I didn’t hear the rest of what she said. Kids were pouring out of the cabins around us now, flowing toward the main gate, assembling in a long line of blue and green shirts. But in front of me, still guarding Cabin 40, his gun’s sight raised to his eyes, was Lucas.
Aiming at us.
At my sharp “No!” the girl spun around, throwing out a hand. Blue. She was Blue. I launched into an uneven, limping run just as Lucas flew back, skidding across the mud, the gun in his hands knocked free.
“Hey!” the girl called after me. “Get back here, dumbass!”
“Sam!” Ellie. “Come back! Sam!”
“Go!” I called. “I’ll catch up!”
“What are you doing?”
I shook the last of their voices out of my head, didn’t turn back to watch them leave me behind.
“Lucas, Lucas—don’t—” I fumbled for the words as he jumped up onto his feet. Smoke filtered through the air. I’d seen it coasting over the tops of the cabins, but I had no idea where it was coming from, the Reds or the firefight. “Lucas! Listen to me!”
I wondered if he could hear me at all. His beautiful face was set in a grim mask of violence, spattered with blood. Pale with anger. There was a buzzing coming from somewhere nearby, like an insect, and I realized almost a second too late that the earpiece he was wearing over his right ear was still active. He was still getting orders.
“Lucas!” The name ripped out of my throat as he raised a hand. The air heated, jumping twenty, thirty degrees around me. “Stop!”
I tackled him hard enough to nearly bite my own tongue off. Lucas went wild under me, bucking and thrashing to get me off, but it wasn’t going to happen, not until I ripped that piece of plastic out of his ear and sent it sailing into the wall of Cabin 40.
They’ll take him, they’ll kill him, they won’t let the Reds live, I will never see him again, can’t have him, can’t take him—my thoughts spun out as Lucas stared at me. As his eyes fixed on me. There wasn’t a whisper of emotion in his expression, but, for a second…for a second there was something.
Doubt.
Confusion.
And all at once, I understood. There was no one barking commands in his ear. He didn’t know what to do if someone hadn’t directly ordered it. They must have—conditioned them? Was that the right word? They must have done something to get them to listen to the Camp Controllers and PSFs. Lucas hadn’t wanted to talk about his training. I scrambled to remember if he’d said anything that I could use now.
Mud stuck to the back of my legs and side, and the rain, it didn’t stop. I reached toward him, brushing his red vest. Need to get him out of here, need to save Lucas, need to hide him—he had fought so hard to get us out, it was my turn now.
My fingers brushed him and he snarled.
I held my hands up. “We need to get you out of your uniform! They’ll take you!”
He didn’t move, and when I tried to grab him again, it felt like his skin was going to blister my palm. His own hand convulsed violently at his side.
Why had he stopped before, but not now? What had I said, done, beyond telling him to stop?
You didn’t tell him. You ordered him, I thought. Commanded him.
The Reds responded to commands, the way trained dogs would. Not requests.
“You listen to me now. I’m in charge.” God—would he hate me for this later? I sucked in a deep breath. There wasn’t time for this. The girl who had come to my cabin was working her way down toward us, clearing each cabin as someone else in black did the same from the other direction. They were about to cut us off before we even had the chance to run. They’ll take him, you have to get him out of here.
“Take off your vest!” I shouted, the words hard and clipped. I couldn’t look at the number spray-painted there: M27.
Lucas stripped off the blood-red vest, the whole of his attention focused on me. My throat squeezed so tight, I couldn’t breathe.
“Drop it!”
He did.
“Stay beside me! Run!”
He did—into the open door of the cabin in the next, outer ring. It housed the Green boys we’d passed on the way to the Mess Hall. In their scramble to leave, to fall into the