CHAPTER THREE

The Commander’s building is buzzing with life. Military personnel march quickly by, while others sit around conference tables looking at blueprints, discussing in loud, confident voices the benefits of building a new granary store or extending the wing of the hospital. It feels like a real unit, a team with a purpose, and it feels good.

And it makes me all the more nervous that we won’t be allowed to stay.

As we pass along the corridors, I see a sprawling gymnasium, people training with weapons, firing bows and arrows, sparring and wrestling. There are even little kids being trained how to fight. The people of Fort Noix are clearly preparing themselves for any kind of eventuality.

Finally, we’re led into the Commander’s office. A charismatic man in his forties, he stands and greets us each cordially by name, clearly already having been briefed. Unlike the General, he doesn’t have a Canadian accent; in fact, he surprises me with a strong South Carolina twang, which tells me he’s one of the defectors from the American side of the opposition.

He turns to me last.

“And you must be Brooke Moore.” He cups his hand around mine and shakes, and the warmth from his skin seeps into mine. “I must say I’m impressed by your experiences. General Reece has filled me in on all you’ve endured. I know it’s been hard on you. We don’t know much about the outside world. We keep to ourselves here. Slaverunners, arenas – that’s a whole different world to what we’re used to. What I’ve been told about you is really truly incredible. I’m humbled to meet you all.”

Finally, he drops my hand.

“I’m amazed by what you’ve done here,” I say to the Commander. “I’ve dreamt of a place like this ever since the war. But I never dared dream it was true.”

Ben nods in agreement, while Bree and Charlie seem completely entranced by the Commander, both gazing at him with wide eyes.

“I understand,” he says. “On some days it’s hard for me to take in, too.”

He takes a deep breath. Unlike General Reece, who is a bit on the bristly side, the Commander is warm and pleasant, which keeps me hopeful.

But now that the formalities are over, his tone changes, darkens. He gestures for us all to sit. We sit in our chairs, stiff-backed like kids in a principal’s office. He looks us over as he speaks. I can feel that he’s judging each of us, summing us up.

“I have a very serious decision to make,” he begins. “Regarding whether you can stay at Fort Noix.”

I nod solemnly as my hands twist in my lap.

“We’ve taken in outsiders before,” he continues, “particularly children, but we don’t do so as a matter of course. We’ve been tricked in the past by kids your age.”

“We’re not working for anyone,” I say, quickly. “We’re not spies or anything like that.”

He looks at me skeptically.

“Then tell me about the boat.”

It takes me a moment to understand, and then I realize: when we’d been rescued, we’d been traveling in a stolen slaverunner vessel. I realize that they must think we’re part of some kind of organization.

“We stole it,” I reply. “We used it to escape from Arena Two.”

The Commander regards me with suspicious eyes, like he doesn’t believe that we could have escaped from an arena.

“Did anyone follow you?” he asks. “If you escaped an arena and stole a boat from slaverunners, surely they’d be pursuing you?”

I think back to the time on the island in the Hudson, of the relentless game of cat and mouse we played with the slaverunners. But we’d managed to get away.

“There aren’t,” I say, confidently. “You have my word.”

He frowns.

“I need more than your word, Brooke,” the Commander contests. “The entire town would be in danger if someone had followed you.”

“The only proof I have is that I’ve been lying asleep in a hospital bed for days and no one’s come yet.”

The Commander narrows his eyes, but my words seem to sink in. He folds his hands on top of the table.

“I’d like to know, in that case, why we should take you in. Why should we house you? Feed you?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do,” I say. “How else will we rebuild our civilization? At some point we need to start taking care of each other again.”

My words seem to anger him.

“This is not a hotel,” he snaps. “There are no free meals here. Everyone chips in. If we let you stay you’ll be expected to work. Fort Noix is only for people who can contribute. Only for the tough. There is a graveyard out there filled with those who couldn’t hack it here. No one here rests on their laurels. Fort Noix is not just about surviving – we are training an army of survivors.”

I can feel my fighting instinct kick in. I pull my hands into fists and thump them on the table. “We can contribute. We’re not just weak children looking for someone to take care of them. We’ve fought in arenas. We’ve killed men, animals, and monsters. We have rescued people, kids. We are good people. Strong people.”

“People who are used to doing things their own way,” he contests. “How can I expect you to alter to a life under military command? Rules keep us alive. Order is the only thing stopping us from perishing like the others. We have a hierarchy. A system. How will you hack being told what to do after so many years running wild?”

I take a deep breath.

“Our father was in the military,” I say. “Bree and I know exactly what it’s like.”

He pauses, then eyes me with dark, beady eyes.

“Your father was in the military?”

“Yes,” I reply sternly, a little out of breath from my outpouring of anger.

