“You can’t know what it’s like.”
“To be chosen by him.”
“To be touched by greatness.”
“So we can’t carry munitions today.”
“Or tomorrow.”
“Or ever.”
“So sorry, Bam.”
“Yes, so sorry.”
“We hope you can understand.”
• • •
Bam storms through the maze of the mine in search of Starkey, losing track of where she’s been, her thoughts and emotions in such a tailspin, it’s all she can do not to blow up like a clapper.
She finds him at the computer looking over Jeevan’s shoulder at their next target, but right now, there’s no room for that on Bam’s radar. She’s out of breath from running through the mine. She knows her emotions are on her sleeve, staining as brightly as blood. She knows she should have just run deeper into the mine and paced and stewed and broiled until her anger and disgust had faded. But she couldn’t do it.
“When were you going to tell me?”
Starkey regards her for a moment, takes a sip from his canteen, and sends Jeevan away. He knows from the look on her face exactly what she’s talking about. How could he not know?
“Why do you think it’s your business?”
“I am your second in command. You don’t keep secrets from me!”
“There a difference between a secret and discretion.”
“Discretion? Don’t you dare talk to me about discretion after scoring your little hat trick.”
“This is a dangerous thing I’m doing out there. I’m not entirely blind to that. I know it might be messed up, but I want to leave something behind if I don’t survive—and it’s not like I forced them.”
“You never force anyone, do you, Mason? You just hypnotize them. You dazzle them. And before you know it, people are willing to do anything for you.”
Then Starkey slices through to the one thing hanging in the air between them—the one thing that shouldn’t be said.
“You’re just pissed off because you’re not one of them.”
Bam slaps him so hard he stumbles, nearly knocking over the computer. And when he comes back at her, anger in his eyes, she’s ready. She grabs his ruined hand and squeezes it. Hard. The reaction is immediate. His legs buckle beneath him, and he falls to his knees. She squeezes harder.
“Let . . . go . . . ,” he squeaks. “Please . . . let . . . go . . . .”
She grips his hand a moment longer, then releases it, prepared for whatever he does to her next. Let him throw her to the ground. Let him spit in her face. Let him hit her and hit her again. At least that would be something. At least there’d be some passion from him launched in her direction.
Instead of retaliating, he just grabs his ruined hand, rises, and closes his eyes until the pain passes.
“After all I’ve done for you,” she says. “After all I’ve been for you, you go off with them?”
“Bambi, please—”
“Don’t call me that! Never call me that!”
“If it were you instead of them, you couldn’t be out there with me changing the world, could you? It would be too dangerous!”
“You could have given me the choice!”
“And then what? How could you be my second if that’s between us?”
Bam finds she has no answer to that, and Starkey must know he’s having an effect on her, because he takes a step closer. His voice becomes kinder. “Don’t you know how much you mean to me, Bam? What we have is something I’ll never have with those girls.”
“And what they have, I’ll never have.”
He regards her. Gauging. Assessing. “Is that what you really want, Bam? Is that what would make you happy? Really?” Then he steps deep into her airspace. She’s so tall that standing this close, he seems even shorter than he really is.
He cranes his neck to kiss her, but their lips are still an inch away, and instead of suffering the indignation of rising on his tiptoes, he reaches behind her head, pulling her down into the kiss. That kiss is like a conjurer’s act. It’s artful, it’s worthy of applause, it is everything Bam ever dreamed it might be . . . but nothing will change the fact that it’s only a trick, and today there is no audience to applaud it.
“I’m sorry I hurt you, Bam. And you’re right; you deserve something real from me.”
“That wasn’t real, Mason.”
He offers her something between a grin and a grimace. “It’s as real as I get.”
• • •
Bam wanders the mine, feeling spent in every possible way. Her fury at Starkey no longer knows where to go. Neither do any of her emotions. She feels the longing for something unnamable that’s been lost. If she were more naive, she’d call it her innocence, but Bambi Ann Covalt has not been innocent for a very long time.
She bumps her head hard on a rock jutting from the low-slung ceiling. She doesn’t even realize where she was going until her head smacks that rock.
“You again?” Hayden says when he sees her. This time, he’s actually loading a cart with food for the evening meal.
Bam turns to his guard. “Go get me something to drink.”
He looks confused. “But all the water and stuff is in here.”
“Fine. Then go get me some sushi!”
“Huh?”
“Could you really be that stupid? Just get the hell out of here!”
“Yes, Miss Bam.” He hurries out, practically tripping over his weapon.
Hayden is amused. “ ‘Miss Bam.’ Sounds like a good name for a kindergarten teacher. Have you ever considered the profession?”
“I don’t like children.”
“You don’t like adults much either. Or, for that matter, anything in between.”
For some reason, that makes tears rise like bile in her, but she bears down and holds them in, refusing to let Hayden see them.
“You’re bleeding,” Hayden says. Concerned, he takes a step toward her, but she waves him off.
“I’m fine.” She touches her head. There’s a small cut where she bumped it on the ceiling. The least of her problems. She’ll make an appointment with the kid with the dental floss. “We need to talk.”
“About?”
She checks to make sure the guard hasn’t come back and they are truly alone. “I promised you’d have my ear. So bend it. Now.”
54 • Force
The raid comes without warning, like a team of Juvie-rounders in the night. A real special-ops team—nothing like the playacting kids Starkey calls special ops. The invaders tranq the storks guarding the entrance to the mine before they can even raise their weapons and flood into the tunnels, tranq’ing anyone who comes into view. Their directive is simple: Get to Mason Starkey.
The commotion wakes kids deeper in the mine in time for them to scramble for weapons, which they’ve learned to use without hesitation and without fear. They bring several of the intruders down, but there are more behind them—and this force is armed with weapons the storks have never seen: squad machine guns that spray tiny tranq-tipped darts at such an alarming rate, they create an inescapable wall of unconsciousness before them. The layers of protection surrounding Starkey peel away until he’s exposed and vulnerable before the invading force.
Starkey swings his own weapon up, but fumbles with it just long enough for his attackers to grab it and grab him.
The entire operation is over in less than five minutes.
55 • Starkey
It was madness to believe he was untouchable. He knows that now. The storks’ hiding place was well concealed, but the Juvies are skilled at ferreting out the most resistant of AWOLs. Starkey struggles, but it’s no use—and his ruined hand is in such pain from the iron grip of his assailants that the rest of his body drains of strength, just as it had when Bam had grabbed him.
All around him in the tunnels are the unconscious bodies of his precious storks with tiny spots of blood dotting their clothes where the tranq darts embedded in their skin. No one’s fighting anymore. Anyone still conscious is on the run. The storks know they are outarmed and outclassed.