When she’s done priming the masses for Starkey, she turns down a side passageway that should be familiar, but she bumps her head for the umpteenth time on a jutting piece of stone. So many of these tunnels are alike; she always knows exactly where she is when she hits that damn stone. The walls begin to spread, opening into a wider cavern. The lights, which are strung around the edge, create an odd sense of darkness in the very center of the space, as if there’s a black hole in the middle of the room.
This is the storage room, where food and supplies are kept. This is also where Hayden is currently stationed, with an armed guard at all times who is there for both his protection and to make sure he stays on his best behavior.
“He’s a flight risk, but we can’t make him look like a prisoner,” Starkey had said. “We’re not the Juvenile Authority.”
Of course, Hayden is a prisoner—but God forbid they make him look like one.
It was Bam’s suggestion that he be put in charge of food distribution. First because it was what he did when he first arrived at the Graveyard, so he had experience. Second because the kid who had been doing it was killed today.
She finds him taking inventory of their canned goods and being very chatty with the guard, gleaning information about the plane crash and everything that happened since then from the 7-Eleven raids and their stint at the abandoned Palm Springs hotel to Camp Red Heron and the Egret Academy. Bam is going to have to make sure the guards know enough not to talk about anything with Hayden that doesn’t involve Spam and canned corn.
The guard asks if he can go to the bathroom, which is quite a hike from this spot in the mine, and she lets him go. “I’ll watch Hayden until you get back.” He offers her his Uzi, but she refuses it.
Hayden has a pad and jots down notes about their food supply.
“You have way too much chili,” he says, pointing to a stack of gallon-sized cans. “And it’s not like you can disguise it to be anything but chili.”
Bam crosses her arms. “I knew you’d already be complaining. In case you forgot, we just set you free. You should be grateful.”
“I am. In fact, I’m ecstatic. But incarceration at a harvest camp must have left me a little brain damaged because suddenly I’m putting larger concerns ahead of my own.”
“Like having too much chili?”
He doesn’t respond to that—he just moves around the room continuing his inventory. Bam glances off, wondering when the guard will be back. She came here because she considers it her job to keep an eye on Hayden, but she doesn’t like him—never did. Hayden’s the kind of guy who gets in your head, but only goes there to amuse himself.
He looks up from his inventory pad, catching Bam’s gaze. He holds it—longer than a glance, but shorter than a look. Then his attention is back on his pad again. But not really.
“You realize he’s going to get you all killed, don’t you?”
Bam is caught off guard—not by Hayden’s comment, but by how it infuriates her. She feels her cheeks flushing in outrage. She must not allow him to put thoughts into her head. Especially when those thoughts are already there.
“Say one more thing about Starkey, and the next sound you hear will be your head cracking like an egg at the bottom of the nearest mine shaft.”
Hayden just smirks. “That’s clever, Bam. I had never counted you among the clever!”
She scowls, not sure whether to take that as a compliment or an insult. “Just keep your mouth shut and do what you’re told, unless you want to be treated like a prisoner.”
“I’ll make a deal with you,” Hayden says. “I won’t say a thing to anyone else, but I get to speak my mind with you. Fair enough?”
“Absolutely not! And if you try, I’ll rip your lousy tongue out and sell it to the highest bidder.”
He guffaws at that. “Point for Bam! You truly do excel in disturbing imagery. Someday I may want to study under you.”
She shoves him—not hard enough to knock him down, but enough to push him back and off balance. “What makes you think I’d want to hear anything that comes out of your mouth? And what makes you think you know better than Starkey? He’s doing amazing things! Do you have any idea how many kids we saved today?”
Hayden sighs and looks to the stacks of canned food he’s been counting, as if each can represents another kid saved. “I won’t begrudge Starkey the statistics of salvation,” he tells her. “But I wonder what it will mean in the long run.”
“It means all those kids won’t get unwound.”
“Maybe . . . Or maybe it means they’ll be unwound more quickly once they’re caught—along with every other kid awaiting unwinding.”
“Starkey’s a visionary!” she yells. Her voice is so loud, she hears it echoing from the stone around her. She wonders who might be listening. In these tunnels there’s always someone listening. She forces herself to use her indoor voice, although it comes out in an angry hiss. “To Starkey, it’s not only about taking down harvest camps. It’s about making a stand for storks.” She slowly strides toward Hayden as she speaks, and Hayden moves away, trying to keep a healthy distance between them. “Can’t you see he’s igniting a stork revolution? Other storks who think they have no hope—who know they’re second-class citizens—will rise up and demand fair treatment.”
“And he’ll do this by terrorist attacks?”
“Guerilla warfare!”
By now she has Hayden backed against the wall, and yet he appears at ease. Instead she feels like the one who’s cornered.
“Every outlaw is eventually brought down, Bam.”
Bam shakes her head, forcing the thought into submission. “Not if they win the war.”
He slides away from her, to the other side of the room, and sits on the stack of chili cans. “Although it unsettles the stomach as much as this chili will, I have to give you at least some benefit of the doubt,” he says. “It’s true that history is full of self-important madmen who managed to claw their way to power and lead their people successfully. Offhand I can’t think of any, but I’m sure they’ll come to me.”
“Alexander the Great,” Bam suggests. “Napoléon Bonaparte.”
Hayden tilts his head slightly and narrows his eyes, as if trying to visualize it. “So then, when you look at Mason Starkey, do you see any of the qualities of Alexander or Napoléon—aside from being short?”
Bam hardens her jaw and says, “I do.”
And there’s that slithery smirk from Hayden again. “I’m sorry, miss, but if you want the part, you’ll have to do a much better job of acting than that.”
Although Bam would like to knock out a few of Hayden’s perfectly straightened teeth, she won’t let her anger rule her now. Not after seeing how Starkey let his anger take control today. “We’re done here,” she tells Hayden, deciding not to wait until his guard returns.
Hayden’s smirk broadens into a condescending smile, which is even more infuriating. Maybe she’ll punch him after all. “But you haven’t heard the best part yet,” he says.
She should just leave now, before she becomes the butt of yet another one of his personal jokes, but she just can’t do it. “And what might that be?”
Hayden stands and saunters toward her—which means that maybe he’s going to say something that won’t risk losing him some teeth. “I know you and Starkey are going to continue to liberate harvest camps, for better or for worse,” he says. “That being the case, I’d like to help keep more of your storks alive. Remember, I was the head of tech at the Graveyard. I know a thing or two that could help.”
Now it’s Bam’s turn to smirk. She knows Hayden too well.
“And what do you want in return?”
“Like I said before, all I want is your ear—and not in an unwinding sense.” Then he gets quiet. Serious. She’s never seen Hayden serious. This is something new. “I want your promise that you’ll listen to me—really listen to me—when I have something to say. You don’t have to like it; you just have to hear it.”