Enemy Inside (Defectors Trilogy) (12 page)

“Do you know what bothers me most about Isador?” said Amory. “Besides not knowing what they did to me.”

I shook my head, feeling him tense under me.

“My dad didn’t even
visit
me. I was his test subject — not his son.”

“Maybe you weren’t
his
test subject. Maybe bringing you to Isador was the only way for him to save you.”

Amory shook his head. “It was
his
experiment. He headed up the whole initiative.”

“I just don’t understand what they wanted with you.”

“To test the new generation of CIDs.” He shuddered. “I had a bad reaction to the behavior modification frequency of the old one, but it didn’t feel like this.”

“How does it work?”

“I heard my dad talking about it once. The rovers activate your CID, and it sends a signal to your brain. The pain when I was trying to escape
felt
real, but it was all just my brain telling me I was in pain.”

“But it burned you.”

“What?”

“When you were within range of the rover, it looked like it was burning you from the inside.”

“They probably had it turned up to the maximum setting. I’m surprised that didn’t fry it.”

“It would have killed you first.”

He sighed angrily. “I hate that you had to see me like that.”

“It wasn’t your fault . . . it wasn’t even you.”

“But it
was
me. And it was me who didn’t see you with that carrier. I could have killed you.”

“No, you couldn’t.”

For a long moment, Amory didn’t answer. I sat up and turned my head to face him in the darkness.

“I still trust you with my life. The PMC can’t change that.”

He let out a long intake of breath and cupped the back of my head in his hand, bringing my face down to meet his lips.

I snuggled deeper into the crook of his arm, not wanting any of the rest of it to be real. Just him. I didn’t even have time to marvel at his warmth, the smell of him, or the way my heart was pounding through my chest against his ribcage.
 

For the first time in a long time, I felt safe. Amory was himself again, and we were together. We had survived the worst.

I woke with a start, unable to breathe.
 

A hand tightened around my mouth. Disoriented, I bit down reflexively, trying to scream, but the sound was muffled by the hand.
 

Terror — pure terror — clamped down on my chest. I thrashed on the bed, and Amory awoke with a yell. I made a grab for him, but someone seized me roughly by the arm and yanked me up off the bed, nearly dislocating my shoulder. I tried to pull away, but whoever had me was very strong.
 

Amory.

I wanted to cry out — scream to warn him — but I couldn’t make a sound.

Another pair of hands grabbed my other arm, and I lost my footing as two people dragged me out of the room. I twisted around to look for Amory, but I couldn’t see anything in the pitch blackness. My feet fumbled to gain traction as they pulled me across the apartment.

The PMC — they were taking me.
I couldn’t let them take me.

I dug in my feet, breaking my face away from the hand clamped over my mouth. I yelled, but the hand clamped down again. My captor crushed me against his chest, dragging me bodily out the front door.

Somewhere behind me, I heard a struggle. I twisted, my captor’s fingers pulling painfully against my skin. Through the darkness, I could see three figures lurching from side to side like a drunken caterpillar. One of the three was knocked backward, banging into the doorframe. The other hit the person in the middle, who stumbled.

Amory.
I tried to call his name, but I just tasted the skin of the hand around my mouth: sweat and something chemical.

This was it. I only had one chance.

I stopped suddenly, hunkering down and jabbing my elbows into the soft guts of the people on either side of me. My right jab was stronger, and his grip loosened. I kicked wildly, finding purchase with a shin.
 

Freeing my arm, I swung toward the person on my left. He caught my wrist, and I kicked up my knee as hard as I could. I hit something soft, and his cry of agony told me I had hit the mark. I yanked out of his grip and ran blindly down the hallway.

My bare feet brushed the threadbare carpet, and I tried not to think about all the carrier blood soaked into the floor. At least it was dark. I tried the door on my right, but it was the wrong one. Desperate, I tried the next door, but the first had slowed me down.

The first man who had gone down was just feet behind me. I threw open the door to the decoy apartment, slamming it against his body as he tried to follow me. He grunted but didn’t seem badly hurt. I tore through the darkness to the window, heaving it open with one hand.
 

