Graduation Day (The Testing 3)

“Kerrick.” For a moment Tomas goes still. Then he shakes his head as Kerrick barrels down the stairs. Tomas looks around the room and takes a step to the left. “But if Kerrick is here, then—”

A gunshot punches the air to my right and a figure steps out of one of the rooms. I don’t think. I set myself, aim, and fire. The answering scream tells me I have managed to hit something. I don’t wait to see who I shot, I just grab Tomas’s arm and yell for him to move. I don’t understand what’s happening, but I do know that if Tomas hadn’t moved, he would be dead.

We reach the end of the hall. Gunshots rip through the air. Tomas flinches with each shot, but whoever is shooting must be as skilled at hitting a moving target as I am, because the bullets don’t come close to our position. Of course, that could change at any moment.

I spot an exit to the right, but Tomas grabs my hand and pulls me down the hall to the left. “Come on.”

He leads me through a wide, arching doorway that runs into the center of the stadium. My throat burns with each breath. I climb the steps that lead to the entrance to the greenhouse. Tomas punches a code into a panel. The door slides open and he pulls me through.

The smell of growing plants and rich soil hits me first, followed by the air thick with moisture.

“This way.”

I have been in this room only once before, during my first University tour, and then only for a few minutes. Nothing here is familiar, and I am running out of ammunition. I can only hope that whatever Tomas has planned will get us out of this situation.

Tomas pulls me through several rows of oak saplings and through a grove of reed-thin elms near an area that is surrounded by a small, red wire fence. “There’s a control booth over this way that runs the irrigation, power, and climate for the greenhouse. Go there.”

He begins pulling the knee-high red fence out of the earth. “Kerrick and Marin can’t be allowed to leave here. Not unless we want them coming after us again or reporting us to someone who can do something worse. Go.”

Understanding what he’s trying to do, I run to the twenty-foot-square patch of the greenhouse and help yank the fence out of the ground, removing the barrier that warns people about the plants contained inside. Plants my father has spent his lifetime eradicating. Mancinella Flowers. Pink Ivy. Poppy Doll Eyes. Red Jessamine. Flowers and plants that if touched or tasted can shut down nervous systems and cause cardiac arrest, blindness, vomiting, and dozens of other awful side effects. For some, ingestion is necessary to trigger the poison, but the Mancinella Flower and Pink Ivy only require the simplest touch for infection to occur. And Poppy Doll Eye berries can cause severe hallucinations, the walls of veins to thin, and hearts to stop beating. Terrible plants. Mutations caused by the chemicals unleashed upon the world. Those grown here are used for study so that scientists can figure out how to eradicate their effects. Today, Tomas and I need their deadly qualities to keep us alive.

Careful not to touch the toxic plants, Tomas and I shift the fence to an area that contains edible vegetation.

“Now what?” I ask.

“Now we have to get them to come in this direction and hope they don’t notice what they’re stumbling into. Kerrick is in Biological Engineering, but he deals more with animal studies than plants. I just wish we had a way to burn some of the plants. There are burners in some of the labs, but we don’t have time to waste getting them. Maybe—”

“I have an idea,” I say, opening my bag and grabbing the matches I took from the chemistry lab and the specimen container where I stored the excess black powder.

“What’s that?”

“Something that can set the plants on fire.”

I keep one eye on the entrance in the distance as I place the paper with the black substance near the patch of plants Tomas thinks has the best chance of making this plan work. Poppy Doll Eyes. When burned, this plant gives off fumes that will overload the nervous system. Something people from Pierre Colony learned when a spark from a researcher’s campfire landed on dry grass near a large patch of the plants with the white bulbs that look like tiny eyes. The fire combined with high winds caused everyone living on the outskirts of the colony to suffer muscle spasms, blindness, or, in many cases, death.

With the amount of powder I have used, a flame should flare high an

d wide enough to make the white bulbs hanging nearby catch on fire. The only tricks will be to get our two attackers to come in this direction and to create a fuse long enough to allow me to get to the exit eighty feet behind this point before the smoke caused by the burning plants can reach me or Tomas.

“Here.” Tomas hands me a thin ten-inch strip of paper. Not as long or as reliable a fuse as I would like, but the shouts I hear and the figure bursting through the greenhouse door tell me I am out of time.

I lay the fuse on the paper and push a coating of powder onto the end. I fumble for the matches and pull one from the book.

“Get their attention,” I whisper as I poise the match against the strike pad.

Tomas looks at the black powder and the match, then back at me. Nodding, he stands. He takes several steps toward the greenhouse door. He pretends to stumble over an evergreen shrub and swears. That’s all it takes.

Kerrick’s head swings in our direction. “They’re over there.”

Tomas looks back over his shoulder and makes for the exit behind us. Kerrick and Marin trample plants and weave around young trees as they race for our position. Tomas yells, “Cia. Come on.”

“My foot is caught,” I yell back. “Go. I’ll catch up.”

Kerrick and the other person come closer. For the first time I get a glimpse of Marin. She’s someone I have seen around campus. I think I’ve even noticed her talking to Tomas. Her most distinctive features are her smile and contagious laughter. She isn’t laughing now as she closes the distance between us.

A gunshot rings out. I hear the bullet hit the ground far behind me. Aimed at Tomas. Another shot. Kerrick and the girl move closer. Everything inside me screams at me to flee, but I hold my position as I pretend to struggle to free myself from the phantom vine that holds me hostage. I need their attention directed at me, not on the nearby plants. They come closer. Just a few more seconds.

Five.