced than the Clinic Emma and her mother manned. Here, the beds are on wheels and the cabinets lining the walls are heavy-duty encasements with locks. Contents have been pulled from them and left scattered about the floor: rusted scissors, broken equipment, small bottles of medicine that rock in the wind.

Jackson is still muttering as we approach a wooden platform. A T-shaped formation rises from its base, and a looped rope dangles from the highest point. I think it must be like our Council Bell—a device somehow used to call meetings to order—until Sammy whispers, “Gallows.” Then he reenacts pulling one of the ropes over his head and tightening it about his neck. He cocks his head to the side, lets his tongue hang out of his mouth, and I understand. We give the platform a wide berth as we pass.

“Remember when you said you’d prove me wrong?” Bree whispers to me. “Well, this place doesn’t look very populated.”

“They have to be here. We saw them.”

What I don’t say is that I’m growing as worried as she is that we hiked across all of AmEast for nothing. I didn’t expect survivors to come pouring into the streets to greet us, but we haven’t seen a single sign of life. The possibility that Group A killed one another off is seeming more and more probable.

But then . . .

“There!”

A streak of light moves through one of the buildings ahead. It is faint, blotted out by the snowfall. Bree and I break into a run. Sammy shouts something about staying with the Forgery, and we don’t slow. I burst into the building, Bree on my heels. Two deer carcasses hang from the ceiling and the air is metallic with the scent of blood. The first sign of people. Of survivors.

“Hello?” Bree calls out.

We move around a table laden with cleavers and mallets. Floorboards creak on the other side of the room. I have an arrow ready and Bree’s got the handgun pointed into the darkness. I hope whoever is in here can’t see as well as we can with our night vision. I doubt we look very approachable.

“Hello?” Bree tries again.

Footsteps, and then a figure carrying a torch, rendered white by my goggles.

It sprints between the two carcasses and out a side door. Bree and I follow, darting across an alley and into another building. We enter a wide room—a barn, maybe—empty except for wooden crates and a couple of shovels.

Weapons ready, Bree and I move into the center of the room. The torch, and the figure carrying it, have disappeared.

An outburst from the streets reaches us: Clipper screaming for help; Sammy shouting.

Jackson. We never should have left the others alone with him. The Forgery’s hysterics were an act, just as I suspected. He’s probably making a run for it right now.

But before I can move, the floor comes to life beneath me, folding in on itself. Bree and I glance at each other and then we are falling.

I hit bottom and see white. Heat shoots through my back. I gasp for air, over and over, and finally it returns to my lungs. A stranger leaps from above and the trapdoor through which Bree and I fell is pulled shut.

The stranger holds the torch at arm’s length, blinking rapidly, as though its brilliance hurts his eyes. I pull off the night-vision goggles to see him properly. He’s not much older than I am, with wild hair that clumps together in matted, shoulder-length sections, and pale—almost translucent—skin. Something dark and tarlike is smeared across most of his face as a sort of nighttime camouflage. He leans forward and flashes a blade before me.

“It ’pears we have guests,” he says.

It is only then, as additional torches are lit, that I notice the half dozen bodies waiting along the edges of the room. The group is entirely male, their clothing a haphazard blend of materials—furs patched with cotton and wool and leather. They crouch like animals near the walls—knees bony, palms against the floor—and blink their bloodshot eyes.

A single word comes to mind, a word Fallyn spoke when she laughed at our mission plans.

Savages.

And they have us surrounded.

TWENTY-ONE

I SCRAMBLE BACKWARD, MY SHOULDERS pressing into Bree’s. The boy lays the flat edge of his blade beneath my chin and presses upward, forcing me to look at him.

“I wouldn’t be makin’ fast moves.” His words come out strung together, bleeding into one another as he disregards consonants. “I might think yer comin’ after me. Be forced to slit yer throat.”

A door behind him bursts open and two males enter, dragging Clipper, Sammy, and Jackson. All three are bound and gagged. The team’s earlier shouts had nothing to do with the Forgery after all.

“We got the others, Titus,” one of the escorts says.

Titus lowers his knife from my chin and turns toward them. Bree and I sense our chance and act at the same moment. She scrambles to her feet and I grab the radio from my hip.

“Xavier. We’re—”

Titus’s fist comes out of nowhere. I taste blood, drop the radio. The world goes momentarily blurry. When my vision steadies, Titus is standing before me, unwrapping a metal chain from his palm. He stomps on the radio, crushing it beneath his heel.

“That’s enough!” Bree shouts, the handgun trained on him. “Untie them.” She motions toward the rest of our team with the barrel. “Do it now or I swear I will fire.”

Titus slashes his knife so quickly I don’t see it coming. One moment he’s still and the next my chest is on fire. I gasp, press a palm against my shirt. The material grows damp, and my fingers sticky.

“Put it down, girlie,” Titus says to Bree, “or next time he’s gettin’ worse.”

“We came to help you,” she says, refusing to lower the gun. “We came—”

“And we ain’t askin’ for yer help! But that’s the thing with yer people. Ya think ya know what’s best for e’erybody. Ya think so much ya don’t think at all.”

I blink, and his blade is against my neck for a second time. The two men behind Titus have brought knives to Sammy’s and Clipper’s throats as well. Only Jackson is left unthreatened, but seeing as we had him bound from the beginning, it was probably clear we never cared much for his safety. For a split second I hope that he will take advantage of this and somehow free us all. A foolish, desperate thought.

“Put down yer weapon and we’ll have a nice talk,” Titus says to Bree.

“How do I know you won’t slit his throat when I lower my gun?”

“Yer just gonna have to trust me.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Cus if ya don’t, I’ll kill yer whole team instead.”

Bree shifts her footing. “You’re bluffing.”

But I know he’s not. I can see it in his bloodshot eyes. We were wrong to think these people wanted our help, that we could convince them to join our cause, turn their prison into our hideout. So wrong.

“Bree,” I say. Titus’s knife grates against my throat. “It’s not worth it.”

“I can do this,” she says.

They are too spaced out. She’ll only get a shot off, two at best, before one of us is dead.

“You’re good, but you’re not this good. No one is. If you’re smart, you’ll acknowledge that.”

Her grip is shaking now, the gun quivering as it darts between Titus and his men. Bree swallows and lowers the weapon. Titus snatches it from her. He turns to face a vacant wall, and pulls the trigger six times. My ears ring, pound, throb from the shots being fired in enclosed quarters.

Titus hands the gun back to Bree, smiling. “So powerful ’til it ain’t, eh?”

She looks at the weapon, now an empty piece of metal. Her jaw clenches. She lunges at him, but someone along the wall jumps to restrain her.

Titus wraps the chain back around his palm.

He’s struck Bree all of three times when I’m blindfolded and dragged from the room.

I’m shoved to a sitting position, the ground beneath me cold. Pain flares through my shoulders as my hands are pulled behind me and bound. Then my shirt’s being torn open. A moment later comes the sting of a needle, stitching the cut on my chest but not bothering to be gentle about it. A gag ends up in my mouth when I won’t stop yelling for Bree and the others.

When the wound is dressed and the blindfold finally pulled off, I find I’m in a dingy room filled with pipes and poles and oddly sized metal containers. The view is engulfed by darkness as the healer leaves, pulling the door shut behind him. My only company now is a flickering candle set far out of reach.

“Hey!” I shout through my gag. My voice echoes through the dark room. I scramble to stand up and find my arms are not only tied behind my back, but around a pole as well. I twist, attempting to free myself, and feel the stitches strain from the motion.

“Hey!” I shout again. “Untie me!”

“They’re not coming,” someone says. Jackson.

I flatten myself to the floor and peer beneath a metal vat behind the pole I’m tethered to. I can just barely make him out on the other side, sitting with his back to me.

“Jackson. Can you untie me?” The gag is muddling my words, but he seems to understand me well enough because he laughs.

“Why would I help you? And besides, I can’t. I’m tied up, too.”

“Where are the others?”

“Sammy and Clipper were dragged off somewhere. I don’t know where they took them.”

“And Bree?” I ask, my voice catching. “What about Bree?”

“Titus beat her until she passed out. Then I was dragged here, but you were too busy screaming to hear them bring me in. I don’t know anything else.”

My mouth goes dry. How did this happen? How did I manage to botch our mission, get my entire team caught? And Bree. It’s completely my fault. I told her to put the gun down. I told her to surrender her only way of protecting herself.

A loud screech echoes through the room and torchlight floods in. I shrink away from it. A man dressed in furs and leather enters, dragging Sammy and Clipper behind him. Sammy’s blond bangs are slick with blood and his nose is swollen to double its normal size. It’s broken for sure. I feel a small surge of relief when I see Clipper unharmed.

The man binds Sammy to the pole in front of me, and Clipper to the one behind Sammy. Then he notices me watching and shouts back toward the doorway.

“Did he wanna see the leader next?”

“Bring him,” comes the reply.

I’m promptly untied and dragged from the room. We go up a flight of stairs and through a series of hallways. Some have cold, concrete walls; others are nothing but frozen dirt tunnels. Not once do I see a window. We are still underground. Even stranger, I don’t see a single person. There have to be more than the handful Bree and I saw after falling through the trapdoor.

We make a quick turn, and I’m shoved into a room. A hammock hangs between two poles. A bedpan rests on the floor. Several candles sit on the surface of a crudely fashioned table. Titus steps from a corner and into their glow.

I’m pushed onto a crate serving as a chair, and while my arms remain tethered behind my back, at least the gag is removed.

Titus waves at my escort dismissively. “Put the damn torch out or get gone, Bruno. It’s hurtin’ my eyes.”

Bruno grunts and leaves. As soon as I’m alone with Titus, I spit out the first thought that comes into my head.

“Where’s Bree?”

His lips spread into a thin smile, which looks wicked in the candlelight. “You ain’t here to talk about yer woman.”

“Where is she?”

“Tell me yer name, and maybe I’ll tell where she’s at.”

“Gray,” I say immediately. “Gray Weathersby.”

He says the name back to me, like he’s trying it on. Then he runs his fingers absentmindedly through a candle’s flame.

“I gave you my name. Now where is she?”

“I’ve changed my mind.”

I writhe against my bindings. “You said—”

Titus picks up his knife and drives it into the table. It stands, wobbling upright, light bouncing off the blade. “What’s it this time?” His lips are pulled back in a snarl, his chest heaving. “What do ya want?”

“This time? We came to help you.”

He folds his arms across his chest and laughs. “That’s what yer people said last visit, and ’member how that went?”

I’m trying to make sense of his words, but they don’t add up. I run through everything I know about Group A.

The test subjects became uncivilized. They were fighting, killing one another off, completely out of control. Frank turned off their electricity, hoping they would perish. They did; Bo overheard the confirmation years ago, a report from one Order member to Frank. But then we saw survivors, just months ago, darting in and out of the Group A screens in Union Central’s control room. I must be missing a detail—a crucial detail—because nothing Titus is saying makes sense.

