Three (Article 5 #3)(38)

“Thanks,” I said.

“Thank you,” she replied. And I could see in her eyes that she meant for all of it: getting her out of the hospital and pushing her from town to town until we could finally come here.

I smiled, then pushed all thoughts of condoms, and Chase naked, and me naked in front of Chase from my mind. There were more pressing issues to deal with.

I walked evenly to the door so as not to scare her, but inside I was wary. Something urgent had pulled DeWitt away. Something bad.

As soon as I was out the door, I ran into my guard. But this time I didn’t give him a chance to ask where I was headed. I raced back to the north wing, thoughts growing louder and louder in my mind.

Tucker called. They’re in trouble. They’ve been hit again.

There were more people inside the radio room than before. Hastily, I reached the doorway, just as DeWitt was leaving. We collided, his expression furious and frightening. I could see then how this man could kill soldiers if prompted.

I glanced over his shoulder, eyes falling to the map on the far wall. It took only a moment to recognize that there was one more pin than yesterday—this one in Southern Ohio.

Another post had fallen.

“Wait—my friends,” I said as DeWitt charged by. He didn’t even notice me on his trek down the hall. The tech I’d sat beside earlier hunched over the radio, holding the round metal headphones to his ears as if the headband was useless. I tried to reach him but a guard shut the door in my face.

Within me, something dark flexed its claws. Another post had fallen. More good people were dead. I hated the MM. I hated them so much I could barely breathe.

I needed to find Chase. He needed to know what had happened. I couldn’t hold this news alone; it was eating me from the inside out. But when I turned around, there was the guard.

“Going somewhere?” he asked.





CHAPTER


10


BARRED from finding Chase until the soldiers were done with their training, I was assigned to the kitchen, where I spent the remainder of the afternoon in the sweltering cafeteria. The north wing had grown eerily quiet, like a calm before the storm, and no one else came or went. According to my guard, whose name I had learned was Rocklin, DeWitt had requested I stay nearby in case Tucker tried to make contact. I didn’t know where DeWitt himself had gone; after he’d left the north wing, I hadn’t seen him. But I did as Rocklin ordered because if any new developments arose, I wanted to be close enough to hear them.

Panda, council member and kitchen commander, had tasked me to peel potatoes. By my guess there were probably about a thousand of them in the pile beside the stove. While I worked I watched him through my lashes. His head gleamed with perspiration, and his sleeves were rolled up to reveal names listed down his forearms. The muscles beneath flexed as he chopped cabbage.

I’d thought DeWitt might order a council meeting to discuss what had happened, but Panda hadn’t been summoned. Each minute that passed wore down my patience. The questions replayed in my head over and over. If Tucker had been caught. If what remained of his team was being followed by the MM. If they were still on the mission, still trying to warn the other bases.

If Tucker was dead.

“What do your tattoos mean?” I asked Panda after I nicked my finger for the tenth time.

Panda didn’t look up. “Will the answer help you peel potatoes?”

I tossed a potato into the dismal completed pile and reached for another. White, starchy residue coated my skin up to the elbows.

“They’re my reminder,” he said after a while. “I’m sure you’ve got your reasons for being here.”

My chest constricted. There wasn’t enough skin to fit my mother’s name and those of all my friends lost at home, at the reformatory, in the resistance. I focused on peeling until Panda said it was time to serve dinner.

*

NIGHT came slowly, the color of the sky changing by the slightest degrees from red to purple to blue. I helped Will serve a hearty fish stew on the patio outside the cafeteria. He talked little once the fighters began to arrive through the curtain of trees. With his eyes as round as a puppy dog’s, it was easy to see he wanted to be with them. I wondered why he wasn’t—maybe that had been DeWitt’s decree.

As I ladled the soup into bowls my thoughts drifted to my mother, of her days serving at the soup kitchen. It felt good to be doing something she’d done, even if half of that something was listening for gossip.

While searching for Chase I found Billy. He’d returned with Jack and some of the other safe house survivors, but lagged behind, not joining their conversation. The awkward hacker I’d known at the Wayland Inn had all but disappeared, and in his place was someone older and distant who oozed anger from every pore. He barely acknowledged me as he came through the line, and admittedly I didn’t make much of an effort to draw him out. Even Sarah, who he’d seemed friendly with just yesterday, was ignored.

I grew weary as the darkness descended. I still hadn’t seen Chase or his uncle, and DeWitt had yet to reappear. I listened to those who came through the line, but no one acknowledged their leader’s absence. Talk was mostly of the arrival of a new shipment of weapons that had been hijacked somewhere near the Red Zone border on the outskirts of South Carolina.

Torches were lit around the cracked patio where the people of Endurance were finishing their meal. The tang of flames and earthy smell of wood made my nose crinkle as the smoke puffed into the night sky. I found Rebecca sitting with Sarah at one of the tables, and though I felt drawn to join them, my feet were leading me in the opposite direction, back toward where Chase had gone this morning.