Enemy Inside (Defectors Trilogy) (34 page)

“Hey! Shut up and put these on,” said Jared. He tossed back a bundle of zip ties, and I caught them. I took two and passed the bundle to Amory, my breath catching in my chest as I fastened them in loose loops. They reminded me too much of my first encounter with carriers when I’d been tied to a tree, convinced I was going to die. If I looked closely, I could still make out the scars from where their bonds had cut into my wrists.
 

Amory looped his very generously — loose enough that he could still keep his gun trained on Jared from under his coat.

Up ahead, I could just make out the checkpoint. It looked like an ordinary tollbooth, except the barricade had dozens of rovers mounted under the overpass — all of them trained in our direction. My palms felt sweaty, so I focused on taking deep breaths. I told myself a little anxiety would not raise a red flag for the officers — after all, I was supposed to be a fugitive — but I couldn’t help worrying that my shallow breathing would give us away.

We moved forward at a crawl in the long line of vehicles — all of them PMC cargo trucks. Officers in white were inspecting the cargo, questioning the drivers, and consulting the CID data flashing across their smartlenses.

“Do you think it’s suspicious that we have the guns and supplies in the trunk?” I whispered, not turning my head in case we were being watched through the security cameras.

“Too late now,” breathed Jared. “Lucky all those guns were stolen from the PMC.”

My heart pounded against my ribcage. I couldn’t do this. If we failed, it would be my plan that had gotten us in this mess.
 

But it was too late.
 

We continued to inch forward in the line until there was only one truck in front of us. Logan slumped against the window so that her golden hair fanned in front of her face. If the officers noticed she was infected, we were done. They would never let us pass.

One of the officers approached our vehicle. It was a smug-looking man with greasy black hair and just the right amount of stubble that made me think he grew his facial hair that way on purpose. He had a smartlens perched on the bridge of his nose, the glare obscuring half his expression.

“Morning, officers,” he drawled, his eyes hovering too long on Mariah. He sneered.

“Morning,” said Jared automatically. His expression was perfect: slightly tired, bored, but trying to be friendly. No wonder he’d worked undercover as an officer.

“What have we got here? Undocumented illegals?”

Jared sighed. “Defectors.”

The man nodded. “That’s good. You can’t bring any undocumented people in for any reason. Not even prisoners.”

I watched Jared in the side mirror. He swallowed. “Yep. They’re all defectors. Caught ’em on the run headed west.”

The greasy man chuckled. “That’s a pretty common story. They’re not, uh, rebels, are they?”

“Not from what I could tell. Picked up just the four of them. Half-starved, too, by the looks of it.”

“Why are you bringing them in?”

“World Corp is collecting test subjects that match their ages.”

The man stopped suddenly, shining his flashlight into the back seat. My heart stopped as it settled on Logan.
 

She turned her face ever so slightly toward him, and I caught the glint of yellow in her eyes as the flashlight beam illuminated her face.

“Hang on a sec,” said the man.

My heart was pounding so loudly, I was sure the officer could hear it.
 

He’d seen Logan’s eyes. He knew.

He appraised her for a long moment. “You sure caught yourself a hot little piece.”

I breathed out, releasing the edge of the seat I’d been white-knuckling.

The man smacked his lips. “I sure hope you got to have a little fun first.” He sneered through the window at Logan and me. “This one ain’t bad, either.”

I looked away, feeling my face burn with anger. Logan put her head down, trying to hide her flared nostrils and murderous eyes.

“Sure did,” Jared said with a hard laugh, not missing a beat.

I glanced at Amory sitting next to me. His hands were curled into fists, and the zip ties were making deep divots in his skin as he focused on restraining himself.

“All right. Open up the trunk. Gotta check for contraband.”

I exhaled the breath I’d been holding as the officer moved around to open the trunk of the cruiser. I heard his boots scuffing on the asphalt, and then I felt a rush of cold air as he opened the tailgate.

For a long minute, there was nothing but the nearly inaudible sound of his smartlens computing. Then I heard his boots again as he approached the front of the vehicle.

“Any reason you have six unregistered weapons back here?”

