Three (Article 5 #3)(35)

“We met them,” I said, thinking Jesse’s assessment was pretty accurate. “Yesterday, before Dr. DeWitt’s people showed up.” I ran a hand over my bruised side, remembering the boy who’d kicked me there.

Jesse didn’t look surprised. “Think DeWitt tries to take some in and rehabilitate them or something. Impossible to fix what’s already broke though, if you ask me.”

Chase shoved his hands in his pockets, and I could tell he was thinking about Harper, and the picture he’d torn off the wall in the north wing.

As the line reached its end, people began filtering to their assigned duties. I watched Sean help Rebecca toward the south wing, where we’d passed the classrooms, and felt the pull toward the opposite side, where Three’s leader had summoned me.

Chase looked torn, and I tried to offer a reassuring smile. “I guess I’ll see you later.”

He nodded slowly, but his feet stuck to the ground. I didn’t want to go either. Bad things happened when we split up. A memory of the last night before he’d been drafted into the FBR over a year ago came to the forefront of my mind. I shouldn’t have let him go then, and I shouldn’t be letting him go now.

“Find me if anything comes up.” He glanced over my shoulder toward the lodge, reluctance in his eyes.

“I’ll find you.”

“Good god,” said Jesse. “I just remembered why I never got married.”

Chase smirked, then leaned down and planted a quick kiss on my cheek. “Be careful,” he whispered. I willed him to do the same as he turned and followed Jesse away.

*

“I WANT the location and status of your team.” DeWitt loomed over my shoulder as I sat in my plastic bucket seat before the radio. The tech beside me was turning dials and pressing buttons on the black console. A crackle of static filled the small room.

On the opposite wall two other members were crammed side by side at a small table stacked with assorted papers, and I eavesdropped curiously as they muttered numbers aloud and recorded them on clipboards.

“Not a word about who you’re with or where you are.” DeWitt drew my attention back to the task at hand. “Obviously this Morris trusts you, but you may not be able to trust him anymore.”

Anymore. As if I ever really did. “You think he’s the one selling out the bases?”

DeWitt tilted his head. “Should I?”

I frowned, both at his suspicion and my doubt. A month ago I wouldn’t have questioned it—Tucker was bad, end of story. But since then Tucker had proven he was on our side, making me question everything I knew about him.

I turned back toward the microphone. “He’s with us.”

I felt DeWitt’s eyes on me, and when I looked up I saw that his expression had grown hard. Beside me, the tech shifted in his chair.

“Anything else I should know about him?”

He might as well have asked if Tucker had killed my mother, but maybe I was just being paranoid.

Be careful, Chase had said.

I reminded myself that DeWitt hadn’t come into this position by chance. When he spoke, the entire compound had stopped to listen. That was a power I didn’t want to fight against.

“No,” I said.

I planted my feet on the floor, and scooted the chair to the microphone.

“I’m ready.”

*

TUCKER didn’t answer.

We attempted to make contact on the same frequency he’d used yesterday, but to no avail. Wherever he was headed, whatever danger he might have been in, he was unable to respond. As the hours passed, I became more and more convinced the something else had gone wrong.

By lunchtime it was clear we weren’t going to make contact unless Tucker called first. DeWitt had disappeared late in the morning without explanation, and in his absence, I rose and wandered to the opposite side of the room where the operators were still recording numbers on a stack of paper.

A woman with a pencil between her teeth shoved back the dark bangs that stuck to her forehead with sweat. The heat coming off the radios in the room was tremendous, and it was beginning to make me drowsy.

I looked down at the notes she’d scribbled across the paper. There were two columns. On the left was a list of regions: 129, 257, 313, and so on. On the right, a census count—90, 568, and even in one region, 925.

Instantly, I was alert.

“Is that how many people are on our side, or theirs?” I asked.

The woman’s head snapped up, her cap of greasy hair swinging and sticking momentarily to her cheek.

“I wish we had that many on our side,” she said. “Rebels don’t waste a lot of time counting their numbers.”

I didn’t need to ask why.

“You got the soldier counts from hacking into the mainframe?” I lowered my voice. “Can you check if someone’s been captured? A carrier. He’s missing.”

“Does it look like we have mainframe access?” she said briskly.

“My friend Billy hacked into the mainframe in Knoxville.”

She snorted. “That was Knoxville. This is No Man’s Land. We haven’t had Internet since the president shut down our satellites during the War—said it was too easy to organize terrorists that way, in case you’re too young to remember. Now you need a hardline to crack into and we’re too far out for that. Bureau’s got bombs that run by body heat sensors, and we’re still deciphering radio messages.” She groaned and covered her face with her hands.