“What?” Hagen strode over to meet him with me close on her heels.
“They have assault rifles!” Sid said. “When I wouldn’t open the gate, they shot off the lock and drove in. Drove! They wouldn’t answer my questions. And they nabbed Rafe.”
“Rafe?” I echoed.
“Yeah. Out on the square.” Sid dabbed his brow with a dirty handkerchief. “He gave them a good run, but they got him.”
I turned to Hagen. “I thought line guards weren’t allowed to cross the bridge.”
“They aren’t,” she said, her jaw tight.
I still couldn’t fathom it. “They broke quarantine just to come after Rafe?”
“No, missy.” Sid cast his piggy eyes on me. “They came for you.”
16
Sid smirked at me, but Hagen snapped, “The line patrol just arrested the one guy who knows something about the feral that’s terrorizing this compound. Exactly how is that funny?”
Sid wiped the amusement from his porcine face. “They came in asking if I’d seen a girl with long brown hair, wearing clothes like theirs.” He pointed at my camouflage pants.
An engine roared in the square. Those still inside the station crowded at the window for a look.
“Lane!” Rafe’s voice didn’t sound upset. If anything his tone carried a hint of triumph. “Come on out!”
Hagen and I hurried to the door, but when she threw it open, I hung back. “What if they’ve come to arrest me for breaking quarantine? The whole patrol saw me cross the bridge.”
“People have done a lot worse on Arsenal Island and escaped across the bridge, but no guards ever came after them,” Hagen assured me. “Seems to me that someone high up is bending the law for you. Someone with a whole lot of clout — like that big wheel you mentioned.”
Not a chance. Spurling wouldn’t risk her reputation for me. She’d said as much to my face.
“Come on, Lane,” Rafe shouted. “They just want to talk to you. Everything’s okay.”
Brows raised, Hagen held open the door. Still, I hesitated. Rafe had gotten me out of the chimpacabra warren alive, escorted me to Moline, and offered to do the fetch on my father’s behalf. Discounting the supply closet incident and his prejudice against manimals, he deserved my trust. So why was I feeling so wary?
“Would you get your butt out here?” he hollered.
Inhaling deeply, I took the machete from my bag and stepped outside to find Rafe lounging in the back of an open-top jeep. Two line guards stood beside the vehicle, dressed in carbon-gray body armor. They had their assault rifles drawn and at the ready. The pimple-faced, pale-skinned male guard gaped at the furry vendor, while the young black woman scanned the square, her gaze always coming back to Rafe. They seemed very jumpy, considering the fact that other than the vendor, there weren’t any manimals on the square.
“What is that thing?” I heard the male guard mutter under his breath.
Rafe, on the other hand, seemed completely relaxed, as if it were a day at the park. He waved me over and introduced the guards as Fairfax and Bear Lake. “She goes by Bearly, as in barely able to resist me,” he added, giving her a smile but getting no reaction from her. Her mouth was drawn down at the corners. “This is Lane,” he added. Neither guard so much as glanced my way. They were distracted, watching for the ambush they apparently expected.
Rafe rose in the back of the jeep, which required dragging a handcuff up the vehicle’s steel-tube frame. The other cuff was on his wrist. “She’s all yours,” he called to someone behind me.
I spun to see Everson by the door. How had I walked past six-foot-plus of stone-faced line guard and not noticed him?
“Hey,” Everson said. His eyes ran over me, catching with surprise on the machete in my hand. I could feel my face flush. I wondered how messed up I looked compared to the last time we’d seen each other. After all, since then, I’d met a tiger-man and barely escaped a chimpacabra. My fatigues were caked with dirt. My face had to be too. I squashed the impulse to smooth my hair.
“I’m sorry about the Lull,” I said.
He smiled faintly. “You owed me. Are you okay?”
I nodded and shifted, unsure of what to say. I’d forgotten how deep his voice was. “Please don’t arrest me. I know I shouldn’t have come, but —”
“Arrest you?” he interrupted, coming toward me, his gun pointed at the ground. “Lane, I came to help you.”
My heart picked up tempo. There was nothing he could do, but still, he was the first person to offer without sounding resentful.
“Quit acting noble,” Rafe said from the back of the jeep. “You’re just here ’cause she’s hot.”
In any other situation, I would have warmed to hear that adjective applied to me, but out of his mouth, it was just a way to slam Everson, who shot Rafe a death threat of a look. Rafe just chuckled.
“I don’t understand.” I touched Everson’s arm and he returned his gaze to me. “How did you get permission to come here?”
“Blackmail,” he said like it was no big deal.
“What?”
“You gave me the idea,” he said, lowering his voice. “I told Captain Hyrax that if he didn’t approve me for an immediate reconnaissance mission to Moline, I’d be forced to file a report about the unauthorized ‘friends’ he has flown over the wall.”
Everson’s determination to help me was flattering and dashing and kind, but still my stomach dropped. “The captain will make your life awful after this.”
“I’m not worried,” he said. And for some reason, he wasn’t. I could feel the excitement coming off him in waves. At least somebody was happy to be here. “Did you give Mack the letter?” he asked.
I felt my brief pleasure at seeing him drain away. “My dad isn’t here.”
“Okay, you got her,” Fairfax called to Everson. “Let’s get out of here before that pig thing comes back.” He glanced around the square and shuddered, which sent a flash of anger through me.
As if I had the right to judge him. I was horrified too when I first laid eyes on Sid. “It’s okay. Sid’s not feral. None of them are.” Fairfax didn’t seem to hear me — or else he didn’t think I was a reliable source.
“Aren’t you all forgetting something?” Rafe jangled his handcuff. “I held up my end.”
I gasped as I realized what he meant. “You lying scumbag.” I strode to the jeep. “‘Come on out. Everything’s okay?’ You got me outside in exchange for your freedom.”
“I did it for you,” he said without a drop of irony. “You’ll be safer on Arsenal.”
Everson joined me by the jeep. “She’ll be safer away from you.”
“Whatever you want to tell yourself, silky, but we had a deal.”
“Like the deal where you were going to let her go if I put down my gun?”
“That wasn’t a deal,” Rafe protested.
“Okay,” Everson agreed. “I’m just reneging then.”
“No way! You can’t. You’re the good guy.”
“I’m in your territory,” Everson said dryly. “I figured I’d play by your rules.”
“Come on!” Rafe dropped back into the seat.
“Cruz, dump her in the jeep, and —” Fairfax jerked up his rifle and aimed it at the station. Bearly did the same, and I turned to see a horde of compound residents — human and manimal — pushing out the door, their weapons drawn. Hagen led them onto the square with Sid at her elbow.
“Don’t come any closer!” Fairfax shouted.
I swore I could taste the adrenaline radiating off all three guards. “It’s okay, they’re not feral,” I said again.
Everson’s storm-cloud eyes were practically flashing heat lightning. “Look at them,” he whispered, sounding agitated. “There are so many. They’re so mutated.” He glanced back at Rafe. “How long have they been living like this?”