A hand grabbed my shoulder and whipped me around.
The Collab shone a flashlight in my eyes, making it impossible to see his features. Not that it mattered. One Collab was as bad as the next.
“We’re going to our dorm right now,” I said, hating the tremor in my voice. I shouldered in front of Mel and prayed the Collab wouldn’t notice anything strange about her.
“It’s after curfew,” the Collab said. He ran the beam of his flashlight down the length of my body. He chuckled. “You two could be in serious trouble.”
“We’re just running a little late,” I said, taking a step back. Mel stepped with me.
The Collab moved his light onto her, the beam traveling up the length of her body to her face. Then he barked with laughter. “Cool. Twins.”
His laughter made my stomach lurch with revulsion. Like most Collabs, he was soft around the middle from too much food and not enough exercise. Still, he was bigger than me. I took another step backward, but this time, Mel didn’t move. A glance behind me told me we’d been backed up against the side wall of the gymnasium.
“You know,” the Collab was saying, “I could bring you up to the Dean’s office.” Instead of threatening, his voice held a nasty undercurrent of suggestion. What a skeeze. “But I bet we can work something out.”
He swung his tranq gun off his shoulder. He held it one-handed, his stance lazily aggressive as he pressed the barrel to my neck then nudged it downward to part the zipper of my jacket. He flashed another stomach-churning smile. “I have always wondered about twins.”
In any sane world, a guy like this—all sweat and blubber—wouldn’t have a shot with one girl, let alone two. But it seemed unwise to point this out.
He looked at Mel and his expression soured. “What’s wrong with her? She doesn’t look like a Breeder.”
Before he could look at her too long, I knocked the barrel away from my chest. “Get away from me.”
Clearly the Collab wasn’t used to people talking back to him.
“Isn’t it bad enough you betrayed humanity by collaborating to feed us to the Ticks?” I stepped forward, not out of bravery, but so he wouldn’t have the room to raise his tranq rifle again. Surprise was the only advantage I had. The words poured out of me in a flood of uncorked resentment. “The rest of us Greens have no rights. But we have to put up with this crap, too?”
I got right in his face. He stumbled back a step. By now, adrenaline was pumping through my veins like battery acid. Fueled by six months of fear and one hell of a bad day, I reached up and shoved his shoulder, praying he wouldn’t notice that I was reaching for the pruning shears with my other hand.
But before I could grab them, the Collab overcame his shock.
He was in better shape than I would have thought, because he moved fast, grabbing my wrist and giving it a sharp twist. It felt like he was going to wrench my arm right out of my shoulder. I dropped to my knees with a yelp of pain but he kept twisting, pushing me face-first into the ground. He rammed his knee in between my shoulder blades. The sharp tip of the garden shears dug into my back. He was practically sitting on them. How could he not feel them beneath his leg?
I bucked against him, kicking with my legs. He raised up to flip me over. I let him, hoping I could get an arm back to the shears, but he was back down on me in an instant, his knees pinning my shoulders to the ground.
The Collab tilted his crotch forward so it was right in my face. He laughed. “I do like this.”
This close, his body odor clogged my nose, closing off my throat. I turned my head and saw Mel standing just a few feet away. Anyone else would have run for it. Not Mel. She was still staring up at the night sky, her gaze blank and out of focus, her head tilted just so, as if straining to hear the upper register of some distant tune. Why the hell had I given her that Valium?
Beyond the heavy thrust of my thundering heart, I could faintly hear the song she was humming. And I finally placed it. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. She’d finally reached the “Ode to Joy” part at the end. What a great time for her sense of humor to pop up.
Again I tried to kick up, but my legs didn’t come anywhere near close to his back. With his knees on my shoulders and his legs on either side of my chest, both my arms were pinned. My left arm was almost beneath me. I could almost reach the gardening shears, but I needed more room to move. I bucked again, but the guy was like an anvil planted on my chest.
I thought of how Carter and I had fought just that afternoon. Carter was bigger than this guy. Stronger. He must have been taking it easy on me this afternoon. He’d been holding back, trying to keep me safe. This guy didn’t care if he hurt me. Maybe he’d even relish it. Suddenly panic flooded me. I was in serious trouble unless I could get my hand on those gardening shears.
His grimy fingers were mere inches from my eyes. His fingers were chubby. His nails rimmed with dirt or grease. He was stronger. He was armed. And—Christ—he was reaching for his belt buckle.
