Page 46 of The Last Love Story

“What don’t I know?” I bite out.

Becka lets out a laugh as she bends at the waist. “Girl, Lyceum sold you out. They are the reason you’re here.”

My blood goes icy.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, but my voice shakes.

Becka steps closer. We’re almost nose to nose. “I do. You think they took you in because your writinginspired people?” She twists her face and raises her voice at the last words, mocking me. “No, boo. They figured out whoOrionwas. And who you were to him. It was easy to fake an application for the administration’s internship. His daddy needed a pretty face next to his pretty son to distract the country from everything ugly he wants to do. Howperfect,the actual Girl Next Door. Who cares what his son thinks about you. The presidentloves you.You’re going to win him a third term.”

What? Dizziness rushes through me, a wave nearly knocking me to the ground. The whole tunnel seems to expand around me until I’m just a pinprick, just a girl, beneath a city, beneath a nation at war, beneath a world on the brink of its true ending. “You’re lying,” I whisper. It’s illegal. He’sbeen president for eight years. It may be late, but he’s going to endorse a successor. Any day now.

“Oh, I wish I was,” Becka says with a short laugh. “But I’m not, and I think you know that.”

I saw your heart, Ripley,Ms. Astor said.We need heart. We needyou: someone who believes this isn’t the end of the world. Someone who can help us write a new beginning.Then, my brain spits out the memory of Meg and Candice, their lips curled in derision.Right. It’s your love of writing that brought you here.

“Oh, don’t do that,” Becka says.

“Do what?” I ask, my voice still quavering.

Becka scoffs at me. “Whatever this is.” She flaps a hand at me and whatever heartbroken face I’m making. “Get angry, Ripley. Now isn’t the time to feel sorry for yourself and play undercover librarian. You could be the most powerful soldier, behind enemy lines. You could change the fate of the war—of the world.” Becka’s watch beeps; she glances down at her wrist and swears under her breath. “Well, time’s up. We go upstairs, and we pretend we were up there the whole time, looking for that necklace. Got it?”

I don’t say anything, in part because I’m trying not to throw up.

“Hart,” she snaps.

“Got it,” I force myself to say. Because I can’t think of anything else.

She slips her helmet back on and reaches for my arm to guide me. I stumble back up the stairs in a daze. We filter back into the group just as Ettie laughs and declares she wasn’t even wearing a necklace. On her dazzling smile, the Hammers redirect us—toward the White House. My new home.

“Before we get there,” Becka hisses, “think about whose side you want to be on.”

Chapter 12

“Five minutes,” Becka announces the second we step inside. I’m not sure if she’s speaking to me or to the group of Hammers who can’t seem to step more than two yards away from me. I guess I will now be living in a bubble of black body armor and twilight fatigues, of clicking nightsticks and shiny boots.

By the time we make it to the second floor, my neck is sore from craning to look around—up at the cavernous ceiling, behind us, down winding staircases, sideways at the judgmental faces of previous presidents. It’s the first time I’ve seen an actual oil painting, and the walls are practically papered in them.

“You’re perfectly safe here,” Becka says. “It may look old-fashioned, but the whole building has been Streamlined. Any of these screens”—she jabs a finger at theglowing surfaces sprinkled every few yards—“are security checkpoints, and we’ll be monitoring you on the feeds.”

“I’m being recorded?” I squeak out.

The dome of Becka’s helmet bends in a nod and I wish I could see her face. “The cameras and microphones in each room filter through our own internal Alba. You see a mouse? We’ll flag your heart rate spike and pupil dilation before you even stop screaming. You’re in good hands.”

It might sound like a brag, but I know it’s meant as a warning to me: There are cameras and microphones everywhere.

“Speaking of, from earlier today,” Becka says, and she thrusts a tablet to me. On the screen, my parents smile and wave, crammed too close together on a love seat to fit into frame. I startle and nearly drop it, but Becka seems ready for this, scooping it from me just as smoothly. “They’re safe. As your head of security, I get hourly updates from their security team.”

“Can I talk to them?”

Her helmet tilts, as if to say,Do you want to?

Right. Each word will be recorded.

Still.

I set my jaw, hoping my stubbornness is clear there.

“We’ll put through the request,” Becka says. She snaps at a soldier. “Faulkner, by twenty-one hundred hours.” Then she turns to me and stops abruptly, throwing open a door. “Your room.”