I’ll only get angry again if we try to talk.
We end in a small bedroom. There’s just a cot in the corner, and a dresser and desk. Everything looks like it’s about a good kick away from collapsing into a pile of tinder.
“You can stay here,” Lai says. Her back is still to me, and I wonder if she’s dealing with the same problem of speaking without letting her emotions explode out. “If you need anything, I’ll be in the room next door, and Jay will be on the other side. It’ll take a while to get used to this place and remember how to get around, but you’ve got time.”
“Right,” I say. “And now?”
“Now nothing.” She crosses her arms, still facing away from me. “I’ve got business to take care of. Jay is helping with the startup of our new underground farm, and I don’t know how long he’ll be, so just stay here and don’t cause any trouble.”
“You expect me to just sit around and wait until you come get me?” My fury sets my words on fire.
She finally turns around to look at me. “I don’t have time to show you around any more than this—especially when you were hardly paying attention to begin with. You can’t go anywhere without getting lost, and we don’t have the people to spare to babysit you. I said not to get in the way, didn’t I? I didn’t have to bring you here, so stop acting upset when I’m giving you a safe place to go and all I ask in return is that you don’t be a nuisance.”
“Oh, so I should be thankful to you, is that it?” The fire that had been in my words before runs wild through my blood. It nearly bursts to the surface, but I hold back my gift. “Thankful you didn’t abandon me, thankful you’re telling me to just sit around and wait for nothing, thankful you’re finally letting me in on something this big after hiding it for so long? You really are a conceited piece of work.”
“I never claimed to be otherwise. If you don’t like it, you can get out.”
I don’t say anything. I’m having a hard enough time holding back my gift—and trying not to storm out of this room and never come back. Because she is right about one thing: I don’t have anywhere else to go. I don’t know how much I could get away with without actually pushing her far enough to kick me out. And if that happened, I’d be as good as dead.
“I’ll come back in a few hours with lunch,” Lai says. She brushes past me on her way to the door. “Don’t do anything reckless until then.”
“Isn’t that your thing?” I ask.
She slams the door shut behind her. Good riddance.
But almost as soon as she’s gone, my anger burns out into unhappiness. I miss training with Lai and laughing with her over stupid things and being able to say whatever I wanted. I miss knowing I could trust her with my back and feeling invincible when we fought together. Why did things turn out like this? Why do I have to question every single little thing she does? Why does it feel like she never trusted me with anything even once? Even after I told her about my past and the fact I was a girl pretending to be a boy for years, she didn’t tell me anything. Not about her gift of telepathy, not about her past with the leader of the rebels, not about this place—nothing.
Then it turns out Mendel’s been hiding his memory loss and was a former rebel. And even though I’m excited to become better friends with Jay, the truth is that he was in on at least some of this Order stuff all along—even if he was just keeping it secret for Lai’s sake, he was still hiding it.
I slam the door back open and storm into the hall. Like hell I’m just going to sit here waiting for Lai to order me around. I’m no one’s dog.
I rush through the halls in an angry haze. It takes a while for me to realize I haven’t been keeping track of where I’m going. When I look back at all the twisting tunnels, I know I’m screwed. Shit. Why’s this place gotta be so confusing?
Whatever. It doesn’t matter.
I keep going forward, taking a random path whenever I reach splits. I pass all sorts of rooms, and when