Forged (21 page)

EMMA'S CHIP GETS US INSIDE
and up the necessary stairwells. When Bree and I burst onto Frank's floor, the few workers present step out of our way without a fight. Something is changing. It's as if they know Frank's grip is almost exhausted. They are deciding whose graces they want to be in when the smoke clears.

His office is locked, and this is the one door that doesn't register Emma's chip. I throw my shoulder into the door as I twist the knob. Slam my palm against it. “Come on!” Not now. We can't hit a dead end here.

“Gray!” Bree shoves me aside and aims where the teeth of the latch are hidden within the wood. She fires once, twice, and the locking mechanism gives.

The office is empty.

We walk in with our guns up, scanning the room. Papers lay scattered across the floor. A desk drawer hangs open as though files were grabbed in a hurry.

“Got it,” Bree says. She's found the section of shelving Emma mentioned, although I can't imagine how Emma discovered it. Maybe she visited Frank's office and found it already open, or caught someone in the act of coming or going.

Bree pushes, and the section recedes, then slides behind the rest of the shelves to reveal a second office. The floor is slate gray and dull, and a narrow corridor branches off to the left. A series of surveillance screens hang on the walls, currently showing the square downtown. Without the Forgeries, the fighting is more evenly matched. There are no cushioned chairs in this office, no elaborate drapes or grand glass windows. The only decorative touch is a picture frame propped up beside the lone computer. The woman in the photo looks uncannily familiar, though I can't remember ever meeting her.

A gunshot deafens me in the tight quarters.

I duck, hands cradling my head. A second blast—or maybe it's the same bullet—strikes a screen, which crackles and goes dead. Frank darts from behind a large filing cabinet and races down the hallway. I send a bullet after him. It hits
his leg. He staggers around a corner, firing blindly back. It is by sheer luck that the bullets hit the wall and not me.

I round the corner only to see him turning another.

“Damn, this place is big. Bree?” I turn. She's not behind me. “Bree!”

As I backtrack, my lungs seem to shrink. I all but fall into the secondary office. She's on the floor, leaning against the wall.

I drop to my knees and scramble to her.

“Are you hit?” My hands are on her, checking her face, her torso.

“Just grazed,” she says, wincing as my hands move to her arms. “Right there.”

I pull back. It's then that I notice the tear on the upper arm of her jacket, the blood. And the fact that her tank is shorter than it used to be. A pale rag, torn from the hem of her shirt, is in her opposite hand. She was trying to secure the material over the wound, slow the bleeding.

“Go,” she says. “I'll be right on your heels.”

“We stay together.”

“Gray . . .”

“No. Just stop.” I snatch the rag from her and tie it around her bicep. “Good?”

“Good.”

I help her to her feet—she cringes—and we take off down
the corridor. It forks and branches often. Frank must be able to access half of Union Central through these hallways.

We turn or stay straight as he did. The path is made obvious by the blood from his leg—smeared against walls he paused to lean on, splattered against the floor where it fell as he ran.

Another turn and we're facing a narrow stairwell. I ascend half the flight and look over my shoulder. Bree's leaning against the wall, shivering.

“I'll be right behind you,” she promises. “Go. Please?”

I slow, take a step toward her.

“Go!”

My feet carry me up the rest of the stairs. I shoulder my way through a door, and it bangs open into blinding light. I'm on the roof. A helicopter is backlit by the sun, the blades already alive. My bangs whip into my eyes as rooftop rubble swirls at my feet. Squinting against the wind, I see motion in the front of the rig. I fire and the pilot goes still. Another Order member leaps from the rear, and my bullet finds him before his feet hit the roof. No more movement.

“Frank!”

I'm not climbing into that helicopter. He's going to come to me. In the open. Where I can see him and fire a shot easily.

“Quick to run now that your Forgeries are dead and no one's willing to stand and protect you, huh?”

Still nothing.

“There's no way out except through me.”

With his hands held in surrender, Frank steps from the helicopter and onto the roof . “Gray,” he says. “The unHeisted boy. Here to put a bullet in me?”

“Believe me, you deserve worse.”

“For trying to protect people? They need to be told how to think, what to do. Just look at them.” He waves in the vague direction of the square. “They are tearing one another apart. People can't be trusted with their own two hands, let alone their minds.”

“Enough!”

“Are you going to shoot me, then? Is that how the fugitive for freedom frees his people? By killing the one person who's kept them safe?”

“Yes.”

I pull the trigger.

The hammer strikes.

But no bullet flies.

Is it jammed? No, I'm out. This is the Forgery's gun from the training field. I didn't know how many rounds I was carrying, hadn't been counting as I fired.

