Page 27

VALE

I usher Ami past the guard stand and her attitude is perfect—cold, not forthcoming. Just gives her name and lets me say the rest. Her steady gaze is unnerving, so different from her giggles outside the complex.

She learns quickly, and she’s already used to how things are up here. I think about her wandering the market. Now she walks beside me, spine straight, her hands shoved in the pockets of her coat. As I stare out of the corner of my eye I can’t help but notice details of her profile.

Her freckles, still scattered over her cheeks all these years later.

Her nose is straight, her chin pronounced.

She moves with a smooth grace of practiced movement.

Is she a dancer? She’s broad in her shoulders, her upper back a dramatic V to her trim waist like maybe she rock climbs or wrestles.

She wears it well, her pretty face and wavy brown hair on her athletic body.

Ami clears her throat. “Vale, you’re staring. ”

I scoff a little. “Am not, you wish.” What am I, twelve years old now?

There’s a small smile on Ami’s lips when her feet stop. In surprise I see we’re at the wide front door. She looks at me expectantly and I try to hide my confusion. How did we get here so quickly?

“You know what,” I start and falter, several things occurring to me at once. The minute we walk through those doors, my father will hear about it if he hasn’t already from the guard in the booth out front.

Also, it’s lunchtime and there will be men, lots of them, in the halls. I stray off the path, walking on the new June grass around the side of the building. Ami follows me without comment.

“Secret shortcut?” she asks under her breath.

“Something like that,” I tell her. She crouches a little, like a sneaky spy. “Stop it,” I say. I don’t need her making me laugh right now. I come to a locked side door, steel, no handles, with narrow panes of glass covered over by plywood. I pull a key from my pocket.

“You live in a high school,” Ami says.

“I live at the Forge,” I tell her, pushing the key in and pulling as I turn to open the side door, which is in fact a secret shortcut.

“You know, I went to a high school like this,” she says. “In Baltimore.”

I roll my eyes as I pull the door open. “Not like this one, Ami.”

We’re in a back hall of what used to be the science wing. The labs have been converted into weapons storage. There are still a couple we use as labs, mostly for cooking up explosives and whatever else people are making—drugs, I don’t know. Nothing good.

The original doors have been replaced by steel doors with padlocks. The lockers in the hall have been ripped out but not replaced, leaving a mess of plaster and plywood hanging off the walls. I hadn’t thought about how it looks until I see Ami’s wide eyes. Like a high school out of the apocalypse.

I take her quickly past the locker rooms where a few guys call out to us. She’s got the hat pulled low over her eyes, and she stays right next to me. I couldn’t ask for better cooperation.

We’re quickly back to the offices and I unlock the door to my room, pulling her inside and locking the door with a sigh of relief.

Huh . I didn’t think about where I was taking her. I remember thinking we would go and look for Zeph. Talk to them together, get some answers, and check her story. Instead she’s in my room and I feel relief. At least she’s not out in the Forge with all the men staring at her.

Ami’s gazing at me. “Vale, you’re nervous.”

“No way,” I mutter.

She smiles knowingly. “Your breathing. Your shoulders. I can tell.”

I normally hate that PS stuff, monitoring everyone’s emotional state at any given moment. But it makes sense for her to be on alert.

“I’m just worried for you. My father…” I’m not sure what to say about him.

“Isaiah Adamson,” she murmurs.

“He’s not a good man. I know that. He might have been, a long time ago in Baltimore when my mom was still around.”

Ami makes a noise in her throat at the mention of my mom and it doesn’t help. I desperately push down the emotion before it can surface.

“The PS sent her to Iran. The negotiations in ’26.” There’s more to the story that I don’t want to discuss. I sit down heavily on the bed. Ami sits on the chair next to the desk, looking out the window at the water and the mountains. Her fingers trace over the empty desk.

I find myself drifting a little. It’s a surreal experience to see her here in my space, sitting at my desk. I never thought I’d have a woman in here, especially one from the PS.

My father hates the PS for what happened to my mom, but he has something like respect for the leaders there. He figures, of course they emasculated men and grabbed power. But it makes sense to him that men would find a way out, find a way back to power.