“Yer men gave me the same lie when we questioned ’em,” Titus says. “We’re here to help. The blond was partic’ly useless. Refused to say a damn thing. Claimed ya wouldn’t want him to.”

I feel a surge of gratitude at Sammy’s loyalty.

Titus sits on the crate opposite me and pulls his knife from the table. He points it at me.

“Now ya listen, and ya listen careful. Yer not wearin’ those black uniforms, but I know what yer plannin’. And even if I weren’t alive the first time Reapers crossed our Wall, I know the stories well ’nuff. I know the sufferin’ ya sow.”

The truth hits me like a blow to the gut. Bo interpreted the report about Group A dying off the way the way anyone would. But now, I think I know. I don’t want to believe it, but I think . . .

“Titus, what happened the last time someone visited?”

“Ya know perfectly well what happened,” he spits. “It was yer people, and it was a massacre. E’erybody livin’ above was slaughtered.”

TWENTY-TWO

MY MOUTH FALLS OPEN. IT’S impossibly cruel, but it makes sense. It explains how so many of them survived, why they stay so cautiously hidden even now.

“Your people had been fighting back then,” I say. “It was a war. Those who didn’t want any part in the bloodshed must have gone underground. The others continued to battle above, in the open, for months. And then . . .” I think back to the word Titus used to describe what must be the Order. “And then the Reapers arrived.”

“I see yer finally ’memberin’. So I’m askin’ again: What do ya want this time?”

“We aren’t with them,” I say. “Those men . . . the Reapers. They’re part of the Franconian Order, a group that serves Dimitri Octavius Frank. He is your enemy—not my team. He put you inside this Wall and when things got too out of hand for his liking, he decided to clean up the mess he started by slaughtering your people.”

“Ya know an awful lot ’bout our history.” Titus’s eyes narrow in thought. “Too much.”

“We are like you, Titus. I grew up inside a Wall, too.”

He grunts doubtfully. “Yer lyin’.”

“Why? Because anyone that climbs the Wall ends up burned to death? Because it would be impossible for me to be here if I climbed?”

He looks up. “Course ya know that detail. Any Reaper would.”

“I am not a Reaper. My team has nothing to do with the Order.”

He cocks his head at me and blinks those bloodshot eyes. I get a sickening feeling he’s deciding how to dispose of me when our meeting is complete. He doesn’t believe a word I’ve spoken.

“You said you want answers and I have them,” I say desperately. “I’ll explain why my team is truly here, but only if I can see Bree afterward, confirm she’s okay.”

He considers this, and eventually nods for me to continue. I start the way the truth was once told to me.

“This place, your home. It’s part of a project. The Laicos Project.”

I tell him everything.

I explain how Frank set up five test groups across AmEast. How he forced societies under various living conditions to create his own brand of soldiers. How he Heisted boys at eighteen, and in the case of Saltwater, the occasional girl at sixteen. I tell him about the Forgeries, Frank’s plan to replicate each Heisted subject for his ongoing battle with AmWest, and his end goal of limitless replicas, an expendable army of soldiers, which I fear he’s finally accomplished. I end with how the Rebels spotted Group A’s people on the screens in Frank’s control room and decided to investigate.

“We want your help rebooting the power here. Then we could get in touch with our people back east, fight Frank from two directions. You can help us. Or you could leave, climb the Wall, and start a life somewhere else. Whatever your people want. The point is that you don’t have to live like this anymore. The Rebels are willing to help you.”

“Anybody climbin’ over that Wall ends up dead,” Titus says firmly.

“I just told you: Frank doesn’t even know you are here. He thinks he killed everyone. Nothing will happen if you climb.”

“Lies! We all ’member the tales of our grandparents, stories ’bout Reapers dressed in black, whose sole purpose was gatherin’ the dead. Death claims all climbers.”

“Oh, really? When was the last time anyone tried to cross the Wall?”

“They ain’t climbed in decades, and there ain’t gonna be climbin’ anytime soon. We go above only at night; dark is safe, day is danger. Nothin’ good comes from up there.”

“No, plenty of good exists. There is bad, too, but I’m offering you help. Hundreds of us, thousands of us, are on your side. We want to make it right. We want to overthrow Frank so no one fears him anymore, including your people.”

He twists his knife on the table, the point carving out a tiny divot. “This is a complicated lie yer weavin’, Reaper. Do ya think I’ll fall for it cus it’s so layered?”

“I’m telling you the truth!”

“The Heists ya mentioned, the whole point of this s’posed Project. They ain’t happenin’ here. They ne’er happened here. Yer story is full of contradictions and I ain’t buyin’ it.”

“Of course they don’t happen here! Frank thought your people were unstable. He didn’t want to use them as a base for Forgeries. He thought you were so wild, he came in and murdered everyone aboveground just to put an end to his own mess. And now, even if he did want to Heist from your pool, he couldn’t because he doesn’t know you exist. You’ve been hiding down here for years, terrified to show your faces.”

Titus slams his palms on the table. “Ya weren’t here to witness the slaughter. Ya didn’t hear the screamin’, the pleas for mercy, the Reapers tearin’ our people apart.”

“Neither did you! This happened years ago.”

“I don’t have to live somethin’ to know it!” he shouts. “We’ve ne’er forgotten the dangers that live above, and I ain’t walkin’ outside with ya. I ain’t helping ya power nothin’ neither.”

“I want to talk to the person in charge.”

He smiles. “Yer looking at him.”

“There’s no one older?”

“There’re many, but we ain’t got much use fer a person can’t no longer hunt, or scavenge, or make new life. The elderly got no power in Burg.”

“Burg?”

“Don’t act like ya don’t know where yer at, Reaper.”

So Group A finally has a name. “How many of you are there? In total?”

“I ain’t giving my enemy more information,” he says, standing.

“We have the same enemy! How many times do I have to say it?”

But he’s beyond listening. “Bruno! Kaz!”

Bruno reenters the room. In the candlelight, I can see him clearly for the first time. He has a patchy beard and beady eyes and he can’t be much older than Sammy. The second man looks the same age and wears a wool sweater reinforced across the elbows and shoulders with leather.

“Take him to the holdin’ cell,” Titus says. “Give him five, then put him back with the others.”

“Wait!” I shout. “You have to listen to me. You have to—”

But Bruno and Kaz are already dragging me from the room. I lose track of where we are going because I’m struggling so much. We take a sharp turn and stop before a solid, ominous-looking door. One of them opens it as the other unties my hands. Then I’m shoved inside, bolted in with the darkness. There is a lone candle on the floor. It takes a minute for my eyes to adjust, but when they do, I realize Titus has kept his word about one thing.

He’s let me see Bree.

She’s lying facedown on the hard floor, head resting against her forearm. A small bowl of water, practically empty, sits nearby.

I crawl to Bree’s side, put my ear near her face. A warm exhale hits my cheek.

I roll her over and cringe. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her in worse shape. Her lip is split in two places, and her nose, like Sammy’s, is far larger than it should be. A gash on her forehead from Titus’s metal-laced punching has left her hair traced with blood. There’s an even nastier gash above her left eye. It needs stitches. Badly.

“Bree?” I shake her shoulder gently.

She moans, forces her eyes open. They go wide when she sees me, and my name is laced with pain when it falls from her lips.

I rip a section of cloth from my shirt and dip it in the water bowl so I can attempt to clean some of the blood from her face.

“I’m gonna kill him for this. He thinks this proves something—beating someone whose hands are held.”

“Don’t waste . . . your energy,” she says between sharp inhales.

I raise an eyebrow.

“I’ll kill him myself,” she clarifies. “I don’t need anyone fighting”—she winces as I press the cloth to the gash above her eye—“my battles.”

I grin at her stubbornness. “It’s good to know he didn’t break your spirit.”

“And that surprises you? You thought I’d break from a few punches?”

“No. Definitely not. I just—”

I suddenly want to touch her with my hands and not the damp cloth. I want to feel her skin and pull her into my chest and tell her it’s okay to let her guard down. Just once, she doesn’t have to be so tough. I understand, and I won’t judge. She could even cry for all I care, because it won’t change how strong she is. Not to me.

“What is it?” she asks.

Her eyes are searching mine, clear and blue and hopeful, but I don’t know how to answer her. There are not enough words in the world to even begin to explain how I feel. Without thinking, I put a palm to her cheek.

She goes rigid. “Gray?”

I reach for her, and suddenly her face is cupped in my hands and I’m staring right at her, dumbstruck by the simple fact that I want to kiss her. Softly, so as not to cause her more pain. Passionately, because the pain will be worth it.

But then she says, “Don’t do it unless you mean it,” and I realize my life is one impulsive reaction after another. That what I want in this moment might not be what I want tomorrow, or the day after; and that kissing her now could turn out to be as good as stomping on her heart, just like she warned that night with the loons.

So I say, “Do what? I’m resetting your nose.”

Even when I reposition my thumbs, I can tell she doesn’t believe me. I push her bones back in place and she yelps.

The door is yanked open behind us.

“Time’s up,” Bruno barks, and then he is dragging me from the room. This time, I don’t struggle as he leads me. I count steps and turns and stairwells. I memorize the way back to Bree.

“I saw her,” I tell the team after Bruno reties me to my pole and wishes us sweet dreams with a ruthless smile. “She’s alive.”

“And?” Sammy asks through the dark. “What’d she say? Any ideas for getting out of this?”

It’s not until he says this that I realize I squandered my time with Bree. Instead of trying to devise a plan, I spent those five precious minutes focusing on all the wrong things. This is why I will never be half the leader my father was. I am selfish and careless and irresponsible. I am in over my head.

I roll onto my side without answering Sammy.

“Sure, take your time, Gray. It’s not like we’re being held against our will or anything.”

Moments later he’s snoring, as though a hostile argument is the best recipe for a good night’s sleep. And maybe for him, it is; he spoke his piece. But I dream up an unsettling sort of nightmare.

The sky is black with crows, their wings beating against the clouds, blotting out the sun. A red-tailed hawk tries to pass through, but he is no match for their numbers. Ebony beaks descend, and then there is blood. Everywhere. The sky ripples and suddenly it is the surface of a lake, dark beneath a sliver of moon, a single loon on its center. He’s bleeding, too. And crying. A sorrowful, lonely song.

He calls again and again and again.

The night passes.

And he remains alone.

TWENTY-THREE

WE ARE UNTIED AND LED to a shared washroom by Bruno and Kaz many hours later. I assume it’s morning, but it’s impossible to tell in Burg’s windowless tunnels.

The men leave us with two lit candles before they step into the hall, bolting the door behind them. There is little water, just a bucket for the four of us, and we wash as well as we can. I clean the dried blood from my face and chest. I have a black eye from Titus, but I look phenomenal compared to Sammy. Bruises surround both his eyes, and his broken nose looks worse than ever.

“How are you feeling?”

“Like hell.” He turns toward a sliver of mirror on the wall and examines his nose.

“You want me to reset it?”

Sammy ignores me; just takes a deep breath, positions his fingers accordingly, and presses the bones back into place. His eyes are streaming by the time he’s finished.

“That seem straight to you?”

