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  A warning screamed in my head. I tried to get away, but this seemed to drive new excitement into him. He was actually enjoying this. His hard grip was making my hands prickle with numbness.

  Somewhere in the street I heard a car door slam.

  “Stop,” I managed.

  “Let go!” Beth shouted at him.

  Conner and Bateman pulled my mother away. Morris’s hands were still on my wrists. I heard nothing over the ringing in my ears.

  And then I saw him.

  His hair was black and gleaming in the last splinters of sunlight. It was short now, cleanly cut like the other soldiers’, and his eyes, sharp as a wolf’s, were so dark I could barely see the pupils. JENNINGS was spelled out in perfect gold letters over the breast of his pressed uniform. I had never in my life seen him look so grave. He was nearly unrecognizable.

  My heart was beating quickly, fearfully, but beating all the same. Just because he was near. My body had sensed him before my mind had.

  “Chase?” I asked.

  I thought of many things all at the same time. I wanted to run to him despite everything. I wanted him to hold me as he had the night before he’d left. But the pain of his absence returned fast, and reality sliced at my insides.

  He’d chosen this over me.

  I grasped on to the hope that maybe he could help us.

  Chase said nothing. His jaw was bulging, as though he was grinding his teeth, but otherwise his face revealed no emotion, no indication that the home he’d been raised in was twenty feet away. He stood between where Morris held me and the van. It occurred to me that he was the driver.

  “Don’t forget why you’re here,” Bateman snapped at him.

  “Chase, tell them they’re wrong.” I looked straight at him.

  He didn’t look at me. He didn’t even move.

  “Enough. Get back in the van, Jennings!” ordered Bateman.

  “Chase!” I shouted. I felt my face twist with confusion. Was he really going to ignore me?

  “Don’t speak to him,” Bateman snapped at me. “Will someone please do something with this girl?”

  My terror grew, closing off the world around me. Chase’s presence didn’t soothe me as it had in the past. The mouth that had once curved into a smile and softened against my lips was a hard, grim line. There was no warmth in him now. This was not the Chase I remembered. This wasn’t my Chase.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off of his face. The pain in my chest nearly doubled me over.

  Morris jerked me up, and instinct tore through me. I reared back, breaking free from his grasp, and wrapped my arms around my mother’s shoulders. Someone yanked me back. My grip was slipping. They were pulling her away from me.

  “NO!” I screamed.

  “Let go of her!” I heard a soldier bark. “Or we’ll take you, too, Red.”

  Beth’s fists, which had knotted in my school uniform, were torn from my clothing. Through tear-filled eyes I saw that Ryan had restrained her, his face contorted with guilt. Beth was crying, reaching out for me. I didn’t let go of my mother.

  “Okay, okay,” I heard my mother say. Her words came out very fast. “Please, officer, please let us go. We can talk right here.”

  A sob broke from my throat. I couldn’t stand the obedience in her tone. She was so afraid. They were trying to separate us again, and I knew, more than anything else, that I could not let them do that.

  “Be gentle with them, please! Please!” Mrs. Crowley begged.

  In one heave, Morris ripped me from my mother. Enraged, I swiped at his face. My nails caught the thin skin of his neck, and he swore loudly.

  I saw the world through a crimson veil. I wanted him to attack me just so I could lash out at him again.

  His green eyes were beady in anger, and he snarled as he jerked the nightstick from his hip. In a flash it was swinging back above his head.

  I braced my arms defensively over my face.

  “STOP!” My mother’s pitch was strident. I could hear it above the screaming adrenaline in my ears.

  Someone pushed me, and I was flung hard to the ground, my hair covering my face, blocking my vision. There was a stinging in my chest that stole the breath from my lungs. I crawled back to my knees.

  “Jennings!” I heard Bateman shout. “Your CO will hear about this!”

  Chase was standing in front of me, blocking my view.

  “Don’t hurt him!” I panted. Morris’s weapon was still ready to strike, though now it was aimed at Chase.

