Читать книгу Captive - Aimee Carter - Страница 7

II MIDNIGHT MEETING

The passageway above the fourth floor was as dusty and dirty as ever. Without a flashlight, I was plunged into darkness, and even after my eyes adjusted to what little moonlight filtered in, I couldn’t see more than a few inches in front of me. Cobwebs caught my hair and cheeks, and once I thought I felt a spider running down the back of my dress, but I forced myself to stay calm and move forward. I’d taken this route a dozen times before. I could do this.

At last I found the staircase that led downward, and from then on out, it was only a matter of not tripping. The heels I wore made that more difficult than it should have been, and twice I had to catch myself on the wooden bannister. By the time the creaky steps turned into the dirt tunnel underneath the grounds of Somerset, I’d collected two splinters in my palm, and I was fervently wishing I’d stopped long enough to grab a pair of boots.

The tunnel was pitch-black. I ran a hand across the dirt wall to guide me, keeping my ears peeled for any sign of Knox. But I would have seen the light from his flashlight if he was still in the tunnel, and satisfied that I was alone, I picked up the pace. I had no guarantee I’d be able to slip into the bunker undetected. By now the guards knew me, but I didn’t have the codes, and I’d have to catch up to Knox if I wanted access. Even then, it was entirely possible he’d tell me to go home, though if he thought I would listen after his little speech in the suite—

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

A hand clamped over my wrist, tugging me away from the wall, and I swore loudly enough that they probably heard it back in Somerset. Yanking my arm away, I thrashed wildly in the darkness. “Let—me—go!”

Light flooded the tunnel, and Knox stood with his free hand still wrapped bruisingly around my wrist. “Not until you answer my question.”

“I will kick you again,” I said, squinting against the brightness.

“Still not an answer.”

I scowled. “What do you think I’m doing? I’m coming with you.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am.”

His eyes narrowed, and for a long moment, we stood face-to-face, both waiting for the other to back down. Neither of us did.

“Do you understand how delicate this situation is?” said Knox. “If you and your aversion to obedience say the wrong word to the wrong person—”

“Maybe if you stopped acting like I’m an untrained dog and started treating me like a person who’s as much a part of this as you are, I’d stop pulling against your invisible leash,” I said. “I have every right to be there, and you know it. If you keep acting like I’m a liability—”

“I wouldn’t if you stopped being a liability.”

“—then I’ll leave,” I finished, ignoring him. “If I can’t work with the Blackcoats, then I don’t have any reason to be here anymore.”

“Oh?” Knox arched an eyebrow. “And where would you go?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m here because you asked me to be part of this, and I agreed, because it is the right thing to do. But this—leaving me behind, treating me like I’m incapable of making a right move without you—this isn’t what I signed up for. If you don’t let me go to that meeting, then I’ll disappear. I don’t care how many Shields you have searching for me. Scour the entire country. You will never find me.”

His brow furrowed, and a muscle in his jaw twitched. “I asked you to stay because I thought you’d cooperate and help us. The more time I spend chasing after you and cleaning up your messes, the less time I have to focus on the rebellion. Do you understand?”

“The more you treat me like a child, the more likely I’ll be to act like one,” I said calmly, keeping a tight rein on the anger boiling inside me. I wasn’t about to give him any reason to dismiss me. “Do you understand?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Fine. You start behaving, and I’ll start trusting you.”

“Good. Now let go of me.”

Knox released my wrist, and I rubbed it, hoping it didn’t bruise. Purple would be hard to hide against Lila’s porcelain skin.

“Come on, we’re going to be late,” he said, and he led me down the dirt tunnel, the beam of light swinging with each hurried step. “Celia and Lila are supposed to be there tonight, which means you have to watch what you say, all right?”

“Watch what I say about what?” I said, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other without stumbling.

“They still don’t know Daxton’s an impostor,” he said. “No one does.”

I blinked. “Wait—you mean you haven’t told any of the Blackcoats?”

“Of course not. One of them will inevitably leak the information to Celia, and as soon as she finds out, she’ll storm Somerset and throw our entire plan into jeopardy.”