I nod, and he gives me a cocky grin.

“So what are we going to do?” Clipper asks. His eyes are heavy, like he didn’t get more than an hour or two of sleep, which could very well be true. I fill them in on the horrific slaughter of Group A’s people years ago and how Titus believes we are with the Order, or, as he likes to refer to them, the Reapers.

“I think the only way to move forward is if Titus truly believes we are on his side,” I say. “We have to earn their trust.”

Sammy sighs dramatically. “This means I can’t break his nose and even the score, then, huh?”

I shoot him a look. “Definitely not.”

“What about Bo and the others?” Clipper asks. “They’ll come for us, right?”

“I don’t think so. The plan was for them to give us a few days to warm up any survivors. Get them on our side. Find out how to restore power. Until you saw to the cameras and got the feeds looped, Bo and Xavier were going to stand watch.”

“But you radioed them,” Clipper says. “You only managed to say Xavier’s name before Titus smashed the thing, but if he heard it, he’d know how panicked you sounded. They’ll suspect something is wrong. Try to break us out.”

“They’re smarter than that,” Jackson says. I’m surprised not only to hear him chime in, but to have him share my point of view.

“Exactly,” I say. “They won’t come barging into Group A blindly. Not when they don’t know what they’re up against. We need to be patient. Make Titus see that we really do want to help his people, that we’re not here to ruin them the way the Order did years ago.”

“You know, Reapers has a better ring to it,” Sammy says. “Much more threatening and ominous. Frank really missed the mark naming his army.”

For some reason, this is the comment that sets me off. “Is it impossible for you to be serious? Ever?”

“Me?” he says, looking both innocent and furious at once. “You’re the one who got us into this mess.”

“This is not my fault.”

“Oh, really? Funny, seeing as you’re the one in charge.”

“I didn’t ask to be!” I snap back.

“So man up or let someone else take over!”

“Fine! You want me to start dishing out orders? Here’s one: Quit it with the endless sarcasm!”

We have gotten very close in the shouting. I realize for the first time that Sammy is slightly taller and I have to look up at him. I don’t like it.

“I’ll be serious, Gray,” he says slowly, “soon as you stop dragging Emma around like a rag doll.”

“What, exactly, does that mean?”

“It means all she does is talk about you. That she’s torn up about everything and yet you’re still stringing her on, acting like she has a chance when it’s perfectly obvious where your mind’s at. Why don’t you sleep with Nox and get it over with? Break Emma’s heart so she can move on already!”

I shove him as hard as I can. He throws a punch that I barely manage to dodge and before I get a chance to throw one back, Jackson launches himself between us.

“God, you and Nox deserve each other,” Sammy spits over the Forgery’s shoulder. “You’re both selfish, bitter, and completely crazy.”

I lunge at him, but Jackson holds me at bay.

“Are we actually doing this?” Clipper says. “This is a really dumb thing to be fighting about right now.”

I quit straining against Jackson, drop my arms to my side. Clipper is right. We can’t be fighting now. Not about this, not about anything. If we are not united, there is no way we will get out of this mess.

I wipe my palm on my shirt and offer it to Sammy even though I still feel like clocking him. “Same team?”

He stares at my outstretched hand, and finally takes it. “For now.”

Clipper looks nervously at the door and all I want is for him to trust me, but I don’t know how to do this leader thing. I need my father here. Or Blaine. They’d probably say something inspirational, or at the very least, reassuring.

“I’ll crack Titus,” I announce, trying to sound sure of myself. “I don’t know how, but I’ll get him to believe our story. I just need a few days.”

“What if he decides something else first?” Clipper asks, his face pale with worry.

“Like what?”

“He thinks we’re with the Order, that we are the same murderers that killed his people. You really think he’s going to keep us alive long enough to come around? Untie us? Let us start searching this place for its power source?”

I knock on the door, letting Bruno and Kaz know we are done.

“Well?” Clipper says, but I don’t answer him.

There are hundreds of survivors in Burg after all. We’re standing in a hallway with them, waiting in a line that twists out of view beyond a corner.

A girl who can’t be much older than I am is just ahead of us. She has her hand on the shoulder of a small boy of three or four. Resting on her hip is an infant and, by the looks of her bulging stomach, she has another on the way. Her skin is dark—not as dark as Aiden’s, but it has an almost tanned quality to it, as though she spends her days in the sun. It’s her eyes that give away the truth, though: bloodshot and squinting, downturned to avoid the glare of torches that line the hallway. Her hair hangs in clumps like Titus’s.

“What are we waiting for?” I ask her.

She pulls her son to her side, as if I might harm him by breathing on him. “Yer the Reapers that came durin’ the night,” she says. “The ones they’re keepin’ in the boiler room.”

Bruno shoves the girl’s shoulder. “They ain’t got no need to know where we’re keepin’ ’em.”

“What’s a boiler room?” I ask, but the girl is already turning away from me. I know it’s not even worth trying Bruno.

“It’s a mechanical room,” Sammy explains. “Full of water heaters, pumps, generators. It probably powered this place once.”

There is a shift in the hallway before I can thank him. The line quiets, and then: a humming. Deep and cavernous. Unearthly. There’s no variation to the drone, no change in pitch, but I feel it. In my bones, on my skin. It’s like the world vibrates slightly under its power.

The line starts to move, shuffling forward.

“That almost sounded like a furnace kicking on,” Clipper says. “A big one.”

The young boy ahead, who still stands with his mother’s hand on his shoulders, twists toward us. “It’s the Tollin’,” he says.

Sammy looks baffled. “Tolling?”

“E’ery mornin’, e’ery night,” Bruno explains. “It means food.”

When I was younger, Ma sometimes rang a bell to tell Blaine and me that it was dinnertime. We’d be off in the livestock fields, or goofing around on the Council stairs, and we could always hear it ringing. It had an unmistakable tone, and carried more clearly than her voice ever could. We’d come running home, feet flying and bellies growling.

But this noise is not a bell. It sounds unnatural, like an endless exhale from a sleeping giant.

“Where’s it coming from?” I ask.

“The Room of Whistles and Whirs,” the young boy says.

I laugh lightly, expecting the mother to acknowledge her son’s creativity, but she only turns and says, “It’s true. That room ne’er sleeps. There’re always noises behind the door. Soft whirring noises, the purr of a monster.” Her baby starts to cry and she bounces him on her hip. “Who knows what’s in there, though. It can’t be opened, that door. Ne’er has.”

“You base your entire eating schedule around a noise that comes from a room you’ve never actually entered?”

The girl’s eyes bulge. “Don’t go insultin’ the Room of Whistles and Whirs. It’ll hear. It’ll know.”

Sammy rolls his eyes. As the line starts moving he leans toward me and whispers, “We are so screwed.”

I cringe, knowing he’s right—that Fallyn’s original assumptions were right, too. We have hiked across all of AmEast for a mission that may be doomed. Even if we do manage to escape our bindings long enough to find a way to repower the town and see to the cameras, the survivors here won’t join our fight. They won’t leave, either, so long as Titus is in charge, and there is no way Burg can become a secondary Rebel base without their cooperation.

Coming here was always a risk, but I never expected to be in this deep, this trapped. I get a sinking feeling in my stomach when I realize that in the course of one day, our mission has completely changed.

It is no longer a rescue mission; it is a breakout. For us.

We need to escape Burg.

TWENTY-FOUR

BREAKFAST IS TWO STRIPS OF dried meat and a small crust of bread, and it is not enough to quiet my grumbling stomach. We are brought back to the boiler room as the line disbands, Burg citizens scattering as soon as they retrieve their food. Bruno has nearly finished securing us when Kaz calls in.

“Titus wants to see the young one again.”

“If he hurts him—”

“Ya’ll what?” Bruno snaps at me. “Hit him? Kill him? Spit in his eye? Yer threats don’t mean nothin’ unless ya can free yerself from those ropes, Reaper.”

He yanks Clipper to his feet and leaves, shutting us in with the darkness.

When I close my eyes, I see Titus with chains on his fists, and Clipper trying to shield himself with lanky hands. I work over escape possibilities to distract my thoughts, but I need to win over Titus first and foremost, which will be impossible if he refuses to see me. I start worrying that Clipper’s concerns could come to fruition: Titus may dispose of us.

“Sammy?” I call, hoping he can help me brainstorm. “Sammy!”

But he’s snoring ever so lightly.

“Funny, isn’t it?” Jackson says behind me. “We’ll soon be sleeping forever and he felt the need to get one more nap in.”

“Sure, Jackson. It’s downright hilarious.”

“My name. You’re still calling me by my name.”

“We’re on the same team now.”

“Amazing how that happens.” Only he doesn’t sound amazed. He sounds smug, like he knew it would come to this all along.

“Did you know about these people? That they’d be crazy?”

“How could I have known?”

“We climbed the Wall and you said we shouldn’t go into the town. You said it was bad.”

“I knew nothing. I still know nothing.”

I wish I could read his face for lies, but I can only stare ahead from where I sit, in the direction of Sammy’s snores. I wonder how bad Clipper will look when he comes back. I wonder if he’ll come back.

“I have to tell you something,” the Forgery says. “I tried the night we climbed the Wall, but you wouldn’t listen.”

He pauses, like he’s waiting for permission to continue. “Well? What is it?”

“I remember.”

“Remember what?”

“The pieces of my life that have always been foggy, what happened when I turned eighteen. It came back when I saw the Wall. It felt like a dream at first, like something my brain must have conjured up to amuse me, but then we climbed and the truth hit me so hard it was like getting my wind knocked out.”

He takes a deep breath and I’m worried that if I say anything he won’t continue, so I sit in silence, afraid to break the spell.

“There are things I’ve always known, like how hot it was where I grew up. We didn’t have winters like this, but we did have a Wall. And you couldn’t cross it. If you did, you died. Dextern. That was my home. It was named after someone important before my time, but he went missing. They all went missing at eighteen, the boys. I had two brothers: one older, one younger. The first one left me and then I left the youngest. Something took me.” A short pause. “And here’s what I never used to be able to remember but now can: lights. Blinding lights. And wind, raging, like I was caught in a storm. Then a room and a cold slab of metal beneath my back and faces overhead that wore white masks covering their mouths and noses. I fell asleep and almost immediately I was waking up again, only it felt like I was waking up for the very first time, like every moment beforehand had been a dream.

“It makes sense now, the way it’s all coming together. It’s like I was trying to braid with two strands and only just found the third. I think I know what it means, but I want to hear you say it.” He’s quiet for a moment and then asks, “What happened to me, Gray?”

“Nothing happened to you. It happened to Jackson.”

“But I’m Jackson.”

“You’re a Forgery named Jackson. There’s a difference.”

Harvey once explained that a Forgery is a perfect replica of a Heisted boy. They have all the same appearances and mannerisms and even memories. It’s the software integrated with their minds that keeps them acting on Frank’s orders despite what he’s done to them. The code Harvey wrote is so powerful, it can override free will, convince a Forgery to block out certain thoughts and act in a way they wouldn’t if their minds were unburdened. It could make them forget their Heist, for instance, as well as the moments following it.