He knew. I couldn’t breathe. We were finished.

Jared made a guilty clicking sound with his mouth. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I know it’s against regulation, but our precinct was overrun about a week ago. We grabbed what we could and ran for it.”

The greasy man’s eyes glazed over, and I knew he was checking something on his smartlens. “Says here you two are from different precincts.” He gestured between Jared and Mariah.

“Right. When I said ‘we,’ I meant my partner. He was killed raiding a rebel camp. I picked up this lady at the debriefing. She’d lost somebody, too, so we figured we’d team up and look for illegals.”

The man glanced away from the stream of information flashing across his lens and regarded Jared. Then, as if seeing nothing wrong with this explanation, he nodded. “Well, I’ll need to confiscate two of those weapons. No more than two rifles per officer at any time. That’s regulation. But I’m not going to write you up for it . . . extraordinary circumstances and all.”

“I understand.”

Logan was fuming silently behind me, and I begged her silently not to speak. We couldn’t have one of her outbursts blow our cover. Losing two guns was unfortunate, but at least we still had the hidden handgun.

“Man, you sure got a lot of food back here,” the man mumbled from the back of the truck.

“Well, we’ve been on the road for a week. Not a lot of places to stop.”

“Is it that bad?” The officer reappeared. “
Phew
am I glad I was stationed at the border. Those poor sons of bitches in Sector X were overrun.
Overrun
. Were you there for that?”

“Nope. We were part of the cleanup crew, though. Absolute mess.”

The officer nodded. “Well, I’ll let you go on through. But you take them straight to World Corp, you hear?”

Jared grinned. “Will do.”

The man waved us through, and Jared accelerated a little faster than he should have, blowing past the other officers watching idly from the checkpoint. The rovers swiveled like crazy trying to latch on to our CIDs, but we were through.

Amory aimed a hard kick at the back of his seat, and Logan leaned over behind her to reach for a gun.

“Hey!” Jared yelled. “Just playing along.”

“He did what he had to do,” I said, watching Amory. “And he was good.”

“Thank you! Jesus Christ. You know what I’m risking for you people?”

“I bet you were right at home with these assholes,” Amory growled.

Jared shot him an angry look in the rearview mirror. “They make me just as sick as you. Don’t act like you wouldn’t have done the same exact thing to get us through.”

Amory slumped back, still fuming.

“Besides, it was a close call with those guns. Why didn’t any of us think to hide them? Now we’re down two SCARS.”

“There were quite a few close calls,” muttered Mariah. “I can’t believe he bought that story about your partner.”

“I can’t believe he didn’t see her eyes,” I said.

“Yeah, me neither.”

“No more screwups,” snapped Mariah.

“Did that seem strange to anyone else?” asked Greyson. “It seemed a little too easy to me.”

Jared shrugged, and we continued toward the city. We passed under more rovers, which made me nervous. Even though we had cleared the checkpoint at the border, I worried our vehicle was being monitored closely since the officers knew it was full of illegals.

Mariah directed Jared to take the first exit off the highway, and I began to see buildings on the skyline. The first thing I noticed upon entering the city was how many rovers there were. Not only were they mounted at nearly every intersection, but they were also above the entrances to most buildings. Officers in crisp white uniforms paced the sidewalks, and we watched a couple dressed in white scrubs shuffle by quickly. They didn’t speak to one another but walked purposefully with their heads down.

Then we saw a white stone building rising up in the distance. It took up the entire city block, and a crowd of people dressed in white coveralls was spilling out. There was an inlet on the side of the building projecting motivational messages down its facade:
Forward for progress . . . Order and compliance are the foundation for our future . . . World Corp International: perfect science for an ideal world.

“Where are they all going?” I asked.

“To the factories,” said Mariah. “When they migrated north and came to the refugee commune, they could either work for the factories, the farms, or the PMC. The people with some education go to the labs.”

“And they all live here?”

“Not here, necessarily, but there are lots of communes like this one. Some are nicer than others.”

“Who pays for all this?”

“They do. Their wages just cover room and board.”

As we passed the commune, I watched the tired-looking men and women in their coveralls trudging toward the factory.