  “You don’t need that.” Chase’s voice was very low. Morris lowered the stick.

  “You said you’d be cool,” he hissed, glaring at Chase.

  Had Chase told this soldier—Morris—about me? Were they friends? How could he be friends with someone like that?

  Chase said nothing. He didn’t move.

  “Stand down, Jennings,” Bateman commanded.

  I scrambled up and glared at the man in charge. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

  “Watch your mouth,” snapped Bateman. “You’ve already struck a soldier. How much deeper a hole are you looking to dig?”

  I could hear my mother arguing through her hiccuping sobs. When they began to move her toward the van again, I lunged forward, my hands tangling in Chase’s uniform. Desperation blanketed me. They were going to take her away.

  “Chase, please,” I begged. “Please tell them this is a mistake. Tell them we’re good people. You know us. You know me.”

  He shook me off as though some disgusting thing had touched him. That stung more than anything could in this moment. I stared at him in shock.

  The defeat was devastating.

  My arms were pulled behind me and latched into place by Morris’s strong grip. I didn’t care. I couldn’t even feel them.

  Chase stepped away from me. Bateman and Conner ushered my mother to the van. She looked over her shoulder at me with scared eyes.

  “It’s okay, baby,” she called, trying to sound confident. “I’ll find out who’s responsible for this, and we’ll have a nice long chat.”

  My gut twisted at the prospect.

  “She doesn’t even have her shoes on!” I shouted at the soldiers.

  There were no more words as they loaded my mother in the back of the van. When she disappeared inside, I felt something tear within me, loosing what felt like acid into my chest. It scalded my insides. It made my breath come faster, made my throat burn and my lungs clench.

  “Walk to the car,” Morris ordered.

  “What? No!” Beth cried. “You can’t take her!”

  “What are you doing?” Ryan demanded.

  “Ms. Miller is being taken into custody by the federal government in accordance with Article 5 of the Moral Statutes. She’s going into rehabilitation.”

  I was getting very tired all of a sudden. My thoughts weren’t making sense. Blurry lines formed around my vision, but I couldn’t blink them back. I gulped down air, but there wasn’t enough.

  “Don’t fight me, Ember,” Chase ordered quietly. My heart broke to hear him say my name.

  “Why are you doing this?” The sound of my voice was distant and weak. He didn’t answer me. I didn’t expect an answer anyway.

  They led me to the car, parked behind the van. Chase opened the door to the backseat and sat me down roughly. I fell to my side, feeling the leather dampen from my tears.

  Then Chase was gone. And though my heart quieted, the pain in my chest remained. It stole my breath and swallowed me whole, and I tumbled into darkness.

  CHAPTER

  2

  “MOM, I’m home!” I kicked off my flats at the front door and proceeded straight down the hallway to the kitchen, where I heard her laughing.

  “Ember, there you are! Look who’s back!” My mother was standing at the stove, beaming like she’d just gotten me a shiny new toy. Skeptical, I rounded the corner and stopped cold.

  Chase Jennings was in my kitchen.

  Chase Jennings, who I’d playe
d tag with and raced bikes with and had a crush on since before I knew what crushes were.

  Chase Jennings, who had grown into a rough-around-the-edges kind of handsome; tall and built and so much more dangerous than the scrawny fourteen-year-old I’d last seen. He was leaning back casually in his chair, hands in his denim pockets, a mess of black hair stuffed beneath an old baseball cap.

  I was staring. I looked away quickly, feeling the flush rise in my cheeks.

  “Um… hi.”

  “Hey, Ember,” he said easily. “You grew up.”

  * * *

  MY eyes blinked open as the FBR cruiser shuddered to a stop. Slowly, I sat up, head heavy and clouded, and pushed the hair from my face.

  Where was I?

  Night had descended, and the darkness aided my disorientation. I rubbed my eyes, catching a glimpse of the blond soldier’s profile through the thick glass partition between the front seats and the back. Morris. I remembered his name badge. I looked out the front windshield, distorted by the barricade. With a jolt of panic, I realized I was searching for a van. One that was no longer in front of us.

