“But—” I think of the Scavengers swarming into the crowd; faces monstrous with screaming. “But people died.”
“Two hundred,” Tack says quietly. He still won’t look at me. “Two dozen officers. The rest citizens. They didn’t bother to tally the Scavengers who were killed.” He shrugs his shoulders, a quick convulsion. “Sometimes it is necessary that individuals are sacrificed for the health of the whole.” That’s straight out of a DFA pamphlet.
“Okay,” I say. My hands are shaking, and I grip the sides of my chair. I’m still having trouble thinking straight. “Okay. So what are we going to do about it?”
Raven’s eyes flick to Tack, but he keeps his head bowed. “We’ve already done something about it, Lena,” she says, still in that baby-voice, and once again I get a weird prickling in my chest. There is something they aren’t telling me—something bad.
“I don’t understand.” My voice sounds hollow.
There are a few seconds of heavy silence. Then Tack sighs, and says over his shoulder to Raven, “I told you, we should have clued her in from the start. I told you we should have trusted her.”
Raven says nothing. A muscle twitches in her jaw. And suddenly I remember coming downstairs a few weeks before the rally and hearing Tack and Raven fighting.
I just don’t understand why we can’t be honest with each other. We’re supposed to be on the same side.
You know that’s unrealistic, Tack. It’s for the best. You have to trust me.
You’re the one who isn’t trusting. . . .
They were fighting about me.
“Clued me in to what?” The prickling is becoming a heavy thud, painful and sharp.
“Go ahead,” Raven says to Tack. “If you want to tell her so badly, be my guest.” Her voice is biting, but I can tell, underneath that, she’s afraid. She’s afraid of me and how I will react.
“Tell me what?” I can’t stand this anymore—the cryptic glances, the impenetrable web of half phrases.
Tack passes a hand over his forehead. “Okay, look,” he says, speaking quickly now, as though eager to end the conversation. “It wasn’t a mistake that you and Julian were taken by the Scavengers, okay? It wasn’t an error. It was planned.”
Heat creeps up my neck. I lick my lips. “Who planned it?” I say, though I know: It must have been the DFA. I answer my own question, saying, “The DFA,” just as Tack grimaces and says, “We did.”
Ticking silence. One, two, three, four. I count off the seconds, take a deep breath, close my eyes, and reopen them. “What?”
Tack actually flushes. “We did. The resistance planned it.”
More silence. My throat and mouth have gone to dust. “I—I don’t understand.”
Tack is avoiding my eyes again. He walks his fingers across the edge of the table, back and forth, back and forth. “We paid the Scavengers to take Julian. Well, the resistance did. One of the higher-ups in the movement has been posing as a DFA agent—not that it matters. The Scavengers will do anything for a price, and just because they’ve been in the DFA’s pocket for a while now doesn’t mean their loyalties aren’t for sale.”
“Julian,” I repeat. Numbness is creeping through my body. “And what about me?”
Tack hesitates for just a fraction of a second. “They were paid to hold you, too. They were told that Julian was being tailed by a girl. They were told to hold both of you together.”
“And they thought they’d get a ransom for us,” I say. Tack nods. My voice sounds foreign, as though it’s coming from far away. I can hardly breathe. I manage to gasp out, “Why?”
Raven has been standing still, staring at the ground. Suddenly she bursts out, “You were never in any danger. Not really. The Scavengers knew they wouldn’t get paid if they touched you.”
I think back to the argument I overheard in the tunnels, the wheedling voice urging Albino to stick with the original plan, the way they tried to pump Julian for information about his security codes. The Scavengers were obviously getting impatient. They wanted their payday sooner.
“Never in any danger?” I repeat. Raven won’t look at me either. “I—I almost died.” Anger is spreading hot tentacles through my chest. “We were starved. We were jumped. Julian was beaten half to death. We had to fight—”
“And you did.” Finally Raven looks at me, and to my horror her eyes are shining; she looks happy. “You escaped, and you got Julian out safely too.”
For several seconds I can’t speak. I am burning, burning, burning, as the true meaning of everything that happened slams into me. “This … this was all a test?”
“No,” Tack says firmly. “No, Lena. You have to understand. That was part of it, but—”
I push back from the table, turn away from the sound of his voice. I want to curl into a ball. I want to scream, or hit something.
“It was bigger than that, what you did. What you helped us do. And we would have made sure you were safe. We have our own people underground. They’d been told to look out for you.”
The rat-man and Coin. No wonder they helped us. They were paid to.
I can’t speak anymore. I am having trouble swallowing. It takes all my energy just to stay on my feet. The containment, the fear, the bodyguards who were killed in the subway—the resistance’s fault. Our fault. A test.