“Lemme help,” Maude says, springing up from the bed. She roots around in her hair and hands Song a pin. He straightens it out and sticks into the lock. We all watch and wait, and after a few minutes the lock clicks.
But Song isn’t the one who’s opened it. Wren, the girl we met at dinner with the icy eyes and headscarf, stands in the doorway. She’s carrying a heavy load of red fabric over her arm.
“I come bearing gifts,” she says, stepping into the cabin and throwing the folds of fabric onto my bunk. We gather around. She lifts up one and shakes open a long, red robe with snaps down the front. “For the ceremony. One size fits all.” She offers one to each of us. Maude and Bruce watch carefully. We haven’t told them about the Pairing Ceremony.
“Am I finally being made a dame? If so, I’d like to request a transfer to the royal chambers and a servant to do my gardening for me,” Maude says. “Also, I need a foot rub.”
Wren looks down at Maude’s knotted feet, frowns, and passes her a robe. “For you,” she says.
Maude beams and slips the robe straight over her head. Silas and I share a glance. If they’ve been invited, then it can’t just be about breeding. Silas’s face relaxes a fraction, and he holds his robe out at arm’s length to look at it.
“Did Maks and Quinn find anyone?” I ask Wren.
“Don’t think so,” she says. “All dead apparently. Murdered or something.”
“Even the girl? Even Bea?” Maude asks. Wren shrugs unsympathetically. I bite down hard and clench my jaw. Bea murdered? After everything she endured?
I don’t believe it.
“And where’s Quinn now?” Silas asks.
“He’s been taken to the lockup.”
“Lockup?” Silas pushes.
“Yep,” Wren says, and with no further explanation goes to the door. “I finally got a robe today, too. Can’t wait to meet my other.” She beams, showing her yellow teeth, pulls the door closed behind her, and locks it.
“Ugly-looking bitch,” Maude croaks, clutching for a joke. “I’m ancient. At least I got an excuse.” She returns to her bunk and flops down.
“We should talk about it, Maude,” I say.
“About what? I ain’t got nothing to say,” she whispers.
Bruce sits next to Maude and kisses the side of her head. “Maddie?”
“Jazz was a pain in the butt, but she was just a kid,” Dorian says, sounding more like his old self. He folds up his robe. “How many more of us need to die?” He’s speaking to himself, but we all nod.
“And now Quinn’s been imprisoned,” Silas says.
“Because Jazz couldn’t be found, and Vanya needs someone to blame,” I say.
“We have to speak to him. We have to find out what happened,” Silas says.
Song returns to the door. He tries again to pick the lock with the hairpin. When he can’t, he slumps on the floor. “It’s useless,” he says.
Maude is on her back. She points upward. “Go through the roof,” she says, and we all look up to see what she’s pointing at: the skylight.
30
BEA
Ronan and I are in a room on the second floor of an old hotel not far from the station. The floorboards creak, and the walls are ready to fall in on themselves. Ronan uses a finger and thumb to make an opening in the crooked blinds. “What can be taking him so long?” he wonders.
He sits next to me on the bed and sinks into it. We aren’t using a flashlight in case an opportunistic drifter sees the light, but even in the gloom, I can make out the wrinkles in Ronan’s brow.
It’s freezing again and I can’t stop trembling or thinking about Quinn. I curl up to keep warm. “How will they escape from Sequoia, if it’s so terrible there?” I say. “And what makes Quinn think they can just stroll back into the pod to help?”
I wish I’d tried harder to persuade him to stay. I just watched him leave. And he never mentioned Maude. Does that mean she never made it to Sequoia?
Ronan rubs his eyes. “I don’t know, Bea. But what I do know is that Jude asked for Quinn, and what I’m giving him is a sick kid and his son’s outlawed girlfriend. Let’s concentrate on winning him over, and then worry about Quinn, okay?”
He’s right: If I’m going to be any use to Ronan, and if my parents’ deaths are to mean anything, I have to focus on what we’re about to do. “We just tell the truth: Quinn was here and then he left. Jude Caffrey knows what Quinn and I mean to each other, and he’ll know I wouldn’t return to the pod if Quinn wasn’t following.”
“You seem very confident,” Ronan says. He stands up and peers through the blinds again.
“I’m not,” I say. I’m terrified of returning to the place where my parents were killed and attempting to collude with a man responsible for countless deaths at The Grove.
But if I want to stop others from spending their whole lives under the Ministry’s iron thumb, I only have one choice—I have to throw my shoulders back and fight.
31
ALINA
Song gives me a leg up, but when I push on the hatch it doesn’t budge. “There’s a latch,” Song says.
I pull it to the left and the piston lets out a gentle puff. Then I haul myself up onto the roof and sit low in case a patrolling guard spots me. Down in the cabin, Song and Bruce are helping Silas. His two hands appear at either side of the opening and then he’s pulling himself up through it. He sits on the opposite side of the hatch. “It might not be true. About Bea,” he whispers into the night.
My stomach heaves. “I think it is.”
“Well, let’s wait until we talk to Quinn,” he says. “We can’t know that anything these people say is true.”
I don’t want to dwell on it. What’s the point? What does thinking ever change? I crawl to the edge of the roof and turn onto my belly. I dangle a moment before letting go and land awkwardly. No floodlight is activated, and I crouch in the stillness. Silas lands next to me with a thud seconds later.
We stay hunched and sneak behind the cabins. As clouds cover the moon, we’re bathed in complete darkness, and I feel Silas hold on to the tail of my jacket to make sure he doesn’t lose me. When we reach the last cabin, and our eyes have fully adjusted, we stop. The annex is to our right, in front of the main house, the other outbuildings to our left. Between the outbuildings and us is an expanse of open land, and if it’s protected by motion sensors, we’ll be discovered.
The clouds shift, and the moon dispenses a little light. Silas looks quickly from left to right. “That must be the lockup. Narrow windows,” he says, pointing to a squat building in the distance. He’s about to speak again when we hear low voices. We flatten ourselves against the wall as Vanya and Maks come into view. I breathe as slowly and quietly as I can.
“I’m sorry about your daughter,” Maks says.
“She was dead to me a long time ago,” Vanya responds.
“Well, maybe she isn’t. I don’t trust any of them,” he says. “They’re too clever.”
Vanya smiles. “So what? How many brainy traitors have we buried?”
They are tittering when the area erupts in light. I pull my face around the corner and instinctively take Silas’s hand. He puts a finger to the blowoff valve of my facemask. Like he has to warn me to be quiet.
“What are those idiots doing?” Vanya says. “Go and shut down the floodlights.” Maks gallops away.
“It’s Vanya,” a new voice says.
“What are you playing at? What if someone sees you?” Vanya hisses, and the floodlights dim to nothing. I poke my face around the corner. Silas stands over me and does the same. In Maks’s place is a pair of men carrying a long object wrapped in plastic. They put down their load and stand panting.