Underground, who are going to help you. They’ll give you the details, okay?”
I nod again. It’s all I seem capable of at the moment.
My mother checks her watch. “I’ll meet you in the sanitation room in about two hours. We won’t have much time to talk then.” She places her hands on my shoulders and kisses the air by both my cheeks. “Dear heart?”
I clear my throat, looking for my voice. “Yes, Mom?”
Her fingers tighten on my shoulders. “I trust you to do the right thing today.”
My cheek presses against hard, cold metal, and fifty pounds of linens flatten me against the bottom of the cart. Logan is next to me somewhere in the darkness. I think that’s his stomach my feet are poking, and that might be his arm encircling my knees.
We rode in on a delivery van, packed inside an oversize cube of new linens. The cube was dumped on a conveyor belt. From there, it was untied and transferred to a laundry cart by a bot. The bot is now pushing the cart toward the building’s sanitation room, where the sheets will be laundered before being put on the beds of the lab subjects.
Supposedly, there’s plenty of oxygen within the folds of these sheets. I breathe through my nose. Bad idea. The chemical stench of freshly manufactured cloth makes the breakfast rise in my throat.
Switching to shallow, open-mouthed breaths, I try to keep a mental map of our path. But the cart constantly jerks and halts. I lose track of the turns and just lie there, feeling every bump of the cart against my bones.
Finally we stop, and I hear my mom’s voice. “Quick. You can come out now.”
Logan and I claw our way to the surface and climb out a moment before the cart is lifted by mechanical arms. Its contents are dumped onto another conveyor belt, which leads into the sanitation machine. The linens will come out the other end washed, dried, and neatly folded.
My mother presses a few buttons on a keyball, and the bot spins and leaves the room. I hear the hiss of boiling hot jets, and the lit-up walls flicker. The sanitation machine takes up an entire wall of the room, and a row of empty carts lines another.
“Your Underground contact will meet you here,” my mother says. “I can’t stay, but you can hide in one of those empty carts until he arrives.”
She touches up my makeup and then hands me the kit. “This makeup would last through a war as long as you don’t forget to freshen it every few hours.” She straightens my wig, her fingers lingering briefly on the fake strands of hair. “Remember what I said.”
“Always.” I reach up and give her one last hug.
She turns to Logan. “Be careful. Take care of my daughter.”
She looks back at me, a gaze that sears itself into my memory forever, and then she is gone. It all happens so fast, I almost don’t have time to feel the pressure building in my chest.
Logan and I climb into one of the empty carts, settling our spines against the metal frame.
“Were you able to get in touch with the Underground?” I ask. “To tell them what we learned from Potts?”
“Yeah. My mom called her contact on the board last night.” He takes my hand, tracing the lifeline along my palm. “As I suspected, they were already aware of the situation. They sent a messenger to Harmony to tell Mikey.”
“What are they going to do?”
“Move,” he says. “They’ll wait for you and Jessa to get back, and then they’ll pick up camp and leave. Instead of finding another location, they’ll roam around for a while, until we can be sure ComA’s no longer looking.”
Just as he finishes talking, the door slams shut. My heart pounds against my chest, but the whirling of the sanitation machine drowns it out. Logan puts a finger to his lips and motions upward, to indicate we should take a look.
Rising to my knees, I peek over the edge. A uniformed guard stands near the entrance, scanning the room. I can’t see his face, but his hair is the prettiest color I’ve ever seen. Deep russet red threaded with bits of gold. Without thinking, I stand straight up.
He whips his head around, and I’m looking into the startled face of William, the guard who lied for me.
“October Twenty-Eight.” William staggers backward, his eyes wide. “What are you doing back here?”
I’m surprised he recognized me with the heavy