Three (Article 5 #3)(99)

“Likes a close view, does she?” came a voice beside me.

“Guess so,” grumbled the man I had fallen into. I turned my face to see Tucker’s green eyes blazing back into mine. His lips brushed my ear. “You must have some kind of death wish.”

I tried to get up but he held me in place.

“What do you think is going to happen here?” he demanded. “You’re outnumbered two thousand to one.”

“To two,” I said, but he only scoffed. “You can’t just sit here and watch our friends die.”

He tightened his grip. “You think I have a choice?”

“You always have a choice.”

The prisoners shuffled forward; another was being brought toward the ring.

I strained my eyes through the chain-link, focusing on the man in the front. He was thin, bowed through the back. There was a tattoo on his wrist that snaked up his bare forearm into a beige prison uniform. His ratty hair was long to the shoulders, spilling out from beneath the bag covering his head.

I watched, speechless, as they unchained Frank Wallace from the others and dragged him toward the ring, but before he could get to the gate another of the prisoners attacked one of the guards. A fight erupted, and those closest to me stood again, blocking my way. Tucker latched me under his shoulder as the guards rushed in to manage the prisoners. We were only ten feet away, close enough to see the prisoner who’d started the fight. To see that the bag over his head had fallen free.

The noise went silent. The lights grew dim. Every man between us wavered in my vision.

There, on his knees, two guns pointed at his head, was Chase. His shoulders heaved up and down, and from his nose came a trickle of blood. When the soldiers had brought Wallace to the ring, they must have released the ankle chains that bound all the prisoners together, because Chase was now separated from the others who were being forced to lie face down on the ground.

Chase refused to lower. He looked up into the faces of the soldiers with cold defiance in his stare.

But when his eyes found mine, his lips parted, formed the word that tore me apart.

“No.”

And in that moment I felt it. The certainty that we would not escape this place. That we would die here.

The sob rose in my throat.

“I’ll find you,” I had told him once, “and I’ll bring you back.”

I held on to his gaze as though it were my life raft. He rocked back on his heels, and tilted his head, and there was a grief blanketing his shoulders so heavy it nearly paralyzed me.

“Hold on,” I whispered.

I reached into my purse for the knife. If I could create a big enough diversion, he might have a chance—at least he would be able to run. If I was fast maybe I could get away, too.

It was a slim chance at best, but I’d made it this far. I couldn’t give up now.

On the platform, the Chief of Reformation was waiting for a man to test his drink. He grew impatient, slamming one fist on the table. Finally, the man, red in the face and blinking, nodded, and passed along the bottle.

My palms grew damp as I prepared for what I would have to do.

Tucker’s arm, now at a diagonal across my chest, tightened. He was still watching Chase, scarcely breathing, and didn’t let go, even as I attempted to peel back his fingers from my waist.

“What are you doing?” I whispered.

Across the ring, another soldier had climbed the platform steps. Stocky and balding, he bent low to deliver a message to the chief. Slowly, Reinhardt lowered his glass and nodded. A catlike grin split his face and he shook his head as if in disbelief, and stood.

He raised his hands, and a hush took the crowd. It began with those closest to him, and then, like wildfire, the silence caught, racing through the courtyard, climbing the walls of the building until no one made a sound.

Glancing skyward, I couldn’t help but wonder how I was still standing. The time felt liquid, flowing by like water in a stream. It had to be after midnight. Maybe there had been a problem with the attack. Maybe Three had failed. Either way, I focused on the task at hand: getting on that platform.

“Don’t move,” Tucker said between his teeth.

Again the microphone’s hiss cut through the air.

“Fellow soldiers!” began the chief, the metallic ring distorting his voice to give it a strange, robotic quality. “The way of the soldier is not always easy. We are ever challenged. Tested by those who would stand in our way.” He paused. “If ever you need validation that your chosen path is indeed the one of righteousness, tonight is the night.”

From the opposite corner of the courtyard came a unit of soldiers leading a man on three separate leashes, not unlike those Tucker had placed around my neck. His face was hidden, his wrists bound in front of him, attached to chains that latched to his ankles, but even at a shuffle he still managed to walk tall with his shoulders back and his chest open, as if daring someone to shoot him in the heart. A path cleared as they approached the ring, and in the quiet I could hear Wallace’s voice, crackling with dehydration.

“Let him go, you…” He was silenced with the blunt end of a rifle. A young soldier with dark hair grabbed his bound wrists from behind and forced him to stand.

The prisoner was brought into the ring. It was then I noticed the slight limp, as though he favored one leg.

“I give you a member of the rebel group Three, caught just south of here attempting to flee our border patrol. Shall we show him what happens to those who try to outrun reformation?”