But Jackson . . .

Maybe the Wall triggered something. Seeing it could have been too personal. Climbing it might have pushed him over the edge, caused some glitch in his internal software. His mind could now be processing things beyond what his programming intended. Or maybe he’s making it all up. I worry I’ll never be able to figure him out, separate his truths from his lies.

“Frank—the person who sent me to tail your group,” Jackson says. “He is the person who put me behind the Wall in Dextern. He’s the Order and the Reaper. That’s what I can see now. They are one and the same.”

“Yes,” I say, even though he didn’t ask for confirmation. There is a mangled noise, like Jackson is sobbing into the folds of his shirt. “Are you crying?” I ask. The act should be impossible for a Forgery.

“No,” he says. “But it hurts.”

“Welcome to the Laicos Project, Jackson. He hurt a lot of people: me, Bree, Xavier, my father. He hurt them all to build people like you.”

“It’s not the truth that hurts,” he says. “It’s a question I have. I only recently started thinking it, but every time it wanders into my head I feel like my skull is about to crack under the weight of it all. It is the worst headache I’ve ever had. It makes me want to die.”

“Must be one heck of a question.”

He exhales quickly, like breathing hurts. “I keep . . . I keep asking myself if you’re really the enemy. I wonder if maybe . . .” He pauses, choking on his own words. “I keep asking myself if I should help you.”

The metal vat between us vibrates as Jackson collapses against it. I listen to him shudder, wheeze, cough in pain.

I wonder what it means.

And then, I wonder if it’s all a lie.

When Clipper returns, he looks fine. Shaken, but fine.

“What did Titus want?”

“He wanted to know why I’m here,” the boy says. “Because I’m so much younger than the rest of you.”

“What did you tell him?”

“The truth. That I’m the technical lead. That I was supposed to get this place up and running again, fix the cameras with looped footage. He seemed interested in that. Brought me to the Room of Whistles and Whirs and made me put my ear against the doorway. Asked me what was on the other side.”

“And?”

“It could be exactly what we’re looking for: a control room with access to the camera feeds. I’m actually wondering if there are generators in there, too, and if that’s all the Tolling is—the people of Burg hearing them kick on and off.”

“But why would they need generators?” Sammy asks, finally awake. “There’s nothing powered here.”

“Except the cameras,” I say.

“Titus wants me to open it,” Clipper says after a brief pause. “The door.”

“Maybe I can strike a deal with him. Our freedom for the door. If I can arrange that, can you open it, Clipper?”

“I have to try. If that room’s holding what I think it is, getting inside means we might be able to salvage the mission after all. Might even be able to get Titus on our side, too.”

“What will you need?”

“There was a panel near the door, probably for an access code. I need my gear, but tell Titus I’m after tools.”

“What kind of tools?” I ask.

“Make something up. Copper wiring. Alcohol from the hospital. I don’t care. Anything that will get you above­ground to search for it.”

“And why do I want to go aboveground?”

“Because I stashed my pack before they grabbed us the other night. It’s under the gallows. There’s a loose board at the base. You get the pack and I can put us in touch with Xavier again. Just as a backup. In case this door thing doesn’t work out.”

“Clipper, you’re a genius.”

I wish he could see me in the darkness, because I’m smiling. For the first time in days.

When the Tolling strikes again that evening, Bruno escorts our team to the food line. Again we watch the people ahead of us collect their strips of dry meat before dispersing. But rather than scattering as they had earlier, many head for the stairs. Half of them are extremely young, and small, and they wear cloth bags over their shoulders. The older portion of the group, made up mainly of males, clutch knives and spears. Most have tar smeared across their faces the way Titus did when we first met, darkening their skin to blend with the night.

“Where are they going?” I ask Bruno.

“To work,” he answers without looking at me. “Scavengers and Hunters work nights. E’eryone else, days.”

“Unless yer unlucky and get saddled with two jobs,” a boy grumbles as he brushes by.

“Yeah, bein’ a Breeder’s a real chore,” Bruno snaps after him.

The boy tightens his grip on his knife. His skin is so dark he’s forgone camouflage. He looks about my age, but it’s hard to be certain because he has a hood pulled up and it casts most of his face in shadow. I think of the girl I saw at the morning Tolling, children in her care spaced out like clockwork, and think I may know what a Breeder’s job is in Burg. Even though the concept is the same, something about it seems far worse than Claysoot’s slatings.

“Take me to see Titus,” I say to Bruno. “I have a proposition.”

“He don’t make deals with Reapers.”

“Even if they know how to open the Room of Whistles and Whirs?”

Bruno’s lips pinch and he tugs me out of line. I look over my shoulder at the team and Sammy winks at me as I’m led away. We may have an unfinished argument lingering between us, but I know he sees the same opportunity I do, and for once, it’s nice to be supported.

TWENTY-FIVE

“MY DOOR FER YER FREEDOM?” Titus repeats after I’ve made my proposal.

“That’s the plan.”

“How do I know yer not gonna send more Reapers in yer place?”

I give him the same answer he gave Bree when she was in a standoff with his men: “You’re just going to have to trust me.”

Titus rubs the back of his neck. “Ain’t sure I can do that.”

“We are not with them, and I can prove it to you when we open the door. We think the Room of Whistles and Whirs might be a control room.”

He tosses his knife from hand to hand.

“If I’m right, we can alter the cameras. Make it safe for your people to walk aboveground. You could even leave if you wanted.”

“Course we can leave. That’s why we’re openin’ it. It’s the only way out.”

I almost laugh, but the look on his face remains stern. “Titus, whatever lies behind that door is not going to lead you out of Burg.”

“Our tales say it Tolled the day the Reapers came,” he says. “Just moments before they arrived. Like a warnin’. Like it knew.”

“Coincidence.”

“It’ll lead us to safety.”

“It’s just a room.”

“And the Wall ya want us climbin’ is just stairs to a fiery death,” he snaps.

There is no point arguing. I will not change his mind—at least not until the door is open. Maybe then I’ll be able to convince him I’m not with the Order. Maybe he’ll even join our side, make this trip not an entire waste. But until then . . .

“Fine. The deal stands. The door for our freedom, nothing more. I’ll need to go aboveground to gather supplies for Clipper.”

“Why can’t the boy get ’em himself?” Titus asks.

I lean back on my crate, attempting to appear indifferent. “He could. But they’ll spot him, the Reapers. They watch this place. You know it. It’s why you only go out at night. And Clipper doesn’t stick to the shadows the way I do. If you want someone invisible, like your Scavengers and Hunters, you’ll send me.”

“Tell me what ya need and my people’ll get it.”

“I won’t know it until I see it.”

Titus rolls the knife over in his palm. “Ya see this here blade, Reaper? I love it more than anythin’. I hone it e’ery day. I polish the handle. I wipe it clean when it gets bloody and then I polish it some more. It’s an extension of my hand.” He holds it out in demonstration, jabbing the air.

“What’s your point?”

His eyes narrow. “My point is I ain’t got no problem usin’ this knife and usin’ it well. If yer not back within a timely fashion, that girl of yers will be dead.”

I don’t like it, but I don’t have another choice.

“We shake on it,” he says. “In blood. Yer back quickly, or her life is mine to take. Then, if ya get that door open and promise no Reapers will enter in yer place, I’ll let yer men walk.”

He makes a fist around the blade and draws back quickly, splitting open his palm. Bruno takes the knife from him and does the same to my hand. The weapon is so sharp I barely feel its slice, until suddenly my palm is white-hot.

“Do we got a deal?” Titus says, his hand outstretched.

I can agree to it all but the promise at the end. I have no true control over the Order, no ability to swear they won’t ever set foot here. But why would they? They no longer think twice about this place. And I need that gear bag waiting under the gallows. I need to speak with Xavier and Bo, arrange alternate escape plans in case Clipper has issues with the door.

So I reach out. I press my palm into Titus’s. We shake.

Bruno hands me a rag to wrap around my bleeding palm, and a cloth bag like the ones I saw the Scavengers carrying earlier. Then he leads me to a lone stairwell just beyond Titus’s room.

“Don’t linger. He really will spill her blood without hesitatin’.”

But I already know this, and I ascend the stairs without another word.

I push open a set of cellar doors and step into a dingy alley. The moon is lighting up the snow like sun on a body of water. I blink, temporarily blinded after a full day in the dimly lit tunnels.

The smell of life is exhilarating. Dirt, frozen beneath my feet. Bark and pine of trees that are not visible from where I stand. Even the snow seems rich with sensation. It’s like I’ve awoken from a bad dream and am living once more. I don’t know how Titus is content to keep his people trapped beneath this town, living like moles, when he could be out here.

I take a deep breath and it burns. How quickly I forgot the sting of cold.

The moon is much brighter than when we infiltrated Burg, and without snowfall to obscure it, I can see easily. Which means the cameras can, too. I zip my jacket up as tightly as it will go, pull my hat as low as possible, and slink down the alley.

Ahead, two figures dart between buildings. Scavengers. I wait for a large cloud to pass over the moon, and then I sprint toward the gallows. It takes me a moment to find the loose board. I kick it in and sure enough, Clipper’s pack is there, cold to the touch.

For a split second I contemplate sprinting for the Wall. I could make it there and back quickly, alert the others of our situation in person. But my idea of quickly might be different than Titus’s, and I can’t take chances with Bree’s life on the line.

A cloud shifts overhead and as the moon casts its glow back on the land, I snatch up the pack and duck into the nearby schoolhouse. Worried there may be cameras inside the room, I wedge myself between two overturned desks so that I’m mostly hidden from view, and start rooting through the bag.

I set aside anything I think Titus may confiscate—a small pocketknife that folds down compactly, a flashlight that could be used to strike someone, the clipping device, which is menacing just to look at—but the rest of the gear is harmless. The location device. Food and water. Wires and computer chips and batteries and all sorts of technological gear I can say Clipper needs to break open the Room of Whistles and Whirs. I transfer everything from Clipper’s bag into the cloth one Bruno provided. Then I pull off my boot and use the knife to cut out a piece of the insole. I collapse the weapon, tuck it in place, and pull my boot back on. When I stand, I can feel it beneath my heel. I wouldn’t want to walk any distance on it, but if I’m going to get free of my ropes tonight, I’ll need it.

I peer out the window, gazing in the direction of the Wall. I imagine Emma twisting a bit of hair around her finger—she always does that when she’s anxious. I wonder for a split second if Sammy is thinking about her too, and the idea makes my stomach tighten.

“What are ya doin’ in here?”

There’s a figure in the doorway. I squint and recognize him as the boy who brushed by Bruno earlier, complaining about working two jobs. His hands are stained with blood.

“I could ask you the same. Aren’t you supposed to be hunting?”

He snorts. “Puck and I already took down a deer. I gutted it. He went back fer smaller game.”

“But not you?”

The boy shrugs and moves silently past me, procuring a small book from a gap between the windowsill and wall.

“It’s a little dark for reading, don’t you think?”

