Article 5 (Article 5 #1)(16)

The vision continued to poison my mind. Ms. Brock in the house next door, beating my mother’s hands. Chase blocking me in the corner. Don’t fight me, Ember.

I tried to focus on the real memory: My Chase had been waiting inside, ready with a smile and his open arms. But after everything he’d done, even the memory seemed false.

Slowly, the world became familiar. I was still at the reformatory. Still in my dorm room.

I heard something click, then rattle. It was coming from Rebecca’s side of the room. From the window.

Someone’s breaking in! My muscles coiled, ready to bolt out the door.

“Rebecca!” I croaked, forcing a painful swallow. My sock-clad feet were already on the floor. The skirt that had bunched at my hips untwisted around my legs.

She didn’t move. I listened, but there was no sound.

No sound at all, actually. Not even Rebecca breathing.

I forced myself to steady. It was probably a gust of wind against the glass. A tree branch or dead leaves or something. It wasn’t an intruder. No one was coming to get me. Not even if I wanted them to.

“Rebecca?” I asked, this time just above a whisper. She didn’t stir.

I slid off the bed and padded toward the window, still watching the glass.

I said her name again. She lay absolutely still.

I put my hand on the mattress. The moon shone through the window and lit the bandages on my bloated knuckles a pale blue. My fingertips stretched farther, feeling the blanket.

And the pillow beneath it.

“What the hell?” I said out loud. My eyes shot up, through the glass, into the woods, where a figure in white crossed the tree line. My jaw hit the floor.

Rebecca was running, the fraud. She’d stopped me earlier from the same, while she’d been planning this all along. There was no time to focus on that, though. Rebecca had found some way to escape, something more planned than Rosa’s impulsive flight, and I’d be damned if she was going to leave me behind.

I stuffed my feet into my shoes and threw the jacket on my chair across my back. I wasn’t tired or hungry. The thrill of anticipation collided with the absolute terror of being caught. Defiance surged.

I didn’t think twice about stepping onto Rebecca’s bed in my dirty shoes; I would have relished more in the action if I had. I propped the window open. It made the same click and rattle that I had heard earlier, when I had thought someone was breaking in, not breaking out.

From our room on the bottom floor it was almost too easy to slide out the little frame and swing my legs to the ground. So easy, in fact, I wondered why everyone hadn’t tried. Sudden doubt gave me pause—there had to be a reason the whole school hadn’t disappeared after curfew—but if Brock’s prized little Sister was out here, she had to know what she was doing.

I forced a slow, pained breath and continued. My skirt rode up around my hips, and the cold night bit into the skin at the tops of my thighs, but as soon as my feet hit the ground I was running.

The night was bright enough that I could partially see the way. I sprinted across a narrow lane and into the woods where I had seen Rebecca disappear. The hum of a power generator masked the crunch of dead leaves under my footsteps, both a blessing and a curse. No one could hear me, but I couldn’t hear them, either.

Though I worried about getting caught, my feet continued on. Rebecca had been here three years. She knew this system, this facility. She wouldn’t be attempting an escape unless she was positive it was a sure thing.

The deeper I dove into the woods, the darker it became, even under the starlight. I wondered where we were going. To a broken fence maybe. The long shadows blended with the night sky, leaving only highlights of bare branches and textured tree trunks. I walked with my hands in front of me, feeling my way forward. I was getting anxious, fearing I’d lost her. The generator was getting louder.

Finally, I heard voices. One male, the other so bubbly it couldn’t be anyone but Rebecca. I stopped dead in my tracks and ducked, hiding behind the broken tree trunk. I couldn’t make out what they were saying. As stealthily as possible, I scooted closer.

“I can’t believe Randolph smacked her,” I heard Rebecca say.

“Yeah. He liked it, too, the sick bastard.” The voice was familiar.

“Sean … what did you all do to her?”

“Brock said take her to the shack. Come on, you knew that was coming.”

My muscles hardened. They weren’t talking about me; they were talking about Rosa.

In my mind’s eye I saw the unmarked brick building beside the clinic. Was that the “shack”? Brock had said to take Rosa to “lower campus”; maybe that was what she’d meant. My memory conjured the metallic screech I’d heard when I’d found the clinic’s phone. Had that been Rosa’s scream?

My head was spinning. I still couldn’t place the other voice.

Rebecca was quiet for a moment. “I guess I did.”

“What, you feel sorry for her? Aw, don’t be sad, Becca. Hey, I bet I can cheer you up.”

They were quiet, and I was gripped by the fear that they were moving on without me. In a panic, I lifted my head to see over the log.

My mouth fell open.

Rebecca Lansing was sitting on the generator, wearing a big blue canvas coat. Her bare legs were wrapped around a guard’s hips—the soldier with the sandy hair. The nearly handsome guard who had approved of her line this morning. He had one hand shoved through her messed blond hair, the other on her bare thigh. Their lips were smashed against each other with a frenzied passion.