He grabbed my hand and clenched it tight. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
“No, I’m not going to let this go. It looks like someone beat the crap out of you. Who did this to you?” I ran a finger lightly across his ribs and he winced.
“Who do you think?”
“Collabs.” I muttered the word like a curse.
I went to my backpack and pulled out our precious first aid kit and brought it back to his side.
“A couple of them came in during third meal, not long after you left. I heard them talking.”
“But you must hear them talking all the time.” I flipped open the kit and looked inside. “They wouldn’t beat you up over that.”
“Yeah. It wasn’t them. It was the other guy.” He broke off and held his breath as he shifted into a different position. “There’s no time for this. We need to get you and Mel out of here.”
I nearly groaned in frustration. “Joe, I’m not going anywhere until I understand what’s going on.” My fingers hesitated over a pack of ibuprofen. Then I noticed Joe’s shallow, labored breathing. I ripped the foil pack open and dumped the pills into my hand before I could change my mind. “Start at the beginning. Tell me everything.”
I didn’t think I could bear it if this was all because he was trying to help Mel and me.
“That’s just it. There’s not time to tell you everything. If you’re going to get out of here, you need to go tonight.”
“Tonight? We can’t go at night. That’s when the Ticks will be out. If we’re going, we’re leaving early in the morning, when they should be asleep.”
He shook his head even though it seemed to hurt. “No. If you leave tonight, you should be safe. The Ticks just . . . they would have just . . .”
Joe stumbled over his words. My stomach gave a queasy twist as I realized what he was saying. There had been Greens staked out at dusk tonight. The Greens I’d seen on the south side of campus. The Ticks would have already killed them. So any Ticks around the Farm would be full and maybe even sleepy, since the Greens had been tranqed.
Joe must have seen the understanding in my eyes, because he pushed on. “If you’re going, you need to go tonight. Those Collabs I heard talking, they all work over in the admin building. They know things.”
“What kind of things?” I shoved aside the thought of the Greens. They were already dead and I had to focus on keeping Mel safe.
“Some new guy arrived at the Dean’s office a couple of days ago. Some guy who’s even more powerful than the Dean. Some real badass.”
“Two days ago?” I interrupted him to ask. That was when Carter would have arrived. It was like a nickel slot going off in my head. Ding, ding, ding, ding. “Did he bring Greens with him?”
“I think so. Maybe, I don’t know. The thing is, he’s beefing up the security system.”
“Beefing it up?” I asked in disbelief. “How could security be any stronger than it is now?”
“I don’t know. Do I look like I know about all that military crap?”
“No.” But Carter did.
This badass that Joe was talking about, Carter must have come with him. So, Carter was a Collab. Or worse.
But Carter had had us completely at his mercy. If he was going to bring us to the Dean, he would have done it then. So where was he?
Joe was still talking and I forced my attention back to his words.
“Mostly I hear the Collabs complain about it. But they said this guy Sebastian has been traveling across the country. He’s been to other Farms. He figures out how people are getting out. He fixes the problems. And then no one gets out.”
I pulled an Ace bandage from the med kit, my mind racing, trying to make sense of Joe’s words. But the pieces weren’t fitting together right. Mel had come to stand beside me and I heard the sllluuunk of her Slinky.
“I don’t understand,” I protested, opening the package that held the bandage. I had no idea if wrapping his ribs in bandages would help, but I’d seen people do it in movies. Medical knowledge via TV was probably worse than WebMD, but it was the best I had. “How do these Collabs know what he does in other places?”
I looked up at Joe. He blinked. “Yeah. I mean, that’s what I thought, too. They’re just talking, right? Just bullshit. But then this other guy comes in.”
“Hold up your shirt, okay?” I wrapped the bandage around his chest once, only to have it sag. I considered it for a second, then said, “Exhale.”
He blew out a slow breath that ended in a hiss.
I tightened the bandage and asked, “This other guy, was that the guy who hit you?”
“Yeah. Their . . . um, what do you call it?”
“Their superior? Like their captain?”
“Yeah. He comes in.” Joe winced again as I tightened the bandage. “He noticed that I was listening. He gave them a hard time. Said they could get kicked out of the Collab program for talking about stuff like that in front of Greens. He sent them back to admin and once they left, he did this to me.”
