State of Chaos

Dear Diary,

Tonight I screwed up some poor prisoner’s life. Epic win.

Nice.

I glance back at Harry and Sophia, but their eyes are glued to the floor. Harry is shaking. They look worse than I do.

“How—” I begin, but Kamaneva cuts me off.

“I have my sources,” she says.

Her eyes flick to Harry. He swallows and the food I just ate turns over in my stomach. He won’t look at me.

“You…?” I whisper.

He still doesn’t say anything.

“Why?” I demand, tears springing to my eyes.

Sophia is shocked. Frozen. Kamaneva wraps her fingers around my arm and pulls me away from the table, pushing me towards two Omega troopers. Sophia suddenly starts screaming.

“You traitor!” she shrieks, lunging at Harry.

He crashes to the ground with Sophia on top of him, either trying to choke him or tear the hair out of his head. Maybe a combination of both. Kamaneva watches in silence. Guards break up the fight, and when Sophia is hauled to her feet, her face is covered with tears. Harry is crying, too.

Add me to the list.

“She made me tell you,” Harry says. “I swear, Cassidy, I wouldn’t do anything like this unless—”

“—Unless your life depended on it?” I snort. “I guess it did.”

He nods, fisting his hands and sinking to the ground.

Kamaneva and her guards drag me outside. The next thing I know, I’m being led through the school to a storage building behind the complex. And the whole time, all I can think is:

Harry betrayed me.

“What did you do to Harry?” I demand, shooting daggers at Kamaneva with my eyes. “What did you threaten him with?”

Kamaneva doesn’t answer. She just continues looking smug.

“You made him do that.” I struggle against the guards, total rage turning my vision red. “Why are you doing this to me? Why do you hate me so much? I never did anything to you!”

“You’re alive,” Kamaneva snaps, cold. “My daughter should have been alive.”

The storage facility is a small building with a tiny window in the top of the wall. The guards open the doors and throw me inside. I land on my hands and knees, looking at a blank room. It’s empty. Not even a bench or a bucket to use for a toilet.

“So you want to kill me and Sophia because your daughter died?” I shake my head. “You’re insane.”

Kamaneva flushes and lands a heavy kick to my side. I double over and jump to my feet, drawing back. “Only one of you has to die,” she hisses. “It’s only fair.”

“I’m not the one who killed your daughter.”

“My daughter died around your age.” Kamaneva’s features don’t soften. They remain steely and emotionless.

“It wasn’t my fault,” I say.

She looks me up and down. “The prisoners have to be kept in line. You violated the rules. You have until morning.”

She turns around so fast I swear she’s going to fall over, but she doesn’t. The guards slam and lock the heavy door behind them. The building is plunged into darkness. It’s cold. Empty. Creepy. I pace up and down, trying to process everything that just happened.

Harry turned me in for stealing. Kamaneva must have given him something in return. Extra rations? A bed to sleep on? Who the heck knows? She’s just a borderline sociopath who loves the drama of dragging out an execution. I had no idea the woman hated me that much. Scratch that. Hated Sophia and me. What’s worse, Chris was right. I really can’t trust anybody.

Harry betrayed me.

You don’t know what Kamaneva did to him to get him to do this, my conscious points out. She probably threatened to have him killed. He didn’t have a choice.

No. We all have a choice. I never would have betrayed Sophia or Harry.

And Chris never would have betrayed me.

I curl up in a ball in the front corner of the building. My mouth is dry, my heart is beating fast. A wave of fear like I’ve never experienced before in my life crashes over me. Tears blur my vision.

Tomorrow, Kamaneva will come back for me.

Tomorrow, I’ll be executed.

Chapter Seven

I’ve been in life or death situations before. How many times did I almost die when I was trying to find my father after the EMP hit? More times than I’d like to count. But this is different, because all you can do is sit and wait for death to come knocking at your door. You can’t fight it, you can’t do anything about it. You can only hope something scares it away and gives you a little extra time to stick around.

But that’s not going to happen. Not now.

Dawn has broken outside, and slits of sunlight are falling through the single window near the roof of the storage building. I’m standing with my back pressed against the far wall, studying the words and phrases etched into the wall by prisoners that have been locked in here before me. Everything from names and dates to Bible verses has been scratched into the paint. Somebody wrote:

Rose Leland

Reedley, California

Don’t Forget Me

A final note. I fight the tears prickling behind my eyes. Breaking down isn’t going to do any good at this point. My fate is sealed. And now that the hysterics have passed and I’ve accepted this fact, I’m swamped with an eerie calm feeling.

It’s like being stuck in a dream. It doesn’t seem real, but it is. I’m totally spaced out. I keep rubbing my thumb along the gold shield necklace Chris gave me so many months ago. If he knew I was about to die, would he tell me he loved me? I don’t know. I don’t think I want to know.

But I can hope.

Thirty minutes after sunrise, I hear footsteps approaching the building. My muscles tense. Everything gets sharper, louder. My fear is a physical thing. I’m going to die. I’ll be executed just like everybody else Kamaneva has ever made an example of. Nobody will even remember that I existed.

Suddenly frightened at the prospect of being forgotten, I pick up a small shard of metal from the floor. I scratch my name into the dark paint on the wall, leaving CASSIDY HART in white letters. Underneath it I put my age, 19. There. At least I’ve memorialized myself somewhere. It’s not like I’m going to get a funeral. They’ll probably throw my dead body into a ditch…

The door rattles, breaking me out of my morbid thoughts. Kamaneva steps inside, four Omega guards with her. I tilt my head to look up at her from my crouched position on the floor. She takes in my appearance and smiles — not in a friendly, fuzzy way, either. It’s more like a twisted leer of satisfaction.

So not helping.

“Ready?” she asks.

I say nothing. I simply glare.

Two Omega guards pull me upright, and that’s when I notice that one of the troopers with Kamaneva is Grease. He’s looking at me with sad eyes. I lock gazes with him and he frowns before looking away.

And that’s it.

I’m taken out of the storage building and led through the center of the school. We pass the LAB and the cafeteria. By the time I’m brought to the front of the school, there’s a big crowd of POWs. A curving section of the road dips close to the front sidewalk, widening near a few steps that lead to a dried up fountain. It used to be a school bus parking area. Now it’s a stage for prisoner executions.

I also realize that all of the POW groups in the labor camp are gathered around. Hundreds of them. Kamaneva has turned this into a bloody circus performance.

I’m led to the center of the road, up the steps to the fountain. The Omega troopers release me. Kamaneva takes a step forward and gestures to Grease, looking him over.

“Kill her,” she says.

He blanches, frozen. I don’t even try to resist. Why would I? I’ll be shot if I attempt to escape, and I’ll be shot if I don’t. I’m a dead girl either way. Escape isn’t happening.