The Commander frowns, then shuffles some papers on his desk as though looking for something. I see that it’s a list of our names. He taps mine over and over with his fingertip then looks up and frowns.

“Moore,” he says, saying my surname. Then he lights up.

“He’s not Laurence Moore?”

At the sound of my father’s name, my heart seems to stop beating entirely.

“Yes,” Bree and I cry at the same time.

“Do you know him?” I add, my voice sounding desperate and frantic.

He leans back and now looks at us with a whole new respect, as if meeting us for the first time.

“I know of him,” he says, nodding with clear surprise.

Hearing his tone of respect as he talks about my father makes me feel a surge of pride. It’s no surprise to me that people looked up to him.

I realize then that the Commander’s mood is shifting. Coming face to face with the orphaned children of an old acquaintance must have stirred some kind of sympathy inside of him.

“You can all stay,” he says.

I clasp Bree’s hand with relief and let out the breath I’d been holding. Ben and Charlie audibly sigh their relief. But before we even have a chance to smile at one another, the Commander says something else, something that makes my heart clench.

“But the dog has to go.”

Bree gasps.

“No!” she cries.

She wraps her arms more tightly around Penelope. Sensing she’s become the subject of attention, the little Chihuahua wriggles in Bree’s arms.

“No one stays at Fort Noix who cannot contribute,” the Commander says. “That goes for animals as well. We have guard dogs, sheep dogs, and horses on the farms, but your little pet is useless to us. She absolutely cannot stay.”

Bree dissolves into tears.

“Penelope isn’t just a pet. She’s the smartest animal in the world. She saved our life!”

I put my arm around Bree and pull her close into my side.

“Please,” I say to the Commander, impassioned. “We’re so grateful to you for letting us stay, but don’t make us give up Penelope. We’ve already lost so much. Our home. Our parents. Our friends. Please don’t make us give up our dog too.”

Charlie looks at the Commander with concern in his eyes. He’s trying to read the situation, to work out whether this is going to escalate into a fight like it always did back in the holding cells of Arena 2.

Finally, the Commander sighs.

“It can stay,” he relents. “For now.”

Bree turns her tear-stained eyes up to him. “She can?”

The Commander nods stiffly.

“Thank you,” she whispers, gratefully.

Though the Commander’s face remains emotionless, I can tell he’s moved by our plight.

“Now,” he says quickly, standing, “General Reece will assign you quarters and take you to them.”

We all stand too. The Commander clamps a hand down on Bree’s shoulder and begins steering her to the door. Then all at once we’re shoved out into the corridor.

We stand there, shell-shocked, hardly comprehending what just happened.

“We got in,” I state, blinking.

Ben nods, looking equally taken aback. “Yes. We did.”

“This is home now?” Bree asks.

I squeeze her close into me. “It’s home.”

*

We follow General Reece outside past rows of small brick buildings, one story high, covered in branches to camouflage them.

“Males and females are separated,” the General explains. “Ben, Charlie, you’ll be staying here.” She points at one of the brick buildings covered in thick ivy. “Brooke, Bree, you’ll be across the street.”

Ben frowns. “Don’t people live with their families?”

The General stiffens a little. “None of us have families,” she says, a hint of emotion in her voice for the first time. “When you desert the military, you don’t get a chance to bring your husband, kids, or parents with you.”

I feel a pang of sympathy in my gut. My dad wasn’t the only person who deserted his family for a cause he believed in. And I wasn’t the only person to abandon their mother.

“But hasn’t anyone formed a family since?” Ben asks, pressing her further, as though oblivious to her emotional pain. “I thought you said you began repopulating.”

“There are no families at the moment. Not yet, anyway. The community has to be controlled and stabilized to ensure we have enough food, space, and resources. We can’t have people breeding whenever they want to. It must be regulated.”

“Breeding?” Ben says under his breath. “That’s a funny way of putting it.”

The General purses her lips. “I understand that you have questions about how things work here, and I appreciate it may seem unusual to you from the outside. But Fort Noix has survived because of the rules we’ve put in place, because of our order. Our citizens understand and respect that.”

“And so do we,” I add, quickly. I turn and put an arm around my sister. “Come on, Bree, let’s get inside. I’m looking forward to meeting our new housemates.”

The General nods. “They’ll show you the ropes from here on out. Follow them to lunch when it’s time.”

She gives us a salute, then walks away, taking her soldiers with her.

*

A cheerful American woman named Neena shows us around our new home. She’s the “mother” of the house, which consists, she tells us, of a group of teenage girls and young women. She explains that the rest of our housemates are out working and that we’ll meet them in the evening.

“Give you time to settle in,” she says, smiling kindly. “A house full of twenty women can get a little much at times.”