“I’ll read when I can, and now is the only time I get. It ain’t like it’s allowed below.”

“Titus doesn’t—”

“No. My ma taught me, cus her ma taught her, and on and on cus someone once knew how, only that person is long gone.” He runs a hand over the cover. “I don’t really need to read it anymore—I got the whole thing mem’rized—but I like comin’ here on nights I catch game early just to hold it. So I don’t forget.”

“How to read?” I ask, because I don’t think it’s a skill a person can lose when they fail to exercise it.

“No,” he says, glancing up at me. “I don’t want to forget what it says. It’s a journal. Some girl’s. She talks ’bout what she sees each night when she’s dreamin’: a world bigger than Burg, with mountains and oceans and peace. Where there ain’t no fightin’. Where the sleepin’ are buried in graveyards and the livin’ walk together and their children chase their heels. She sees this all when she climbs the Wall. She dreams it e’ery night.” He looks down at the journal in his hands. “I wish I could thank her. She keeps me sane. E’ery time I have to go back under I ’member that this journal is here, that I can return and relive her dream.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

He screws his face up for a moment. “Reaper or not, yer from out there. Her dreams are real in a way, ain’t they? Ya’ve seen ’em.”

“Yes,” I say, even though the world beyond Burg’s Wall is nowhere near as peaceful as the one in the dream journal. “You can see it, too. If you climb.”

“I tried makin’ a ladder once,” he says, shaking his head, “but Titus caught wind of it and beat my ma senseless. So I made somethin’ smaller, easier to hide. Sawed off the handle to a busted hayfork—its prongs are bent so badly they’d be more useful fer hookin’ somethin’ than movin’ hay—and I tied a rope to it. With a good throw I could pro’ly hook the top of the Wall and scale the thing, but I . . . I keep losin’ my nerve.”

“We might be leaving soon,” I tell him. “You could come with us.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” But he doesn’t sound convinced.

“We also might be staying, depending on what we find in the Room of Whistles and Whirs. I guess what I’m saying is either way, you could stick by our side. You don’t owe Titus anything.”

He runs a hand over the spine of the journal absentmindedly. Sighing, I grab the cloth bag at my feet and move for the door. I’ve wasted too much time.

“What’s yer name?” he calls after me.

“Gray.”

“I’m Blake, but e’erybody calls me Bleak.”

“Why’s that?”

“Cus I’m so negative all the time. Cus I hate Burg and those tunnels and our jobs and my life.” I’m thinking how the name does indeed fit him when he adds, “But I don’t see what’s so bleak ’bout wantin’ something better. ’Bout hopin’ for more.”

I shoot him a quick smile and duck outside, then skirt back up the alley. Before pulling the cellar door open, I take a deep breath. The wind is whipping over the ground, picking up the snow, twisting it, throwing it. It dances until the wind tires and then the town is as still as a tombstone. Just moonlight and clouds and skeleton buildings.

I think about Bleak and his journal, how those small words recorded by a complete stranger are the things that have kept him hopeful when everyone else sees nothing but his negativity. So much power in those words. So much in dreams.

I drop down the stairwell, shutting out the world.

TWENTY-SIX

BRUNO AND KAZ EMPTY THE cloth bag onto Titus’s table to root through my supplies. They grunt and point and mumble questions to each other. Titus eventually nods at his men and they stuff the contents back into the bag. Bruno turns to me and starts patting at my shirt, my pants. He checks each and every pocket, but never removes my boots.

“The boy starts workin’ on the door first thing tomorrow,” Titus says. “Now, Bruno, get this Reaper outta my sight.”

“Hang on. I want to see Bree first.”

“Yer here, and ya weren’t slow. She ain’t been touched.”

“I’d still like to confirm that.”

“Ah,” Titus says, his lips curling playfully. “So that ya can touch her yerself, maybe?”

My jaw tightens. “Bring me to her or Clipper doesn’t open the door.”

“Perhaps I should give ya some blankets, too,” Titus jeers. “So ya can have yer moment in luxury.”

“Now!”

He bursts out laughing. “Yer so easy to rile, Reaper.”

I hate being called that, being associated with Frank and his Order, with the people who have ruined my entire life. I wonder if this is what Jackson felt like when we called him Forgery.

“Give him another five with the girl,” Titus says to Bruno. Fingers clamp down on my elbow and I’m tugged from the room. When we arrive at Bree’s door, Bruno smiles. “Have fun. I’ll try not to listen.”

I shoulder past him. Bree is sitting in the far corner but the door is slammed behind me and she is immediately swallowed by darkness. I might as well be blind for how much I can see.

“Bree?”

“Here,” she says. “I’m here.” And she repeats herself, calling out to me as I crawl through the darkness toward her voice. My hands find her knees and I sit next to her, back against the wall. She is right beside me, and I still can’t see her. We are lost in a sea of black, floating.

“Why don’t you have the candle lit?” I ask.

“It burned out. They haven’t brought another.”

“Have they been feeding you?”

“Yes.”

“And the washroom. They let you out to visit it?”

“Twice a day, after meals.”

A pause. Silence except for my pulse beating in my ears.

“And a few nurses visited once,” she adds. “Stripped me of my clothes and examined me.”

“Did they hurt you?”

Another pause.

“Bree, did they hurt you?”

“No,” she snaps. “They just prodded me like livestock and left.”

“And now?”

“And now nothing, Gray. This is it. Me and these walls. The darkness. My eyes burn every time they open that door. How did this happen? How did we get stuck down here?”

“I’m fixing it.”

I tell her about the Room of Whistles and Whirs, and Titus’s belief that his people can escape Burg through it. About the deal I struck and how Titus agreed to free us so long as Clipper opens the door.

“That sounds too easy,” she says. I can’t see her face but I’m positive it’s dressed in doubt and furrowed eyebrows and the most stubborn sort of scowl.

“Why are they keeping you separate from us?”

She snorts. “If I knew, I’d do something about it.”

The darkness is so thick I’m starting to grow dizzy. If it weren’t for the floor beneath me, I might not know which way is up.

“Gray?” she says, and her voice has this quaver to it I’ve never heard before. “What if we actually can’t get out of this one? What if Titus doesn’t honor the deal and what if this is it, us stuck down here? I mean, I don’t want to think that way. I keep telling myself not to. But I have this terrible feeling that—” I feel her shoulders shake next to me. She takes a deep breath. Another. “I’m scared we’re actually in over our heads this time. I’ve never felt that sort of doubt before. Not once. But then they close me in without you guys, and I’ve got nothing but walls and darkness and all these hopeless thoughts that won’t stop rocketing around my head. No matter how damn hard I try to silence them, they just get louder and louder and—”

I reach for her. Her hands are rough like mine, calloused from working a knife and throwing spears, but still so delicate. Thin. Small. I squeeze her palm and she lets out a sob.

“Bree?”

But her head is already against my chest. She’s crying, letting these giant, shameless sobs escape her. I don’t say anything because I somehow know she doesn’t need words. She’s not looking for reassurance, or for me to promise her everything will be okay. She just needs me to be here. With her. Sitting. One hand in hers, the other on her back. That’s all she needs and all she wants.

So that’s all I do.

A moment later she pulls away from me. “If you tell anyone about this, I swear I will kick the crap out of you.”

“Like you could.”

“I mean it, Gray. Don’t tell them I broke. I couldn’t bear it.”

“Who broke? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I would give anything to see her face right now. In my mind, I picture her smiling.

But she’s not, because right then the door is yanked open and as light floods the cell, I can see her. Bruises paint her skin in angry shades of purple and yellow. Most of her minor cuts have closed to dry, ragged scabs, and the bad gash above her eyebrow is now held together by stitches someone was kind enough to administer. Her eyes are puffy from crying and the blue of her irises is brighter than I remember. She looks scared. I’ve never seen fear on her face before and it freezes my heart.

Bree’s grip tightens on my hand. Her eyes glisten. Bruno drags us apart before any more tears can fall.

We’re locked in just as we were the previous night, with a lone candle that will burn through its wick long before morning. The gear I gathered sits near it, far out of reach.

Once Bruno’s and Kaz’s footsteps fade down the hall, I kick off my boot. I feel my way in the dark, peeling back the insole, finding the knife, flicking it open. It takes forever to saw through my ropes, but I manage. I grab the candle and gear bag, and untie Clipper. He digs through the supplies until he finds a spare radio. Leave it to Clipper to have extras of everything, even if it did make his pack heavier during our travels.

He fiddles with the thing for a few minutes and then hands it to me. “That should be the right channel. Reception could be poor—I’m not sure how far underground we are.”

“Xavier? Bo?” I ask hesitantly.

There is a crackle from the unit and then Xavier’s voice, slightly choppy. “Gray? Thank goodness. Bo was just about to head in after you—it’s been silent for way too long. What happened?” There is a muffled noise in the background. “Yeah, he’s fine, Emma.”

I give Xavier a quick rundown of our predicament, explaining how Clipper needs to open the Room of Whistles and Whirs to secure our freedom.

“If it’s not a control room like we suspect, we probably won’t be able to convince Titus to join our cause,” I explain. “But we’ll be able to leave so long as we get the door open. And that’s why I wanted to talk to you. If you don’t hear from us by nightfall tomorrow, something went wrong.”

“Wrong how?” he asks. “Like being held against your will wrong?”

“Probably.”

The unit crackles a few times and I can’t hear all of what he’s saying.

“. . . found more fuel in the back of the car, stored under the seats. Must have been why those other two exploded so easily when you shot them from the Catherine. Point is, we’ll have the means to run for a while if it comes to that.” Another crackle, muffled voices. “Emma, he’s okay. We’re speaking right now . . . No, you can’t talk to . . . Fine.”

“Gray?” Emma’s voice is so soft and delicate it is as if she stands beside me. “What happened?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I should have been there.”

“No, I’m glad you weren’t. Trust me.”

A pause. “Are you going to be okay?”

“Yes,” I say firmly. “We’ll be in touch tomorrow, and everything is going to be fine. I swear it.”

She lets out a tiny laugh. “You shouldn’t make such lofty promises, Gray. You might not be able to keep them.” It’s quiet for a moment and then her voice reaches me as a whisper. “I love you, Gray.”

That word. I would have given anything to hear her say it over the summer, to have had the chance to say it back, but now, more than ever, I understand its true power. How it can make you ache as much as it can make you soar. How it shouldn’t be said in return unless you mean it as deeply as the speaker. And that’s not something you can ever know. Not truly. There’s too much blind faith involved and that word is always, always a risk. You’ll get hurt. Or the other person will. You’ll stomp on someone’s heart without meaning to. Loving is foolish and risky, like trying to raise a building in a bog. Emotions don’t make strong foundations.

So when Emma says my name, repeats that word, asks me if I’m still here, I only tell her she’s breaking up, that she should put Xavier back on before the connection dies.

I end up getting Bo instead.

“There’s something else,” he says. “I was switching radio channels last night, wondering if you were trying to reach us on the wrong one, and overheard a staticky message: Friends of the Resistance, please repeat: The phoenix thinks you should engage the enemy. Then today, I came across it again. Different voice, different channel, same message. Clearer this time, too, like the source was closer.”

