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Chapter 2

ADRIEN’S FINGERS MET my fumbling ones as we attached the other tank to my waist.

“How do we get out of here?” he asked.

“If they came down the main elevator, we follow the escape route I’ve practiced.” My voice was low and muted through the mask. There was a microphone option for normal speech, but I wasn’t sure how loud it would be, so I didn’t switch it on. “Head to the west end of the complex and take the stairs.” I’d memorized the lab schematics and drilled the best escape routes. The lab had three exits—two elevators and one set of stairs. The stairs were closest and the best option for getting out unnoticed. “As long as no one sees us, we’ll be fine.”

Adrien nodded. The diagnostic clicked in my ear, and I looked down at the readout panel on my forearm. All systems clear. At least that was one piece of good news. I also felt steadier on my feet. The adrenaline pumping through my body was briefly giving me strength. I took a deep breath and pushed my gloved finger against the button that released the sliding door to the adjacent room in the laboratory.

Voices sounded from another room nearby, but the lab was empty. The room was all clean lines and antiseptic lab tables covered with equipment. The smooth, burnished metal floors glinted. I paused to listen, but, within the echoing space, it was impossible to tell how close the voices were.

I ducked low and crept behind one of the laboratory tables, careful not to knock into any of the test tubes in my bulky suit. Adrien shut the door to the hidden room behind us. It looked like every other chrome-lined panel that formed the wall. But before Adrien could slide a table in front of it to complete the illusion, the click of boot heels and voices from the hall echoed louder. Adrien dropped down beside me.

My heart thumped wildly, and I instinctively put my hand to my heart monitor. I was glad the Rez had disabled it months ago; otherwise it would have been beeping loudly to signal my rapid heartbeat.

The room only had one exit. In my emergency evacuation plans, I’d always taken for granted the flashing alarm in the alcove would go off in time to make it clear of this room. Before I could even try to think what to do next, the voices were in the room with us.

Adrien huddled with me behind the black-topped table, eyes flicking around and mouth pursed tightly. I didn’t know what he was looking for. To get to the stairs, we first had to get out of this room and past the doorway, right where it sounded like the Inspector was standing. Panic bubbled up inside me.

“What is it you say you study here, again?” The Inspector’s clipped tones echoed off the chrome walls of the spotless lab. There was a moment’s silence before Milton’s voice piped up.

“We study viral pathogens, such as Flu 216 and its various permutations. Also,” Milton continued, his voice shaky and high-pitched, “we’re doing some innovative research into the application of nanotechnology to viral pathogens. The Cabinet of Medical Technology is very interested in our progress.”

“I see,” said the Inspector, his boots thudding as he stepped further into the room and closer to the table we hid behind. “And have you noticed anything … anomalous?”

“N-no, sir,” Milton said. I squeezed my eyes shut. Milton was a painfully bad liar. He was younger than most others at the lab, but he was a genius, the top viral tech. Like most researchers, he didn’t have the emotion-numbing V-chip installed. Which was a problem right now.

Usually Veri, our other Rez insider, was the one who handled communicating with officials on behalf of the lab. She was far more skilled in the art of subversion and misdirection. But she must not be here yet, and Milton stumbled over every other word.

Footsteps came closer. Sweat beaded on my forehead and dripped down my face beneath the mask. I looked frantically at Adrien.

“What’s this?” The Inspector paused near the false wall to my hidden room and tapped the paneling. Had Adrien not shut the door completely? I cringed at the hollow ping of the Inspector’s knuckles on the chrome and my heartbeat sped up even more. He was close enough that I could see the tip of his shiny black boot.

I wanted to crawl around the other side of the table, but Adrien sensed my panic and shook his head. His eyes darted in every direction. We both knew the crinkling noise my suit would make. There was no way we could sneak out of the room unnoticed.

A hiss sounded. The Inspector had found the small catch that opened the hidden door. In our haste, Adrien must have forgotten to replace the cover. He leaned in and whispered frantically in my ear. “Knock him out with your telek, like you did with the Chancellor that time.”

“But—”

“Anomalous contraband.” The Inspector’s voice came from inside the small alcove. I heard the sound of papers being ripped off the walls.