The cold, sharp wind stung my bare arms, but I threw myself onto the fire escape. The man was right behind me — stumbling, reaching through the window. There was no time for the ladder. I jumped, but his hand caught my ankle. I lost my balance and plummeted sideways toward the ground.

I flailed my limbs, trying to right myself before I hit the ground, but the fall was shorter than I’d thought — shorter and more painful.

The hard, rough concrete cut through the snow, slicing against my exposed skin and scraping down through the flesh. All the wind was knocked out of me.
 

Get up. Get up!
I thought.

Trembling, I tried to stand, but my ankle shook.

A door on the side of the building burst open, banging against the brick. Two enormous PMC officers emerged, dragging Amory between them. He was flailing around, fighting as I’d never seen. His eyes were dark again, his teeth bared in an animalistic snarl as he dug in his feet and jerked his elbow up to connect with an officer’s spleen.

It didn’t matter. They had him. I crawled forward — desperate to get away — but a boot stomped down painfully on my ankle. I looked up.

The officer who pursued me onto the fire escape was towering over me, a smug look on his face. He had messy blond hair that was a little too long for PMC standards, a hard square jaw, and protruding cheekbones that cut his face into sharp planes. Flinching away, I felt the raw hatred and fear cutting my insides. This was it. After everything we had done, they had ambushed us in our sleep.

I caught Amory’s eye. He looked as miserable as I felt. His left eye was beginning to swell, and blood trickled from his nose. At least he had not gone without a fight, either.
 

A fourth PMC officer emerged from the side door. Hunched over and walking funny, I knew instantly that he was the officer I kicked in the hallway. I felt a cold hand grip my upper arm, and any satisfaction I felt drained away.

The blond officer pulled me roughly to my feet. I stumbled to one side, but he held fast to my arm. My left ankle would not support my full weight. A strange look crossed the officer’s face, but he dragged me through the snow toward Amory to stand under the streetlight.
 

Another one of Amory’s officers grabbed my arm, and the blond officer stepped back to look at us, as if admiring his work. I realized we must look like a motley crew. Amory’s nose was still dripping blood, bruises blooming on his face. I had scrapes and cuts running all up and down my arms from my fall, and I was shivering barefoot in the snow.

“Yeah, that’s definitely them,” said the blond man. “Amory Elwood and . . .
accomplice
.” He formed the last word around his lips with a smirk, as if he knew how much it irritated me to be pegged as somehow less important — Amory’s sidekick. It was stupid, and I should have been glad that they had not uncovered my real identity, but somehow the officer’s smugness dug into me more than our present danger.

“Why don’t you run her CID?” said the officer I had kicked. He had red hair and a slurred British accent.

The blond man smirked, grabbing my arm for effect. “She’s a defector, you idiot. They both are.”

I yanked my arm away, glaring up at him.

“Why don’ you tag ’er? I bet she’d be real forthcomin’ —”

“We’re under direct orders,” barked the blond man. “Besides,” he grinned, “she knows a thing or two about that already. We’d probably have to give her enough to kill her just to get what we want.”
 

He eyed my arm tattooed with HALLO burns, and I wanted to pull away.

Taking a step toward me, he jerked me forward until I was right up close, causing a surge of pain to shoot up my right side. Amory lunged next to me, but the officer holding him grabbed both his arms. The blond officer slapped a piece of hard plastic over my wrist and yanked the other in place next to it. I looked down. It was a one-piece restraint, like handcuffs.
 

“Let Elwood deal with her.”

“Whah?” said the redhead with marked indignation. “Why ’im?”

“They breached security at Isador. He’s curious.”

My heart sank as the man holding me gripped my arm and dragged me toward a parked PMC cruiser. Pain shot up my leg in protest, and my eyes watered. He tossed me in the backseat, and the other men followed with Amory. He wore plastic restraints, too. Our eyes met as he struggled against the men holding him, and I could tell he was not really trying anymore. If I was captured, he would not run and leave me.
 