“The phoenix,” I say, puzzled, and I can feel my face screw up in concentration.

“Come on, Gray. Don’t you see? I thought that Ryder . . . maybe . . . because Owen said he was going to radio September when we were on the boat.”

And suddenly it is obvious.

“She got through to him! September somehow reached Ryder from Bone Harbor, told him all of our suspicions about AmWest, and this is his response, being passed on by Rebel supporters who stumble upon it. Ryder Phoenix thinks we should reach out to the Expats! Unless . . . Couldn’t engage mean battle as much as conversation?”

“We’ve always seen them as the enemy,” Bo answers. “And I know Ryder. He wouldn’t go through all the trouble of sending this message back if it only meant to keep viewing AmWest exactly as we always have.”

“So you think it means . . . ?”

“I do, yes. We were right to wonder if the Expats were another group of Rebels, not unlike us.”

I glance toward Clipper and Sammy. They both look like they’re not sure what to make of this news.

“Little help this does us now,” I say to Bo.

“Are you entering a control room tomorrow or not?” he responds. “Get Titus on your side; then Clipper can go to work. We could have both Burg and a few Expats manning the Rebels’ newest base by nightfall.”

I promise Bo updates as soon as possible, and Clipper stows the radio away. After retying him to his pole, I put the gear and candle back near the doorway and return the small knife to its hiding place within my boot. I manage to secure my arms behind my back and kick the excess rope I cut when freeing myself aside, hoping Bruno won’t notice the difference come morning. The candle hisses out moments later, and I realize, despite everything, that I am hopeful.

I listen to the others, their breathing slow as they sleep. My eyelids are finally growing heavy when Jackson whispers through the dark.

“I guess Frank didn’t overestimate you after all.”

“What are you talking about?”

“AmWest. He feared you were going to join forces with them from the beginning. Naturally, they’d be your best ally.”

Of course he would admit this to me now, when we’ve finally worked it out ourselves. Not earlier when we could have more effectively used the information. Not when we asked him for it. And he claims he wants to help us.

“Are you still planning on stranding me here when you’re released?” he asks.

“Are you still planning on torturing us for headquarters’ location?”

“I know I should. And it wouldn’t even be that hard. You, Gray, would tell me what I want to know in an instant.”

I think of all those people still holed up in Crevice Valley. Ryder, the captains, families, and children. Blaine.

“I’d die first.”

Jackson laughs. “Oh, I wouldn’t touch you. I’d start by cutting up one of the girls and you’d give me the location before I could even get creative with my blade.”

“And you still have the nerve to ask if I’d spare you?”

“Caring for people is a weakness, Gray,” he says. “Let your enemy know what’s closest to your heart and you’re as good as beaten before the fight even begins. But the thing is, I don’t—” He coughs, and when he speaks again, it sounds as though he is forcing out the words. “I don’t think I want to be your enemy.” A few rapidly drawn breaths. “And I don’t want to hurt Emma or Bree either.”

“Then don’t.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Yes, Jackson. It really is. If you don’t want to do something, don’t.”

I am so sick of his games, the lies.

“Did I ever tell you about Kay?” he asks. “He’s my youngest brother, and was right around Aiden’s age when I was taken from Dextern. Aiden reminded me of him. The way he wasn’t afraid to smile, how he didn’t let the cruelness of life turn him bitter. I played hand games with Kay, too. They always made him laugh and that sound could brighten any day.” He chuckles at his own memories. “I loved him so much.”

These words aren’t right. They are impossible. Harvey claimed as much the day I arrived in Crevice Valley. I spoke of Emma and how much I loved her during a series of Harvey’s tests, and he immediately said I couldn’t be a Forgery because they were incapable of the feeling. But if Jackson still loves his brother now, in his Forged state, what else is he capable of? Remorse? Pity? Can he feel emotions as strongly as I do? Maybe the Wall really did cause something to break down in his programming after all. Maybe he truly is a Forgery with a heart.

I must be crazy to think this. Jackson is a machine. He doesn’t have a conscience, and even though he’s musing about right and wrong now, the mere thoughts hurt him. I doubt he could truly lift a finger in a manner that goes against his commands.

“I wonder if Kay misses me,” he says.

“Kay doesn’t know you exist. He only knows that his real brother was Heisted on his eighteenth birthday. I’m sure he misses the real Jackson.”

“What makes me less real?”

“If you choose to act the way Jackson would, maybe nothing.”

“The real Jackson would help you. I—” He coughs once, twice. Gasps in pain. “I want to help you.”

“Then when the time comes, you should.”

“Al—” He cuts off, cursing. I listen to him groan. “Allies,” the Forgery says, panting as though he’s just sprinted a long distance.

“Allies.”

I’m surprised to discover that I want to trust him, that I’m hoping with every fiber of my being that the pain in his voice is real. If a Forgery can become a Rebel’s ally . . .

“I know you won’t believe me,” he says, “but I am sorry about your father. It was a horrible thing.”

A shred of humanity. A declaration of remorse. I should be happy, but the possibility that Jackson is now on our side is so promising, so huge, so unprecedented, that it also makes me doubtful. My muscles tense, like I’m already bracing for the letdown.

TWENTY-SEVEN

I AM WITH MY BROTHER in Claysoot, tracking a deer by the light of a full moon. Blaine startles it purposely, and then it’s fleeing, away from him and along the Wall, directly toward me, just as we planned. When it appears, white tail upright, eyes wide, I take it down with a single arrow.

“We should make stew,” Blaine says when he catches up to me. “The way Ma used to.”

“I’ll go to the market in the morning. Trade for some vegetables.” I stoop to retrieve the carcass.

“Let me help.” But despite the long haul back to town, I want to do it alone. He grabs my shoulder when I ignore him. “I want to help you, Gray.”

A series of clouds swallows the moon and as I glare at Blaine, annoyed he’s pressing this, I catch something unnatural in his eyes. They are lifeless, inanimate, his pupils barely growing as the world darkens. I realize that this is a sign. A terrible sign that up until now I’ve never been able to identify. A girl warned me about it once. I can’t remember who she is or what the sign even means, only that I can’t trust Blaine—not after I’ve seen this. I step away from him, heart hammering.

“Where are you going, little brother? We are allies, a team, twins.” He pulls a knife from his waistband. “I want to help you.” He turns the blade over. “Let me help you.”

I run. The wind is howling and his footsteps pound after me. I trip on a tree root and tumble forward. When I roll over he is above me, diving, pinning me to the earth. I barely get my arms up in time. The knife glints, held at bay inches from my neck.

I throw an elbow into his face and he flinches enough for me to free myself. He slashes with the blade as we scramble to our feet. My shirt tears open, but not my skin. Grabbing Blaine’s forearm, I bring it against my knee—once, twice, again—until he drops the knife. I grab it and then I’m backing away, panting, the weapon out-held.

Blaine watches me for a moment, head tilted in amusement. And then he charges. He’s running full-out, a sprint, no sign that he might slow. He is going to crush me, tackle me, strangle me with his bare hands. I jump aside at the last moment, swinging the weapon in defense.

Blaine staggers to a standstill, arms on his stomach. When he moves them, his palms are wet with blood.

“Gray?”

His voice has changed somehow, grown softer. He drops to his knees and stares up at me. The moon reappears, lighting Claysoot with the strength of the sun. The world grows brighter and brighter, like it is about to explode, and Blaine’s pupils shrink so drastically it’s impossible to miss. I take a step toward him. My shadow falls across his face and his pupils grow. His eyes are normal again. They are normal but I swear I didn’t imagine it before. He wasn’t himself just earlier.

Blaine coughs—blood spatters the clay earth—and he collapses.

I run to him, roll him over, but he is already dead. There is an arrow in his forehead and around us, the clay earth has become snow. Bloody snow, starting beneath Blaine’s skull and then blooming outward: searching, fanning, covering the world in red. And then the blood is everywhere. On my clothes, my hands, my face.

Blaine sits bolt upright and grips my elbow. His eyes are black now, every last inch of them, blood streaming from them like tears. “You murdered me.”

I jolt awake—sweating, shaking—and bite on my knuckles to hold in a sob. In the darkness, all I can see is Blaine. My brother was in that Forgery I killed back near Stonewall. Just like Jackson, the real Blaine existed somewhere beneath his programming, and I killed him. I killed him before he could surface.

You didn’t know, I tell myself. And even if you did, it’s not the same thing. It wasn’t truly him.

I close my eyes.

I can live with this. I will live with this.

I have to.

Titus and Bruno come to retrieve us in the morning, but only Clipper and I are untied and led from the room. I get an uneasy feeling that I’m in attendance solely in case Titus needs to revisit our bargain. I hope it doesn’t come to this.

We pass a large group of Burg’s citizens as we head for the Room of Whistles and Whirs. They are paired off as couples and filing into a separate hallway. Bringing up the rear is Bleak. I can see him properly for the first time and he looks different than he did under moonlight. He is definitely around my age. Unlike most of Burg’s citizens, his hair hasn’t given itself over to a matted mess; he’s kept it incredibly short, as though he drags a blade over his scalp every few evenings. He walks with his shoulders held back, an almost bored look on his face, but the girl at his side doesn’t seem to mind. She’s smiling at him playfully.

Bleak’s eyes find mine and before rounding the corner he gives me a small, indifferent shrug. I know exactly what he’s feeling. I experienced it during every Claysoot slating. It’s hard to hate what awaits, because it’s far from torture, but the formality of the entire affair is both draining and depressing. I don’t blame Bleak for his emotions. If anything, I’m surprised there aren’t more people in Burg that share nicknames like his.

“Get to it, boy,” Titus says, shoving Clipper forward.

We’ve reached the Room of Whistles and Whirs. The door is a heavy thing, thick and solid, no hinges or handle. Its edges are recognizable only because the door is recessed from the rest of the hallway, set back about a palm’s width.

Clipper opens the small silver box mounted near the door to reveal what looks like a series of buttons. He pops these off, exposing a mess of wires and small panels that glint beneath the torchlight. This seems to make more sense to Clipper than the buttons, because he bends to retrieve something in the bag. Several moments later, he’s attached his own wires to the box on the wall, and then attached those to some sort of thin, handheld panel.

The boy slides to the floor, the device resting on his knees, and waits. The screen keeps flashing sporadically, but it’s not until it goes still, a constant blue light illuminating his face, that Clipper seems interested. He taps at the device frantically, tongue hanging out the corner of his mouth, eyes squinted in concentration.

“A knife,” he says, jumping to his feet. “I need a knife.”

Titus hesitates.

“Do you want to open the door or not?”

Titus snaps his fingers and Bruno complies. Clipper takes the knife and gathers the wires that spill from the silver box, flattening them into some semblance of order against the wall. He counts, recounts, moves his blade between them. Biting his lip, he puts the knife behind two of the wires and tugs. They split. He uses the blade to strip back some sort of casing on the wires and then twists two of them together. Bruno snatches back his blade.