“Why would anyone agree to live here?” I asked.

“It’s safer — patriotic. Canada is fighting back.”

“And everyone up here is fine with the PMC?” asked Greyson.

“They don’t have to be. Everything is owned by World Corp International.”

Soon the meticulously trimmed bushes and trees flanking the sidewalks around the commune disappeared, and dingy-looking buildings covered in graffiti rose up out of the concrete. Fast food containers spilling from overturned trashcans blew across the street like tumbleweed.

The people here weren’t dressed in crisp white coveralls. One woman lingered on the corner dressed in a baggy gray sweater with a damp cigarette sagging between her lips. She had a small dirty boy wrapped around her ankles and carried a crumpled plastic shopping bag. She stared at us as we passed, and I felt a shiver.

It was too quiet on the street. Up ahead, a silvery beacon appeared over the filth — a building towering over all the rest, reflecting the sunlight back into our eyes.

“Welcome to the headquarters of World Corp International,” said Mariah.

We continued to stare at the behemoth building. It was impossible not to.
 

More imposing than its sheer size was the conspicuous lack of windows and the foreboding shadow it cast over the buildings in its wake. The Infinity Building appeared to be one continuous sheet of titanium that sloped on the side, hollow in the center to form a cylindrical space within the outer shell.

“It’s a stretched Möbius strip,” said Mariah. “You can only really tell from the aerial view, though.”

We all stared.

“Pull into that parking garage across the street,” she instructed.

Jared turned down a side street running perpendicular to the building and entered the dark underground garage. Sparse beams of light flickered through the slits in the concrete as we drove down the steep slope. I imagined we were driving under the street that ran in front of the building. We passed the main parking area until we reached the bottom level. It was empty save for half a dozen World Corp vans and two PMC cruisers identical to ours.

Jared parked between the other two cruisers and got out. Logan glared at him through the car window as she struggled to tear off the plastic zip ties.

“You and Amory are staying here,” I said.

Logan’s face twisted in indignation. “No way.”

“You aren’t well enough to fight if something goes wrong. Besides, they’ll know in a second that you’re infected.”

“Exactly,” said Mariah. “She has to go. She’s our ‘test subject.’”

Logan arched a brow in satisfaction. Even with the virus coursing through her veins, she couldn’t resist the action.

“No,” I said. “It’s too dangerous.”

“We don’t have a choice.”

“They could kill her on sight.”

“If we’re caught getting the cure, she’s as good as dead anyway. She should take it immediately in case we don’t make it out. Better to be a human prisoner than a free dying carrier.”
 

My stomach clenched, every fiber of my being screaming in protest. It didn’t make sense for Mariah to suddenly pretend to care what became of Logan, but her motives didn’t matter. She was right. Logan had to come.

Before I could answer, Amory grabbed my elbow and pulled me out to the other side of the cruiser, out of earshot of Mariah and Jared.

“You two aren’t going in alone with them. They could turn you over to World Corp. You and Logan . . . it wouldn’t be a fair fight right now.”

“I know that. But Mariah’s right. Logan’s our way in, and if we’re captured on the way out . . . at least she will have taken the cure.”

“If you’re captured on the way out, you’ll probably be killed! This isn’t an option. I’m coming with you.”

I shook my head. “You know you can’t. It’s too dangerous. If they recognize you as the one who escaped —”

“Then we’ll send Greyson in.”

“No. You both should stay here. If anything goes wrong, there’s two of you.”

Amory sighed, furrowing his brow. “I don’t like this.”

“Neither do I. But we don’t have another choice.”

“If they take you . . .”

“That’s not going to happen.”

Amory’s mouth was a hard line, and his eyes were crinkled in fear. “If you aren’t out in an hour, I’m coming in.”

I locked eyes with him, shaking my head once. “You have to be smart about this. Don’t do anything you wouldn’t normally do just because it’s me and Logan in there.”

“But it
is
you and Logan.”

“Still. Don’t forget you and Greyson have a bigger part to play in all this.” I made a serious face. “If anything happens to him, I’m holding you personally responsible.”