With the Enemy by Eva Gray Read Free Book Online Page B

miss, because you have a race on your hands.”
    One by one our flashlights go out and we get quiet. The space is filled with the sound of us shifting in our sleeping bags and the rain pouring down outside. Above me the spiky fronds of the fake palm tree stir gently in the wind that comes through the gap in the door planking.
    As I lie there I think about my favorite holiday. It’s not a holiday as much as the memory of a special day when I was much younger, back before the War started. Both my parents took off work and we went ice-skating outside. It snowed a little and the trees looked like they were frosted, and afterward they took me for real hot chocolate at a fancy restaurant and I sat between them and felt completely safe. Completely at home.
    Four hours from Chicago, I’d said. And we are. But not four hours from home.

Chapter 5
    T he store is silent when my eyes open, and only the slightest hints of daylight filter inside.
    Everyone else is still asleep but my mind has been restless all night, like a hamster in an old vid clip running endlessly on a wheel. Over and over, I see myself repeating back Troy’s words,
What big lie
? then Troy’s face filling with disappointment and him saying,
No
, I told you,
not lie —
    I told you
.
    Told me what?
    I slip out of my sleeping bag, carefully lift my backpack, and go toward the front of the store. There’s a bit more light there, and a counter I can spread out on.
    I pull the papers we found in the prison camp frommy bag and smooth them out. There are five different documents, each about four pages long, and one that is much longer. I start with the shorter ones, flipping through them to see if there’s any mention of the Phoenix or a reform school in Chicago.
    There isn’t.
    I start on the longer one, but immediately shift gears. The document is titled “Root Operations,” and it takes me only a minute of skimming to realize what I have. This is a list of Alliance cells, or “branches,” as it calls them, around the United States.
    It’s single-spaced, printed two columns per page. It is fifty-three pages long.
    I can’t believe it. I
don’t want to
believe it.
    The city of Chicago alone takes up more than a page, with more than forty branches listed. They are listed by neighborhood — Bucktown Branch, Chinatown Branch, Humboldt Park Branch — but there are no addresses. The cells could be anywhere in those neighborhoods. Probably in plain sight.
    And Maddie could be in any one of them.
    Or could have been.
    Troy’s voice comes uninvited into my head again:
    They shriek when you do it, like you’re stealing their souls
.
    I shake it away and try to force my mind back to studying the Alliance papers.
    How did you get out
?
    Shoot. It was the only way. They never even thought of it
.
    I try humming but nothing —
    I won’t let them take me back!
    — drowns out his voice.
    I put down the papers and fish in my pack for my compass and the map of Chicago and Environs I found in the bookstore in the abandoned mall. The map is old, from eight years ago, and half the markings on it are obsolete. There are no more amusement parks or post offices or general points of interest. But the major roads haven’t changed, and they’re the important part. They are what we need to avoid.
    Out here where there aren’t many people or many buildings, not having our ID bracelets has been inconvenient but not impossible. But in Chicago it will be trickier. Ifwe get spotted without our IDs, we’ll be picked up and taken immediately to prison, and straightening that out would cost time we don’t have.
    Time Maddie doesn’t have.
    So we are going to have to be careful. Very careful.
    My eyes slide down the map from central Chicago south to where my house is. It would be an additional three hours’ walking to get there. Maybe once I’ve figured out where Maddie is —
    I hear footsteps behind me and turn to see Alonso loping toward me. “I brought you breakfast,” he