The car door slammed, and the blond man climbed in the front seat with one of the enormous officers who had taken Amory down. The other officers piled into another cruiser, the redhead shooting me a murderous look. I was glad he wasn’t one of our drivers.

Pulling away from the safe house, a sick feeling of dread rose up in my chest.
 

What would they do to us now that Amory had already escaped once? And what would they do once they found out his CID had been removed?
 

Either his bandage had ripped off during the struggle, or he’d pulled it off himself, but I could still see the coagulated blood around my shaky incision on the back of his neck.

We pulled through an empty intersection, and, as if on cue, Amory doubled over with a yell.
 

Brilliant,
I thought.
He wanted them to think he still had his CID.

Twisting around in his seat, the enormous officer smacked him hard across the face.

“Stop!” I yelled. “It’s your fault he’s like this!”

“It’s the new CID,” the blond man muttered. His hazel eyes flashed in the rearview mirror. Although he couldn’t have been older than twenty-five, they were etched with lines of fatigue.

The enormous officer shifted in his seat as Amory let out another cry, and his fat fingers flexed around the nightstick at his hip. Anger twisted my gut, but I focused on arranging my face to look pained instead. Amory was doing a good job; his face was contorted with agony, his knuckles white as they gripped the edge of the seat.

“Where are you taking us?” I asked. “It gets worse the farther we get from Isador.”

No one answered.
 

As we passed between rows of destroyed buildings, I began to feel a slight prickle on the back of my neck. Something wasn’t right. All the functioning bases were farther back the way we came. There was nowhere they could take us on this side of the city. Unless . . .

“Are you taking us out of Sector X?”

The blond man’s eyes flickered. “We’re under direct orders to take you to Elwood. He has expressed . . .
interest
in the two of you since his son’s escape.”

My heart seized. If they tortured the information out of me, they would know
who
had initiated Amory’s escape. Godfrey would be in danger, his cover blown.

“Where is Elwood? All the bases on this side of the city were destroyed in the riots.”

“We’re in the rebuilding stage now,” said the officer through gritted teeth.

A chill shot down my spine.
What did that mean?
 

“What about all the carriers? What will you do with them?”

The blond man opened his mouth to answer, but the enormous officer in the passenger seat jerked his head. The skin around the collar of his uniform wobbled. “Don’t talk to the prisoners. These ones are slippery.”

The blond man fell silent, staring out at the road.
 

I tried not to listen to Amory’s moans of pain. Even though I knew they were just for show, they were hard to hear.

Rising up over the wreckage, the George Washington Bridge came into view through the darkness. It was strange to find myself
not
wanting to cross it when that had been the only thing on my mind for the last twenty-four hours. If we left Sector X, Godfrey would have no way to find us.
 

“You can’t pass under all those rovers!” I said in a panicked voice. “The signal will be too strong. You’ll kill him.”

The blond man shrugged. “It’s the only way in or out of this city.”

I glanced at Amory, and I read my own grim satisfaction in his face. Godfrey had been wrong about there being other ways out of Sector X. I couldn’t help but think that was an enormous vulnerability for the PMC. Looking up at the gleaming steel buttresses, the bridge looked strong and solid, but I remembered the withered remains of the beautiful silver bridge the rebels had blown up. That bridge had been newer, stronger — built with the best materials dirty PMC money could buy. But anything could be destroyed.
 

As we neared the rover, Amory cried out louder. He gripped the sides of his head so forcefully it looked as if he might split his skull in two. I could see the shiny bug eyes of the rovers, and my stomach twisted.

The blond man tapped his ear, and I could see a small white device protruding. “Officer Cassidy and Officer Tate transporting prisoners. One defector — unidentified — and Amory Elwood. Over.”

There was a sharp beep and then the soft sound of static. Someone was speaking on the other end.

“I have direct orders, ma’am. You can see the paperwork yourself when we cross. Over.”

We passed under the line of rovers, and I could see one turn red as it settled on me. Amory cried out, the sound reverberating in the small space.