“You know, Reapers has a better ring to it,” Sammy says. “Much more threatening and ominous. Frank really missed the mark naming his army.”
For some reason, this is the comment that sets me off. “Is it impossible for you to be serious? Ever?”
“Me?” he says, looking both innocent and furious at once. “You’re the one who got us into this mess.”
“This is not my fault.”
“Oh, really? Funny, seeing as you’re the one in charge.”
“I didn’t ask to be!” I snap back.
“So man up or let someone else take over!”
“Fine! You want me to start dishing out orders? Here’s one: Quit it with the endless sarcasm!”
We have gotten very close in the shouting. I realize for the first time that Sammy is slightly taller and I have to look up at him. I don’t like it.
“I’ll be serious, Gray,” he says slowly, “soon as you stop dragging Emma around like a rag doll.”
“What, exactly, does that mean?”
“It means all she does is talk about you. That she’s torn up about everything and yet you’re still stringing her on, acting like she has a chance when it’s perfectly obvious where your mind’s at. Why don’t you sleep with Nox and get it over with? Break Emma’s heart so she can move on already!”
I shove him as hard as I can. He throws a punch that I barely manage to dodge and before I get a chance to throw one back, Jackson launches himself between us.
“God, you and Nox deserve each other,” Sammy spits over the Forgery’s shoulder. “You’re both selfish, bitter, and completely crazy.”
I lunge at him, but Jackson holds me at bay.
“Are we actually doing this?” Clipper says. “This is a really dumb thing to be fighting about right now.”
I quit straining against Jackson, drop my arms to my side. Clipper is right. We can’t be fighting now. Not about this, not about anything. If we are not united, there is no way we will get out of this mess.
I wipe my palm on my shirt and offer it to Sammy even though I still feel like clocking him. “Same team?”
He stares at my outstretched hand, and finally takes it. “For now.”
Clipper looks nervously at the door and all I want is for him to trust me, but I don’t know how to do this leader thing. I need my father here. Or Blaine. They’d probably say something inspirational, or at the very least, reassuring.
“I’ll crack Titus,” I announce, trying to sound sure of myself. “I don’t know how, but I’ll get him to believe our story. I just need a few days.”
“What if he decides something else first?” Clipper asks, his face pale with worry.
“Like what?”
“He thinks we’re with the Order, that we are the same murderers that killed his people. You really think he’s going to keep us alive long enough to come around? Untie us? Let us start searching this place for its power source?”
I knock on the door, letting Bruno and Kaz know we are done.
“Well?” Clipper says, but I don’t answer him.
There are hundreds of survivors in Burg after all. We’re standing in a hallway with them, waiting in a line that twists out of view beyond a corner.
A girl who can’t be much older than I am is just ahead of us. She has her hand on the shoulder of a small boy of three or four. Resting on her hip is an infant and, by the looks of her bulging stomach, she has another on the way. Her skin is dark—not as dark as Aiden’s, but it has an almost tanned quality to it, as though she spends her days in the sun. It’s her eyes that give away the truth, though: bloodshot and squinting, downturned to avoid the glare of torches that line the hallway. Her hair hangs in clumps like Titus’s.
“What are we waiting for?” I ask her.
She pulls her son to her side, as if I might harm him by breathing on him. “Yer the Reapers that came durin’ the night,” she says. “The ones they’re keepin’ in the boiler room.”
Bruno shoves the girl’s shoulder. “They ain’t got no need to know where we’re keepin’ ’em.”
“What’s a boiler room?” I ask, but the girl is already turning away from me. I know it’s not even worth trying Bruno.
“It’s a mechanical room,” Sammy explains. “Full of water heaters, pumps, generators. It probably powered this place once.”
There is a shift in the hallway before I can thank him. The line quiets, and then: a humming. Deep and cavernous. Unearthly. There’s no variation to the drone, no change in pitch, but I feel it. In my bones, on my skin. It’s like the world vibrates slightly under its power.
The line starts to move, shuffling forward.
“That almost sounded like a furnace kicking on,” Clipper says. “A big one.”
The young boy ahead, who still stands with his mother’s hand on his shoulders, twists toward us. “It’s the Tollin’,” he says.
Sammy looks baffled. “Tolling?”
“E’ery mornin’, e’ery night,” Bruno explains. “It means food.”
When I was younger, Ma sometimes rang a bell to tell Blaine and me that it was dinnertime. We’d be off in the livestock fields, or goofing around on the Council stairs, and we could always hear it ringing. It had an unmistakable tone, and carried more clearly than her voice ever could. We’d come running home, feet flying and bellies growling.
But this noise is not a bell. It sounds unnatural, like an endless exhale from a sleeping giant.
“Where’s it coming from?” I ask.
“The Room of Whistles and Whirs,” the young boy says.
I laugh lightly, expecting the mother to acknowledge her son’s creativity, but she only turns and says, “It’s true. That room ne’er sleeps. There’re always noises behind the door. Soft whirring noises, the purr of a monster.” Her baby starts to cry and she bounces him on her hip. “Who knows what’s in there, though. It can’t be opened, that door. Ne’er has.”
“You base your entire eating schedule around a noise that comes from a room you’ve never actually entered?”
The girl’s eyes bulge. “Don’t go insultin’ the Room of Whistles and Whirs. It’ll hear. It’ll know.”
Sammy rolls his eyes. As the line starts moving he leans toward me and whispers, “We are so screwed.”
I cringe, knowing he’s right—that Fallyn’s original assumptions were right, too. We have hiked across all of AmEast for a mission that may be doomed. Even if we do manage to escape our bindings long enough to find a way to repower the town and see to the cameras, the survivors here won’t join our fight. They won’t leave, either, so long as Titus is in charge, and there is no way Burg can become a secondary Rebel base without their cooperation.
Coming here was always a risk, but I never expected to be in this deep, this trapped. I get a sinking feeling in my stomach when I realize that in the course of one day, our mission has completely changed.
It is no longer a rescue mission; it is a breakout. For us.
We need to escape Burg.
TWENTY-FOUR
BREAKFAST IS TWO STRIPS OF dried meat and a small crust of bread, and it is not enough to quiet my grumbling stomach. We are brought back to the boiler room as the line disbands, Burg citizens scattering as soon as they retrieve their food. Bruno has nearly finished securing us when Kaz calls in.
“Titus wants to see the young one again.”
“If he hurts him—”
“Ya’ll what?” Bruno snaps at me. “Hit him? Kill him? Spit in his eye? Yer threats don’t mean nothin’ unless ya can free yerself from those ropes, Reaper.”
He yanks Clipper to his feet and leaves, shutting us in with the darkness.