“At ease,” the General says. The soldiers relax. “I’d like to take my visitors to the Crow’s Nest.”
There’s a door in the wall, and the General’s men unlock it for us. It swings open with a puff of dust, and behind it, there’s a concrete staircase, leading up into darkness.
Sketch groans. “You could’ve told me before the drinking there was gonna be so many stairs.”
The General doesn’t laugh. I’m starting to think he’s a ChumHead, like his pants are too tight in all the wrong places. He moves past us, into the stairwell.
We follow.
It goes on forever.
All the levels are marked with bright red numbers, painted on the wall. When we reach another level, I’m dripping sweat. But it feels good to move. It feels good to climb, because we’re heading toward answers.
And since leaving the Shallows, I know we all have questions we want answered. Especially Meadow.
She walks behind me, and the higher we go, the harder she breathes. It’s not normal for someone who could probably outrun me ten times and only break a light sweat.
I look over my shoulder as we climb. “You okay?”
Her face is pale. Her lips are a horrible, papery white.
It’s not like her.
I think of yesterday, when her nose bled, and she dropped like a swatted fly. She won’t like this, but I stop and wait for her to catch up to me. She’s exhausted from the surgery, probably. I wrap my arm around her waist and climb by her side.
“I don’t need help,” Meadow says.
“I don’t care,” I say back.
This is the game we’ve been playing since we left the Shallows. One snappy remark after another. She’s too stubborn.
I can be stubborn, too.
I help her more by lifting some of her weight onto me. I’m practically carrying her up the stairs now.
“I said I’m fine, Zephyr.” Meadow glares at me.
I laugh because I can’t help it. “You’re acting like such a . . .”
“I know,” she says. She sighs and leans her head against my shoulder. “I know.”
We pass flight twenty. Thirty.
The whole time, the General is up ahead of us not looking back.
At one point, there’s a hole in the wall, like something was blasted through here. We scramble over rubble and keep going, until finally we reach the very last set of stairs.
It leads to a single red metal ladder that heads into the ceiling.
The General goes first, climbing on hands and feet. He shoves open a grate and disappears into cool night air.
Sketch goes after, complaining, as always.
Meadow rests heavy on my shoulder.
I help her to the ladder. She leans against it, and when she breathes, I can hear a wheeze in the back of her throat.
“Just relax here for a second,” I tell her.
“I don’t need to relax,” she says. “I can do this.” Her voice doesn’t sound convincing. She looks up at me with sad, gray eyes, the same ones I’ve been waiting to look into for so long.
She’s here now. She’s with me and she’s safe.
But she’s not the same.
“Something is happening to you,” I say. “We need to get help, Meadow.”
“I’m just tired.”
“That’s exactly it,” I say. “You don’t get tired. Not the Meadow I know.”
She shakes her head.
When she speaks, she stares into my eyes, and I’m haunted by what I see. “The Meadow you knew is dead.”
She turns, grabs on to the ladder, and climbs into the sky.
CHAPTER 53
MEADOW
We are at the top of the tallest building in the city.
And if I weren’t already out of breath, the sight would have stolen mine away.
Up so high, we can see for miles. Buildings go on, stretching into the darkness, and beyond, I can see other places.
Forests.
Dark, flat patches of land, and long expanses of road that reach on and on into nowhere, or somewhere, however you look at it.
The world is just so big. I feel as small as a seashell, as if the Outside is a wave so large it could crush me whole.
The General takes us to the edge of the building, where a woman sits, waiting.
In front of her is what looks like a long tube of metal, shining black as oil under the moonlight.
When she sees us, she stands, salutes the General. She has deep-red hair the color of blood, and on her bare shoulder, big and bold, is the same eagle tattoo that everyone else here has. A statement. For a moment, I am reminded of the Initiative’s eye tattoo, open and all-seeing. They were all marked with it, and it seems that this New Militia has marked themselves with a symbol, too.
It is strange, how things constantly remind me of home.
I wonder if I will ever truly escape my past.
No, Darling, my mother’s voice taunts me from the grave. You will never escape the Shallows, no matter how fast or how far you run. It is your destiny.
“Sasha,” the General addresses the woman, pulling me from my thoughts. She’s young, I realize, perhaps only a few years older than I am. Sasha smiles and nods with respect, and the Commander continues. “I need to show them the truth. Fire it up, will you?”
Sasha nods, then turns to the metal tube. It is like a giant lens, aimed at the sky.
“You ever seen a telescope?” she asks.
Zephyr and Sketch and I shake our heads.
Sasha laughs. “No, not many have, I guess. There’s not much of that stuff left today. But this baby, she’s great.” She pats the telescope on its side. “A real powerhouse, aren’t you, girl?”
Sasha lowers the telescope so that the end is pointing out into the distance, away from the city. She puts her eye up to the smaller side, makes some adjustments.
I see her shoulders stiffen. She stands, nods at the General.
“It’s ready, Sir.”
“Good work, Soldier,” he says. He turns to the three of us, and his eyes hold a gloom that wasn’t there before. “The Shallows is surrounded by a Perimeter. As is the Ridge, where you’re trying to go. And the third site, at the Drop. It’s a way of keeping you all in and keeping others out.”
“We know that.” Sketch shrugs. “We had to escape the damn thing to get free.”
“‘Free,’” the General says. “It’s a strange word, isn’t it? We all have different meanings for it, and I think you may find, after you see what I’m about to show you, that your definition of freedom will change.”
He moves aside.
Sasha smiles sadly and waves us over.
I go first.
“Just put your eye here,” she says. “Like a rifle scope. You look like the kind of girl who knows her way around a gun or two.”
I nod, and she helps position me so that I can stare with one eye into the telescope. It’s strange, like looking into a black hole, and at first, all I see is darkness.
“This is miles and miles away, out in the ocean,” Sasha explains. “You see it yet?”
“It’s too dark,” I say, but then suddenly there is a blinking light.
It starts out as purple.
Then blue.
Then red.
Then back again.
As the light blinks, an image begins to take shape. A solid line splitting the darkness, a little lighter than the rest of the night sky.