Three (Article 5 #3)(45)

The muscles beside DeWitt’s mouth ticked, and his scarred jaw was gray with stubble. My throat worked to swallow. Besides learning that Chase had not been sent out for our injured, I had accomplished nothing, and now I’d missed something important. Something that affected more lives than just my own.

“Is he still…” I pointed to the radio and then realized I couldn’t respond anyway. Besides receiving signals, Three was confined to air silence.

“No,” said DeWitt. “He’s gone now.”

The disappointment weighed heavily on my shoulders.

“What did he say?”

DeWitt sighed and strode past me to the radio. He said something to the operator, who flipped a few switches on the high right corner of the machine, and then removed his headphones.

“Lucky for you, we recorded it.”

The transmission was not as clear as it had been before. Now it was glitchy and clicked on and off in intervals. But that didn’t stop Tucker’s voice, stretched thin with panic, from filling the room.

“… if you’re even still there … gone … all of them … just me left … if you’re still … meet … at the beach. I’ll be … soon as I can…” A crackling burst of static followed, and in it I realized I’d been holding my breath and quickly gulped down the air.

Then Tucker whispered, almost as a prayer, “Please be there.”

The transmission went silent.

A stitch popped in the neck of my shirt. During the recording I’d gripped the hem and stretched it down my hips as far as it would go. I released it now, but my hands were still shaky. Old scars stood out on the backs of my knuckles, white on red blotchy skin.

Tucker was all that was left of the team we’d sent into the interior. It felt like he was coming back to find me, just as he had in Louisville after Cara’s death. Just as he always would.

DeWitt broke the silence. “The beach—I assume he means the safe house?”

I backed into the wall and leaned against it, grateful it was sturdy while I was not.

“Yes,” I managed. “That’s where we split up.”

“I don’t suppose I have to tell you that he could be responsible for the FBR’s attacks on our posts. That he could be baiting you into a trap.”

He didn’t have to tell me those things; I had already considered them. But there was another possibility, too: that Tucker was honestly in danger and needed our help.

The pulse pounded in my ears.

“Someone’s got to meet him,” I said finally. “We need to find out what he knows about the resistance posts.”

“And if he’s been compromised?”

I breathed in slowly, let the air fill my lungs. “Someone’s got to bring him in. Keep an eye on him if you don’t trust him. Rocklin seems bored following me around.”

DeWitt raised his brows, contemplating this.

“Send me,” I heard myself say. “And Chase. He trusts us.” If Chase was with me he wouldn’t be back in the interior, hunted by soldiers.

“That may be difficult,” said DeWitt, staring off at the map with the red pushpins, the fallen posts. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would have a problem with this. We weren’t crucial to Endurance’s operations.

I pushed off the wall, meeting his eyes. “You want to send Chase to Charlotte.”

DeWitt didn’t answer.

“The MM’s looking for him after what happened in the rehab hospital in Chicago.” I paused to steady my voice. “I saw the census numbers yesterday. We don’t have enough people to beat them.”

“I know,” said DeWitt softly.

“Then why?”

“Because half the country is too scared to stand up for themselves, and the other half is sleeping.” He wandered around the room, distracted. “Do you know how many people have no idea the threat the FBR poses on their freedom? So they’ve had to cut back a little since the War, so they’ve moved to a smaller house, gotten a generator so they don’t lose their power at curfew. They believe what the news tells them—that these attacks on our posts were for their own good. The FBR’s gotten rid of more insurgents, more scum endangering their children’s futures. They’ll never see a city of starving people, living in tents. They’ll never wait in a line for food or hide in a check point and wait for a carrier to take them somewhere safe.” He stopped now, and slowly smashed his fist into the tabletop. “They will never watch someone they love murdered for helping their fellow man.”

I could still hear my mother, arguing with the officers that took her away. We’re not animals, she’d said. But they’d gotten rid of her like she was one.

It didn’t seem possible that half the country had adjusted to the MM’s demands, that they carried on as if nothing was wrong. It didn’t seem possible that my mother and I had been doing exactly that just months ago. I pictured the neighborhood Tucker had told me about in his first radio transmission, the one that had boasted its compliance to the Statutes. These places did exist. They were why the MM could do what the MM did.

A horrible realization sunk into my bones.

“You’re going to attack the MM knowing we’ll lose.”

“Nothing is certain,” he said again. “We’re going to set an example—show the Bureau what Three is capable of. We’re going to wake up the country, and once they see the horrors of how their government will respond, they won’t be able to stand by any longer.”