Pandemonium

“But—” I think of the Scavengers swarming into the crowd; faces monstrous with screaming. “But people died.”



“Two hundred,” Tack says quietly. He still won’t look at me. “Two dozen officers. The rest citizens. They didn’t bother to tally the Scavengers who were killed.” He shrugs his shoulders, a quick convulsion. “Sometimes it is necessary that individuals are sacrificed for the health of the whole.” That’s straight out of a DFA pamphlet.



“Okay,” I say. My hands are shaking, and I grip the sides of my chair. I’m still having trouble thinking straight. “Okay. So what are we going to do about it?”



Raven’s eyes flick to Tack, but he keeps his head bowed. “We’ve already done something about it, Lena,” she says, still in that baby-voice, and once again I get a weird prickling in my chest. There is something they aren’t telling me—something bad.



“I don’t understand.” My voice sounds hollow.



There are a few seconds of heavy silence. Then Tack sighs, and says over his shoulder to Raven, “I told you, we should have clued her in from the start. I told you we should have trusted her.”



Raven says nothing. A muscle twitches in her jaw. And suddenly I remember coming downstairs a few weeks before the rally and hearing Tack and Raven fighting.



I just don’t understand why we can’t be honest with each other. We’re supposed to be on the same side.



You know that’s unrealistic, Tack. It’s for the best. You have to trust me.



You’re the one who isn’t trusting. . . .



They were fighting about me.



“Clued me in to what?” The prickling is becoming a heavy thud, painful and sharp.



“Go ahead,” Raven says to Tack. “If you want to tell her so badly, be my guest.” Her voice is biting, but I can tell, underneath that, she’s afraid. She’s afraid of me and how I will react.



“Tell me what?” I can’t stand this anymore—the cryptic glances, the impenetrable web of half phrases.



Tack passes a hand over his forehead. “Okay, look,” he says, speaking quickly now, as though eager to end the conversation. “It wasn’t a mistake that you and Julian were taken by the Scavengers, okay? It wasn’t an error. It was planned.”



Heat creeps up my neck. I lick my lips. “Who planned it?” I say, though I know: It must have been the DFA. I answer my own question, saying, “The DFA,” just as Tack grimaces and says, “We did.”



Ticking silence. One, two, three, four. I count off the seconds, take a deep breath, close my eyes, and reopen them. “What?”



Tack actually flushes. “We did. The resistance planned it.”



More silence. My throat and mouth have gone to dust. “I—I don’t understand.”



Tack is avoiding my eyes again. He walks his fingers across the edge of the table, back and forth, back and forth. “We paid the Scavengers to take Julian. Well, the resistance did. One of the higher-ups in the movement has been posing as a DFA agent—not that it matters. The Scavengers will do anything for a price, and just because they’ve been in the DFA’s pocket for a while now doesn’t mean their loyalties aren’t for sale.”



“Julian,” I repeat. Numbness is creeping through my body. “And what about me?”



Tack hesitates for just a fraction of a second. “They were paid to hold you, too. They were told that Julian was being tailed by a girl. They were told to hold both of you together.”



“And they thought they’d get a ransom for us,” I say. Tack nods. My voice sounds foreign, as though it’s coming from far away. I can hardly breathe. I manage to gasp out, “Why?”



Raven has been standing still, staring at the ground. Suddenly she bursts out, “You were never in any danger. Not really. The Scavengers knew they wouldn’t get paid if they touched you.”



I think back to the argument I overheard in the tunnels, the wheedling voice urging Albino to stick with the original plan, the way they tried to pump Julian for information about his security codes. The Scavengers were obviously getting impatient. They wanted their payday sooner.



“Never in any danger?” I repeat. Raven won’t look at me either. “I—I almost died.” Anger is spreading hot tentacles through my chest. “We were starved. We were jumped. Julian was beaten half to death. We had to fight—”



“And you did.” Finally Raven looks at me, and to my horror her eyes are shining; she looks happy. “You escaped, and you got Julian out safely too.”



For several seconds I can’t speak. I am burning, burning, burning, as the true meaning of everything that happened slams into me. “This … this was all a test?”



“No,” Tack says firmly. “No, Lena. You have to understand. That was part of it, but—”



I push back from the table, turn away from the sound of his voice. I want to curl into a ball. I want to scream, or hit something.



“It was bigger than that, what you did. What you helped us do. And we would have made sure you were safe. We have our own people underground. They’d been told to look out for you.”



The rat-man and Coin. No wonder they helped us. They were paid to.



I can’t speak anymore. I am having trouble swallowing. It takes all my energy just to stay on my feet. The containment, the fear, the bodyguards who were killed in the subway—the resistance’s fault. Our fault. A test.



