The Conformity by John Hornor Jacobs Page A

something.
    What’s that? I send.
    I got the beat. You’re gonna need me.
    â€œI’m going, too,” Ember says. I didn’t even notice her here. She looks at me with a defiant glint in her eye, as if daring me to naysay her.
    â€œWhat about your team?” Jack asks.
    â€œI’ll write my resignation next time we’re near a typewriter.”
    Jack looks stunned. Things are happening too fast. The Society—Jack’s home for the past two years—is in shambles, and the world beyond its borders is in an even worse state. If there’s one thing Jack likes, it’s the fiber of daily routine.
    â€œWhat, you don’t want me to come with you?” Ember looks from me, cocking an eyebrow, to Jack.
    â€œOf course I do! It’s just, I’ve never heard of someone leaving one of the teams …”
    â€œLearn something new every day, don’tcha?” She puts her arm around his waist and pulls him in tight. “Anyway, I wasn’t going to let you run off with these Irregular girls.”
    Jack blushes. It’s weird, but, when she says it, Ember’s looking straight at me.
    I know reindeer games, and this chick is playing them.
    â€œWell, that’s it, then. Where do we go?”
    Davies says, “Back this way. It’s a long walk to the warrens.”
    â€œThe warrens?”
    â€œYou’ll see.”

    He leads us back through another, smaller lab—this one full of equipment that would seem more appropriate on a space shuttle than beneath a mountain—and down a concrete stairwell that diminishes to a vanishing point both up and down and echoes strangely. A few floors below, he keys us into another door and through a weirdly mundane office complex full of fluorescent lights and cubicles, ferns and Casual Friday! fliers. Then we’re out into another corridor, this one a rough-hewn hall cut from the living rock of the mountain.
    I can feel the weight of stone above me.
    At the end of this hall, Davies unlocks another keycard door to reveal a small armory. Tap’s and Danielle’s eyes light up as they spy rack upon rack of automatic weapons and smell the spiced fragrance of gunpowder and munitions oil.
    â€œThere’s some clothing over there, I think,” Davies says, pointing at a couple of crates. Bernard, Jack, and I toddle to the boxes and begin rifling through them. I set aside some flak vests. They don’t look like they’d keep me warm, just not perforated. I don’t think the forecast called for partly cloudy with a 75 percent chance of gunfire, but what the hell do I know? I’m a mind reader, not a psychic.
    Bernard grunts at the discovery of black fatigues, and we all sort through them. Casey, pulling out a jacket, says, “Shreve, will you help me?”
    I assist, pulling the jacket over her shoulder. The one sleeve hangs loose, empty, and she looks down at it with an unsatisfied expression. “This is going to get in the way.” Her one visible hand trembles, and the resounding booms of the Conformity shudder through the mountain. My heart catches and begins to hammer in my chest.
    Davies slaps a knife in my hand, and I tie the sleeve as close as possible to the shoulder, cutting away the rest, fast. With an almost imperceptible tremor in her voice, Casey says, “Shreve, promise me you won’t do anything stupid.” The rush is on me, and it takes a moment to discern that she doesn’t mean the knife.
    People have said that to me before. For a moment, I can only think of Booth, big-hearted Booth. My enemy. My friend. Whatever remnant of him will be left behind with Priest.
    â€œI won’t,” I say. “Nothing more important to me than the integrity of my skin.”
    â€œI find that hard to believe.” She doesn’t smile, just looks more worried. “I’ve seen your scars.”
    I can only nod. She’s close now, and I can feel the eyes of some of