I blinked, trying to force down my fear so I could think.
He’d have to lift his h*ps off me to get his pants down—again, I had to choke back my fear. If I could get to the shears, I’d have to stab the Collab. If he didn’t make too much noise, I could steal his tranq rifle and shoot him. If he was out long enough for me to finish the work on the fence then maybe we had a chance. My list of ifs just got considerably longer.
I fumbled at my back, feeling for the pruning shears. My palms were sweaty and slipped on the handle, but I finally gripped them tightly as he yanked on his zipper.
“Let her go!” a voice called out.
I felt a flood of relief. Carter. Thank God.
The Collab and I both froze. The harsh beam from a flashlight cut across the darkness. For an instant it shone straight into my eyes, then it jerked away, bobbing up and down as he jogged toward us.
My attacker left his belt buckle dangling as he reached for his rifle. With the light slashing across my face, I could see nothing, only hear the steady thud-thud of Carter’s footfalls as he ran toward us. The Collab started to stand and I scrambled out from beneath him. He grabbed a hunk of my hair before I could get away.
“Oh. It’s you.” The Collab holding me let go of his rifle.
“Yeah. It’s me,” Carter said.
I waited for him to attack the Collab, but he didn’t make a move and didn’t even look in my direction.
Fear trickled down my spine. How the hell would this Collab know him? And why wasn’t Carter helping me? Was Carter a Collab?
Then the flashlight scanned my face. I pinched my eyes shut, willing them to adapt quickly to the dark. The afterimage of the Maglite bulb flashed on my retinas. When I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was the glossy black boots of a collaborator.
Yep. Carter was a Collab.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Lily
“What’s going on here?” Carter asked.
My brain struggled to make the puzzle pieces fit. Again I wondered, if he was a Collab, why hadn’t he brought me in when he’d had the chance earlier?
Unlike this first Collab’s, Carter’s uniform was pressed and clean. His boots were polished to gleaming. I still couldn’t see his face, but his blond hair shone in the moonlight. From this angle he looked as crisply sinister as the Hitler Youth I’d seen pictures of in my history book.
Beside this guy, my original attacker looked scruffy and slovenly. A junkyard dog compared to a trained Rottweiler.
Scruffy floundered for a minute, before protesting, “I was just having a little fun.”
“Is she a Breeder?”
Scruffy stood up, keeping his fist clenched in my hair so he pulled me to my knees. “What does it matter? They were out after curfew.”
“It matters. Let her go.” Carter the Nazi sounded like he was used to barking orders and having them followed. When Scruffy didn’t jump to obey, Carter swung the tranq gun off his shoulder in a gesture that was both casual and threatening at the same time. “If she didn’t volunteer to be a Breeder, you can’t touch her. That’s the law.”
Scruffy’s hold on my hair tightened. I could have fought against it, but I held still, conserving my energy, trying to fight off the residual panic from Scruffy’s first attack.
“Whatever,” Scruffy slurred before he shoved me away, sending me sprawling on the ground before Carter’s gleaming black boots. “Nobody pays attention to that kind of thing.”
“They do now. Get back to your duty station.”
“What are you gonna do with them? ’Cause there’s two, ya know. We could both—”
“I’m taking them to the Dean’s office.” Nazi Carter shifted his tranq rifle so it pointed right at Scruffy’s chest. “It wouldn’t be out of my way to bring you along.”
Scruffy stumbled back, bringing up both of his hands in a sign of submission. “N-no way, man. The Dean’s office?” His voice cracked on the words. “I was just having a little fun. They were only out after curfew.”
“Which is almost as serious as being away from your duty post.”
Scruffy turned and ran before I even had a chance to scramble to my feet.
“Get up,” Carter ordered with a gesture of his rifle.
“I am.”
Carter watched Scruffy retreating. I’d just straightened up and was rolling my shoulder with a wince as Scruffy rounded the corner of the gymnasium and disappeared from sight. I opened my mouth, but before I could demand some answers from Carter, he pulled me into his arms. He just squeezed me—really tight—for a second. I could feel his face in my hair and thought I heard him mutter a curse. And then he let me go, taking a big step back. His expression was blank and distant.
What the hell?
Shaking off my confusion, I reached for Mel’s hand. She clutched it so tight I expected my bones to crack. “You should have run,” I whispered, but she ducked her head and shook it, her fingers slipping through her hair, making her look even more like a wild animal.