The Rule of One (The Rule of One #1)(18)

I must have courage. “No. I’ll do it myself.”

With a stiff nod, he moves out the door to continue his search. Another ping rings through the air. All clear.

But nothing seems clear at all.





MIRA

I crouch, patient and still, poised to run.

Pressed against a neighbor’s fence, I scan the streets once more. I’ve verified numerous times that no Guards or agents remain in the area. All spectators have gone inside; all lights are out. Yet I remain rooted to my hiding place.

I spare a quick glance at my tablet. 2:50 a.m. You can’t hide from our fate. Move. I take one step and then another, choosing my path carefully but swiftly behind the row of quiet houses, using the darkness as my cloak.

My right ankle throbs with each slap of my naked feet against the hard concrete, but I keep moving. Our two-story home comes into view, and the pain of what waits for me inside that dark and silent house outweighs any physical pain. Did the Guard take them?

Oh God.

I hear the constant hum of a small surveillance drone overhead, patrolling the neighborhood from the sky. As it moves to circle our house once more, I hug the line of shadows that edge the fence and race toward the back of the greenhouse.

I smuggle myself into the community garden positioned just outside the glass complex, sticking to the path I know is blind to the cameras—two rows down, six up—and stop in the very back corner. I collapse to my knees in front of the raised bed of newly ripened eggplants and dig my hands into the soil, my fingers yanking the lobed leaves of the fruit in my haste.

The letter X, so microscopic one would have to know it’s there to see it, appears beneath the mulch and manure. I place my index finger over the symbol and listen for the subtle click of the latch unlocking. The X radiates a blue light under my fingerprint, and a small shoulder-width door appears in the dirt.

Lifting the handle, I slip into the opening and shut the hatch softly above me. I slide down the ladder, hobble through the emergency tunnel, enter our basement, and climb the stairs to the empty wall.

With two knocks I push into the passageway. Please let them be on the other side. Two more knocks and I stagger across the living room, and find myself in the kitchen.

My body freezes when I see her.

Ava sits alone at the dinner table under the dim glow of a small work light, two stuffed rucksacks on the bench beside her. She must not have heard me enter, because she doesn’t look up.

She makes a clean incision in her inner right wrist. Gasping in pain, she glides the tip of a blade into the open cut, and with a steady hand and a brutal flick, the microchip lands casually beside her, slick with red. We both stare transfixed at the metal capsule, unmoving.

“Are we running?” I say.

Ava jumps at the sight of me, her eyes somber and afraid. The cold, numb wall of strength I built up comes melting down, pouring out through burning tears. Forgive me.

She presses a bandage to her wound and moves to embrace me, hard. “Where were you?” she whispers. I don’t answer. She doesn’t care where I was. Just that I’m here now.

I feel Father before I see him. I keep my chin buried in Ava’s shoulder and lift my swollen eyes to find him watching us from the staircase.

“We have to hurry,” he says, steady and calm. His expression holds no anger. No blame.

“It was Halton,” I confess. Tears fall freely down my cheeks, washing me clean. “He grabbed my wrist in the greenhouse and somehow knew my chip is an imitation.”

Ava lets go of me and stands back. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

I try to move toward her, to make her understand, but the agony of my twisted ankle prevents me. Deep purple and blue bruising has already spread across my inflamed foot. A mark of my penitence.

“Girls, we don’t have time for this,” Father says. He turns off the work lamp and approaches the back window, trusting the smart glass to conceal him. His eyes penetrate the black of the outside world, searching for leftover patrols.

Ava and I have never once been above ground together. Being in the kitchen with her now feels vulnerable and unbalanced. I need her to look at me, to tell me it’s okay, but I’m too afraid to speak. Ava! I shout in my head. But she holds her focus on the glass wall facing the empty street.

Satisfied we are alone, Father takes my tablet and punches in several codes to destroy all our data. “You can’t bring any devices in case you’re monitored.” He sets my tablet on the counter beside his own, which displays a running timer. He’s going to detonate the basement.

“We leave in five minutes,” he says, climbing the steps to the second floor.

Shoes. I need to put on shoes. I grasp for practicality, for something I can control. I walk heavily to the rucksacks and see Ava has already placed a pair of black boots on the chair for me. Pulling them on gingerly, I keep the laces of my right boot loose to fit my swelling ankle. When I look up I find Ava examining me, and our eyes meet like they always do, communicating a myriad of thoughts and emotions with just one glance.

Father glides down the staircase and in two long strides stands before us, a plastic box in his hands. His manner now earnest, he holds it out to Ava and opens his mouth to explain, but the words die in his throat.

The pulsating sound of the house alarm cuts through the room, sinking my heart and paralyzing my brain. Father suddenly surges forward, arms out, trying to block Ava and me just as a camera flash goes off, freezing the moment in time.