I frowned. Celia, Lila’s mother and Daxton’s sister, was the reason so much of this had happened in the first place. After Daxton had brutally executed her husband, she’d created the Blackcoats, an underground army bent on seeing the Harts stripped of their power and the ranking system abolished for good in favor of the democracy on which America had been built. In the process, she’d used her only daughter, Lila, to captivate the crowds and ensure even more support from the higher ranks for her rebellion. Lila had been reluctant, though, and as the target on her back grew and word of her impending assassination reached their ears, she and Knox had formed a plan: fake her death and hide her underground, where Daxton would never find her. No one else, not even Celia, had known.

The only thing they hadn’t counted on was Daxton having someone else Masked to take Lila’s place—me. And as soon as they discovered what had happened, my education about the real horrors of the country had begun. They’d involved me in the Blackcoats’ plans ever since, and like hell was I giving up my chance to make a difference just because Knox said so.

But Knox had kept Celia in the dark about nearly everything. Even she hadn’t known about her daughter still being alive until she had kidnapped Greyson, Daxton’s son, in an attempt at retribution. She’d never wanted to harm him, but the Harts hadn’t known that, and in the process of rescuing him, they thought they’d killed Celia—and me, for that matter. Luckily for both of us, we’d survived.

While I had agreed to take Lila’s place on a more permanent basis, however, Celia had been forced underground. Not that I thought she minded, but Knox was right: if she found out Daxton wasn’t really Daxton after all and she—or Greyson—should have been ruling the country instead, she would have unleashed the Blackcoats on Somerset without a second thought. Or a cohesive plan in place.

“We have to tell Sampson and the others eventually,” I said. “If they know, maybe they can strategize—”

“It won’t matter,” said Knox as we reached the metal door that opened up to an abandoned alleyway. “They could try to out him, but the media is in Daxton’s pocket. Anyone who went to press with the news would be labeled a traitor and executed before sundown. No one should have to make that sacrifice for nothing.”

The cold December night made me shiver, even with Benjy’s jacket. But it wasn’t far to the bunker, and I hugged myself and toughed out the chill. “The Blackcoats don’t have contacts in the media?”

“Of course we do,” he said. “That doesn’t change the fact that it won’t make any difference. There are a million ways Daxton could spin it, and he’ll never let anyone close enough to prove it.”

“What about Greyson?” Daxton’s eighteen-year-old son was less than enthusiastic about following in his father’s footsteps, but even inexperienced, he would be infinitely better than Daxton.

Knox’s mouth formed a thin line, and he wrapped his arm around my shoulders. Normally it would have been a sweet gesture, but tonight it felt more like a threat. “Do you want to see the masses go after him once the rebellion begins?”

“You mean it hasn’t already?” I said, but he didn’t answer. I bit my lip. Greyson was one of my only friends, and the last thing I wanted was for him to get caught in the cross fire.

We were meters from the bunker when Knox stopped and faced me, his dark eyes bearing into mine. “Listen to me, Kitty,” he said in a low, hurried voice. “Telling the others about Daxton doesn’t outweigh the risks of Celia finding out—and if the other Blackcoat leaders know, she will find out sooner rather than later. And what happens after that is anyone’s guess. Do you understand me?”

“But maybe one of them could think of a way to get the word out and turn Daxton’s supporters against him,” I said. “Too many people have already died—”

“Those people were willing to risk it,” said Knox. “We’re all willing to risk it.”

“I’m not willing to risk Benjy’s life,” I said. “He didn’t agree to any of this, and if there’s a war on Somerset, he’ll get caught in the middle.”

“I’ve already promised to protect you both—”

“You’re not a god, Knox,” I said. “You can’t guarantee we’ll both get out of this alive, and you know it. If we tell them, we could find a way to replace Daxton and have a revolution without anyone else dying—”

“There’s no such thing as a bloodless revolution.”

Knox’s voice cracked like a whip through the alleyway. He glanced around quickly, as if to reassure himself we were alone, and then leaned in close enough for me to smell the champagne on his breath. Not strong enough to knock me over, but it was a stark reminder of the evening we’d had.