I tried to listen, to see if there was any buzzing in my ears, any whisper of power left that I could try to harness. But all I could hear were Milton’s weak excuses. He backed away from the other man, moving closer to us. “I didn’t know that was there,” he said. “I swear I’ve never seen that room before!”

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried again to draw on my power. None of this was going according to plan. No one was ever supposed to find the hidden room. I had to disable the Inspector if any of us were going to make it out of here alive.

I closed my eyes and tried to call on my telek. Moments earlier, my power had nearly consumed me. Now, no matter how much I strained, it wouldn’t come. The beast was gone.

I shook my head frantically at Adrien. He seemed to understand and tugged me forward while the Inspector was busy looking through the things in my alcove. But we weren’t fast enough. As soon as we rounded the corner of the table, the Inspector’s voice rang out. “You there! Stop!”

Adrien bolted for the door, dragging me along with him. My feet were heavy from the weighty suit, but I managed to stay upright. Milton ran after us.

The Inspector’s voice rang out behind as he spoke into his arm com, “Possible fugitive sighting in sublevel lab 810. Subjects are heading west!”

I cursed. Reinforcements would be coming.

“They’ll be covering the west stairs,” Adrien said.

I nodded and when we came to a fork in the hallway, pulled him left instead of right toward the stairs. “Let’s try for the freight elevator in the central lab.”

I tried to shut out all other thoughts and focus on moving one foot in front of the other. Adrien pulled Milton in front of me as we ran down the narrow hallway. “Get your elevator access card ready!”

The floors and walls were made of a dulled gray metal and our pounding footsteps broadcast our every move. Ahead, I saw where the hallway opened into the central lab.

Almost there.

We raced toward the opening, close enough now that I could see the elevator across the expanse of the lab.

But right as we closed the distance and were almost into the room, a shadow darkened the opening, and then another and another. Three Regulators stood in front of us, the metal plating on their faces glinting from the light in the hallway. They were the Community’s soulless soldiers, almost as much machine as they were man. Adrien stopped cold, but Milton wasn’t as quick. He tripped over Adrien, taking both of them down. My breath stopped in my chest and the moment seemed to slow. I looked from Adrien to the Regulators right as they raised their forearms, each with a triple-barreled laser weapon attached.

We were all going to die.

A jolt rocked involuntarily through my body. I must be hit. They must have fired in the instant I’d taken to blink. But I was shocked when I realized it was the Regulators who were blown backward, not me. They landed heavily on their backs halfway across the lab, bloodied chunks of alloy flying from their chests and arms as they went. I felt my eyes widen as I looked down at my outstretched arms in shock. My power. It had worked.

Adrien was on his feet. He pulled Milton up again just as one of the Regulators stirred.

“Go back!” Adrien shouted. He pulled a gun from his hip and let out several bright red blasts.

Milton and I raced back down the hallway. I looked over my shoulder. All three of the Regs were getting up now. Two of them were bloodied and one looked like he was missing an arm. But still, I knew I hadn’t done enough damage. I’d only slowed them down for a moment. Regulators never stopped, no matter what.

Adrien kept firing behind us, but I didn’t pause to look again. I was too slow already. The hallway was long and straight. The Regs would have a clear shot at us as soon as they were on their feet. We’d never make it if we kept going forward. My mind raced as we passed several numbered doors down the hallway. I thought about the schematics of the lab I’d memorized. These were research rooms. If we went into one of them, we’d only get ourselves trapped. Unless …

Two more doors down, I paused and slammed my gloved hand on the door release pad. Milton kept going.

“In here,” I shouted. Adrien ran a few steps past me and grabbed Milton, yanking him through the doorway right as a quick stream of red burned into the wall where we’d been standing only moments before.

Adrien closed the door behind us. The door was made of reinforced steel, meant to seal shut in case of any pathogen leaks or disruptions to the ventilation system. But even though it shut with a satisfyingly heavy clang, I knew it wouldn’t stop the Regulators for long.

“What now?” Adrien asked, clicking the button for the lock mechanism.

“The waste chute,” I said, nodding toward the wall where a small door was embedded in the wall. We were eight stories underground, and the lab had a separate waste-disposal system for the hazardous materials they dealt with.

This was the central disposal room. Bottles of thick liquids lined the walls, full of acids to break down organic matter before it was loaded into disposal barrels and sent up the chute. The whole place smelled like antiseptic and lye. “Milton, can you get it open?”

