Chapter Twenty-One

Delaney

"Girls in one van, boys in the other," Charisma ordered airily. She and her goons had marched us out of the principal's office, leaving Mr. Kastner and Lizzy quaking in their boots, and out to the parking lot. The two gray vans I'd seen before were still there, their engines idling as they waited on the curb. Without a word, the men began to move, leading the guys around the back of one van, and Abby and I to the rear of another one.

The trunk opened on its own, and we were forced inside. Right before my face was driven into the musty-smelling carpet, I caught Charisma's eye and she flashed me a predatory smile. Then the trunk was slammed shut, and we were plunged into blackness.

I didn't move for a while, instead choosing to stay sprawled across the floor. I heard Abby moving around but couldn't see her; the darkness was too absolute. That was alright with me. The last thing I wanted was Abby, with her snide comments and spiteful attitude, to see me panicking.

I couldn't believe how quickly events had turned around on us. Just the night before, I was feeling great, and totally confident that we were doing the right thing. Now, I was on the way to who-knows-where with a vicious Superior who probably ate Losers like me for breakfast. Not to mention that my so-called best friend had betrayed me.

My hands turned to fists and I seethed as I thought of Lizzy, and the way she'd pointed at me, ratted me out to Charisma, left me at the mercy of the corrupt, defective government. I'd known she was angry with me, but I hadn't expected something like that from her. I hadn't expected her to do something that would make me hate her so completely.

Dimly, I heard the sound of a door slamming. Seconds later, the rev of the engine echoed through the space, causing the vehicle to shake slightly. I pulled myself into a sitting position just as the van began to move, bouncing along the street with erratic jolts.

I think reality hit right about then. The enormity of the situation suddenly became clear, and I felt sick. Chills crawled up and down my spine as I tried to swallow the bile that was inching its way up my throat.

Abby had been quiet for a while, so I wasn't sure where in the van she was. When her voice piped up in the darkness, it startled me.

"Where do you think we're going?" she asked roughly.

I shrugged, though she couldn't see me. "The Capitol, probably."

She was silent for a moment, and I could picture her raising her eyebrows. "That's all the way across the country."

"Yeah," I murmured. "Yeah, it is." I tried to pretend like that was no big deal, but it was hard. I'd hardly been out of my own city, much less out of state and across the country. The idea of it was extremely daunting.

"Well, this should be fun. Never been to the Capitol before."

I laughed, but it was forced. The van continued to bounce along, and for a while, neither of us spoke. Eventually, though, I had to ask. "What do you think they'll do to us?" I asked meekly.

Abby's response was delayed, and preceded by a heavy sigh. "I don't know," she said at last. "I guess we'll find out, though, won't we?"

○●○●○●○

About twenty minutes of suffocating silence later, the van rolled to a stop. I straightened up, rubbing my eyes but still seeing darkness. Abby yawned from somewhere to my right.

"Where we at?" she asked sleepily.

"No idea," I murmured in response. I crawled in the direction I assumed the doors were in and began banging against them. A moment later, they swung open, flooding the trunk with light, and I was barely to stop myself from tumbling out of the van.

"Get out," a male voice barked harshly. After blinking to clear the spots from my eyes, I recognized it as one of the guards from Mr. Kastner's office. "Hurry it up!"

I jumped out of the trunk hastily, stumbling a few feet before the man grabbed me roughly by the shoulder. My eyes caught onto a familiar sign across the way, and I realized that we were at Brookhurst, a private airfield that was constructed several years ago just outside of Seattle. About thirty feet away, I saw two small jets sitting side by side.

Abby took her time with exiting, stretching and rolling out her neck before slowly climbing out of the vehicle. The guard glared at her, and she held his gaze with eyebrows raised for a quick moment. Then, before anyone realized what was happening, she was running, sprinting away from the van as fast as she could.

The man holding me shouted out after her. He pushed away from me and began running after her. I staggered back and watched as several other black-clad figures appeared and joined in pursuit.

It happened very quickly. One minute, Abby was booking it across the field; the next, five of the men had grabbed her and were dragging her back to the van as she kicked and screamed.

When they reached us, the guards set her on the ground but didn't release her. "Don't try anything like that again," our ward said. He lifted his shoulder so that his shirt rose slightly, revealing the silvery holster of a gun.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Abby muttered, rolling her eyes. "You don't scare me."

He certainly scared me, though.

"Just come on," he snapped, grabbing my shoulder again. Then, after exchanging nods, he and his cohorts led us away.

Following Abby's lead, I straightened up and tried to walk with purpose, stalking across the field like I owned the place. Which really wasn't all that easy to do while being manhandled by someone twice your size.

They took us to the first of the two planes. As we approached, I saw Trai and Caleb being brought toward us by their own set of guards. Trai caught my eye and smiled.

When she noticed them, Abby shouted out, "Caleb!"

Immediately, one of the men spun her around so that she was facing him and slapped her straight across the face. The force was great that she was sent sprawling. A pained cry escaped her lips as she hit the ground, clutching her face with one hand.

"Abby!" Trai cried. He tried to rush toward us, but was held back by his own captors. Grunting, a few of the men lifted Abby from the ground and tossed her into the plane. I stared at them, wide-eyed.

"What are you looking at?" one snarled. "Get in the plane!" I hauled myself onto the short ramp and scrambled inside on my hands and knees. The main compartment of the plane contain pairs of seats in a row down the middle, with walking space along the sides. Abby was sitting in the first row with her eyes closed. Silently, I pulled myself in next to her. The entire right side of her face was red, and a small bruise was forming under her eye.

"You okay?" I asked, stiff with horror at what they had done to her.

"I'm fine," she snapped scathingly. That was the end of the conversation.

A few minutes later, the guards filed in and filled up the seats behind us. I glared at each of them as they entered. Once everyone was seated, a voice crackled into the back, saying, "Please fasten your seat-belts and prepare for take-off."

I squeezed my eyes shut as the plane lifted into the air. I'd been in an aircraft only once before, at a aviation parade in elementary school. And that one was a hovercraft; it hadn't gone more than ten feet off the ground.

Once the plane was flying, though, I realized that the sensation wasn't much different from being in a car. A little smoother, maybe, but otherwise the same. I knew we had to be going really fast, but it didn't feel that way at all.

"Where are you taking us?" Abby called out after a while.

An angry, "That's none of your business," was her only response.

I don't know how long we were in the air—one hour, maybe two—but it felt like an eternity. After pulling at a loose strand on my tank top became boring, I tied and untied the drawstrings on my sweatpants. That, too, quickly lost its enjoyability; I determined that I was extremely useless without my phone to entertain me.

I must have fallen asleep sometime along the way, because the last thing I remembered was being unable to untie the knot in my drawstrings before my eyes opened to the sound of the pilot's voice.

"Sit tight, folks," he said amiably. "We will be landing in approximately five minutes."

As I blinked myself awake, I realized that the sides of the plane had slid away almost completely, revealing walls of thick glass windows. At first, looking out them and seeing how far above the ground we were was nauseating, but I quickly grew used to it.

I lifted in my seat as far as my seat-belt would allow me and craned my neck to see outside. First I only saw what looked like dead space: nothing but dirt and rubble as far as I could see. But as we continued, something larger, grander, came into view.

It was a giant structure, a hulking dome, made of glass held together by polished gold bands and sparkling silver rivets. It went from the ground and reached a peak several hundred feet in the sky before dropping back down to the earth several miles in the distance.

I heard Abby spit out a few astonished expletives as I breathed, "What the hell is that?"

A short laugh came from behind me. "That," someone replied gruffly, "is what used to be known as Washington D.C. Welcome to the Capitol."