My goals:
—Find whoever was in charge of assigning waiters to the President.
—Get myself assigned.
—Kill the President, perhaps with a sterling silver fork, or maybe just pistol-whip him, since my still-bulletless gun was tucked into the waistband of my underwear.
Whatever happened after that didn’t matter.
101
HELEN
THE TALL, DARK SHADOW SEEMED to come from the ceiling, and Helen Strepp blinked at it in alarm. Sitting up on her hard bunk, she tensed her muscles, made her cuffed hands into hard blades of flesh. But when the strip of faint, dusky daylight showed off his blond hair, she relaxed a tiny bit.
“Gaz?” she breathed.
“None other,” whispered the Loner, and started to pick the locks on her cuffs.
“How did you get here?” she asked him.
His bright-blue eyes met hers for a second, then he made small flapping motions with his hands. She nodded. Of course.
“Is your part of the plan in place?” she asked as her cuffs popped off.
He nodded. “How about yours?”
“I hope so,” Strepp said, rubbing her wrists. “Did you get Becca into the palace?”
The Loner sighed, sat back on his heels. “Yeah. A girl less cut out to be a servant, I’ve never seen. Well, okay—I’ve seen one other. But still.”
“I know,” Strepp agreed ruefully.
“Duck,” the Loner said gently, touching her shoulder.
Strepp flung herself to the floor seconds before the wall of her prison cell exploded inward, showering her with chunks of concrete and dust. Alarms went off, people started yelling. Blinking dust out of her eyes, Helen saw that the large hole led outdoors, with sunlight and clouds.
“Come on,” the Loner said, grabbing her hand. They leaped through, her feet feeling pillowed on the manicured grass.
Ajana—Vice President Nielson—had told her to come home. Well, Helen was. Just not in the way anyone expected. This time she was coming back to see the President die.
102
CASSIE
“GIVE ME YOUR BACKPACK,” TIM yelled, and I tossed it at him. He threw it off the roof, along with his own, then jumped down after them. I peered over the edge—because of another fence, no guards were waiting below. Yet. When I looked behind me, I saw the top of a ladder and very quickly, the head and shoulders of a guard. I slung my rifle over my good shoulder and jumped down into Tim’s strong arms, jarred only a bit by my landing.
“Okay, now we run!” he said, and grabbed my hand. Most of the guards were on the other side of the fence—excellent planning, guys—so we had a tiny bit of a head start. We stuck out like cornstalks the reaper missed: the only citizens running, me trying to shove my rifle back under my somewhat shredded coat, Tim looking everywhere for a good place to hunker down.
And it had to be soon—you don’t run as long as you can. You run a little bit and then hide and disguise yourself. Blend in.
“Here!” Tim threw back at me, his words almost lost as we raced by. He turned into a market street—I’d seen pictures of them in old newspapers. It was like a Co-op, but everyone got to keep their own stuff, their own money. Weird.
“Okay, okay,” he muttered as we slowed down. My rifle was safely stowed and we continued to hold hands. It was time to hide—past time.
“Forty-seven, forty-seven,” he said under his breath. I looked around us—the stalls were numbered. At stall forty-seven, he pulled me inside. I was blind after the sunlight of the street, and I tensed, stopping dead, until my eyes adjusted.
“Come on,” Tim said, pulling me forward again.