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“Betsy Shoemake.”
Her accent is from the Orange, I recognize it immediately.
“I worked with your mother for years,” she says.
My smile drops and so does my hand.
She leans forward. “Never saw eye to eye, I’m afraid. I hope we’ll get along better.”
I nod. Yeah, I do too.
“Can I drive you anywhere this morning?”
“I need you to take me to Selfice.”
Her eyes skirt around, making sure we’re alone. “That won’t be possible. She’s gone…”
“Where? What does it mean to be timed out?”
Her coloring pales and her pupils dilate; it happens so quickly and then she regains her composure.
“Where did you hear that?”
“Nordice.”
“She shouldn’t have spoken those words to you...it isn’t anything you need to concern yourself with. It was time for your handler to take a break. She was reported for a long list of issues—failure to comply with procedure, substance abuse, badgering her employer…”
“Ridiculous. We did equal badgering.”
“It might be hard to adjust, but I assure you, Nordice is quite excellent. In the long run, I really think you’ll appreciate what she brings to the team.”
I grind my teeth, staring straight through her.
TWENTY-THREE
PHOENIX
If a male Tasmanian devil is not very good, the female will just get up and walk away during sex.
The next morning when I walk into the kitchen, Gwen and Tahira are reading an article at the table. They barely register my presence when I saygood morning. I pour myself coffee and stand behind them. The picture attached to the headline is Gwen’s mugshot. It slowly fades to an overhead view of the prison before becoming her mugshot again. I feel embarrassed to be seeing it, but then I remember that Gwen didn’t actually do anything to deserve prison.
Where is Gwen?
The article begins, questioning where Gwen and the other hundred women who escaped are hiding. A couple of sentences in, my heart starts racing.
With the success rates of the End Men decreasing, first with Marcus—where is he anyway?—and now with Folsom gone, how necessary are the End Men to the future? There is a climbing belief among the citizens of the nation that we take care of our Regions, rather than let our sole focus be on repopulation.
We need the Gwens of the Regions to ascend from the ashes and give us hope again. We are not downtrodden, we are not in despair, we have a new purpose, and that is to empower one another. Breathe new life into our bones and build a new Region. One that we can all be proud of.
I sit down and look at them. “Who wrote that?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Gwen says. “They brought up Marcus, so they know he’s missing. People should be asking where he is.” Her forehead crinkles in the middle and she swipes to find more; when she doesn’t, she looks at me. “Where is Jackal? It’s been days, Phoenix...”
“I—I don’t know. It’s like he’s just disappeared. I’ve not heard from him.”
“That doesn’t seem like Jackal,” Gwen says.
“I don’t know what seems like Jackal,” I say. “I don’t understand him.”
