When I reach the edge of the city, I leap. I join the pressing crowd, a wave of people surging as one. The Cam soars into the sky, out of reach. But when I look up, it’s still following.
She won’t be out in the open, the Commander’s voice says in my head.
“You can’t just pop in when you feel like it,” I growl. “If you expect me to concentrate, and do this job right, get out of my head.”
The crowd moves me toward the Rations Hall. I long for the old days, working side by side with Orion. How different life would have been, if I hadn’t met Zephyr. If I’d gone on, working day in and out, not knowing that the entire time, she was on my team. Maybe she would have recruited me eventually. Maybe we would have had more time to plan and do things right from the start.
I duck right, head for the alley, stepping over a dead body.
I look behind the Dumpster. There is a sleeping person, but it isn’t my mother.
You’re wasting time. Do you think I’m a fool?
“Give me access to the Rations Hall,” I say.
I can almost hear him sigh.
Then the door across from me pops open, and I rush inside.
I check behind the crates, look inside the empty ones.
I see faces pressed up against the glass barrier. Wards and other citizens, starved and desperate. A fight breaks out, and Initiative guards end it with a bullet to a woman’s brain. Blood splatters against the glass, bright crimson.
There is nothing in this building, Miss Woodson. Move on.
“Get out of my head!” I growl.
I leave through the alleyway and cross the street, head for the beach. I press through hundreds, thousands of people. Everyone pushes and shoves. Someone knocks my Regulator, and pain radiates through my body like shards of ice.
I gasp. I feel like I can’t breathe, so I push harder, then almost tumble into the alley. I run, leap over another body that is missing an arm.
The second I hit the jungle floor I’m sprinting. My body takes over, needing to run, to move. And being lost in nature makes me feel, for a second, that I am just heading back home.
The houseboat will still be there.
Peri will be waiting on deck, her curls dancing in the wind.
Koi will be carving on a slab of wood, and my father will train me before the Dark Time comes.
I hear the roar of the ocean. I stop on the edge of the trees, see the waves crashing onshore. The ocean is angry today. The shipwrecked boats dip and dive, tossed about by the current.
I have a flash of a memory. Smoke trailing to the sky. The last bits of my houseboat, sinking beneath the waves.
Zephyr’s hand, touching my arm as I wake up. Me throwing his body to the sand, threatening to kill him if he comes near me again.
How badly I want his touch now. How badly I want his soft words, and his foolish belief that things will always be okay.
I sit down in the sand.
The Commander speaks to me, but I interrupt him. I have a small ounce of power, and I am going to use it.
“My mother won’t come to me here,” I say. “She’ll come to me in a place that matters.”
And that’s when I realize it. Our first home. The place we were last happy, a real family.
“I need paint,” I say. “Bring me paint, by the old apartment complex on Main.”
As you wish, the Commander says.
I have never heard so much darkness in a single man’s voice.
CHAPTER 21
ZEPHYR
I hate the Resistance Cave.
I stand at its entrance with Rhone, Dex, and Sparrow, preparing myself for the argument that I know is soon to come.
The Cave is shaped like a dome, an arching ceiling with water dripping down the concrete walls. It’s hidden under the Shallows, a patchwork of tunnels and concrete caverns that are perfect for hiding out.
“This isn’t going to work, Zero,” Rhone says beside me.
I swallow. “It has to work.”
We step into the Cave as a team.
Tunnels jut off into different areas, leading to places all over the Shallows. People are scattered about. Some of them sit by a crackling fire. Others practice fighting.
I see some new faces, some old.
The last time I was in the Resistance Cave, I was hoping for help that I knew Orion wouldn’t be happy to give.
The time before that, I was with Meadow.
Memories rush for me and grab ahold. Meadow teaching me how to fight, how to harness the power of my training from when I was only a child.
Talan is here, glowing with life, making jokes that make me laugh until I feel like I can’t breathe. Sketch paints our faces before we head into the Leech Headquarters to shut down the Motherboard. Kill the Protector, and end the system for good.
Three weeks ago, we were a family. An army.
Now, we’re broken, scattered across the Shallows. Some of us are dead.
Some of us might as well be.
And some of us . . .
“Zero!” a voice shouts from across the Cave. I’d recognize it anywhere, because I’ve hated its owner since the very first time I saw her. Sparrow tenses beside me, though I don’t know why.
“Orion,” I say. The Resistance Leader, who once posed as a Leech Officer. She’s the reason we got into this whole mess in the first place.
I hate her.
I also need her.
She’s seated by the fire. Her bald head, covered in tattoos now, shines an eerie gray in the dim light. She waves us over.
Dex squeals and sprints past me to join the other Resistance kids as they chase a rat like it’s a toy.
“I’m telling you, Zero, this is a no-go,” Rhone warns.
“I’ve heard enough,” I say. “We’re out of options.”
We cross the Cave with Sparrow in tow, and I get ready to beg for the cause.
CHAPTER 22
MEADOW
I stand on the steps of my old apartment building, a can of bloodred paint at my feet. This is the last place where my family was happy together. This is the last place in the Shallows that might still hold a special place in my mother’s heart.
If I am right.
And I could be horribly wrong.
The windows of the building are boarded up. There are plenty of them that I can paint a message on, large enough for my mother to see.
I dip my fingers into the paint and lose myself to the motion.
I start on the far left windows, the first-floor ones that I can reach.
And I spell out the time, and I spell out her name, in large letters, one on each window. My heart cracks a little more with each letter, but finally, I step back and admire my work. The wet paint drips down the sides of the old brick, and the moonlight illuminates it. Like blood.
6 a.m.
For Peri.
If somewhere, deep down in my mother’s heart, she still feels for us, and somehow, a part of it still beats for her family, when she sees the message . . .
She will come.