Milton’s whole body shook, his face pale. He gave a quick nod and went to the control panel beside the small door. His fingers tapped quickly on the interface. Adrien slid another energy tube into the bottom of his gun handle and aimed it at the door to the hallway. He didn’t have to wait long.

A sizzling noise sounded as a bright molten line appeared from the Regs’ laser weapons, firing from the other side.

“Hurry,” I said to Milton, who was still typing furiously.

“Got it!” He let out a triumphant whoop as the chute door slid sideways into the wall. My eyes were on the chute—it was a rounded chamber three feet in diameter, meant for sending barrels of waste up to the trash room by the loading bay.

“You two first,” Adrien said, walking backward across the room toward us, his weapon still trained at the door. He pushed me toward the opening.

Then the door to the hallway blew inward and the Regs charged into the room one after another.

Adrien fired, blasting one straight in the chest. The laser round knocked the Reg backward, but he got back to his feet with only a singe on the front of his metal breastplate.

The other Reg lunged toward Milton and me. I stumbled backward, tripping over the heavy suit and landing half in the chute. I pulled my legs inside.

“Come on, Milton!” I screamed. But when I looked up again, the Regulator had clapped his hands on both sides of Milton’s head. In an instant, he crushed Milton’s skull like an overripe watermelon. I stared in shock as Milton slumped to the floor.

A shriek of grief and terror ripped its way out of me, and suddenly all the bottles lining the wall started vibrating. Adrien dropped to the ground and rolled behind several barrels stacked beside the counter as the bottles exploded. The acid spray from the broken containers hit the three Regulators straight in the face.

They stumbled blindly, one falling into the other until they tumbled into a heap. Adrien took the moment of confusion and launched past them. He pushed me to my feet and squeezed into the chute with me. The chute door closed right as a Regulator climbed to his knees and aimed his weapon.

Adrien wrapped his arms around me as a deafening rush of air surrounded us, and then we were sucked upward with nauseating speed. But the chute was meant for barrels, not people. Adrien and I bounced painfully back and forth between the walls. Within a few heartbeats, another chute door opened and we tumbled out into a trash container half-filled with barrels labeled HAZARDOUS WASTE. The back of Adrien’s tunic was ripped up and the skin underneath looked scraped raw. He got to his feet as if he didn’t feel it and hurried over to me.

“Oh god, Zoe, your suit.”

I looked down dazedly and saw that part of my suit hung in shredded ribbons off my arm. Adrien grabbed my left arm to check the diagnostic readout, his face a mask of fear. After a moment he let out the breath he’d been holding. “Only two layers were breached. You’re okay. Come on.”

“We’ve got to go back,” I said, finally finding my voice. “We need to get Milton to a medic—”

Adrien shook his head, his jaw tensed. “He’s dead, Zo. But the Regs aren’t, and they’ll stop at nothing. We’ve gotta go.”

“But—”

He took my shoulders and forced me to look him in the eye. “It’s how we survive in the Rez. The living matter, not the dead.”

It made me sick to my stomach, but I knew he was right. My mind seemed to finally catch up with what was happening. Milton was dead, and every second I didn’t get moving, I was only putting our lives in danger.

I nodded and followed Adrien as he scrambled over the piles of trash barrels spread haphazardly between us and the exit. My boots weighed so much I could barely lift my legs high enough to step over some of them. I stumbled once, but caught myself before I fell, while Adrien punched the button to open the door. The large bay door rolled slowly into the ceiling, groaning as it went. We bent down and scooted under as soon as it was high enough.

The sunlight was blinding. I’d spent three months in a room with only a dim light cell, and the intensity of the daylight seared through my eyes to the back of my skull. There was no time to adjust, so I squeezed my eyes closed except for a tiny crack and let Adrien pull me ahead.

“We’re on the east end of the building, right?” Adrien asked.

“Yeah.”

“Good.” He sounded relieved. “That means my duo-rider is around the corner.”

I had no idea what a duo-rider was, but I just focused on running as fast as I could and watching the concrete under my feet so I didn’t trip.

“There!”

