The woman spits my own blood into my eyes. She digs a blade into my thigh. There’s pain, white hot and angry.
And suddenly I want revenge. On everyone. The Initiative, for putting my family into this world, for making Peri look like a ghost of herself, for putting her through agony that no child should ever have to face. I’m angry at the other colors, for disturbing the last peaceful night I might ever have.
I’m furious at my mother. The entire world.
I stick my fingers into the woman’s eye sockets.
I press hard, until she’s fountaining blood, and it’s like everything inside of me breaks.
I hear myself laughing, memories of the Commander and his torture and Peri’s screams, and my screams, and everything up to this point flooding out from my soul. I pretend this woman is the Initiative, and I’m finally getting my vengeance for what they did to me, my family, Zephyr. Everyone in the Shallows.
“Meadow!” Koi’s voice comes up from somewhere beyond, but I don’t really hear him. “We have to go! There are too many of them!”
The woman’s already dying, probably dead, but I can’t pull away.
I scream until my voice runs ragged. Until hands grab me from behind. I spin, yanking the knife from my thigh, ready to thrust it into my attacker’s throat.
But then I see Zephyr.
“Meadow,” he says. Only my name, and for a second, I almost thrust the knife at him. There’s honesty in his eyes. Truth. Desperation to save me not from the woman, but from myself. “That’s enough! You’ve done enough!”
I see Peri in the shadows. Tears sliding down her cheeks.
Looking at me like . . . like I’m a monster.
I gasp when I see the woman’s face. Feel the hot blood on my hands, the roughness in my throat from laughing and yelling. There’s fighting all around, and Koi drags me to the side, conceals us in the shadows. “We have to run, Meadow. We can’t stay here with Peri. We’re outnumbered.”
I look past him, as the other Cavers fight. A stray boy runs toward us, trying to escape, but a knife gets him in the skull. He drops.
Sketch appears, helping my father walk. His blood-tinged eyes stare right into mine, and in this moment, he commands my every motion. “We will do what it takes to keep Peri safe, Meadow. We’ll run.”
“To where?” Koi asks.
I realize that now is the time. We’re almost ready to leave this place. I have my sister back, my entire family. There is no reason to stay here any longer.
I have to give the signal, but first, we have to run to the extraction point.
“The south end,” I say. “Hurry.”
Tox hobbles forward. “I know South,” he says. He lifts his walking stick, holds it high.
“We’ll follow him,” Zephyr says. “He knows the way. He’s been here longer than any of us, and he knows more than you realize. You have to trust me on this.”
He looks strong. Like a leader, arms rigid at his sides, chin tilted up, so he can stare down at us all, using his height.
“Okay,” I say.
Tox disappears into the darkness of the cave, leading the way.
CHAPTER 104
ZEPHYR
Meadow lost it. Right in front of her sister.
She stuck her hands into that woman’s face like she was digging through sand and . . .
I shove the memory away, force it deep down, where it won’t bug me until later. For now, we have to run.
I don’t know where Tox is leading us, but it’s somewhere deep in the cave. The darkness folds itself around us like a blanket, only it isn’t comforting.
It feels like a cage. I can hear Oranges, tracking us from behind. We move fast, our breathing labored. There were too damn many of them.
“He’s just a loonyheaded old bag!” Saxon hisses from ahead.
“Trust him,” I say. “What other options do we have? You want to go back there and die at the hands of Orange soldiers?”
“I am a soldier!” Saxon snaps. “We just left the other Yellows to die. We left them like bait.”
“Then why did you even come?” Sketch yells. “We did what we had to do. And if you’re with us, then you’ll shut your mouth and enjoy the ride.”
I focus on my breathing. Taking short, quick steps, so I don’t lose my footing in the darkness and fall into Sketch’s back.
My forehead hits the cave ceiling. A snap of pain.
“Oh, right. Duck!” Sketch says, from ahead.
“Could’ve said something sooner,” I grunt, then stoop lower, hauling Meadow with me, our hands glued together from the dead woman’s blood.
Soon the talking fades.
The cave gets so short and so small that I’m on hands and knees.
“This is a dead end,” Meadow says.
But at the very front, Tox uses his walking stick to beat against a pile of rocks.
They tumble, and I see the light.
CHAPTER 105
MEADOW
The darkness dies when we reach the light.
It is only a small flicker, like shadowed sun. But it is there.
“Dig.” The old man’s voice echoes from up ahead. “Dig!”
Koi is closest to him.
I can hear scrambling from ahead, muffled curses as my brother does what Tox says.
It’s a tiny opening in the tunnel ahead.
We have to go one at a time, crawling on our bellies, and by the time it is my turn a tangle of vines is in the way. I slide through them, out onto the forest floor.
“I told you he knew,” Zephyr says to everyone. He stoops down to help me up.
His eyes hold mine. “You can’t slip away again,” he whispers. He grabs my hand and I tell myself I am going to leave my insanity behind in that cave.
But I know, and Zephyr knows, that it is not the truth.
There’s no time to talk.
When I look up, I can see the dome ceiling lowering. Like it is getting closer to connecting to the Perimeter. Overhead, the sun is fading.
We are nearing the end of the seventy-two hours.
If I don’t send the signal soon, the New Militia will hold off their attack. They won’t come for us.
We run.
“We have to stop,” Koi says from behind, after an hour of running.
My father is leaning against him, gasping for breath. The wind blows, moving his hair back from his face. And in this moment, I see the paleness of his skin from the loss of blood.
So weak, so unlike himself.
I hear a clicking noise overhead, like the sound of locusts.
It is a sound I have not heard yet in the Ridge. I look up, but I don’t see anything different on the dome. Just silver, more silver, the webbed lines of metal or titanium, patched together like spiderwebs.
Suddenly something dark falls from the sky, far off in the distance.
Then another right after, crashing to the forest. They sound like rain, trickling from the sky, soaring down in a rush of wind and whispers. They’re too far away to reach us, I think. But maybe I thought too soon.
One lands in the ground, beside me.
It is like the stinger of a giant bee, about three inches long, jet black. So sharp at both ends, and serrated along its edges. Perfect for drawing blood, no matter which side of the Needle hits skin.