Forged (18 page)

I SIT AT THE FOOT
of the platform, legs stretched out before me. My right ankle hurts from when I lowered myself over the edge and dropped to the floor. It was a longer fall than I predicted, but in the darkness, I'd tried anyway. Now, with nothing but my thoughts to entertain me as the evening unfolds, my fears are multiplying.

I should have come east in the car with Sammy, Bree, and Clipper. Why did I think the best option was Harvey walking me directly into the enemy's claws?

You needed to be sure Harvey could earn Frank's trust
, the rational part of my brain whispers.
You needed him to be welcomed back into the Order's inner circle
.

And yes, since I left the Compound with Harvey in tow, supposedly my hostage, it only makes sense for Harvey to reappear with me as his. But then a few more minutes pass and my pulse begins pounding all over again. I'm in a locked room, completely helpless, and awaiting my own execution. If the team can't get to me, I know they'll act when I'm transferred to the Sunder Rally. We broke down all the various rescue possibilities in Bone Harbor. But still . . . What if something goes wrong? Something can
always
go wrong. The execution could happen here. I might never be moved and my death could be broadcast nationwide during the Rally from this very cell.

Calm down
, I say to myself, knocking my head against the platform again.
Calm. Down
.

It takes a very, very long time for me to fall asleep.

I wake to someone jerking my arms behind my back, where they are then secured in cuffs tight enough to break my skin if I struggle. I'm tugged to my feet, blindfolded, and then shoved into a car. I can't see a thing, but the sound of the door slamming, followed by the rumbling engine, is unmistakable.

“Take the back way,” a guard at my side says.

The vehicle pitches over a rough patch of road and picks up speed. Either the windows of the vehicle are blacked out or
it's still predawn, because I can't sense a single ray of sun as we accelerate.

The guards ramble about ordinary things as we drive: their pay, wanting more time off, that wedding last weekend when so-and-so got lucky. One of them mentions a sick daughter at home. They sound so . . .
normal
. If I didn't know better, I'd assume I was in a car of Rebels.

“This is the turn.”

The vehicle slows, rounds a corner. Again picks up speed.

“Hang on. Is that bridge out? Why are . . .”

We brake aggressively.

I hear the explosion before I feel it: a deafening roar, followed by a rumbling beneath the car's wheels.

“This left! Turn here!”

I'm thrown against the door, banging my right shoulder. Another explosion. Debris of some sort rains down on the roof.

“Back! Back! Before we're boxed in.”

The car surges, driving in reverse. My stomach twists. Pops echo outside the car. I hear what sounds like heavy rain against the windows, but we're still moving.

A third rumble. Screeching brakes. We turn fast. Too fast. I feel the right side of the vehicle lose traction with the ground. The sensation of tipping lasts only a moment because soon there's no sense of up or down at all. I hit what
I assume is the roof of the car, then I'm thrown back in the other direction. The vehicle lurches to a standstill, but the popping gunfire continues outside.

My head is throbbing and the entire right side of my body aches. Blood trickles down my brow and is absorbed by the blindfold. I try to shrug it off, but when I strain against my bound wrists, the cuffs only seem to get tighter.

“Pete!” the guard pinned beneath me shouts. He shoves me off and I feel him lean toward what would be the front of the car. “Pete?” He gags. “Oh God. Oh . . .”

He grabs my elbow and tugs. We're moving up, but it would be toward the right-side doors if we hadn't rolled. He won't stop yelling about pain in his leg, but it seems like he's faring better than Pete.

I hear him struggle with the door, curse about his injuries, struggle some more.

“Help me with this,” he growls.

“Take off my blindfold.”

“Forget it.”

“Do you want to die in here?”

He swears again, then pulls the blindfold free.

The car is a disaster. What would be the left side is flush with the ground, but by the buckled state of the roof and doors, I'd say we rolled more than once before coming to a stop. The driver—Pete—has split his skull open on the
steering wheel. The second man up front isn't moving either.

