The Gender War (The Gender Game #4)(31)

“Into the truck!” I shouted as I unloaded a few more rounds, my left wrist starting to ache from the gun’s recoil. I stepped out farther, allowing Henrik and Ms. Dale to move past me and climb into the truck, then followed as they gave me covering fire.

Jay was leaning out of the tarp toward me, his hand held out for me to grab. Without thinking I slapped my right hand into his, and then screamed as it exploded in pain as he hauled me up, dragging me over the tailgate. He gave me an alarmed look, but, thankfully, didn’t let go.

Darkness engulfed my eyes under the shade of the tarp. Jay let me go as soon as I was through, and I crawled toward the front of the truck’s bed, clutching my forearm and trying not to vomit on the floor as the pain shot up my arm. It took me a minute to realize my eyes were watering from the pain, and I sucked in a deep breath, trying to stop my body’s physical reactions and turn my mind toward the battle in which we were still embroiled.

Bullets were pinging off the tailgate and intermittently ripping through the tarp, and the back of the truck seemed filled with crouching bodies. As if from far away, I heard Ms. Dale taking a head count, then Henrik shouting at Viggo, “We’re all in! Let’s go!” Next to me, the unconscious king’s head lolled and bumped up and down as the truck roared into gear.

A dizzy thought spun through my mind. Have we really just kidnapped the king of Patrus?

By the time I slowly returned to my senses, we were careening down the tunnel, apparently having outstripped any pursuit. There had been several loud bangs early on, and I suspected these had been attacks against any vehicles that had tried to follow us. Beginning to get used to the dimness under the tarp, I noticed Owen, Amber, and Ms. Dale crouched behind the tailgate and Quinn, Tim, and Jay sitting in the middle of the bed. Quinn was digging through a backpack he’d been carrying. In a smaller truck it would have been a crowd, but this thing was so huge we had plenty of space.

I sucked in another deep breath, and then lurched upright, taking extra care to use my left hand to brace myself.

“You okay?” asked Jay from the middle of the bed, and I nodded weakly, still in too much pain to say anything. Viggo, at the wheel, was shouting at Henrik through the tiny back window that connected the cab with the bed. Since Henrik sat next to me, I tuned in, trying to get a handle on our situation.

“…the only way in or out? Didn’t you get the blueprints for your mission?”

“No! We don’t know this area. We followed a tracker that was installed on… oh… hmm.” He trailed off, his face pensive.

There was a pause from the cabin. “A tracker on what?”

I was glad Viggo couldn’t see the expression on Henrik’s face, a weird mixture of amusement and regret. “On you, Viggo.”

From the cabin came one of the longest explosions of swearing that I had yet heard from Viggo. The truck seemed to accelerate madly, the engine’s roar echoing loudly in the tunnel.

“So Desmond could be following us right now?” he shouted furiously, once his speech had become intelligible again. “When did that happen? How do we get it off? And, uh… where the hell is it?”

Henrik put his face in his hands and answered the questions one after another. If the situation hadn’t been so serious, I was sure he would have been laughing. I didn’t find it funny at all—had our whole escape been yet another ruse?

“They would have attached it while you were unconscious,” Henrik said. “I don’t think it was one of the ingestible ones. It’s either a skin-colored patch with a very strong adhesive… or a chip inserted underneath your skin. They’ve probably put it in a difficult-to-notice position on your body, like the middle of your back. Getting it out could be difficult, depending on the method they used to attach it…”

“Well, it can’t wait!” Viggo’s voice was grim. I couldn’t see his face through the window because he faced forward, but I knew he was furious. I was furious. I thought of the tracker I’d once slipped Viggo in his flask of water—then thought of somebody cutting him while he was down and sliding another such device into him. My left hand curled into a clumsy fist.

“While you’re driving?” Henrik asked. “If you think you can handle it…”

“I don’t have much choice, do I?” Viggo thundered, and the truck jerked underneath us as his foot, presumably, punched the gas again.

“All right,” Henrik said. “Well, we can switch drivers, and…”

“Don’t have time!” Viggo hollered.

“Fair,” Henrik said. “Then maybe I can come up there and…” His eyes fell on me. “Violet,” he said, quieter now, “could you fit through that window? It had probably better be you.”

I shook the last of the dizziness from my head, or at least tried to. “I can do it,” I said.

Henrik smiled at me as though he’d known I would say yes. He dug around in his pockets and held out a small folding knife, his eyes serious again. “I hope you don’t need this. Check the middle of his back first. If it’s not there… Well, check anywhere you can think of. It’s most likely there, though.” I pocketed the knife and climbed forward.

With his eyes on the road, Viggo growled as I struggled to fit myself through the small back window. “Henrik, I will blame you if I crash and we all die—” He turned his head and saw me, then cracked a dark smile. “Oh, Violet, it’s you. Well, at least I get a beautiful nurse.”