The walls of the train car shrink around me, until I’m encased in a capsule of plastic and steel.
Through the speakers, a familiar voice.
“Welcome back, Fleur,” Poppy says. “I’m so glad you’re home.”
12
About Alaska
JACK
“What in Chronos’s name is going on in here?” I jump, so engrossed I didn’t even hear Chill come into our room. He nudges the door shut with his heel, his narrowed eyes roving over the sketches and scraps of notepaper spread over the floor, then jumping to the dozens of maps I’ve taped over the walls of the room.
Surveillance records drift from my lap in my rush to get up. “I’m glad you’re here,” I say, as calmly as possible. “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
Chill sinks into his rolling chair. “Why do I get the feeling I’m not gonna like where this is going?”
I draw in a deep breath. I tell myself it’s just like ripping off a bandage. I’ll just come out and tell him. Chill’s always had my back before. Once he understands what’s at stake, he’ll come around. “I met with Professor Lyon this morning—”
“About Alaska.” His eyes climb back to the maps on the wall—pencil sketches of all four cardinal campus exits, the buildings they feed into on opposite ends of Greenwich Park, road maps of London, nautical charts, shipping schedules, flight plans, highway maps of the United States—and in them, I see his heart plummet.
“Yeah, about that...”
The rest comes out in an agonized rush. I tell him about my theory about what happened when Fleur held me, about the lion and the girl and the history books in the vault. He cringes as I tell him about my trip into the Crux with Noelle and my sparring match with Amber. His head’s still buried in his hands when I finally rest a drawing in his lap.
The paper rustles, his grip tentative around the circuit I’ve drawn. Four batteries, one for each Season. Two negatively charged. Two positively charged. Opposites touching. No transmitters and no ley lines. A closed loop.
His eyes lift back to the maps. His head shakes back and forth as he puts it all together. “No way. Absolutely not.”
“We can do it,” I tell him. “We can live off the grid. We don’t have to stay here.”
“Says who?” he asks, shoving the paper at me and rolling back to his desk.
“Says Lyon! Says the books locked in the vault. Says all the history Chronos doesn’t want us to know. Because he can’t control us out there if we’re not leashed by a transmitter to the ley lines. He can only control us in here.”
Chill’s voice rises to a fevered pitch he’s never used with me before. “What are you asking me to do, Jack?”
“I’m asking you tolive.”
“I’ve got a life! Right here!”
“You spend all day watching TV, playing video games, and arguing with Poppy over a webcam.”
“I finally get to go to Alaska, and you’re going to make me walk away from that?” His face scrunches up like he’d really like to hit me. Maybe he should. Maybe then he’d understand. He’s never had to draw someone else’s blood in all the years we’ve been here.
“Don’t you get it?You’renot going to Alaska!” I throw an arm at the posters on his wall. “The pictures, the video feeds on your tablet, and that fake fucking window... None of it’s real! You’re notgoinganywhere. You’ll behere, thirty stories below the goddamn ground, no matter what region they send me to!” I shut my eyes so I won’t have to see the look on his face. I’ve just hung out the lie he’s been telling himself and skinned it, bare and bloody. He can’t pretend he doesn’t see it. He can’t keep looking away. “The rankings, the promotions... It’s all a game. This”—I point to both of us—“this is real. The world outside this place,” I say, pointing skyward. “That’s real. You want to go places? Then let’s cut the cord and go someplace real. Someplacewechoose.”
Chill’s lip quivers, belying the defiance in his stare. “And what happens if I don’t want to?”
“Then Poppy and Fleur die.” Saying it cuts like a razor. My voice cracks on the words. “You can’t pretend you didn’t see their names on the rankings board. They’re below the red line. They’ve only got one season left before they’re up for the Purge. All we have to do is convince them to come with us.”
Chill pales. He glances at the webcam on his desk, then quickly away.
“We both witnessed that Termination. We both saw what Chronos did. Could you live with yourself if that happened to Poppy?” Chill flinches, unwilling to look at me as I turn the knife. But maybe he needs to feel some pain to understand why we have to do this. I kneel in front of him. There’s no way I can survive this without him. And I won’t leave him here alone. “We can stop it. We can get them both out of here before anyone knows we’re gone, but the only way this works is if we’re all on board. All eight of us.”
Chill swears quietly. He rubs his eyes beneath his frames, the resolve worn from his voice. “How the hell do you plan to manage that?”
“Fleur and Poppy have nothing to lose. If I can find a way to get through to Fleur, they shouldn’t be hard to convince.” Discarded sketches and plans crinkle under me as I rise to my feet. I rake my hair back, trying to see past all the obstacles, hoping some solid plan will form from the debris.
