“What’s in it for us?” Sketch calls out. I want to tell her to stop talking.
I want to throw my dagger at the strange men, then turn and run, because no one is safe, and they walk with a purpose and strength that can only mean one thing.
This is their territory. And they want us to know it.
“You come with us, dark one”—the other, taller man nods at Sketch—“and you live.”
His friend smiles. Black teeth. Some of them are missing. It reminds me of my mother.
I’m about to throw my dagger, tell Sketch and Zephyr to run. But then the man says something that stops me.
“Your faces. You have the Mark.”
I reach up, my fingers skimming my Catalogue Number.
“Yessss.” He nods, his voice as slithering as a snake’s. “We know about your kind.”
“You’ve seen more of us?” I ask, wasting time. Trying to think of a way out.
The man whirls his weapon, and I know in an instant that he could kill us from where he stands, if he wanted to. And his eyes say that he does. “The train runs along the tracks. Once every few months. But you didn’t come on that train, now did you? No, if you had, you’d already be dead. They shoot them. Soon as they leave the walls. No one escapes the guns.”
I have always wondered what happens to those people on the other train, on the Evaluation day. The train that leaves the Shallows behind, packed with citizens.
Now I know.
The man grins again, but it isn’t a welcoming grin. It sets my bones on fire.
“How did you escape? We want inside the walls.”
Sketch barks out a laugh behind me. “Trust me, ChumHead, you don’t want inside those walls.”
“You’re new here,” he says. “You don’t know what you’re facing.”
What could be worse than the Shallows?
Nothing, my gut tells me. Nothing at all.
But his eyes are hungry. He does want inside the Perimeter. Maybe he thinks safety is on the other side. He doesn’t know the Shallows is full of darkness and death.
He shrugs. “I’ll offer you a choice, right now. You either tell us how to get inside of those walls . . . or you come with us.”
“We don’t answer to anyone but ourselves,” I say, twirling my dagger, and in this moment, in the face of fear, I find my strength. “There are three of us, and two of you.”
“You counted wrong.” The man’s eyes fall on to mine, and he laughs, just as three more men emerge from the tree line.
They have rifles.
“We can run,” Zephyr says with a gasp, beside me.
I take a deep breath. “They’ll shoot us, Zephyr. You can’t outrun a bullet. Our best option is to wait. Then take them out at close range.”
“This is their land,” Sketch says. “Not ours.”
I frown. We are at the disadvantage, even if we do run. Others could come.
“We’ll go with them,” I say, clutching my dagger tighter. “Wait for me to move first.”
I take the lead, walking forward into what I pray is not our first and last mistake.
CHAPTER 42
ZEPHYR
The men take us across the beach.
Two in front, three in back.
The whole time, I keep waiting for Meadow to use her father’s psycho training on them, use her dagger to break us out of this. But she walks with her eyes straight ahead, her face totally calm. It scares the crap out of me, seeing her this way.
We reach the rocks, scramble up to the top and peer down. I gasp when I see the people on the other side.
Men, women, a few kids. About twenty people in total, and they all look well fed enough. They sit around a fire, laughing. A few boys wrestle in the back of the crowd, and two older women are stitching clothing. It looks strangely normal. Like a family.
I smile sideways at Meadow. “Maybe this won’t be so bad,” I whisper.
But she shakes her head, so subtle I almost don’t catch it. “The smoke,” she says, her eyes set in slits as she stares at the bonfire. “It’s black.”
“Black?”
“It shouldn’t be so dark,” she whispers.
I don’t get what she’s talking about, and I don’t have time to ask, because the men prod us with their weapons, and we start the climb down the other side of the rocks.
Everyone cheers when they see us. It’s like some weird welcoming committee. Two little kids run up to us—a boy and a girl—both small like Dex, and for a second the pain of missing her hits me in the gut. I wonder what happened to her, when I left. I wonder if Rhone took control, or if the Leeches regained their power.
The kids touch our foreheads, stare at our Catalogue Numbers.
There’s a woman who comes out of the crowd. Her dark hair almost reaches her toes, and as she walks forward, everyone stops. They bow at her feet.
Meadow and Sketch and I stand in front of her like ChumHeads. Not knowing what the hell we’re supposed to do.
“I am Medin,” the woman says. Her voice is silkier than the men who brought us here. She lifts a hand, touches my forehead. “Welcome to my family.”
I want to flinch away from her for some reason. But I sit still as she strokes my Catalogue Number.
“A Marked one,” she says. She looks at me like I’m holy, her eyes wide. “How did you cross the wall?”
I look sideways at Meadow and Sketch. “We’re looking for the fastest way to the north,” I say. “Do you know how to get there?”
“Maybe.” Medin smiles, then touches my forehead again. Her fingernails are sharp, and for a second, there’s a pinch of pain. “But you must earn the answer. How did you cross the wall?”
“We . . .”
She pulls her thumb away. A drop of my blood sits on her skin, bright red in the sunlight. She lifts it to her mouth, and my stomach whirls.
She licks my blood.
That’s when I realize that her eyes are tinged with red.
And as she signals for all the people to come closer, I notice that their eyes, too, are red. Their hands shake. Some of them twitch.
“Black smoke,” Meadow says. “I remember the story now. Koi told it to me, when I was little, to scare me . . .” Then her gray eyes go wide, and she flips her dagger out, holds it in front of her. “They’re cannibals.”
“What the hell is that?” Sketch asks.
“Cannibals,” Meadow says again. “They eat . . . people.”
“Get them!” Medin hisses to the crowd. “Get the Marked ones!”
The group screams, hands reaching. They rush toward us, too many of them to beat. I’m pulled away from Meadow and Sketch. I can hear Meadow’s scream as she lashes out with her dagger.
She takes out two people with her hands, then lunges for Medin, but the crowd surges around the woman. It takes three men to hold Meadow back. She uses her Regulator to smash one’s nose in, but others take his place.
Sketch curses as they tackle her, and soon the three of us are lying facedown, side by side in the sand with our hands and feet tied up.
“Well, we’re fluxed,” I hear Sketch breathe beside me.
It’s such an obvious, stupid thing to say that I laugh.
Meadow laughs, too, and Sketch joins in, and it feels good, the three of us in this together.
But it also really sucks.
Because we’re about to be eaten.