“How’s the tech, Pace?” I asked to distract myself, but I found it impossible. Vi’s hand remained on Zenn’s arm, and I couldn’t look away.
“Coming along,” he said. “We got some good stuff in Freedom, and I’ve been tinkering. We’ll have what we need in a couple of weeks.”
“Which works out well with the traveling schedule,” Zenn said. “Last I checked, we still had six cities to visit.”
“Maybe seven,” Saffediene noted. “I don’t think all the objectives were completed in Lakehead.”
“True,” Gunner said. “The city was in lockdown. We managed to upload the software and start the false feeds, and that’s all. But those are the important things. The last objective came from the journal and doesn’t have to be complete in order to launch the attack on Freedom.”
“Will we have support in Lakehead?” I asked. “Will they send people?”
“Yes,” Zenn said, too loud. He and Gunn wouldn’t look at each other, or at me.
And there it was. The thing Zenn wanted to hide from me. No matter. I’d get it out of Gunn after Zenn left with Saffediene. They’d have another mission coming up soon, probably tonight.
“Next mission?” I asked.
“Cedar Hills,” Saffediene replied automatically. “Zenn and I leave in a couple of hours.”
“Fantastic,” I said, almost smiling. “Let’s go over assignments. Pace will run communication with all the cities we already have on board, letting them know our schedule. He’ll also be equipping us all with defensive tech.”
“You got it, bro,” Pace said.
“Zenn and Saffediene will finish visiting the cities and compile the travelogue. We’ll also need a list of supplies each city can contribute, and how many people they estimate sending.”
Saffediene nodded, typing something into her e-board. Zenn watched me, his expression unreadable.
“Gunn and Raine will be in charge of maintaining contact with Starr to stay updated with events inside Freedom. Oh, and Zenn, you know Mason Isaacs and have a cache. Can you contact him before you leave this afternoon?”
As soon as the words left my mouth, I couldn’t believe I’d asked him. I didn’t ask anyone anything. I assigned. Zenn waved his hand in agreement.
I surveyed my group. “Excellent. Adjourned.”
“Wait,” Thane said. He’d been silent so long, I was happy to have forgotten about him.
“What?” I snapped.
“I just received a chat from Van Hightower.”
Zenn
20.
“Impossible,” I said, too quietly for anyone to hear. If Thane had indeed received an e-comm from Director Hightower, the Director would have to be close-by.
Very close-by.
Way too close.
Instead of questioning Thane, Jag simply hit a button, which caused a strobing blue light to fill the cavern. He began issuing orders: “Pace, get all the tech. Tell Indy to help you. Vi, stay next to me, see what you can find, and don’t hold anything back.” He spun, his eyes wild, but his voice calm. “Saffediene, Zenn, go to Cedar Hills. Gunn, get Raine and start evacuations. Don’t leave any sensitive material lying around!”
People emerged from the doorways lining the war room, most of them in time to hear the end of Jag’s directive.
Panic hung in the air, but no one acted irrationally. Saffediene linked her arm through mine. “I need to go to my room first!” she shouted over the many footsteps and voices surrounding us.
“Let’s hurry,” I said, a vein of fear snaking through me. Director Hightower would love to get inside my head if he could. I’d been branded a traitor because of my Informant activity, but my file in the Association listed me as rehabilitatable. I hadn’t decided if I wanted to pretend to go through that. I didn’t know if I could pull off such an act convincingly.
In her room Saffediene shoved her extra clothes and the contents of one drawer into her backpack before declaring she was ready. She followed me to my room where I did the same, leaving everything but my clothes, a blanket, and four memory chips I’d taken from Freedom.
They contained all my fondest thoughts of Vi. Things from the Goodgrounds before we’d left. Lucid moments in Freedom. My father had also sent a chip—an old, out-of-date model compared to the tech in Freedom—filled with vids of me as a child, my brother, our family.
I tucked the chips into my pocket and joined Saffediene in the hall. The blue light danced off the dark walls, washing her pale features in an eerie glow. She gripped my hand, her tension evident in her touch.
“This way.” She tugged me away from the only entrance—and thus, the only exit—and toward the mess hall.
“What—?”
“Emergency exit,” she said. Two guys from Indy’s team were filling packs with canned food. They didn’t look up as we passed. Part of me wished I could’ve at least said goodbye to Vi. Part of me wanted to march out the front entrance and confront Director Hightower. All of me was desperate to get away.
But as we entered a square opening I could barely fold my shoulders through, all I could think was, This place had another way out and I didn’t know?
We flew south, away from the cavern, expecting the Director would approach from the north, from Freedom. Saffediene wanted to talk, and I let her.
“I wonder how Hightower found us,” she mused. “I mean, we’ve been so careful. Flying in from different directions, meeting Starr in random sectors. And we’re over a hundred miles from the border of Freedom. The orchards are a huge buffer as it is . . . .”
On and on she went. I grunted every now and then. Just thinking about how Director Hightower had discovered the hideout made me tired. Everything Saffediene said made sense though. I couldn’t help but wonder if someone inside our ranks had narced.
Insider Tip #7: Suspect everyone. Trust no one. When things go wrong, assume someone has tipped off the enemy.
See, that’s what Insiders do. We provide information to both sides. But as far as I knew, I was the only Insider at the cavern.
“Besides Thane,” I said out loud.
Saffediene didn’t miss a beat. “I suspect him too,” she said. “Funny how Hightower shows up at our hideout within days of Thane’s arrival, after we’ve been safe there for months.”
She hadn’t been there for months, but Pace and a small contingency had. And no one had been the wiser—not even me. At least until Thane had brought me outside the barrier a couple of months ago. We’d been sneaking tech and med supplies to the safe house during our “training sessions.”
“Do you think Director Hightower put a tracker on him?” I asked. “Why didn’t we check that?”
“Pace checked when we returned, remember? Thane was clean.”
In my concern for Jag, I’d zoned out most of what had happened after we’d returned. “Okay, so there’s me, and there’s Thane,” I said, ravenous to know who’d told the Director about our hideout.
“I used to live in Freedom,” she said. “And Raine. And Gunn. Do they have special implants? Ways to track them?”
“I’m sure Raine does,” I said. “She’s the Director’s daughter.”
“Vi was probably marked in some special way too,” she said. “Hightower went to great lengths to retrieve her.”
I shuddered at the casual way Saffediene said “retrieve her” like Vi was a possession that could be lost and found. Saffediene had grown up that way, but still. Thinking freely for almost a year should’ve humanized her vocabulary.
Part of me liked that she didn’t mince words though. She moved her board closer to mine. “Do you think Vi is carrying something unknowingly?”