Beyond the cracked windshield is a fading twilight sky. All I can make out is thick smoke and the shadowy outlines of a few buildings. We could be anywhere—Taem or Haven or even some town I've never heard of. Visibility's too poor to determine if there's a dome overhead.

The world reeks of fire and fuel. I've never forgotten that sharp smell—not since Sammy used diesel from the
Catherine
's engine room to help me light my arrows on fire last December. The smoke is thick outside, a few licks of fire behind it. Those flames can
not
meet us. Not if what I'm smelling is our vehicle leaking all its fuel.

I throw my weight against the door with the guard, but it doesn't budge. The fire creeps closer, tearing up the road. More gunfire echoes from somewhere beyond the spiderweb of cracks on the windshield.

While the guard holds the latch, I throw my weight into the door again. Nothing. Again. Still jammed.

Something rocks our vehicle. Some
one
.

I see the legs of the figure climbing onto the car, crawling toward our window. He pulls on the door. I throw my weight into it, and this time, it gives. The door doesn't swing open so much as it is heaved, a heavy grate being moved against its will. An arm reaches in, dressed in dark leather. We grab each other's wrists. I know who I'm holding without seeing
her face. I would know the shape of her anywhere.

She hoists me out, then fires twice into the vehicle. I spend an exhale feeling bad for the guard, and then Bree is tugging me down a narrow alley as the flames make their way into the car. I follow her black form—black pants, black hat, black leather jacket that clings to her frame like a second skin. She's wearing a mask to protect against the smoke and runs through thick billows of it like I'm wearing the same.

The fight continues back in the street, gunfire against gunfire, smoke pluming in the wake of flames. We duck into a building. Bree leads the way up a flight of stairs, through a window and into a neighboring building, down several stairs and into a basement. It's deserted, but an angry alarm blares, red light flashing. The place has been evacuated—by Bree somehow, or maybe because of the fighting outside.

This has all been planned. Meticulously. And she must have had help. There's too much gunfire for it to be just Sammy and Clipper. They must have contacted other Rebel supporters in Taem after arriving at the safe house.

Bree spins to face me, palms out, and I barrel into them. She tears off her mask, then the hat.

“Your biggest regret,” she demands.

“Saying I doubted us.” I don't know why she's asking this,
not when my one and only double died at her hands at the Compound.

She keeps pressure on my chest and pulls out a flashlight. “And the person I told you about after our first night together.” I blink, temporarily blinded. She gathers a fistful of my shirt and pushes me backward. “What was his name?”

“Lock?”

She lowers the flashlight and I realize I should have been suspicious of her, too. I know it's her now that she's mentioned our conversation about Lock—a private moment, a recent one—and the scar above her eyebrow only confirms it further, but how foolish of me. How dumb and trusting and naively stupid to immediately believe the first Bree I saw outside of Bone Harbor was my Bree.

“Do you want to check mine?” She holds out the flashlight like she's heard my thoughts. Then she shakes her head and pockets it. “Actually, no time. Loons. Herons then, loons now. We good?”

“We're good.”

Bree grabs a small axe from a wall lined with tools and points at a table. “Hands here.” With my back to the table, I lift my hands onto the surface, and stretch them as far apart as the cuffs allow.

“Don't mi—”

“I won't. Just hold still.”

I feel the air move as she brings the axe down, followed by a vibration that stings at my wrists and travels to my shoulder socket.

“One more,” she promises.

A
whoosh
, the clink of the restraint splitting, and my arms swing free. Each wrist is still cuffed in metal, but they're no longer tethered together.

She throws the axe aside. “Sammy's waiting.”

“How many people did this take?”

“Does it matter? It worked.”

“But—”

“I think someone's following us, Gray. Explanations later.”

I didn't hear or see anyone, but if she says someone's on our tail, I believe it. We race through the massive basement, which is filled with machinery as large as the ceiling allows. At various intervals we pass medical kits mounted into the wall, emergency breakers to cut power to machines, fire alarms. This must be a factory, and by the look of the equipment we run past, we're on the production level.

