I screamed. “Noelle!” Even though she couldn’t have been more than twenty feet from me, she didn’t look my way. Her head lolled forward as if she were barely conscious, and her dark hair was matted with blood. Elliott knelt beside her, and for one terrible moment I thought he was going to kill her—until he wrapped his arms around her and buried his nose in her bloody hair, the same way Benjy had held me only hours before. Desperation clawed at me from the inside out, but there was nothing I could do. They were already inside the cage. Guards holding rifles surrounded the base, making it a suicide mission at worst to even try to get to them. But the crowd was dead silent. My scream had echoed through the streets, and even Mercer had glanced my way. They could hear me. “They did nothing wrong!” I shouted, climbing onto the railing so the Mercers could see me, too.