My head whips back to Frank, and he's already in the process of drawing his weapon. I dive, tackling him to the ground. He's slow, and I easily dodge the punch he throws.
It's the dust and rubble that he tosses in my face that costs me my advantage. Blinking, eyes burning, I stagger away. My hip hits the lip of the roof, the wall that separates me from a deadly drop. Frank's hands are on the front of my shirt. He pushes me backward.

I can feel the hook of gravity, how I'll topple to my death if he applies much more pressure. I will my feet to dig into the roof. My hands grapple for something, anything, to keep me on
this
side of the ledge. The only things they find are Frank's fists clenching the front of my shirt.

And then, without warning, Frank pauses.

I blink away the last bits of dirt to see what's made him loosen his grip.

Emma.

Emma no more than three paces away with a gun aimed at Frank's heart.

Her form isn't great, but she's close enough to not miss. I think. Her gun hand is shaking, and the corners of her eyes wrinkle as she takes aim. She might not have it in her to pull the trigger. Emma's a fighter when it comes to
saving
lives—stitching cuts and setting bones and tending to illness. Saving, not killing. She couldn't even kill that Order member below. All she did was drug him.

I look toward the stairwell, desperate to find Bree there. The door bangs in the wind.

“Let go of him,” Emma says. Far quicker than I expect him to, Frank caves. I stumble away, rubbing at my burning eyes.

“Now sit on the wall.”

He complies.

Emma moves nearer. One step. Two.

“Doll, you can't be angry with me,” Frank says. “Not after all I've done for you.”

“Don't call me that.”

“Please,” he says, hands held in surrender. “I'll leave, I'll do whatever you want, but please show mercy. All I've ever wanted is to fix people. I'm not the villain you've made me.”

“You've oppressed everyone who turned to you for guidance. You've murdered people for having their own opinions.”

“You're looking at it wrong. You and Gray and all these brainless Rebel romantics think the answer is letting people run wild,” he says. “But structure and rules yield order. Too much freedom makes people bored and greedy. They tear one another apart. Everyone would see that if they stopped fighting me long enough to listen. All I do is protect people. My whole life has been spent keeping people calm and safe and—”

“Living in fear,” I say. “Afraid to speak their minds.”

“People cannot be trusted!” A vein bulges on his forehead.
“Not with anything breakable and certainly not with the future.”

“Stop it!” Emma shouts. “Not another word.” The gun shakes again in her grip and Frank sees it.

“Put the gun down, doll. You don't know what you're doing.”

“
I'm
making the demands now.”

He laughs, and she loosens a bullet into his foot like she's Bree. Like she doesn't have a thing to fear and will pull any trigger necessary. The same possessed determination I've seen on Bree's face now graces Emma's profile. It's the look of a person about to do the unthinkable. Maybe no one is above killing.

Frank swears in pain, jerking to grab his foot, but when Emma brings the weapon's barrel back to his heart, he goes bone still. A bead of sweat drips from his brow and strikes the dust-covered rooftop.

“Promise all my people can walk free,” Emma says. “Everyone in Claysoot and any other test group. The Laicos Project is over.”

“Done.”

She presses the muzzle to his forehead. “Swear you'll let your citizens elect a new ruler. Anyone the majority favors.”

“You have my word.”

“They will try you however they see fit, and if by some
miracle they let you walk, you'll disappear. Permanently.”

“Seems only just.”

“Good.” She lowers the gun. “Then this new world has no room, or need, for a person like you.” She grabs him by the ankles and lifts.

It happens both immediately and in slow motion. For what feels like hours he hangs on the brink of death—momentum not yet claiming him—and then he's toppling. His arms flail out. Shock blows over his face. And he's gone.

I dart to the low wall, peer over.

Dimitri Octavius Frank is dead, a broken heap at the foot of his headquarters. The blood around his head is as dark as his uniform.

Emma sinks to the ground and unravels. She pushes the gun away. Her shoulders shake. She's crying—not audibly, just tears.

“Don't touch me,” she says as I move nearer.

“Emma . . . you just—”

“Don't.”

With her feet tucked beneath her and the determination gone from her face, she looks years younger.

“Thank you,” I say.

Emma wipes her cheeks with the back of her hand. I should do something, not just stand here watching her cry,
but she told me to keep my distance. I feel completely useless. She stares at the gun sitting an arm's length from her knees, and because I worry she'll stop talking altogether if I don't keep her at it, I make my mouth work.

“How'd you find us?”