“Where's the safe house?” I yell as we run.

“Not close.”

“So how the hell are we going to get there?”

“Sewers.”

Of course.

She takes a sharp turn, leading to a flight of stairs. “Up this, out the window, then a half block to the entrance.” She even dares a smile over her shoulder before taking the stairs two at a time.

The gunfire is getting louder again, almost as though we've circled back toward the fighting. I can see the window at the top of the stairs. The sky has nearly lost all its color.

Bree hits the landing, shoves the window open.

“Wait,” she says as I put my hands on the sill. She turns back toward the stairwell, gun poised. A few seconds tick by and she frowns. “He was right on our tail. I heard him.”

I don't know how. I can barely hear her over the blaring alarm system, and she's screaming right into my ear.

“We must have lost him.”

“Don't.” She grabs my arm and hauls me away from the window. “Something's off.” Her forehead furrows. She reaches behind her back and pulls a spare gun from her waistband. “We check together. You take ground level, I'll check above.”

“A trap?” I ask, accepting the weapon.

“I'm not sure. Something though . . .”

We flank the window. She counts, her voice a whisper, and on three, we both pivot, angling outside. The ground is clear, no one in sight. At my side Bree yelps, and ducks back into the building. I hear her gun clatter to the floor. Right
then I know it is indeed a trap, but not on the streets. No, this is worse. I move slowly, knowing what I'm going to see before my eyes actually take it in.

Bree is in the hands of an Order member. He has her held against his chest like a shield, a knife kissing the smooth skin of her neck. In his other hand is a gun, aimed directly at me.

“Put your weapon down,” he orders, and I can't see a single reason not to comply.

“DON'T DO IT, GRAY,” BREE
says. “Don't do anything he tells you to.”

“You really shouldn't test me,” the Order member says. “After all, you know I have it in me to follow through.” He shifts so that he is no longer fully sheltered behind Bree. I can see only half his face, but my stomach drops. I'm looking in a mirror.

“You were dead. She shot you.”

“I was
dying
,” my Forgery corrects. “But stomach wounds are a slow, painful way to go, and it bought me time. Enough to be flown to Taem and receive expert medical care. So thank you for that. Now, put your gun down.”

With half his face still hidden behind Bree, I barely have
a shot.
Barely
. I've never been good with handguns. Not like Bree. And if I hit her . . .

I tuck my elbow in, letting the gun train toward the ceiling.

“Dammit, Gray!”

“That's a good boy. Now put it on the floor.”

“Don't,” she says. “I'm begging you not to.”

But what am I supposed to do? What can I possibly do?

“Shoot him. Take any shot you've got,” she urges.

“So noisy.” The Forgery brings his blade to her lips and hushes her. She falls silent, but he continues to apply pressure, to the point that she gasps. The knife slips into her mouth and I can see it like a blister rising, pressing against her cheek from the inside. My blood thins at the sight of it, then slows at the words spilling from my Forgery. He makes his threats as though they are a song he enjoys singing: Bree has a dirty mouth . . . She used it as a weapon against him and he should take it from her . . . She's a dog who needs a muzzle but perhaps she'd be safer without a set of lips at all.

Her eyes lock on mine and she rolls them. This is so like her to judge me even now, to criticize my hesitation. Like I have a mountain of options at my disposal. There is nothing to shoot, no part of the Forgery I can hit without also hitting her.

Bree slides her feet into a broader stance and rolls her eyes again. An exaggerated motion. And I understand.

She
is going to roll.

Before I can reason with her, she stomps down on the Forgery's foot. He howls. Then she bends, throwing her hips into his gut and rolling him clear off his feet and over her back. He smacks the floor, and my bullet finds him next. Twice. So there can be no mistake. I pick up Bree's dropped weapon and double-check the Forgery. He's gone. Gone for good.

But when I glance up, I realize worse damage has been done.

Bree is bleeding. Everywhere. There is so much blood I can't tell where her mouth ends and the injury begins.