  Then I remembered.

  The MM. The arrest. Chase.

  Where was my mother? I should have been watching! I banged on the glass divider, but Morris and the driver didn’t even flinch. It was soundproof. Frightened now, I crossed my arms over my chest and eased back into the leather seat, trying to gain a lock on my bearings.

  Without a car or a television, we’d been isolated in our neighborhood. The FBR had shut down the local newspaper on account of the scarcity of resources, and had blocked the Internet to stifle rebellion, so we couldn’t even see pictures of how our town had changed. We knew Louisville had been relatively lucky during the War. No bombed buildings. No evacuated areas. But even if it didn’t look damaged, it did look different.

  We passed the lighted convention center, now a distribution plant for Horizons brand food. Then the airport, which had been converted to FBR Weapons Manufacturing when commercial air travel had been prohibited. There had been an influx of soldiers in this area when they’d changed Fort Knox and Fort Campbell into FBR stations. Row after row of blue cruisers were now parked in the lot at the old fairgrounds.

  We were the only car on the freeway. Knowing I was out with the MM when only the MM could be out, surrounded by the flags and crosses and sunrise logos, chilled me to the bone. I felt like Dorothy in some twisted Wizard of Oz.

  An exit ramp led us into downtown Louisville, and at the bottom of the curve, we rolled through an empty four-way stop. The driver aimed toward a monstrous brick high-rise, which spread out on the bottom floors like the tentacles of an octopus. Its yellow eyes—windows, lit by a team of generators—peered out in all directions. We were at the city hospital.

  I couldn’t see the van anywhere. Where had they taken my mother?

  Chase Jennings. I tried to swallow, but his name on my tongue felt like boiling water that I couldn’t push down.

  How could he? I’d trusted him. I’d even thought that I loved him, and not just that, but that he’d genuinely cared for me, too.

  He’d changed. Completely.

  The driver parked the cruiser close to the building in a shadowed lot. A moment later Morris opened the back door and yanked me out by the forearm. The three red lines where my fingernails had raked his skin were bright against his white neck.

  The hum of the generators filled the night, a sharp contrast to the soundproof containment of the cruiser. He led me toward the building, where, in the gleam of the sliding glass doors beneath the Emergency Department sign, I caught my reflection. Pale face. Swollen eyes. My boxy uniform shirt drooped on one side where Beth had stretched it trying to save me, and my knotted braid hung down my ribs.

  We didn’t go inside.

  “I always pictured you blond,” said Morris. His tone, though bland, held a hint of disappointment. I worried again what sort of things Chase had told him.

  “Is my mother here?” I asked.

  “Keep your mouth shut.”

  So he could talk, but I couldn’t? I scowled at him, focusing on the place where my fingernails had drawn blood. Knowing I was capable of defending myself made me feel a little braver. He jerked me across the driveway, where floodlights washed over a navy school bus that cast a looming shadow into the parking lot. Several girls were lined up there, guards posted on either side.

  As we neared, a chill ran through me. The soldier had used the word rehabilitation earlier, but I didn’t know what that entailed or where this facility—if it even was a facility—was located. I pictured one of the massive temporary foster homes erected during the War, or worse, the state penitentiary. They couldn’t possibly be taking me there; I hadn’t done anything wrong myself. Being born wasn’t a crime, even if they were treating me like a criminal.

  But what if they were taking my mother to jail?

  I remembered the kids who had disappeared from school. Katelyn Meadows and Mary Something and that freshman boy I didn’t know. They’d been involved with trials for Article violations, for benign things like missing school for a nonapproved religious holiday. It wasn’t like they’d killed anybody. And yet Katelyn hadn’t come back, and Mary and the boy had been gone a week or two already.

  I tried to remember what Beth had said about Katelyn, but I was shaking so hard my brain seemed to rattle. Her phone number was disconnected. She isn’t on the Missing Persons boards. Her family moved away after the trial.