“I’ve made you a lot of promises, Kitty, and I intend on keeping them. But I can’t do that if you second-guess every move I make and insist on being in the middle of everything. Do you want a rebellion, or do you want to keep things as they are? Because this isn’t a problem that a single bullet will solve. Even if we cut Daxton out of the picture, we still have the entire government to worry about—including all twelve Ministers of the Union, who will see a chance to seize power for themselves and do everything they can to make it happen. Daxton will be removed from his position one way or the other, but there are countless other steps we have to take in the meantime before we even consider putting that plan into action. People are going to die no matter what we do. Right now, all we can do is try our best to minimalize the casualties.”

Furrowing my brow as I digested everything he said, I crossed my arms to stop myself from shivering more than I already was. “I’m just saying there might be another way to do this.”

“If there was, we would have figured it out already.” Knox straightened. “Promise me you won’t bring up Daxton.”

“Promise me you’ll at least consider trying it my way.”

He scowled. “Fine.”

“Fine.”

He punched a nine-digit code into a small metal box, and a moment later, the door to the bunker opened. We stepped inside. A long concrete hallway stretched out in front of us, and the darkness obscured the high ceiling. I swallowed hard and tried not to think about what was up there, just out of sight: two dozen guards, each with a rifle pointed directly at us.

Guilty until proven innocent. That was how it was for the government, and that was how it was for the Blackcoats. Knox could talk about a rebellion and change until he was blue in the face, but as I followed him through the corridor, my head down and Benjy’s jacket clutched around my shoulders, I began to wonder whether or not anything would really change if the Blackcoats succeeded. I believed in freedom and democracy with everything I was, but if Celia and Knox won the rebellion, the people would still be under the rule of the Hart family. In the end, how many lives would really change for the better?

I pressed my lips together. The Blackcoats weren’t perfect, but they were fighting for the rights of the people—the same rights Daxton Hart and the twelve Ministers of the Union took pleasure in denying them. As I watched Knox punch in another code at the end of the dark corridor, the day of my testing flashed through my mind, and cold fear prickled down my spine, a ghost of a life that was slowly slipping away from me with each day that passed. I knew what it was like to be one of them. I knew what it was like to wake up every morning wondering if today would be the day I ran across a Shield in a bad mood, and he would drag me into the street and shoot me in the head just because he had a gun and I didn’t. I knew what it was like to watch it happen to others and worry I was next. And I knew what it was like to consider the possibility that maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world after all.

It was preferable to the alternative: being sent Elsewhere, a place that, until two months ago, I had deluded myself into thinking was some kind of summer camp for criminals, the elderly, and those deemed unfit for society. Daxton had cleared that up for me my first day as Lila, when he’d taken me hunting in a lush forest. We hadn’t been hunting deer or quail, though. We’d been hunting humans.

That was why I was doing this. Not for the people who wanted to keep their heads down and live as happily as their ranks allowed, but for the people whose lives didn’t belong to them anymore. For the people who saw what this world was really like and had no way of escaping it.

Knox led me through a twisting hallway full of armories and colorless bunks, where refugees and members of the Blackcoats stayed. The heart of the bunker was set in the center, where roughly a dozen people had gathered on ratty and worn chairs and couches, each poring over papers I knew would be burned once the meeting ended. Several heads raised when Knox and I joined them, and a few of them even waved. Knox didn’t wave back.

I watched them closely. Most were decades older than me, their faces lined by age and stress. A handful looked to be in their twenties, but even they seemed weighed down. My heart sank. Whatever was going on, it wasn’t good.

In the center of the ragtag group sat an officer wearing a black-and-silver uniform. Sampson, a high-ranking member of the Shields, and one of the leaders of the Blackcoats. I’d only met him a few times, but as I found a place at the edge of the group, he offered me a warm smile. I smiled back.

“Well?” said Knox impatiently. “What happened?”

Sampson’s smile faded. “The raid failed.”

