The Dark and Hollow Places - Carrie Ryan [8]
Chaos erupts, Recruiters running to climb after the young man as others on the bridge take aim with their crossbows. Around me people scream and lunge out of the way but I stay kneeling, watching the young man scrabble along the shore while bolts pepper the ground around him.
“Got him!” one of the Recruiters shouts. The young man stumbles, a bright red streak of blood along his arm where a bolt clipped him. He loses his balance and starts to slip toward the river running under the bridge. And with a splash, he’s gone.
Everyone around me holds a collective breath as they wait for his body to break back up to the surface. Except me. I’m staring at the girl—at my sister—the one who is me. Abigail. She’s crouching where the young man knelt just before he ran. Thin lines of blood well along her arm where her sleeve was torn in the scuffle, and she holds her fists to her temples. One of the dogs thrusts his nose against her elbow and she leans on him as if she has no idea what to do next.
Two of the Recruiters slap hands as they walk past her and she raises her head. They must tell her what happened as they haul her to her feet, because she opens her mouth, and even with the havoc flaring around me I can hear her screaming in rage. It reverberates inside my head as if it were my voice and my throat and my pain.
I will her to look at me. To turn her head and glance my way. I beg her with my mind to see me. To know I’m here. But she doesn’t move. Her gaze never wavers from the towering metal wall where the young man just stood.
Below me the ripples on the river die out to a calm smooth glass. The man never comes to the surface.
The siren eventually cuts out and the Recruiters order everyone to line up so they can search us. They go from section to section with the dogs, trying to determine if any of the rest of us might be infected like the young man.
By the time I’m released everything’s in disarray and I’m able to double back toward the Neverlands, but when I finally make it off the bridge I can’t find my sister anywhere. I race to the wall where I last saw her and press my hand against the cold rust-pocked metal, trying to feel her.
Not too far away a group of Recruiters huddle in a circle around a low fire, laughing and passing around a clay jug. I square my shoulders and as I approach, one with a thick white mustache breaks away, stopping me before I get too close. I’m acutely aware of the way they all stare.
“What are you looking for, hon?” he asks, his voice a mixture of warning and stern amicability.
“What happened to the girl?” I keep my chin up, my hair tucked behind my ears. I feel wide open and vulnerable but I have to know if he sees what I saw: if he notices the resemblance or if I’m just believing what I want to. That my sister is still alive. That I didn’t leave her to die in the Forest after all.
But like everyone else, his gaze fixes on my scars and then bounces away again, to the water and the bridge and the wall and the ground. Everywhere but at my face. He’s an older man and a look of kindness still hovers around the tilt of his mouth.
“She was a friend,” I prod.
He reaches down and tugs on one of the ears of his dog, which leans against his leg, tail twitching lazily. “I wouldn’t worry about her.” I can tell this isn’t what he means; he’s telling me I should forget about her. He shrugs and still refuses to look at me directly. “They might let her go, but …”
I don’t want to think about the “but.” I can’t. “Please,” I beg, hating the taste of the word but knowing I’ll do what it takes to find my sister. I even let my eyes water, hoping tears will help my cause.
“They’ll take her to the headquarters on the Sanctuary,” he says eventually.