Taken (Erin Bowman)

pressure, too.” I flash her a smile and she rolls her eyes.
    “Yeah? Well, I need a drink.”
    She stuffs Frank’s journals back on the shelf and we leave the library in search of some alcohol.

TWENTY-EIGHT
    IN THE BASIN, SQUISHED BETWEEN the Eatery and some storage warehouses, is a damp, dusty building that the Rebels refer to as the Tap Room. When we enter, Clipper is weaving between the men at the bar, snatching near-empty mugs when drinkers aren’t looking. I tell him he’s too young to be drinking, but when he asks me how old I was when I had my first, I admit I was around his age and am forced to let it go.
    The place is a combination of soldiers and civilians. Women cling to the shoulders of various men, dancing to the banjo and guitar being strummed in a corner. I look for my father among the faces, but he’s nowhere to be found. Bree and I fight our way through the crowded space and up to a waist-high bar.
    “Hey, Saul!” Bree shouts, leaning over the counter so far that her feet leave the ground. It causes her shirt to rise and a sliver of bare skin becomes visible above her pants. “We’ll take two shots down here,” she says. The bartender, an older, portly man, slides the drinks our way and Bree shouts her thanks.
    “On getting through a full day without wanting to kill each other,” I say, holding my drink before her.
    “Speak for yourself.” She smirks but clinks her drink against mine and we throw back the shot.
    “Another round?” she asks.
    “They don’t ration this stuff?”
    “Nah, but it’s okay for alcohol to run out. Can’t say the same about food.”
    We share another few rounds before moving to the far end of the bar where we watch a group of young men playing an odd game with miniature spears. They take turns throwing them at a small target that hangs from the wall.
    “We’ve got the next game,” Bree announces to them. The better of the men in the group, who has hit the bull’s-eye several times over, turns to face us.
    He has hair the color of mud that curls behind his ears and a square head, too angular and sharp for me to miss it. This is Xavier Piltess—taller, wider, and far more filled out than the fifteen-year-old who taught me to hunt in the forests of Claysoot—but it is him. “Oh, you’re going down, Bree,” he says. “No way can you take me and Sammy.”
    “Xavier?” I venture.
    He pauses for a second and stares at me. I watch as his gaze halts on my eyes, noting their color: gray, not blue. Recognition breaks across his face.
    “Gray!” he exclaims. We clasp arms and he slaps me on the back the way an older sibling might. “How the heck are you? Where’s your brother?”
    We catch up for a few minutes while he finishes his game, never missing a shot. He was taken hostage by the Rebels over a year ago when an Order mission he was on failed. After hearing Frank’s lies unravel, he switched allegiances.
    I tell him my story, a shortened version, which is speckled with white lies, but for him it doesn’t really matter: Blaine and I got Heisted. We’re both here now, me in training and Blaine in the hospital. I feel guilty when I mention Blaine. I should visit him again.
    Xavier then introduces me to Sammy, a twenty-year-old from Taem who joined the Rebels when his father was executed for counterfeiting ration cards. He’d been using them to acquire extra water that he often brought to struggling villages beyond the dome. Apparently Frank didn’t consider this type of charity work acceptable.
    Bree and I play the two of them in a game called darts. We lose spectacularly. I can’t seem to throw the darts with the right force or angle. They are like toothpick spears and my hands are clumsy with them. Xavier tries to correct my form and give me pointers, but I only improve by the smallest margin. I blame it on the alcohol.
    We end up abandoning the game and taking a tall table hostage. Hal and Polly find the four of us, and we all sit on rickety stools, throwing back drinks too quickly and playing Bullshit. The game turns out to be identical to Claysoot’s Little Lie, only with a fouler name. Bree is the best bullshitter of us all. She fools us again and again, her lie always blending in with the rest. Even when she starts slurring her words and leaning more on me than the table for support, she’s still stumping us.
    I learn that she found herself utterly alone when she was shipped to Taem after her Heist. She has no siblings; her mother