Raven speaks up again, her voice filled with quiet urgency: a salesman trying to convince you to buy, buy, buy. “You did a great thing for us, Lena. You’ve helped the resistance in more ways than you know.”



“I did nothing,” I spit out.



“You did everything. Julian was tremendously important to the DFA. A symbol of everything the DFA stands for. Head of the youth group. That’s six hundred thousand people alone, young people, uncured. Unconvinced.”



My blood goes all at once to ice. I turn around slowly. Tack and Raven are both looking at me hopefully, as though they expect me to be pleased. “What does Julian have to do with this?” I say.



Once again Raven and Tack exchange a glance. This time I can read what they are thinking: I am being difficult, obtuse. I should understand this by now.



“Julian has everything to do with it, Lena,” Raven says. She sits down at the table, next to Tack. They are the patient parents; I am the troublemaking teen. We could be discussing a flunked test. “If Julian’s out of the DFA, if he’s cast out—”



“Even better, if he chooses out,” Tack interjects, and Raven spreads her hands as if to say, Obviously.



She continues, “If he’s cast out or he wants out, either way, it sends a powerful message to all the uncureds who have followed him and seen him as a leader. They might rethink their loyalties—some of them will, at least. We have a chance to bring them over to our side. Think about that, Lena. That’s enough to make a real difference. That’s enough to turn the tide in our favor.”



My mind is moving slowly, as though it has been encased in ice. This morning’s raids—planned. I thought it was a setup, and I was right. The resistance was behind it: They must have tipped off the police and the regulators. They gave up the location of one of their own homesteads just to ensnare Julian.



And I helped ensnare him. I think of his father’s face, floating in the window of the black town car: tight, grim, determined. I think of the story Julian told me about his older brother—how his father locked him in a basement, injured, to die alone and in the dark. And that was just for participating in a demonstration.



Julian was in bed with me. Who knows what they’ll do to him as punishment.



Blackness surges inside of me. I close my eyes and see Alex and Julian’s faces, merging together and then separating, like they did in my dream. It’s happening again. It’s happening again, and again it’s my fault.



“Lena?” I hear a chair scrape away from the table and suddenly Raven is next to me, slipping an arm around my shoulders. “Are you okay?”



“Can we get you something?” Tack asks.



I shake out of Raven’s grasp. “Get off of me.”



“Lena,” Raven croons. “Come on. Have a seat.” She is reaching for me again.



“I said, get off of me.” I pull away from her, stumble backward, bump against a chair.



“I’m going to get some water,” Tack says. He pushes away from the table and heads into a hall that must lead to the rest of the warehouse. For a moment I hear a surge in conversation, raucous, welcoming; then silence.



My hands are shaking so badly I can’t even squeeze them into fists. Otherwise I might hit Raven in the face.



She sighs. “I understand why you’re mad. Maybe Tack was right. Maybe we should have told you the plan from the beginning.” She sounds tired.



“You—you used me,” I spit out.



“You said you wanted to help,” Raven says simply.



“No. Not like that.”



“You don’t get to choose.” Raven takes a seat again and lays her hands flat on the table. “That isn’t how it works.”



I can feel her willing me to yield, to sit, to understand. But I can’t, and I won’t.



“What about Julian?” I force myself to meet her eyes, and I think I see her flinch just slightly.



“He’s not your problem.” Raven’s voice turns slightly harder.



“Yeah?” I think of Julian’s fingers running through my hair, the encircling warmth of his arms, how he whispered, I want to know. I want to know with you. “What if I want to make him my problem?”



Raven and I stare at each other. Her patience is running out. Her mouth is set in a line, angry and tight. “There’s nothing you can do,” she says shortly. “Don’t you get it? Lena Morgan Jones doesn’t exist anymore. Poof—she’s gone. There’s no way back in for her. There’s no way in for you. Your job is done.”



“So we leave Julian to be killed? Or thrown in prison?”



Once again Raven sighs, as though I’m a spoiled child throwing a tantrum. “Julian Fineman is the head of the youth division of the DFA—,” she begins again.



“I know all that,” I snap. “You made me memorize it, remember? So, what? He gets sacrificed for the cause?”



Raven looks at me in silence: an assent.



“You’re just as bad as they are,” I squeeze out, through the tightness of the fury in my throat, the heavy stone of disgust. That is the DFA’s motto too: Some will die for the health of the whole. We have become like them.



Raven stands again and moves toward the hallway. “You can’t feel guilty, Lena,” she says. “This is war, you know.”



“Don’t you get it?” I fire back at her the very words she used on me a long time ago, back at the burrow, after Miyako died. “You can’t tell me what to feel.”



Raven shakes her head. I see a flash of pity on her face. “You—you really liked him, then? Julian?”