“—gency—require—immediate—transportation to—”

The world rocks and rattles, shaking me out of the black and into the blue. I blink against the foggy light around me and try to turn my head to see what dark shape is moving near my feet, but my body is locked up tight. My tongue is swollen and it tastes like bile in my mouth. I can’t feel anything anymore. All that’s left of my heartbeat is a soft, tentative knocking in my chest. A Stay awake, a Fight harder, a You can’t go.

It’s too hard to keep my eyes open for long. When I come back, there’s a face I don’t recognize above me, saying things I can’t hear. One of his careful hands is on my throat, the other on my leg. Gone, back, gone—I’m moved, lifted up on something stiff and unbending. The cold air can’t touch me, but the smell, the smell of clean air, the last traces of rain, it makes me want to cry. I glide under a sky so blue, so purple, so golden I fight as hard as anything to keep my eyes open, because I want to remember it forever, however long that lasts.

Because I know it’ll be the last thing I ever see.

FOUR

LUCAS

WE WAKE UP about a half hour before the rest of the camp does, not with the piercing alarms over the loudspeakers, but the clang of a PSF dragging their baton along the barred barracks window. When you’ve trained your body and mind to rest without ever falling into a real, deep sleep, it’s enough to send you shooting straight up out of your bunk to kick-start the morning routine of wash up-pull on uniform-make bed-stand at attention-wait for instructions. I seem to do all five in one quick motion.

The barracks are silent save for the shuffle of feet and the running of water. The building is old but well heated and decently maintained. We have windows and tiled floors and painted walls, which makes the whole thing almost seem homey in comparison to what I saw of the cabins yesterday. And where they kept Sammy overnight.

Up until last week, it housed PSFs about to hit the end of their mandatory service. We only had to slide neatly into their vacated place, set our uniforms and toiletries in the small chests at the end of the bunks that used to house theirs. There were no decorations on the wall, but they do have a few sun-faded posters up—one with the camp’s posted schedule, which apparently hasn’t changed in seven years, others with charts of the color classifications. The angry slash of red at the top of the chart is labeled FIRE, HIGHLY DANGEROUS.

My breath comes out as a harsh snort.

F13 falls into place beside me, smoothing a braid back over her shoulder. In my head, I’ve always called her Rose, because of the color of her hair. I’ve imagined a whole fake life for her, for all of them, always something silly to counteract the harsh reality. For Rose, I pretend that her parents are zookeepers, and growing up she had a pet armadillo named Fernando and monkeys that hung out in her backyard. I pretend her voice sounds as soft as falling petals, because I’ve only ever heard her scream. The Trainers stripped these kids down to a letter and a number, sapped every feeling and thought that belonged to them. I want to see them as humans. I will dream for them, if I have to.

She’s finished wrapping the sheets over her bed with the pointless military precision drilled into us, and takes a moment to straighten out her uniform and make sure that her shirt is properly tucked in. I do the same, smoothing out a wrinkle that’s not there; I’m bursting with the need to move, to rock back and forth on my heels until it’s time to head out and start the day.

Instead, I picture someone pouring plaster under my skin, letting it dry, keeping me trapped in that same stiff pose. It helps. A little. But I’ve been waiting hours to check on Sam. I kept looking toward Olsen during the dinner rotations, ready to be sent to bring her food, to check on her, to be posted there overnight. I tried to do the math in my head of how long I could disappear from my post and go out around back of the building before anyone would notice.

But Olsen never said a word to me, neither did the camp controller who dismissed us for the night and sent us back here. I didn’t exactly expect them to, but I wanted some kind of hint that she’d at least been brought a blanket or water. What happens when she has to go to the bathroom? Do they let her get up and move around for a few minutes at any point during the night? The questions kept my brain from shutting down. I couldn’t escape them, and a part of me felt like I didn’t deserve to.

The only thing I’d been able to do was watch Tildon to make sure he didn’t disappear at any point, but after the dinner rotations? There was no way to know for sure. He could have gone back, slipping out when he should have been returning to his own barracks.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath to steady myself against the flood of violence and flame that filters through my mind.

The door at the far end of the room swings open, and a camp controller strides in, her gaze sweeping over us. I straighten as a PSF moves between the beds, inspecting the cotton for wrinkles and untucked corners. Satisfied, he nods toward her.

“Your assignments for the day are as follows,” the camp controller begins. I listen only long enough to hear that I’m the medical escort, not assigned to Sammy’s cabin block. A lick of defeat hits me right at my center. I’m babysitting a whole bunch of kids who aren’t her, and, worse, they haven’t rotated me to any of the Blue cabin blocks to confirm for myself that Mia isn’t here.

We follow the camp controller out of the barracks, heading our separate ways. The world around us is still damp and dripping, with the promise of another storm. I’m handed a clipboard with a single sheet of paper listing the names, locations, and times to pick the kids up and walk them over to the Infirmary. At the end of my day, I have an allotted two hours to “assist medical staff” before dinner rotations.