Joe brought his hand to his face and brushed his thumb across the scratch on his cheek. “So I figure, he must not have wanted me to know about it. The guy was serious. Said if I told anyone what I’d heard, he’d flag my chip. Up my testing rate.”
“Oh.” I swallowed. “I didn’t even know you had a chip.”
“Everyone has a chip. Mine just says that my blood’s no good. It says not to take any donations.”
“Oh.” I sank back onto my heels, wondering what my chip said.
A faster testing rate meant more donations. Mel and I had been donating a lot lately.
I didn’t want to think about that, so I asked, “So why are you telling me this now?”
Joe looked me in the eye and for the first time since he’d walked in the room, I felt my doubts slip away. Like he was being completely and totally honest. “Because, Lily, you’re the smartest person I know. If you think you’ve figured a way out, then you probably have.”
I studied him a moment before glancing over at Mel. She bobbed her head in a way that anyone else might take as random movement, but that I knew was nodding. Increasing his testing rate would essentially be the same death sentence Mel and I were trying to avoid. The Collabs would just take donations for a while, but one of these days, they’d test his blood and decide his hormones were within the right range. Then they’d take him off the Farm. If I was just paranoid, he’d go free. If I was right, he’d be slaughtered and fed to the Ticks. If he’d come here to tell me this instead of keeping it to himself, it could only mean one thing.
“You want to come with us,” I guessed.
But Joe shook his head. “I want you to bring someone else, too.”
“Someone else?” My voice rose with my surprise. Even though there wasn’t anyone nearby to overhear me, I dropped back to my knees and leaned closer. Almost whispering. “Who would you want me to get out?”
His gaze shifted away from mine. Though I’d have sworn I’d never seen Joe express any emotion as personal as embarrassment, he blushed. “McKenna.”
“McKenna Wells? From school?”
The pink of Joe’s embarrassment darkened to red anger. “She’s not—”
“If I could get off the Farm, why on earth would I bring her with us? Why would you ask me to?”
“She’s a friend,” Joe said flatly.
“McKenna isn’t a friend to anyone but herself.” She was the kind of person who used others to get what she wanted. That had been true long before we came to the Farm. McKenna had gone to school with Joe and me in the Before. She’d been head cheerleader and resident mean girl at Richardson High. I wasn’t surprised when she was the first person I knew to get pregnant on the Farm. And she was one of the girls who really flaunted it.
“What’d she do? Trade sex for the promise that you could get her out? ’Cause I don’t think you cut a very good deal.”
Joe didn’t say anything. He just let me talk and pace. Mel watched my progress as I moved around the room. Her eyes never left me and I could tell by the way she twisted her hands that I was freaking her out.
“I thought you were smarter than that, Joe.” Mel and I didn’t really have enough food saved up for an extra person, but if helping us had gotten him in trouble in the first place, then I had to offer. “Look, I can get you out. Maybe. But not—”
“I’m not leaving without McKenna. And if it’s her or me, then bring her.”
“Don’t be an idiot. Whatever she said—”
“She’s pregnant,” Joe interrupted.
“Well, duh. She’s been showing off that belly of hers for months. She’s so proud that all those pregnancy hormones make her unappetizing to Ticks. Like it’s some kind of honor—”
“It might be mine.”
“Oh.” I snapped my mouth shut.
Suddenly my mind raced back to the moment in the store today when I made that comment about what would happen to the babies once the first Breeders started giving birth.
Yeah, I’d thought about it, but I hadn’t really thought about it. Not in terms of an actual baby. The progeny of someone I knew. I figured the babies were going to be raised to be more Greens, but I didn’t know if they would stay with their Breeder moms or not. For all I knew, they’d be raised in cages like veal. And that wasn’t even the worst thing that could happen. My stomach gave a sick little flip. This was why the Breeders disgusted me so much. Sure, they’d bought themselves a few more months of life, but at what cost?
No wonder Joe had gone white and acted so strange this afternoon when I’d made the comment.
“I can’t leave her.” His words poured out. “You think this is the first time someone has offered to take me with them? It isn’t. But I can’t just walk away from her and the baby. I never really thought anyone would make it out. But if anyone can, it’s you and Mel. And if those Collabs were right and this is our last chance to get out, then we need to go now.”