Our legacy isn’t a hatred of women, it’s about becoming what we were meant to be.

“So, when can I talk to Zeph?” Ami shakes me out of my thoughts.

I nod, trying to figure out what to do, what to say.

“He’s in basic training,” I tell her.

“Training.” She grins now, unexpectedly, widely, and leans towards me in the chair. “I like training,” she says like she’s admitting something embarrassing.

I snort. “What training have you done, Pepper?”

Ami gets haughty with me. “Citizen training is not nothing, Your Majesty. And self-defense of course, and swim team,” she adds.

Ah, swimming. That explains her strong build.

“Were you good?” I ask, suspecting the answer.

Ami avoids my gaze. “Probably,” she says, looking up at the ceiling.

“What does that mean?”

She adds a shrug. “We don’t compete in the traditional sense anymore.”

Of course they don’t. “I bet you were fast,” I say.

She nods. “Do you swim?”

“A little. They have a pool over in the athletic building.”

Ami’s eyes shine. I like it.

“So can I join Zeph in basic training?” she asks.

I shiver. “No way. It’s just men, Ami.”

She nods. “What do women do? The ones who want to help the Forge?”

I’m not sure. There are a few partners scattered around the Forge, of course. My father has a woman who visits him, and some of the other lieutenants do as well. But I don’t have a lot of exposure to any other women besides the ones I see when I’m undercover in the PS.

“The Forge is mostly men. There are women who are spies.” I grimace a little. “Not too many. Spies mostly…or…”

“Or what?” she asks.

“Wives, girlfriends.”

She nods, her face a mask suddenly. “Like the men in Maryland.”

“No, it’s not like that,” I say fiercely. “It’s what they want.” Ami raises her pretty eyebrows at me .

“I want to do something,” she says pointedly, making it clear she has no interest in hanging around as somebody’s girlfriend.

I sigh. “We’ll have to talk to my father about it.”

“Any suggestions?” she asks.

“For what? Talking to him?”

“Yeah,” she says, staring out the window now.

“He was trained by MAV back in the day. Be careful, he’ll know all the tricks.”

She turns back to me. “Tricks? You mean emotional regulation and control? It’s not a trick, Vale.”

I shrug. “It’s a way to distract yourself from what you’re really feeling and thinking, from your true natural reactions.”

Her brow furrows. “Maybe humans aren’t just meant to act naturally all the time. Maybe we’re meant to evolve into compassionate people who work together and respect each other enough to not fly off the handle.”

“The PS is not what you think,” I tell her. “It hasn’t been for a long time.” I want to explain but there’s a knock on my door. I jerk the door open and I’m glad Ami is sitting at my desk and not on the bed.

It’s one of my father’s guards and he laughs outright at the sight of Ami in my room, getting my hackles up immediately.

“Hey, pretty,” he says to her first, his voice low and smooth. Ami smiles coyly from under my baseball hat.

“What do you want, Jones?” I demand.

“What do you think?” he shoots back. No sexy voice for me, I notice. “Your father wants to see you. Both of you,” he adds .

Ami stands up and I don’t like her obeying his orders without question. I stand still, keeping an eye on him. He moves to hold the door open for her, standing back with his eyes glued on her. Ami passes and his eyes travel rudely down.

“Nice,” he whispers to me as I follow her.

“Shut up,” I tell him flatly. “Keep your eyes to yourself.” We hesitate outside the office. I don’t want to follow him, but I’m not sure where my father is right now.

“Conference room, in the left wing,” he says and starts to lead the way there.

“Leave it,” I tell him, “I’ll take her there myself.”

He hesitates.

“I’ll take her,” I repeat, looking him directly in the eyes. This guy is a few years older than me, but he knows where I stand in the hierarchy.

“Sure you don’t need some company?” he asks Ami.

She gazes back coolly. “We’re good,” she tells him, drawing closer to me.

His smile falls off his face. “Fine. You’d better get her there. I’m not taking the fall for you,” he mutters and heads off in another direction.

I sigh. “Come on, Pepper. Let’s get this over with.”