Clipper returns to frantically tapping at the blue-screened device. I’m wondering why he bothered to cut the wires if he only wanted to rejoin them, when a deep, mechanical click echoes behind the door. Titus darts forward.

“Ya did it,” he whispers.

And Clipper has.

The door moves. We stand there, breath held, as the Room of Whistles and Whirs opens.

TWENTY-EIGHT

IT SMELLS WEIRD.

Not bad.

Just weird. Like dead air. Like lost space. Like a place time forgot to touch.

And there’s this noise. The steady whir that gave the room its name. Louder now that the door is open.

Clipper goes in first, using the illuminated screen of his device to light the way. Moments later there’s a dull bang, like him throwing open a very stubborn window, and shoddy light fills the room.

The room is dull in color—grays and tans, like dead crop fields under a winter sky—and square. To our right is gear that reminds me of Crevice Valley’s technology wing. Computers sit on a long table gathering dust, and additional screens hang on the wall above them. The other walls of the room are lined with large, rectangular components, all metal and flush edges. The whirring noise is coming from one of them.

“Generators,” Clipper says, looking them over quickly. “Just like I suspected. Not enough to power the whole town, though, so they must be for these computers. And the cameras, too, probably. Power and fuel lines must be underground—I mean, we didn’t see any on the way in. The Tolling is the sound of generators kicking on and off while they take turns powering things, but I still don’t really get it: Why waste resources keeping cameras on in a place you think is extinct?”

“Maybe Frank’s not keeping an eye on the inside. Maybe he’s watching the Outer Ring. Making sure no one wanders across his project.”

“Destroying the place seems easier, although I guess that takes resources as well.” Clipper’s eyes go wide. “If they are monitoring the Outer Ring, wouldn’t they have seen us entering the other day?”

I think the Order would have shown up already if this were the case, but I don’t have a chance to answer Clipper, because Titus has started shouting.

“This was s’posed to be it!” he screams. “This was our way out. If it ain’t, what’s the point of the room?” He throws his knife in fury. It clatters off the wall and lands on the keyboard of one of the computers. Its screen comes to life, dim beneath layers of dust.

“Examine it,” Titus orders Clipper.

“For what?” the boy asks.

“Anything. Find its secret. Find the way out of Burg.”

“You have to climb the Wall. It’s the only way out.”

Titus punches Clipper so hard, the boy ends up on the floor.

“I ain’t askin’ for yer insight! I’m askin’ ya to examine that thing and I ain’t gonna ask again.”

“Our deal was only to open the door,” I say. “We’ve done our part.”

But Titus doesn’t acknowledge me. He grabs Clipper by the shirt, yanks him to his feet. The boy looks right at me, and though his eyes are wide, I don’t find them filled with fear. They are stubborn, brave, willing to take a stand. I think back to what feels like years ago, an afternoon when I tracked Clipper in the woods. I might get scared, but I’m not a coward.

Even still, I can’t stand the thought of him getting hurt because of my decisions. Bree said once that the Rebels trust people of skill no matter what their age, but no one should be asked to lay their life on the line at just twelve. I won’t ask it of Clipper.

“Do what he says,” I tell him.

He glares at me, but sits down at the computer.

A good while later, Clipper has confirmed that the generators do indeed power the cameras, whose video is backed up on the computers, which run off the same power source. He also discovers that the computers are networked with Taem. Workers there can send commands to the computers here, refocusing and repositioning cameras without an Order member ever having to set foot in Burg.

“Turn ’em off,” Titus demands, twirling his knife.

“The cameras?” Clipper sounds downright terrified by the idea.

“Yes. I’ll be rid of yer team of Reapers soon, but not yer eyes. I want ’em off.”

“But I might not be able to do it without being detected.”

“I don’t care. Do it now.”

“No, this is enough,” I say, jumping in. “We’ve held up our part of the deal, and then some.”

Titus is on Clipper in a heartbeat, striking him for the second time. He pulls out his knife and holds it before the boy’s face. “Would cuttin’ him be more persuasive than my fists?”

Clipper’s lip is bleeding from the recent blow.

“If we turn them off, we’re doing it our way, a safe way. And then you’ll give us a few minutes in here—alone.” This is a major change to our agreement, and I’m not letting Titus order us around for nothing. Especially not when we’ve walked into a room filled with so many assets.

Titus narrows his eyes. “What’s the safe way?”

“If you want to work with us, we can manipulate the camera feed. Clipper would need some time, but we could fix things so the Order only sees what we want them to see—footage from a few days, on a steady loop. It was always our plan. We want to help you escape the Order, not bring them right to your door.”

“I ain’t working with anyone but my own people. I don’t trust yer lot. Ya know too much to not be one of ’em: a Reaper. Turn it off right now, take yer alone time in the room, and then get gone from our home.”

“I need hours,” Clipper says. “To gather footage—different weather, night versus day. I can’t do this immediately.”

“Ya better kill the eyes now or yer gonna be dead within the next minute,” Titus says, knife at the ready.

Clipper turns back to the computer and starts tapping away at the keyboard. The screen before him is filled with line after line of words and numbers. Half the words don’t even seem real. This must be code, as I’ve heard Harvey describe it, commands that tell the machine what to do and how to run. Something similar exists in Jackson, probably urging him to break the alliance we struck last night.

Clipper keeps typing and the lines of code fly by, on and on until the screen halts on a single question.

Terminate video link? Y / N

Titus squints at the prompt and I get the feeling that if he knows how to read, he doesn’t know very well. He forms the words with his lips, no sound escaping him. Finally, as if it’s all clicked, he straightens up and says, “Do it.”

But Clipper’s shaking his head, blood pooled in the corner of his mouth. “I’ve got a bad feeling.”

“Now!”

Clipper glances at me for help. It’s obvious Titus will never be our ally. We have to do this and pray it doesn’t get us caught. Maybe we can salvage the act later. I don’t want to give this place up—its underground passages, its computers and their connection to Order information. This is exactly the edge that the Rebels need, and Titus is forcing us to throw it aside. But Burg is worth nothing—can be nothing—if we’re dead, unable to man it or tell Ryder of its assets. And so I sort of nod and shrug at Clipper all at once because this is our only option.

Clipper punches in the command. The screen flashes some sort of success message.

We all hold our breath. We wait.

A minute, and nothing.

Several minutes. Still nothing.

“It’s done,” the boy says.

“Then it’s yer turn,” Titus answers, and he steps outside with Bruno.

I rush to Clipper, eye the damage from Titus’s punches. I pull the handkerchief my father gave me so long ago from my pocket and wipe Clipper’s mouth free of blood.

“You’re ruining it,” he says, watching the cloth grow pink.

“It was already ruined. It’s been ruined for a long time.” I tuck it back in my pants and put my hands on Clipper’s shoulders. “I doubt he’ll give us long, so don’t bother with the cameras. Let’s get in touch with Ryder. We need to tell him what we’re up against here: how Titus won’t budge but the place would make a great base, discuss if it’s worth fighting for it or if we’re better off continuing west to seek out the Expats.”

Clipper shakes his head. “Ryder’s unreachable. I can’t connect to anything but Taem and the test groups.”

I glance at the door. Titus is still nowhere to be seen, and I feel like I’m wasting a critical opportunity.

“So what can we do?”

“This connection is like being in Taem’s biggest vault of secrets—a database of information—only we’re invisible. We can look at almost anything we want and they’ll never know we were here. It’s when we take action, like pulling power to camera feeds, that they could catch on to us.”

“So you could check if Frank has any records on Forgeries, then?” I say, an idea engulfing me.

“Sure. What for?”

“Blaine tricked us so easily in Stonewall, but if we know who exists as a Forgery, that will never happen again. Not to us. Or anyone in Crevice Valley.”

Clipper nods and goes to work. I don’t understand how it is possible for him to string words together so quickly; the letters beneath his fingers are painfully out of order—q, w, e, r. Code flies by on the screen, slipping out of view before I’ve even had time to read it. A moment later, Clipper lets out a small cheer. A list of names has appeared on the screen, a headline above them reading Forged Assets.

“Check Xavier, Bo, anyone who came from the Laicos Project,” I say. “Start with Blaine, actually.”

“His Forgery is dead.”

“But Frank’s goal has always been to create a Forgery that could be replicated again and again. Last time I spoke with him, it sounded like he’d accomplished it. There could be dozens of Blaines for all we know.”

Clipper shudders at the idea and jumps through the list, which, unlike the keys, is in alphabetical order. We find Blaine easily, in the Ws.

Weathersby, Blaine

Model Type: F-Gen4

Models Forged: 1

Models in Operation: 0

These words are so welcomed, I let out a huge sigh. I’ve killed the only version of him. I won’t have to do it again. I feel lighter. I feel so much lighter.

“Um . . . Gray. Did you see this? Here?”

I follow Clipper’s hand farther down the screen. I was so focused on Blaine, I didn’t even bother to read the following entry.

Weathersby, Gray

Model Type: F-Gen5

Models Forged: 1

Models in Operation: 1

My heart stops. It truly feels like it stops.

I’m out there somewhere. Me, just as I look right now, only it’s not me—not really. It shouldn’t be so surprising—if a Forged version of Blaine exists, why not me, too?—but I feel like there’s not enough air in the room.

“And your model’s newer,” Clipper says, pointing at the 5 on the screen. “I wonder what that means in terms of its capabilities.”

That my Forged counterpart is the version that can be Forged again and again? But no, there’s only one in operation. It can’t be. Unless there’s simply one at the moment and hundreds are still being produced.

“Check Bree!” I say, now panicked. “Hurry. Bree and all the captains and Xavier and Bo and—”

“Time’s up!” Titus announces, strolling into the room before Clipper can even bring a finger back to the keyboard.

“Wait. This is important.” Bruno grabs my arm and starts hauling me away from the computer. “Dammit! You don’t understand how important this is!”

But I’m shoved into the hallway despite my begging. Kaz is waiting with Sammy and Jackson. Sammy must read the panic on my face because he’s searching the room, neck craned as we are jostled off.

We burst into Titus’s quarters, and Bree is there. She’s sitting on one of the crates, a single guard behind her. Her face is painted with bruises and scabs, but her eyes light up when we enter, and the injuries seem suddenly minuscule.

She flashes me a smile, and I don’t return it.

I should. I want to.

But I get this feeling.

This horrible, viscous, vile feeling.

When I met Bree, she had long since run from Frank. She had already been Heisted. What if the girl I know . . . what if she’s never really been her?

No. That can’t be. I would know. I’d be able to tell.

Except you couldn’t tell with your own brother, the doubt says.

But Bree was living with the Rebels for nearly a year when I met her. She would have compromised Crevice Valley’s location already, figured out a way to reach Frank. Or she would have done it in person when we went back to Taem for the vaccine. She would have betrayed the Rebels a long time ago if she were truly a Forgery.

Unless she has her own motives, the doubt whispers. Unless she’s so strong she’s loyal to herself before Frank. Like Jackson. He brokered a deal in Stonewall that went against his mission just to keep himself alive.

