The Final Hour

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I paced my cell. A step and a half in one direction, a step and a half back. Again and again. Again and again. All the while, the Frustration Creature inside me stamped and raged, a beast in a cage of his own. But I just went on pacing. Back and forth. Back and forth. A step and a half. Again and again.

My thoughts were wild, out of control. It was like some kind of crazed conversation of gibbering voices all talking over one another and interrupting one another inside my brain. I was trying to think of some way out of this, a way other than the one that had come to me in the warden’s office. Some way I could get the word out to someone who counted, warn someone who might be able to stop Prince, to stop the Great Death.

But who? It couldn’t just be anyone. It couldn’t just be a friend, or even one of my parents. How would that help? Who would they go to? Who would believe them? By the time they could reach anyone, convince anyone, it would be too late. There was so little time. No time really. No details the police could work on, no proof, no way to know what the attack would be or even where it was going to take place, unless…

Unless somehow I remembered. If I had ever known the answer, if it was still somewhere inside my mind, it might come back to me in the next memory attack. Or the one after that. It might…

But then what? Without Rose, without being able to contact Rose or anyone else who knew my mission, it still seemed impossible that I could catch up with Prince before he did whatever it was he was planning to do. There seemed no way. No way except…

Out of all those voices gibbering and interrupting in my brain, one kept speaking out louder than the others, one thought kept coming back to me:

If I were free…

If I were free, I thought, I could do something. I could find my way back to the mansion maybe, that crazy gray mansion sitting on the hill, the house Prince had used for his headquarters. It wouldn’t be easy to find. I wasn’t sure where it was. But I knew the location was in my head somewhere and I felt certain that, if I were free, I would be able to retrace my steps and get there.

If I were free…

I remembered Rose had told me that the mansion was still under guard and that it contained computers and records that had helped him and his agents arrest the other Homelanders. Maybe those computers and records held the key to where the Great Death attack was going to take place. Even if they didn’t, if I could reach the mansion, I would also reach the guards around the mansion. I would be able to give them the word, warn them about the coming of the Great Death.

If I were free…

But there was no way to get free, no way to get out of this hell of a prison. Even if my lawyers did everything they said they would, even if everything worked out the way Rose hoped it might, there was no way I could get out of Abingdon in time.

No way, that is, but one. One insane, dangerous, and totally desperate way.

I paced the cell. I paced the cell. One and a half steps back and forth. Again and again and again.

If I were free… If only I were free…

Then, finally, what I was waiting for: The door buzzed. Slid open. A guard shouted at our tier of cells:

“Yard time!”