Knox swore loudly. “How? We had everything planned down to the last detail—”

“Celia found out right before it happened,” said Sampson. “She changed the plan.”

Silence. Slowly Knox’s face went from pink to red to purple. Not once in the past few months, not even when I’d been at my worst, had I ever seen him turn those colors.

It was then that I noticed Celia and Lila were missing, despite Knox’s assumptions that they’d be there tonight. Was this why? Was Celia avoiding him? Or had she been uninvited from her own rebellion?

“You know not to listen to Celia without going through me first,” said Knox in a low, dangerous voice. “No matter what she says—”

“Her ideas weren’t bad,” said Sampson. Even he seemed to shrink under Knox’s glare. “And what was I supposed to do? Say you’d taken over her own army?”

“You should have protected our people.” Knox slammed his fist into a worn wooden coffee table, and half the group jumped. I dug my nails into my palms. “Days—that’s how long we have. Days, Sampson. We needed those supplies. Celia doesn’t have the military knowledge or experience—”

“And you do?” snapped Sampson.

“I’m not some spoiled VII who’s never had to work for anything a day in her entire life,” said Knox.

Before I could stop myself, I snorted.

All eyes turned toward me. My face grew warm, but it was Knox’s stare that made me feel as if I were about to spontaneously combust.

“Did you have something to say, Kitty?” he said. His voice slithered through me, turning my blood to ice.

I should have kept my mouth shut. After everything that had happened that evening, the last thing I should’ve done was add fuel to the fire that was Knox’s temper, but something inside me broke. “If you’re going to rag on Celia for inheriting her VII, then at least acknowledge you had your VI handed to you, too. We all know your father’s title will pass to you one day, and it wouldn’t do to have the next Minister of Ranking with a IV or a V, would it?”

As I repeated the very words he’d said to me when he’d first told me he’d never taken the test, Knox’s face drained of all color, and the silence around us turned deafening. “If you have a problem with any of this, then there’s the door,” he said in a deceptively even voice. But the dark look in his eyes offered me a single promise: if I walked out of there, I would never be allowed back.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—” I sucked in a deep breath. I didn’t owe him an apology for defending Celia, not when he was acting like this. “I’m just saying, we’re here because none of us believes in the rank system in the first place. You have every right to be upset with her, but don’t drag Celia down based on her rank. It only makes you look like a hypocrite when your VI is as good as my VII.”

“Perhaps so,” said Knox coldly, “but between us, I’m the one who could earn my VI if I had to, while you’re the one who earned a III.”

My mouth dropped open, and his words twisted in my chest like a knife. No matter how bad a mood he was in, no matter how rebellious I was feeling, he had never used my III against me before.

Guilt flashed across his face. He knew what he’d said, but he made no move to apologize. We stared at one another as the seconds passed. My hands tightened into fists, and the edges of my vision went dark as I tried to figure out what to say. He was right, of course—I’d earned my lowly III, but not because I wasn’t smart. I couldn’t read anything more than my name, and I’d had to take the test orally, which had resulted in me never getting the chance to finish it. If I had—maybe I’d be a VI, like Benjy. Maybe Daxton would have never hunted me down, and maybe my life would be completely different.

But I couldn’t live off of maybes, and neither could Knox. He might have thought he was the smartest person in the room, but that didn’t mean the rest of us were worthless. That didn’t mean my opinion didn’t matter at all. And if this was what he really thought of me, then no matter what I said, no matter how many good ideas I had, he would never really listen to them. Why would he, when his VI was so superior to my III?

With my chin raised, I turned to face the others, pointedly ignoring Knox. Bad day or not, if this was how he was going to be, then screw him. “Daxton died last year, in the explosion that killed his wife and son.”

“Kitty—”

“He’s been Masked,” I added as if Knox hadn’t said a word. “The impostor is actually a V. I don’t know who he is or where he came from, but the real Daxton’s dead.”

Sampson looked back and forth between me and Knox, disbelief coloring his sharp features. “Is this true?”