  Moved away, I thought. Or they’d all gotten on a bus and disappeared.

  I fell in line behind a heavyset girl with a short blond bob. She was crying so hard she began to choke. Another was rocking back and forth with her arms wrapped around her stomach. They all looked around my age or younger. One dark-haired girl couldn’t have been more than ten.

  Morris loosened his hold around my bruised arm as we approached two guards. One had a black eye. The other flipped through a list of names on a clipboard.

  “Ember Miller,” Morris reported. “How many left until they transport, Jones?’

  My knees weakened. I wondered again where they were taking us. Somewhere distant, otherwise I would have heard about it at school or from the gossip tree at the soup kitchen. It struck me that no one but these soldiers knew our destination. Not even my mother. Beth would look for us, but she’d get a citation or worse if she asked the MM too many questions.

  I had a terrible feeling that I was about to disappear. That I was about to become the next Katelyn Meadows.

  “Three more. They just radioed in. We should be heading out within the hour,” the soldier responded to Morris.

  “Thank God,” said Morris. “These little bastards are vicious.”

  The soldier with the black eye grunted. “Don’t I know it.”

  “If you’re going to give us a citation, I’ll get you the money,” I blurted.

  In truth, we didn’t have the money. We’d already used up nearly all of our government assistance check this month, but they didn’t need to know that. I could hock some of our stuff. I’d done it before.

  “Who said anything about a citation?” Morris asked.

  “What do you want then? I’ll get it. Just tell me where my mother is.”

  “It’s an offense to bribe a soldier,” he warned, smirking as if this were a game.

  There had to be something. I couldn’t get on that bus.

  He saw my eyes dart behind him and anticipated my flight before I took the first step. In a flash his rough grip locked around my waist.

  “No!” I struggled, but he was much stronger and had already trapped my arms against my sides. He chuckled—a sound that plagued me with fear—and shoved me forcefully up the steps with the assistance of the other soldiers.

  It’s happening, I realized with morbid clarity. I’m about to disappear.

  The soldier with the black eye had climbed up the stairs behind me and was now tapping his baton in one hand.

  “Sit do
wn,” he ordered.

  I had no choice but to do what he said.

  Never before had I felt so heavy. I trudged down the long rubber mat to an open seat in the middle and crumpled onto the bench, vaguely registering the sobs of the girls around me. A trickle of numbness inched down my spine, anesthetizing my fear and worry. I felt nothing.

  The girl next to me had long, wavy black hair and mocha skin. She glanced my way then continued to bite her nails, irritated but not scared. Her legs were crossed at the knees, and she wore a tight T-shirt and pajama pants.

  “Forgot your shoes.” She pointed at my feet. My socks were muddy and grass stained. I hadn’t noticed.

  “What did they get you for?” she asked, without looking up from her hand.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Hello?” she said. “Ember, right? I’m talking to you.”

  “Sorry. How do you know…” I looked at her face and did recognize her faintly.

  “I went to Western last year. Rosa Montoya? We had English together. Thanks for remembering.”

  “We did?” I felt my nose scrunch up. I was usually better with faces.

  She rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry. I was only there for a couple months. Between placements, you know.”

  “Placements?”

  “Group homes. Foster care, princesa. So what are you in for?” She spelled the words out slowly. I did remember her now. She had sat in the back of the classroom, biting her nails, looking bored, much as she did today. She’d come in mid-semester and had left before finals. We’d never said a word to each other.

  I wondered if there were other girls from my school on this bus. No one else looked familiar when I glanced around.

  “The soldier said an Article 5,” I answered.

  “Ooh. You got hauled into rehab because your mom’s the village bicycle.”

  “The… what?”

  A girl in the back began sobbing louder. Someone shouted for her to shut up.

  “The village bicycle. Everyone’s had a ride,” she said sarcastically. Then she rolled her eyes. “Ay. Don’t look so innocent. Soldiers? They’ll eat that up. Look, princesa, if it makes you feel any better, I wish I didn’t know my dad. Consider yourself lucky.”