I rush to her, cup her face. His knife fought its way free. When she bent over to throw him off balance, she did so even with the knife pressed against the inside of her cheek, even when that motion required her to fight against the very edge of the blade.

The corner of her lip doesn't end where it used to.

She's not screaming in pain—not yet at least—but she's sputtering as blood pools in her mouth, catching the overflow in her hands.

I tug her away from the window and down the hallway. The medical kits were abundant on the lower level, but here it feels like forever until I find one. I yank it from its brackets and pull Bree into a nearby bathroom. I drop our guns and
riffle through the kit. I pull out bandages and press them against the wound.

Bree swears awkwardly through her ruined mouth. “Is it bad?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say, because I know she doesn't want a lie. “But you'll be fine.”

I find a surgical needle, medical thread. I can stitch, and I can fix her. Not that she's broken. She has never,
ever
been capable of being broken. Not even at the hands of that worthless lump of flesh cooling down the hall—some horrible shadow of myself.

Bree sits on the edge of the sink as I try to clean away the excess blood, but the bandage catches the ragged flesh of her cheek. And that's when the tears come.

She's caught sight of herself in the mirror.

I'll admit it's nasty. It's one of the worst, most unnatural things I've ever seen, a smile that stretches into her cheek. She swears again. The tears fall. I tell her I can make it better even though I'm not positive I can.

I clean the wound with a solution I find in the kit. She screams, her hands digging into my forearms.

“You're okay. You're going to be fine.”

She digs her nails deeper into my skin.

Next come the stitches. The needle snags as I force it into her cheek. It takes all my self-restraint to calm my shaking
hand, to continue drawing her cheek together, to look at her perfect face and know I'm going to scar her. That this, even the good I'm trying to do now, is another wound she'll wear for the rest of her life.

I've sewn to the corner of her mouth before it dawns on me that I don't know how to close off the stitches. I wish Emma was here to make this right. Her work would be cleaner, less intrusive. But she's not, and so I do as best I can. I tie off my work, snip the excess string with a flimsy pair of scissors I find in the kit. The moment I finish, I kiss Bree. Right on that wrecked mouth, as far away from the fresh stitches as possible. She tastes like blood and I hate that it makes me cringe.

I throw the dirty bandages and utensils in the sink and dress the injury. It's bulky and awkward, the way the gauze is taped over the lower half of her cheek. She's shaking, I realize. Her entire body is convulsing.

“What is it? Pain? Do you need something?”

The front of her leather jacket is shiny with blood, and a few dried streaks trail down her chin and neck. Something defeated is written on her features, a sort of doubt and hopelessness I've sensed in her only once before—when we were trapped beneath Burg and she cried against my chest in a pitch-black holding cell.

“Hey.”

She won't pull her gaze away from the mirror.

“Bree!” I grab her wrist and her face snaps to mine. “I love you so damn much,” I tell her.

Her bottom lip quivers, and her eyes work over me, lingering on my hairline. She fishes a wipe from the med kit and pulls me nearer. I stand between Bree's knees, my thighs against the cool sink she sits on, while she tends to my forehead. I'd forgotten about my own injury, the blood I felt trickle behind the blindfold as the vehicle rolled. She cleans the wound, fighting against the shaking of her own fingers, and then applies a small bandage. No stitches needed, I guess.

The alarm keeps blaring, dulled slightly by the door that separates us from the hallway. The fighting seems incredibly distant right now.

Bree looks at me. No, not just at me, but into me. It makes me feel weak and capable in the same breath. Then, as though something has jolted her out of a dream, she jumps from the sink and snatches up her gun.

“The sewers. We're late and Sammy's going to think the worst.”

It's only when she's resorted to her typical demeanor—channeling strength and sureness—that the shock crashes down on me. My legs go slack. I brace myself against the wall, my opposite hand shaking as I clench the gun.

I can't lose anyone else. I can't.

“Gray,” she says. “I need you with me.”

I swallow. With both hands on her gun, Bree trains it up and steps into the hall. Because she asked me to, and because there's no one I'd rather follow, I make myself move.