Reluctantly Knox nodded, his jaw tight and his fists clenched. “Yes. I found out shortly after it happened. No one else knows, and it needs to stay that way. If Celia finds out—”

“We would all be marching on Somerset before the night was out,” said Sampson gravely. “But even if we cannot tell her, this changes everything, Knox.”

“We can’t go to the media. You know we can’t,” said Knox. “We’d be throwing away our contacts’ lives—”

“I’m not suggesting we do,” said Sampson. “I am, however, suggesting we discover who this man truly is. If we can find proof, we’ll have leverage against him. He knows the Shields won’t follow an impostor. The Ministers of the Union would revolt. We would have the ability to effectively strip him of his power completely and give the country something to unite against, all in one fell swoop.”

“Why don’t you just kill him?” I said. “Wouldn’t that solve everything?”

“We already tried that, remember?” said Sampson, eyebrow raised. I scowled.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I grumbled.

“Like what, Kitty?” said Knox. “Like if it wasn’t for you, this mess would’ve been over with months ago?”

I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to draw blood. I’d been the reason the assassination attempt hadn’t worked. I’d stupidly let Celia talk me into helping her out, and instead of giving Daxton the full dose, I’d chickened out and given him half. “Give me another syringe. I’ll kill him this time.”

Sampson shook his head. “We never approved an assassination in the first place. That was Celia’s idea.”

I glanced at Knox, but he wouldn’t meet my eye. Sanctioned by the Blackcoats or not, he’d been the one to supply Celia with the poison.

“There must be something we can do to get rid of this guy,” I said. “He’s one man. He’s not invincible.”

“You’re right, he is one man,” said Sampson. “And if by some miracle we managed to get around his heightened security and succeed, the government would live on without him. No one would ever know he was Masked. Right now, he’s more valuable to us alive as someone for the people to rally against. Dead, he’s a martyr, and we cannot instigate real change within order. We must take advantage of the chaos revealing his true identity would provide. Besides,” he added, leaning in closer to me, “Greyson is next in line, and he’s an unknown. A weak, inexperienced unknown at that. He would crumble under the pressure from the Ministers within days. Celia is far too unstable to take control of the country by herself right now, not to mention everyone thinks she’s dead. That leaves you, Kitty. Do you want to be Prime Minister?”

I frowned. “I’d rather go back to being a III.”

“Then, while I thank you for this additional insight, why don’t you let us try things our way for a while?”

I stared at my hands, fighting the instinct to keep arguing. Unlike Knox, Sampson wasn’t in a piss-poor mood, and I had to trust one of us knew what we were doing.

“So, what now?” said a woman with a scar running down the side of her face. “How are we going to figure out who the Daxton impostor is?”

“We get boots on the ground and dig,” said Sampson. “There must be a paper trail. Augusta wouldn’t have allowed a stranger into a position of power without having some leverage over him.”

“If it ever existed in the first place, Daxton would have made sure it was destroyed by now,” said Knox, his expression stormy.

“That would be the logical thing to do,” agreed Sampson. “We still have to look.”

“But the chances of any evidence still existing—”

“Kitty,” said Sampson, interrupting him. I snapped my head up. “If you had something to tie you back to your old life, would you keep it or destroy it?”

I blinked. It was a stupid question, but he had no way of knowing that. I clung to the things that made me feel like Kitty Doe as if my life depended on it. “I’d hold on to it,” I said. “I’d keep it secret, but I wouldn’t destroy it if it was the only evidence I’d ever existed in the first place.”

He gave me a small smile. “Exactly. If the impostor has found it, there’s a good chance he kept it. Knox, that’s where you come in. Do you think you can get close enough to find it?”

“I’ll try,” he said, lacing his fingers together so tightly that his knuckles turned white.

“You’ll do more than try. If we know who he is, that could give us enough power to make all the difference in this war. An armory isn’t always made up of guns and knives. Sometimes information is the most powerful weapon of all.”

Knox scowled deeply, but at last he said to Sampson, “If this gets me killed, I’m blaming you.”

But as he said it, his eyes met mine, and we both knew the truth: he would blame me instead.