I HANG FROM THE STRUCTURE, dangling a moment before finally letting go.
For the brief slice of time that I’m in free fall, I imagine I’m returning to Claysoot, that when my feet hit the ground I’ll find clay earth beneath them and a familiar hunting trailhead nearby. But inside this Wall, the land is as barren as its Outer Ring. Any trees that grow are saplings, rare and spread out over the snow-covered ground. I think I can make out the silhouettes of buildings in the distance, but the steady snowfall prevents me from being certain.
There is a soft thud and Bree is beside me. Clipper comes next, followed by Jackson and finally, Sammy. I move to rebind Jackson’s arms, and he stumbles away from me, resting a hand on the Wall for support.
“I feel sick,” he says.
I’m positive it’s part of an act so that he can run for it, escape the fate we have planned for him, but then he loses his dinner in the snow.
“Come on,” I say, tugging him.
He looks at the Wall and jerks his head to the side as though dodging a punch, then pinches the bridge of his nose and starts muttering.
“What’s with him?” Bree hisses.
“Hey, pull it together.” I shake Jackson and his eyes fly open.
“We can’t go in,” he says. “It’s bad. This place is bad.”
He keeps muttering, twitching. Clipper looks absolutely terrified, and I can’t have the Forgery putting on a show over nothing, scaring the wits out of my team.
“Hey!” I slap at his shoulder. “Jackson!”
He freezes. “You said my name.”
“If I knew it would make you easier to control, I would have stopped calling you Forgery a long time ago. I’m retying your arms and if you can’t stay quiet, I have no problem breaking your nose again before we find a place to strand you. You want to starve to death with a broken nose, or just starve?”
He offers me his wrists. “I think . . . I need . . .” His head falls into his chest and he cringes again, like he’s experiencing a jolt of pain. “I don’t know anymore. I don’t know anything.”
“Let’s go,” I say to the others, startled at what a good actor Jackson’s becoming. “He’ll be fine.”
Sammy grabs Jackson by the elbow to escort him. “A Forgery wasn’t enough. We had to land one having a nervous breakdown.”
Bree snaps at him to be quiet and we fall into a steady march. It’s difficult to see through the flurrying snow, but I can make out barren crop fields and livestock corrals as we head into town.
Group A was the most well stocked of the test groups, supplied with electricity and running water until Frank cut them off. I’ve known this since the day I read his documentation of the project, but I never truly comprehended those living conditions until now, as we step into the town itself. How this group managed to revolt and attack one another, nearly dying out when they had so many resources at their disposal, is beyond me. Building after building stand pressed together, rooflines caved in. Some are mere skeletons, their frames exposed. Others have intact walls but look moments away from collapsing. Even given the deterioration, it is obvious they were once immaculate. And modern.
I squint, peering through the shattered windows of a structure to my right. School desks sit inside, some tipped over. The next building is a hospital, far more advanced than the Clinic Emma and her mother manned. Here, the beds are on wheels and the cabinets lining the walls are heavy-duty encasements with locks. Contents have been pulled from them and left scattered about the floor: rusted scissors, broken equipment, small bottles of medicine that rock in the wind.
Jackson is still muttering as we approach a wooden platform. A T-shaped formation rises from its base, and a looped rope dangles from the highest point. I think it must be like our Council Bell—a device somehow used to call meetings to order—until Sammy whispers, “Gallows.” Then he reenacts pulling one of the ropes over his head and tightening it about his neck. He cocks his head to the side, lets his tongue hang out of his mouth, and I understand. We give the platform a wide berth as we pass.
“Remember when you said you’d prove me wrong?” Bree whispers to me. “Well, this place doesn’t look very populated.”
“They have to be here. We saw them.”
What I don’t say is that I’m growing as worried as she is that we hiked across all of AmEast for nothing. I didn’t expect survivors to come pouring into the streets to greet us, but we haven’t seen a single sign of life. The possibility that Group A killed one another off is seeming more and more probable.
But then . . .
“There!”
A streak of light moves through one of the buildings ahead. It is faint, blotted out by the snowfall. Bree and I break into a run. Sammy shouts something about staying with the Forgery, and we don’t slow. I burst into the building, Bree on my heels. Two deer carcasses hang from the ceiling and the air is metallic with the scent of blood. The first sign of people. Of survivors.
“Hello?” Bree calls out.
We move around a table laden with cleavers and mallets. Floorboards creak on the other side of the room. I have an arrow ready and Bree’s got the handgun pointed into the darkness. I hope whoever is in here can’t see as well as we can with our night vision. I doubt we look very approachable.
“Hello?” Bree tries again.
Footsteps, and then a figure carrying a torch, rendered white by my goggles.
It sprints between the two carcasses and out a side door. Bree and I follow, darting across an alley and into another building. We enter a wide room—a barn, maybe—empty except for wooden crates and a couple of shovels.
Weapons ready, Bree and I move into the center of the room. The torch, and the figure carrying it, have disappeared.
An outburst from the streets reaches us: Clipper screaming for help; Sammy shouting.
Jackson. We never should have left the others alone with him. The Forgery’s hysterics were an act, just as I suspected. He’s probably making a run for it right now.
But before I can move, the floor comes to life beneath me, folding in on itself. Bree and I glance at each other and then we are falling.
I hit bottom and see white. Heat shoots through my back. I gasp for air, over and over, and finally it returns to my lungs. A stranger leaps from above and the trapdoor through which Bree and I fell is pulled shut.
The stranger holds the torch at arm’s length, blinking rapidly, as though its brilliance hurts his eyes. I pull off the night-vision goggles to see him properly. He’s not much older than I am, with wild hair that clumps together in matted, shoulder-length sections, and pale—almost translucent—skin. Something dark and tarlike is smeared across most of his face as a sort of nighttime camouflage. He leans forward and flashes a blade before me.
“It ’pears we have guests,” he says.
It is only then, as additional torches are lit, that I notice the half dozen bodies waiting along the edges of the room. The group is entirely male, their clothing a haphazard blend of materials—furs patched with cotton and wool and leather. They crouch like animals near the walls—knees bony, palms against the floor—and blink their bloodshot eyes.
A single word comes to mind, a word Fallyn spoke when she laughed at our mission plans.
Savages.
And they have us surrounded.
TWENTY-ONE
I SCRAMBLE BACKWARD, MY SHOULDERS pressing into Bree’s. The boy lays the flat edge of his blade beneath my chin and presses upward, forcing me to look at him.
“I wouldn’t be makin’ fast moves.” His words come out strung together, bleeding into one another as he disregards consonants. “I might think yer comin’ after me. Be forced to slit yer throat.”