I looked up and saw a small egg-shaped vehicle by the wall. The engine was already running and it hovered a few feet off the ground, though I didn’t quite know how. There weren’t any of the fuel-burning propulsion modules roaring along the bottom like I’d seen in other flying transports. The engine was just quietly whirring. The top half of the vehicle was made of one solid oval window. Adrien raised his hand and clicked a small hand-held device. The window lifted up and backward to reveal two seats, one behind the other, and a small stepladder dropped down the side.

I tried to step up with my thick, booted foot, but it didn’t fit into the ladder rung.

“Come on,” I said to myself, as I tried again and managed to get my boot tip wedged in enough to hike myself up. I heaved my body over the side and into the narrow backseat, looking up just in time to see a Reg burst out of the backside of the building.

“Adrien, get in!”

His wiry body moved faster than I’d ever seen as he leapt into the front seat and sealed the window shut in the same motion. The Regulator ran straight at us.

“Why isn’t he shooting?” My voice was near hysterical. We were a clear target out in the open like this.

Adrien grabbed the steering controls. “He’s the one missing his firing arm.” We lifted off the ground.

I sat back and buckled myself in. After another moment, I breathed out in relief as the vehicle rose higher and higher into the air.

We were safe.

Then the vehicle rocked forward suddenly, making me lurch in my seat. I looked ahead and saw a metal hand clamped on the small hood of the duo, inches away from the window. We were almost twenty feet in the air now, but the Reg had still managed to launch himself high enough to grab hold.

He pulled himself up over the front edge with his one arm. The flesh portions of his face were blistered from the acid, parts of his nose and his bionic eye missing entirely. Even the metal on part of his face had melted and partially slid off, revealing the bone underneath. But none of it stopped him. He pulled himself higher up the hood of the duo with single-minded determination.

Adrien fought with the steering, veering wildly left then right in an attempt to shake him, but the Reg had gotten an iron grip on the lip of the front windshield.

I closed my eyes and tried to focus. I needed to use my telek. I could easily dislodge him.

Nothing happened.

With a giant crack, the Reg smashed his head against the window. It was reinforced plastic, so it only cracked and dented inward, but a couple more hits like that, and he’d make it through and get to Adrien. The image of Milton’s crushed skull flashed in my mind.

There was no more time to try accessing my power. I reached over to the front seat and grabbed the weapon holstered at Adrien’s hip.

“Open the top,” I yelled. Adrien didn’t look my way, but he reached forward and clicked a switch. The window started lifting up and backward, creating a crazy rush of air that almost knocked the weapon out of my hand. I managed to keep a grip and pushed the trigger. A burst of red light flared straight into the Reg’s face with enough momentum that he was blown backward. He didn’t release the metal shell as he tumbled down. The duo’s hood peeled off with him, leaving the engine underneath exposed.

Still the Reg held on.

Adrien flipped the switch so the roof sealed shut again, then swung the steering stick back and forth in a zigzag. We could only see the Reg’s hand, gripping the shredded metal of the hood, but the rest of his body bobbed below, his weight still throwing us off balance. He wasn’t letting go, no matter how much we swerved and twisted.

“Hold on to something,” Adrien said. I was already nauseated from the movement, but I gripped the armrests.

Adrien jerked the stick full backward, and we headed straight up into the sky. My head knocked against the back of my helmet at the sudden movement. Then he rammed it back down and sent us in a spiraling freefall. My stomach dropped and I clung to the armrests, trying to contain the terrified scream that rose in my throat at the sight of the rapidly approaching ground. As we spun, the centrifugal force pushed the flap of hood metal outward. The Reg flew out with it away from the body of the duo, but he still held on. His added weight threw us into an even more intense spin.

After a few more dizzy, chaotic seconds, the piece of hood the Reg gripped so tightly ripped off with a screeching tear, and he was flung off into the air.

The vehicle rocked heavily as the Reg fell free, and Adrien’s knuckles were white on the steering stick as he attempted to right us. But we still spiraled downward and the ground was so close that I could begin to make out the leaves on trees.

“Adrien!” I shouted, bracing my hands against the back of his seat.

He strained with his whole body to pull the stick backward.

My heart lodged in my throat as I waited for the impact, but finally we pulled up out of the spin, and after another few moments we were flying straight again.

It was suddenly bizarrely quiet.

“We made it,” I finally whispered, barely believing it.

But Adrien shook his head. “We’ve only just begun.”