With all that was going on, I hadn’t heard anything about the dissection of Iceman. I needed to talk to Harvard when things calmed down.
The heavy door squeaked, and Birdman entered the fort, Mouse and Harvard in tow. Becky was on her feet instantly.
“They’re all clean,” he said, pointing to us. “Come with me.”
He disappeared into his room for a minute and then came back with an armful of old cloth. We all followed him to the meeting room.
“You haven’t been here for a new arrival,” he said. “We have procedures we usually go through. And now we’ve got a ton to process.”
He laid the cloth out on the floor of the meeting room. I recognized some of it as what he’d written on during our last group meeting, but there was a lot more here—drawings and floor plans and lists.
“We keep track of what’s going on in that underground complex,” Birdman said, pointing to what looked like an amazingly detailed floor plan. “Like I was telling you yesterday—one day they’re going to take us out of here, and I want to know what I’m dealing with.”
Harvard peeked out one of the windows, and then turned back to us. “We know you guys want to talk to everyone you knew at the school, and we kind of want to see what they have to say to you. Maybe they’ll tell you something they’re not telling us.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “We’ll find out.”
There were six of us seated in the room—me and Becky, Birdman, Harvard, Mouse, and Shelly. She’d been added at the last minute, when the Greens figured out what was going on. Our six chairs faced three empty ones. It looked like an inquisition.
Most of the town was at the windows, trying to peek or listen, but Birdman was fiercely regulating the fort, and no one was allowed in without his permission. The thick curtains were pulled down, and the only light in the room came from the few dim lanterns. The town was on lockdown.
Birdman motioned to the kid at the door. “Bring in the first group.”
I took Becky’s hand, and after a moment she had to make me let go—I didn’t realize how hard I was squeezing.
Isaiah was the first one in. His head was held high, but it was an imitation of the pious confidence he’d always had at the school. There was fear in his eyes.
He took a seat on the bench opposite us and stared straight ahead, a prisoner.
Behind him was Skiver, Oakland’s right-hand man before he was shot. He stopped just inside the door, staring at Mouse. He wasn’t scared—not like Isaiah—but something was going on in his head.
“Sit down,” Mouse said. It was an order, but there was no edge to her voice. It hardly sounded like her at all.
The third to enter was Gabby. Becky stood up, wanting to run to her, but Birdman held up a hand forbidding it.
We’d thought Gabby was dead or dying. The last I’d seen of her, she was lying on the ground, covered in blood and screaming. But even though there was obvious pain in her face as she crossed the room to the bench, she was walking and breathing and alive.
Birdman was slouched a little in his chair, the kind of casual stance of someone who knew he was in complete control. His calm was a show. It was a threat.
“You’re representatives of the three gangs at the school,” he said. “And—”
Gabby immediately protested. “I wasn’t in charge. You want Curtis.”
“Neither was Skiver,” Birdman said flatly. “This isn’t a leadership meeting.”
Gabby looked to me for help, but I just shrugged. I didn’t know what Birdman wanted. I didn’t care, either. Becky and I were leaving. I needed to talk to Harvard about the dissection, and I needed to see what help Shelly could offer, but then we were leaving.
“You’re here now,” Birdman continued. “I need to know everything you know. I need to know who is trustworthy and who could be working for the other side.”
Gabby’s face contorted. “Working for the other side? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Maxfield has tried to bribe students in the past. We checked to make sure that you’re not duplicates—androids—but we need to know if Maxfield gave someone something in exchange for spying on us.”
“No one here would spy,” Gabby said, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth a sudden look of understanding appeared on her face, and for just an instant she glanced at Isaiah.
If Birdman caught it, he didn’t react.
“We need information,” he continued, gesturing to the cloth maps. “We’re going to talk to everyone, but we’re going to start with you.”
Gabby protested again, and Birdman ignored her.
“Tell me what happened after the fence,” Birdman ordered.
There was a pause for a moment, and then Skiver spoke. He pointed at me and Becky. “After they abandoned us, there was—”
“We did not abandon you,” I snapped.
“Ran away when people started dying?” he said. “What do you call that?”
“We were trying to get help,” I said, anger boiling up inside of me.
“That was days ago,” he said. “And you’ve made it all the way here? What is that? A quarter mile a day? So you’ll make it to the highway sometime next summer?”
“We had to stop,” I said, and gestured to Becky’s arm. “She was going to die.”
“Going to die?” Skiver said, almost laughing. “Do you know how many people died at the fence? Do you know how many died back at the school?” He turned to Gabby. “Show him what they did to you.”
Gabby was obviously uncomfortable.
“Show them,” Skiver screamed, his eyes crazed, and grabbed at her shirt.
She pulled away and shot us all a dark look. Slowly, she pulled up her shirt to show us her stomach, wrapped completely in white gauze. “I don’t know what they did,” she said. “I was in surgery longer than all the others, even longer than Curtis.”
“Artificial organs,” Isaiah said, speaking for the first time.
Gabby lowered her shirt and turned her face away from us.
“She was the worst of them,” Isaiah said, harsh judgment in his eyes as he stared back at me. “The worst of the survivors. The students who helped her said they could see she was going to die—it doesn’t take a doctor to recognize torn intestines and mangled organs.”
“I’m okay,” she said, but her words seemed to enrage Isaiah.
“You could have died, like the others. Like Oakland, and Hector, and Rosa. And for what? So that Benson Fisher could get to this town.” He pointed at me, his hand shaking with anger. “This is your fault. You stirred everyone up. You got them mad. You led them to the fence.”
I wanted to stand up and break his jaw.
But I couldn’t. It was all true. They were dead, and it was because of me.
“Stop it, Isaiah,” Becky said, her voice stronger than it had been since we’d left the school.
“I tried to stop you,” he continued, ignoring her. “I tried to make you understand what we needed to do to survive, but you just couldn’t let it go. You had to be a tough guy and fight and run, and look what it got you.