“Because I’m ready to start spitting fire.”
I rubbed at my face, thinking. “How many implants could you deactivate before it became dangerous for you?”
“Depends on how difficult it is to hit the switch,” Priyanka said. “I can’t imagine I’ll be in trouble, but someone should keep an eye on me after the fact. I might actually try to burn this place down.”
“I will,” Roman said. “I’ll stay with you the whole time.”
“I’m thinking more than just deactivating the implants,” I said with an apologetic look.
“Have no fear, Sparky, I’ll keep it together. You don’t get to have fun without me,” Priyanka said.
“Well, we won’t have that much time to convince everyone,” Max said. “There’s got to be close to a hundred kids here now, and one of them might rat us out for better treatment.”
“What are you thinking?” Roman asked me. “Run surveillance on the soldiers to get their watch schedule down and then head out with a team?”
This would be a risk, there was no avoiding that. The assault on Thurmond had taken weeks of planning and involved coordination on the inside and out. We’d be dependent on surprise and chaos, not careful timing and strategy.
“I’m thinking we leave no one behind,” I said. “Anyway, I don’t need to convince everyone. I just need to convince one person.”
“Well, well, well. Looks like the ladies have come to pay their dues.”
Unsurprisingly, Cubby was in the biggest tent, and even more unsurprisingly, she was surrounded by all of her best meathead types. Two of them rose as Priyanka and I stepped inside. I eyed what looked like tent stakes in their hands.
“Chill,” Priyanka said. “Unless you’re going out vampire hunting, those aren’t going to be necessary. We come in peace, or whatever.”
The tent was really four or five of them tied together, and it was immediately obvious that most of the camp’s allocation of rough wool blankets was here. They were used as everything from padding to create more comfortable sleeping arrangements to curtains dividing off the area where Cubby and a few others were gathered, surrounded by empty ration boxes and water bottles.
I glanced up, checking again to make sure that we were hidden from the sight of the soldiers above us. I couldn’t sense any microphones or cameras, either. Priyanka confirmed it, touching my arm and giving a quick shake of the head.
I almost laughed. At least the hired hands weren’t pretending they cared if we lived or died. The camp controllers at Caledonia had spun the lie about the cameras and PSFs being there for our protection for far too long. In reality, they’d only ever been there to make sure we behaved, and to punish us when we didn’t. The soldiers here didn’t have to work nearly as hard to keep everyone in line, not with everyone’s abilities smothered out like flames. They seemed perfectly content to sit back and watch as we killed each other.
These were the unwanteds, after all. The unclaimed and the misbehaving.
So…my kind of people.
“Where’s the boyfriend?” she asked.
Max had taken Roman on a walkabout to familiarize him with the Pit’s layout and try to plot the escape route. “Which of these kids do you not trust with your life?” I asked instead of answering.
Cubby’s eyes narrowed. “What’s your game?”
“I have an offer for you,” I told her. “But I’ll only deliver it with the assurance no one is going to go slip the information to one of the hired guns, looking for special favors.”
“Anyone who rats to the grays gets spiked,” she told me, picking up her own tent stake to demonstrate.
“What about you?” I asked.
The kids clustered around her began to whisper, exchanging looks that ranged from nervous to curious. Cubby’s face flushed scarlet, all her bluster and bravado gone.
The sleepy-voiced girl, the one she’d called Doc, was sitting to Cubby’s left. She leaned back on her hands, narrowing her gaze on me. “She’s trying to test—”
Cubby jerked up her hand, silencing her. The flustered look turned to one of fury as she pointed the tip of the stake at herself, thrusting it toward her to emphasize each word. “I got here same as everyone, I got treated same as everyone—you think I’m going to lower myself to working with the shits keeping us here? You think that helped any of us at Black Rock? No way in hell. The kids respect me, is all.”
Black Rock? I took a step closer.
I’d assumed she wasn’t more than sixteen, but to have been