Page 150 of The Sixth Fraction

“I’m not looking for Marcus,” my mother says. “He has something I need. I thought maybe he kept it here. That’s why I’m here.”

I see a flash of movement at my mother’s side—both of her hands splayed wide. I watch as she lowers one finger, and another, and another.

It’s a countdown. Seven, six, five.

“But you came because you knew he wouldn’t be here,” Evelyn says. “How did you know that, if it wasn’t you who warned him away?”

Four, three.

“This is a waste of time. You need to give her a real reason to talk,” Eric says, and he turns, pointing his gun, not at my head, but at my shoulder.

Two.

“Like a flesh wound,” he says.

One.

He fires.

But I’m already moving. My entire body prickles with adrenaline as I turn, grabbing Gretchen’s wrist with one hand as I elbow her hard with the other. I hit her in the cheek, and she lurches back, releasing the gun in her panic. I duck low and grab it, then get my hand on the door handle.

My hearing is muffled from the gunshot. All I can think is Run, run, run. I throw the door open and dive into the hallway.

All the sounds and sights of the world are spilling back into my mind. I hear Evelyn snapping at Eric and Eric shouting, “Go after them!”

I feel something heavy against my back. I wrench away from it, screaming into my teeth, before I realize it’s my mother’s arm pressing me down so I have no choice but to hunch. She shoves me toward the stairwell, her chest right up against my spine—using herself as a shield.

We’re in the stairwell, and my mother is running up instead of down.

“Mom—” My lips feel numb. “Where are we—”

“Up and over,” she says to me. “We have to confuse them.”

I stumble up the stairs and follow her through the door on level three. Together we sprint down the hallway. There’s a basket of rolls in front of one of the apartment doors, bundled in gray cloth—a gift for a neighbor.

“Abigail Baker’s!” my mother calls out. Abigail Baker, council member, has a soft voice and teaches a yearly driving workshop for potential bus volunteers. She was also complicit in my father’s attempt to erase my memory.

My mother shoves her way through the door at the end of the hallway. It opens for her. I hear footsteps somewhere behind me, and even though my legs are burning, I throw myself forward, into the open apartment. I close the door behind us, and lock it.

The apartment is dim, the curtains drawn over the windows. It’s a mirror image of Marcus’s place, with the bedroom on the right side instead of the left, and a small galley kitchen right beside me. My mother is standing in the doorway to Abigail Baker’s bedroom, her hand on the frame.

For a moment she’s quiet. Then she looks over her shoulder at me.

“I don’t want you to see this,” she says. “But we have to go out the back.”

“You don’t want me to see . . . what?”

But I know already. Only one thing could make my mother’s voice sound like that. So quiet, almost reverent. I walk to the doorway and look over her shoulder.

Abigail Baker is lying on the bed, her body draped over the bottom of the mattress, like she was trying to run but got tangled in the sheets. Her hair is covering her face. There’s a patch of dark blood on her chest, soaking through her nightgown. She’s very still.

I go just as still. There’s something about the way her arm is stretched out, beseeching, that reminds me of an old painting. But my stomach turns when I look at the dark, wet red of the bullet wound in her chest.

I close my eyes.

“We have to go,” my mother says.

“Who—” I say, and I can’t quite finish the question. “Why—”