“Left Sammy in the hospital wing with some nurses. I found the door open in Frank's office, then followed the blood trail.”

The blood trail
.

“Bree!” My eyes dart to the stairs.

“Gray, wait.” I take one look at Emma's face and know what she's going to say, know exactly how bad it's going to be when I enter the stairwell. I race away. Across the roof. To the door.

I drop to my knees at the sight of her.

She's slouched just two steps from the top, her good hand tucked inside her leather jacket and beneath her injured arm, like she's holding a cramp in her side. Sweat coats her forehead. She's paler than the moon.

“You said a graze.” I pull her nearer. “You said it barely clipped you.” She leans into me. “Bree?”

“I didn't want you . . . to slow down . . . or not go after him.” She cringes. “I didn't want you . . . to know.”

“Know?” I hold her face in my hands, let my fingers trail over her skin just to confirm she's still real.

“Two shots.”

“Two shots where, Bree?
Where?
”

“One graze . . . the other . . .”

She lifts the arm I bandaged just earlier, draws her opposite hand away from her torso. Beneath her jacket, the blood is abundant.

“OH, NO. NO, NO, NO.”

I press my hand against hers, guiding it back to the wound. The blood seeps through our fingers, sticky, warm.

“Emma!” I shout toward the roof.

Bree's breathing is labored. Her eyelids flutter.

“Did you get him?” she asks.

“Yeah. We got him.”

She manages the smallest smile, then leans against the wall and groans.

“Emma!”

She's at the top of the stairwell now, looking down on us. “I can try,” Emma says. “All I can do is try.”

I pull Bree to her feet. She can't hold her own weight
anymore, so I slip an arm beneath her knees and carry her. Emma squeezes past us to lead.

The hospital is full of workers, most of them tending to injured Order members that have been transported back to Union Central from the square. Emma points to a vacant bed and I lower Bree onto the stiff mattress.

“You're fine,” I tell her, but I've never seen her look worse. There's so much blood and her skin is too pale and something is off in her eyes. She's half elsewhere. “Bree?”

Her head rolls to look at me. I kiss her knuckles.

Emma shouts orders to another medic. Bree's jacket needs to come off. And she needs a sedative.

“Gray, you have to move,” Emma says.

But I don't want to let go of Bree's hand. It might never be warm again. Emma pushes against me. Bree's fingers are sticky in mine.

“Someone get him out of here,” Emma yells. “Get him out!”

I'm heaved away by a burly medic and shoved into the hallway. The door slams in my face. When I try the handle, it's locked. All I'm left with is a window view of the chaos. Fists against the glass, throat tightening, I watch.

The sleeve of Bree's leather jacket is sliced open, then freed at the shoulder. Her entire right side, from shoulder to rib cage, is dark with blood. They cut away her shirt and
roll her onto her stomach. A medic walks to the window and pulls down a shade.

I slam my palms against the glass, scream Bree's name. The shade remains down. For a long time. Long enough that I quit pounding on the glass and instead slide to the floor. My father, Blaine, now her? It will actually break me. I will come apart at the seams. How many pieces of myself am I expected to lose and still remain standing?

I stare at her blood on my hands.

I can't stop shaking.

Someone needs to tell me what to do. Someone needs to tell me because I'm about to shatter.

You can't sit there feeling sorry for yourself, that's for sure
, I hear Blaine chide in my ear.
Frank's dead and everyone's still fighting. Go tell them it's time to stop.

He would judge me, even now. But haven't I done enough? Sacrificed plenty? How much am I expected to give?

Everything
, Blaine says.
Because people believed
.

And right then, the true influence of Bea's work hits me—the stories in the
Harbinger
, the propaganda that's been hung throughout towns, the rumors that have been whispered in quiet streets. I thought they were all lies, but they're not. They'll only become lies if I don't do this, if I choose to make them such.

I'm not the only one who's lost a brother or father or friend.
I'm not the only one who's been wronged. Down in that square, everyone's future is a breath away, or maybe a bullet too close to being taken from them. And if I can't stand with them now, what the hell has this all been for?

I glance at the window to Bree's room. The curtain is still drawn.

This is the last thing you have to do
, Blaine promises.
She'll understand
.

There's always one last thing. There will be another after this. That's life.

But he's right. If our fates were reversed, I know he'd already be downtown.

I take a deep breath and stand. Because I must. Because really, when I look at the whole of the matter, there's no other option.

Several blocks from the square there's so much debris in the road I have to abandon the car I took from Union Central and continue on foot. The gunfire is deafening, the world an inferno of flames. I end up cornered in a narrow alley, cowering behind a Dumpster while Order members try to take me out from the roof. I'm an idiot, armed with the same handgun that's been without ammo since I shot Frank's pilots and no plan whatsoever. Somehow, this all seemed a lot easier in my head.

