The Lair Read Free Page A

people’s opinions. Whatever. If I had been an abductura , then, yes, keeping me alive would have been more important than anything else. But I’m not that person. Which means you don’t have to work so hard to protect me.”
    “Lily, that’s not the only reason I want to keep you safe.” The thought of her hurt, in pain . . . it drove me crazy.
    But she waved aside my comment. “Maybe I can’t lead the rebellion, but I still want to fight. We’ve made it this far. I’m not going to turn around now.”
    “Don’t you get it? If you’re not the abductura , then there’s no one to lead the rebellion. We don’t have a leader. We don’t have security. We don’t have shit. There is no human rebellion. Which is why you need to hand over the keys so we can just get out of here.”
    “No.” Lily clung tightly to those keys. “As far as you and I know, this is the last outpost of free humans on the planet. Maybe there are still pockets of humanity in Canada or Beijing or Brazil or wherever, but as far as we know, for certain, this is it. Maybe the rebellion doesn’t have an abductura who can magically brainwash other humans into joining, but the rebellion still has a leader and that leader is you. It always has been. And you can’t just turn your back on these people. Not for me. Not for anyone. They need you.”
    When Lily talked like that—like I was some kind of friggin’ hero—I couldn’t even look at her. The weight of her expectations was too damn heavy on my shoulders. All I wanted was to keep her safe. To just bury my face in her hair and hold her close and maybe forget for a few hours how completely screwed up everything was. But instead, I had to go save the world.
    “Exactly how excited do you think they’re all going to be when they realize that after everything we’ve done to find to you, I was wrong?” She didn’t answer, just stared blankly out the front window. I followed her gaze and realized that up ahead, Merc had opened the gate and stood waiting. Watching us talk in the car. “Think about it, Lil. Those kids are terrified. They expect a leader. When they find out you’re not that person, they are going to freak out. There might not be a rebellion left to lead. The only thing holding Base Camp together is the hope that we can fight the Ticks. That we’ll be able to get more and more kids out of Farms and that someday we’ll be able to fight back. I think the Greens believe it because the guys from Elite believe it. The guys from Elite believe it because I’ve told them we could. Because I believed you would be able to lead us.”
    “I’m sorry,” she said softly.
    “Why are you sorry?”
    She glanced at me from under her lashes. “Because I’m not what you thought I was. Because you thought I could be this great leader and instead I’m just . . . me.”
    I reached across the console for her and cupped my hand around the back of her head so she looked at me.
    Lily was crazy smart and determined. And she fought like a demon to protect the people she cared about. And I was crazy about her. Just the way she was. “You have never disappointed me,” I told her. “I don’t care that you’re not an abductura . Hell, in some ways I’m glad you’re not. But it’s my fault we’re in this situation. I’m the one who told them you could lead us. It’s my mistake. Not yours.”
    She looked at me wordlessly, and I watched her swallow as she nodded. “Okay, then. We have to lie.”
    “What?”
    “If they expect an abductura and if Base Camp is going to fall apart without one, then we’ll have to lie and pretend I’m an abductura .”
    “I’m not going to lie to them.”
    “You may not have a choice. The reason civilization collapsed in the first place is because Roberto used an abductura to convince everyone the Ticks couldn’t be killed. If he can lie to destroy humanity, then we can lie to save it.”
    I turned over her logic in my mind, trying to find the flaw.