I can’t start thinking like this. Bree is Bree. That’s all she’s ever been. The way she’s fought for the Rebels without hesitation since I met her. The way she feels about me—all that passion and anger and hurt when we argued on the beach. The way she cried just the other day in her cell. She’s real. She has to be, because I’m not willing to leave her behind. I can’t. Couldn’t. It would kill me.

She’ll kill you herself, if she’s a Forgery.

But she’s not.

She’s not. She’s not. She’s not.

I’ve decided.

“Well, go ahead,” Titus says, folding his arms over his chest. “Ya’ve got ’til the count of fifty.”

“For what?” I glance at the team, but they look equally confused.

Titus jerks his head toward Bree. “To say yer good-byes.”

TWENTY-NINE

BREE’S SMILE IS GONE, REPLACED immediately with a snarl. She jumps to her feet and the guard behind her grabs her at the elbows.

“Is this a joke?” I say, struggling to keep my voice calm.

Titus looks insulted. “I ne’er joke. Ya did yer job, and yer leavin’ now, just as we agreed.”

“We shook on it! In blood. The door for my team.”

“Ah, see, that’s the thing,” he says, shaking his head. “We ne’er made a deal fer yer team. I said that if the boy opened the door, yer men would walk free. We shook on those words.”

“I . . . you . . .” But I can’t get out anything else because my lungs feel like they’re about to collapse. I didn’t catch his word choice originally, and even if I had, I might not have taken it so literally. It makes no sense, agreeing to a deal that ensures only part of your team’s safety.

“Why?” I finally manage.

“Why not? A healthy female of breedin’ age? We ain’t stupid ’nuff to let that sort of resource wander off. It’d be wasteful, really.”

No wonder they kept her separate from us, had nurses come to examine her. I can’t walk out now, leave Bree to this sort of fate. I take a deep breath, tell myself that if I can only reason with him, everything will be fine.

“You know I wouldn’t have agreed to this.”

“Ain’t my fault ya didn’t analyze my words.”

“You can’t do this,” I try again.

“Oh, but I can.” He smiles and his eyes never leave mine as he waves a hand toward Bree’s guard. “Take her to the Breeder hall and have someone introduce her to her new job.”

Bree screams as she’s tugged toward the doorway, a single word—No!—and it’s her voice, uncharacteristically high and cracking, that causes me to abandon all reason.

I lunge at Titus. He pulls out his knife, but I don’t care about the blade. I care only about Bree, because I realize a million truths in the blink of an eye: I need her and I trust her and I think I might love her and I saved her from a sinking ship and she reads me almost as well as my brother and can make loon calls with her hands and is stubborn and crazy and reckless and real and even if it puts my damn life on the line, I’m not leaving Burg without her.

Titus and I crash to the floor. I hear Sammy jump to action behind me, going after Bruno or Kaz. I think even Clipper joins in, but I don’t dare turn my head to check. I claw the knife from Titus’s hand, push it aside. I don’t want to fight him with the blade because it will make it too easy. I want to feel every ounce of pain I inflict on him. I lose count of my punches. My hands are bloody, my knuckles on fire. Titus is moments away from passing out when someone—Bruno or Kaz—strikes me from behind. My world blurs. I fall to my knees, skull throbbing.

I look for Titus and find him already on his feet, retrieving the knife. He twists around and kicks all in one motion. My head whips backward. The world is white. And then Titus is above me, his knees against my chest and his blade right before my eyes. I spit at him. He lifts me by my shirt and slams me against the floor.

“Any last words before yer butchered, Reaper?” Titus’s nose is gushing, his teeth smeared with blood, but he looks so happy in this moment. Proud. Behind him, Sammy is pinned to the wall by Kaz, and Clipper is slumped to the floor, dazed. Bruno towers over me, watching in amusement.

I catch Jackson in the corner. He’s just standing there, motionless, watching us get beaten to death. I knew he wouldn’t be able to fight it. It was wishful thinking to believe a Forgery could ever be my ally.

But then again . . .

Jackson’s hands have become fists. They are clenched at his side, trembling. His lip twitches. His eyes dart between us all. It’s like he wants to do something but can’t find the courage.

“Now would be the time, Jackson. This is the moment we talked about.”

Titus makes a face, confused with my seemingly odd choice of last words. Then he shrugs and brings the blade closer.

And Jackson springs to life.

He pulls Titus off my chest as though he weighs nothing and knees him in the gut. Titus coughs, buckles over, drops the knife. It is in Jackson’s hand in a flash and before I’ve even scrambled to my feet, Jackson has dragged it across Titus’s neck.

“Don’t,” Bruno pleads, as Jackson turns on him. “Please.”

But the Forgery attacks anyway. He slams Bruno’s head into the wall, and before the guard hits the ground, he turns on Kaz. Jackson brings the blunt end of the knife handle against his temple and the man goes still.

“You killed him,” Clipper says, staring at Titus’s body. “And the others.”

Jackson shakes his head. “These two will live.”

“What the hell just happened?” Sammy is looking at the fallen bodies in shock. “Did you?” He glances at Jackson, and then me, then the Forgery again. “You helped us. Gray said it was time and you helped us.”

“We came to an agreement,” Jackson says plainly. “It took me a little while to act on it, but I feel invincible now.”

And maybe he is. Maybe he’s broken down whatever greater power rules his mind and is truly free, but I don’t have time to contemplate it. I brush by them.

They don’t ask where I’m going.

They know, and they follow.

The Breeder hallway is quiet. The doors hang open, each room empty except for the random blanket or floor mat. My stomach rolls over. What if we’re too late? What if we get there and it’s already been done? I force myself to ignore the thought and push my legs faster.

The hall twists, and when we round the corner, I can make out a guard waiting at the far end. No, not a guard. Bree.

She’s leaning against the wall nonchalantly, arms folded against her chest. I skid to a stop before her, startled.

“What happened?”

She looks up at me, eyebrows raised. “Nothing.”

There are two men inside the room to her right, both unconscious.

“How did—”

“Knocked out the guy they shut me in with before he even saw it coming. The guard was so surprised when I stepped into the hallway he hardly had a chance. And then I waited. I knew you guys would come looking for me.”

Sammy laughs. “You may be crazy, Nox, but you’ve got guts.”

She grins proudly but I’m still staring at her, marveling at the fact that she is intact, untouched, unharmed. I grab her and pull her into a hug.

“I can’t believe you’re okay,” I say into her hair. Then I grab her shoulders and move her away from me so I can look her in the eye. “I would . . . I’d have killed him, Bree. If he—”

She pushes me backward before I can finish. “That’s insulting, Gray. That you don’t think I can take care of myself.”

How did I think, even for a moment, that she could be a Forgery? They are far more calculated and logical and precise, and here she is, yelling at me because I’d kill for her.

“I know you can take care of yourself,” I say. “But that doesn’t mean I’d stand here and do nothing if you needed help. I’d never force you to fight on your own.”

“I’m strongest on my own,” she says, her eyes narrowed. “You know, I can’t believe I actually shed tears over you that night on the beach. You are such a liar. You are making me fight on my own. You have been since the very beginning, and even when I fight for us, you don’t see it, because of Emma. And then when you do see it, it’s in these small moments that never last and it kills me. I can’t do it anymore. I’m on my own team from now on. I won’t let you make me weak.”

She means it. I can see it on her face, in her stance. She’s leaning toward me just slightly, hands clenched in fists. The holding cell may have numbed her, but now that she’s free, she’s raging again. I don’t know what to say. I’ve never known how to handle her in these states, in these moments that she’s on fire.

Behind me, Sammy breaks the silence.

“Cried?” he asks doubtfully. “I don’t believe it, Nox! You’re human after all.”

“Sammy, I will beat you to a pulp,” she snaps. Her eyes drift to the blood on my hands. “Let’s just get back to the others. I doubt we’re welcome here anymore.”

And then she knocks her shoulder against my chest as she passes by.

I hurry after her and take the lead because she has no clue where she’s going. Sammy mumbles something about my priorities and I block him out. I can’t deal with his criticisms now. Or Bree, who’s not making sense. What’s most important is getting out of the tunnels and back to the Wall and deciding on our next step: head west and try to engage the Expats as Ryder suggested, or start trekking home, failures.

When we reach the stairs near Titus’s room, an odd sound breaks out overhead. An intense humming, like a hundred birds caught in a storm, their wings beating against a howling wind. The noise dies out abruptly and a moment later there is an amplified voice.

“Gray Weathersby!” Marco. Aboveground. Calling for me. “You will show yourself or the remains of this town will be destroyed as quickly as we sunk your puny ship.”

Clipper’s work with Burg’s cameras was noticed after all. Frank must have been alerted, Marco called in to investigate. Given how quickly he arrived, he probably was waiting for us along the borderlines, just as Clipper suspected.

“I don’t buy it,” Sammy says. “He’s not going to destroy anything. They won’t waste supplies when they think this place is dead.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “They know we’re here.”

Marco’s voice booms again above us. “We found your friends beyond the Wall. The men are dead. If you don’t want your medic in the same state, you will show yourself.”

Time seems to slow.

They can’t be dead. Bo finally broke free of a life in Frank’s prisons just months ago. And Xavier taught me to hunt, to gut and skin my game, to set traps and snares. How is it possible that these two men are gone?

“He could be lying,” Bree warns.

But I can’t take that risk, and Marco knows it. There is only one option. Just like when we were on the Catherine, the Order has pushed us into a corner of their choosing.

I move toward the stairs and Bree grabs my arm. “Don’t. It’s a trap.”

“We’re trapped as it is.”

“I’ll come with you.”

Her eyes are softer now, filled with worry. How ironic for her to suddenly care, to no longer be furious with me. I shake her off.

“I’m stronger on my own, too.”

These are her words, echoed back with anger and spite. I know they aren’t true, but I say them anyway, just to watch her face go blank. I need her to know how ridiculous it feels to hear that lie.

“I’m going up,” I tell the team. “Sammy, see if you can find Bleak. He’s my age, dark skin, nearly the only guy I’ve seen who keeps his head shaved. He seems to want a better life for himself and the people here, so tell him what’s happening. Make sure he gets everyone somewhere safe. They need to stay hidden.

“And Clipper, the radio’s still with the other gear in the boiler room. Try to get in touch with Bo and Xavier. Maybe Marco’s lying and they can help.”

Clipper looks panicked. “I don’t think—”

“Just try.”

“And the rest of us?” Jackson asks.

“What? He’s on our side now?” Bree looks shocked.

“You’re out of the loop, Nox,” Sammy says. “Shut up and listen.”

But I don’t know what order to give. “Just do whatever you think is right. So long as it doesn’t include following me.”

Clipper and Sammy race down the hallway.

“I’ll be as quick as I can,” I say to Bree and Jackson. “We’ll meet in the Room of Whistles and Whirs. Tell the others.”

“I could help if you just let me,” Bree calls as I take the stairs two at a time.

But I keep climbing.

And I don’t look back.