“You trying to get yourself killed?”

I look across the alley and see Elijah's cousin peering from behind a door. He points at a trail of dark liquid on the ground. At first I think it's blood, but notice it's leaking from an overturned Order vehicle at the end of the alley.

Elijah's cousin lights a match and tosses it onto the gasoline. The flames snake up the trail, and when they meet the car, I can feel the explosion in my ribs. The gunfire falters. Momentarily deaf, I dart across the alley beneath the cover of smoke and into the opposite building.

We race up a few flights and find Elijah hunched over a table with a half dozen other Rebels, shouting into a radio. He's covered in blood but he's fully mobile, so the blood can't be his. I tell him about Frank, and he immediately starts firing off orders.

“Someone get a call back to Union Central. I want video of the body ready to go. Two guards for Gray over there.” He points to a balcony that overlooks the square. “And get him in a bulletproof vest. I'm not taking any chances.”

Before I'm truly ready, I'm stepping onto the balcony with a pair of Rebels at my side. I cringe, expecting a bullet, but nothing finds us. The platform Frank spoke from earlier is overrun. Abandoned cars and broken bodies are everywhere. Some clothed in black uniforms, but nearly as many in threadbare attire. A group of citizens has been beaten
into a corner. A throng of teens smash out the windshield of an Order vehicle, drag the soldiers from the car. I can taste blood in the air and see it on the streets. The world is stained dark.

A microphone is handed to me. Elijah says it will be loud enough. They've rigged Frank's original setup to work for our needs.

A high-pitched whiz sounds, and a white trail blazes toward the dome. It explodes in a starburst of blue—a firework, momentarily louder than the shouting and the screams. Nearly as loud as the popping gunfire.

The noise and foreign color are enough to make people in the square falter. They look up, startled, and the wall behind the platform fills with the image of Frank's fallen body.

This is my signal.

“Frank is dead,” I say in the brief lull of fighting.

My voice booms through the square. So loud I bet Blaine—wherever he is—can hear me. With this realization, a calm washes over me.

The people turn, trying to locate where my voice is coming from. Some spot me. Others, who have not yet seen the proof of Frank's demise, find it on the wall behind the overrun stage.

“Some of you know me, and the rest of you probably don't trust what I have to say,” I continue. “I've been called a lot of
things—Expat, Rebel, a fugitive for freedom—but the truth is I'm just trying to get by. I'm trying to make it from one day to the next. Like you.”

I realize people are actually listening now. Not all of them, but enough. The soldiers who had cornered their prey pause. The boys dragging men from the Order car let their arms hang at their sides. There are fists, still, and weapons held at bay. But people are listening.

“I know how hard it can be to put down your weapon. I do. Especially when fighting seems like the only way to achieve justice. But those of you fighting for freedom have no reason to keep at it—Frank's gone—and those of you fighting on Frank's behalf are no longer bound by your service to the Order. Not unless you want to be.

“If this continues, we're not destroying the enemy anymore. We're killing neighbors. And I'm tired of fighting,” I say. “So damn tired. I want to go home. I want to start living again.”

Almost directly below me, a boy puts down a wooden bat. There are two Order members an arm's distance from him, but he lets the bat fall from his hands like a shield he no longer needs. They look at the boy, then their handguns. It feels like it takes an hour, but they holster them.

And then the surrender spreads like a wildfire. Weapons are dropped, fists are uncurled, outward and onward.
Not everyone complies. There are certain Order members shouting, and I can still hear fighting out of sight beyond the square, where people couldn't see a screen or hear my words. But so many have chosen to surrender. They're still watching me. I don't know for what, so I do the first thing that comes to mind. I hand the microphone to the guard and press the Expat salute into my chest. Then I mirror the salute with my other hand, so that my arms are crossed, and both sets of fingers form a letter. E
and
W. East
and
West.

That's when the bullet finds me.

I don't hear it fired, but it hurts like no other when it strikes. It nicks my finger and hits my vest just above my heart. For a moment, I lose my breath.

The guards grab me before I collapse, and pull me into the safety of the building. I catch one last glimpse of the square. Already, a swarm of Order members and civilians alike are descending on what must be the shooter. Those not working to force the stubborn to surrender are mirroring my two-armed salute.

It's beautiful, and I'm exhausted.

I could sleep for days.

I wish you were here for this
, I tell Blaine silently.
I think I might have made you proud for once
.