by Shade Owens
“I’m not in the mood to play games,” Rainer said. She walked around Dibs’s body, picked up the transponder, and threw it into Scorch’s hand. She caught it as if she’d caught a ball of fire, allowing it to bounce in her palms a few times.
“You’re up,” Rainer said.
Scorch swallowed hard, a bulge rolling down her throat. “I—I don’t know what you want from me. We already told you what we know.”
When Hawkins’s eyes narrowed into dark slits, Scorch raised a trembling hand by her face.
“He… he probably only responds to her voice,” Scorch said.
She leaned her head forward to inspect the gadget, the burned side of her face a bright pink underneath the flickering flames around us.
Rainer twirled the handle of her sword, its sharp tip scraping the stone floor by her feet. She paused, sealed her lips tight, and eyed the transponder. Was she allowing Scorch’s information to sink in? Was it making sense to her?
Without warning, she raised her sword and Scorch shrieked, raising her arms over the ugly grimace on her face.
At the same time, I did something without thinking.
I lunged in front of Scorch and shouted, “Wait!”
With her sword held up by both hands, Rainer froze midair. “What?” she hissed.
“She’s telling you everything she knows,” I said. “Hawkins didn’t give us any details. I swear. We know as much as you do. Can I look at it? I’m the youngest one here, which means I might be more familiar with this kind of technology.”
Slowly, Rainer lowered her sword and elevated her chin. Without a word, she jerked her head sideways, signaling Scorch to hand me the device. With shaky hands, Scorch gave it to me, the sweat of her palm soaking the device’s metal shell.
What the hell was I doing? I knew what I was doing… trying to buy more time. But at what cost? My life? Rainer would have killed Scorch, and afterward, it would be my turn to give her information that I didn’t have.
This way, I’d saved Scorch.
Then, as if reading my mind, Rainer pointed her sword at Scorch. “Figure it out, or she dies.”
Her voice became distant and muffled as if she were speaking with a cloth over her mouth. At that moment, all I cared about was figuring out how the transponder worked. I slid my index finger over its buttons, along the small-holed speaker, and up across the thick, rubber antenna.
“Well?” Rainer spat.
I didn’t respond. Instead, I flipped the transponder around and stared at the engraving at the bottom.
In perfect font, between two small silver screws, was the word Malvric. Whatever, or whoever Malvric was, the name had been imprinted during production. The company name? The brand? I recognized the name. Where did I recognize it from? Was it military? And then, I noticed something else. The back plate of the device was a different color than its body. They were both black, but the shading was different. Why?
I popped my head up to look at Rainer. “Do you have a small knife?”
She smirked, almost as if amused by my boldness.
“Why would I give you a weapon?” she asked, still smiling.
With flat eyelids, I pointed at her sword. “Do you actually think I’m going to try to kill you when you have that thing pointed at us? Unless you have a screwdriver, I need a knife. The sharpest one you have.”
“Wh-what’re you… doing?” Hawkins growled.
Without being ordered to do so, Isaac stepped forward and kicked Hawkins to the ground. She let out a whimper when her jaw smashed against the floor.
Rainer didn’t bother turning around. “Keep your mouth shut, Hawkins.”
She reached behind her back, extracted a small curved knife no larger than a butter knife, and handed it to me. Using its tip, I twirled the screws out of place and slowly lowered myself to the ground. Carefully, I flipped the transponder over to allow the screws to fall out and caught them before they rolled away.
The only reason I knew what I was doing was that I’d taken apart my microcomputer when my cat knocked it into the kitchen sink full of dishes and water. I hadn’t paid the extra money to waterproof it, so in a panic, I took it apart to dry off the interior components.
I had no idea what I’d find inside this transponder, but the difference in plate colors made me wonder if something was hidden inside. It almost looked as if someone had replaced the back plate.
Carefully, I pried the device apart to reveal microchips, small wires, and little metallic components inside. My heart racing, I raised the open device to eye level and inspected every bit. The last thing I wanted to do was damage it—if that happened, I was done for.
Surprisingly, no one spoke, not even Rainer. It was as if everyone in the room was holding their breath, afraid that one wrong move would destroy the transponder completely.
And then, I saw it. Underneath one of the flat blue chips was another set of engraved words. They were so tiny that I had to bring my eye right up to the device.
Silverback Tech Inc.
Toys in America
900154999564
Oregon, USA
Silverback Tech—I knew who they were. They weren’t some secret military organization. Hell, they weren’t even military. They were a new electronics company that had come out in 2082 when I was a preteen and that had launched the very first VC Ring (short for Voice Command). I’d saved up for months to order my very first command ring—a small, silver ring with voice recognition technology that controlled intelligent software. My mom didn’t have enough money to buy all of the advanced AI machinery, which included pretty much anything and everything such as lights, television, appliances, doors, recliner sofas, thermostats, and even vehicles. The only decent thing I had was the light in my room. My mom had bought it for my birthday, so every night when I went to sleep, I’d say, “Turn off the lights,” and my room would go dark.
Apparently, the command ring was the next best thing to some of the most popular competition out there. It was small, portable, and incredibly advanced. For people who had a lot of money, they were able to control their gadgets anywhere they went—their vehicles, their garage doors, their exterior lights. They could even control items inside their home if they were away. In one memorable advertisement, a man wearing a fancy suit and of course his VC Ring was seen driving some expensive car down a newly paved highway. The sun setting behind him filled his car with a purple glow, and he kept tightening his knuckles around his steering wheel, obviously in a rush to get home.
“Lights on,” he’d said, and his car’s headlights turned on. “Make ravioli for supper,” he said, and the camera’s view switched to the interior of his home. There, his stove light lit up, as did his fridge, and his appliances went on to make supper.
At the end of the video, his wife and children came home to a fresh-cooked meal, and cheerful music started playing. I’d never be able to afford appliances like that, I thought at the time, but it was fun to dream about.
So as I stared at the small text imprinted inside the transponder’s interior, specifically at the Toys in America line, which was Silverback Tech’s toy production line, it all made sense to me.
On the inside, where the buttons sank into the device, were small icons beside each one. Three of them specifically jumped out at me.
Play.
Pause.
Record.
On the outside, the buttons had no labels or logos—they were plain black, which made it impossible to know what you were pressing.
This thing wasn’t some advanced transponder or communication device capable of communicating with the outside world—in fact, it wasn’t even a transponder at all. It was a children’s recording device reshaped to look like some military gadget.
Hawkins was playing us all.
EPISODE SIXTEEN
PROLOGUE
The classroom smelled of cheap perfume and spring-scented laundry detergent. In front of me was a bright white screen with a title that read, Employment Assessm
ent.
The whole point of this assessment was to gather information about each student to help them figure out where their skills would be best suited. It started with a quiz on your passions, pastimes, preferences, likes, and dislikes, then moved onto a personality questionnaire.
In a few months, I’d be graduating high school, and only now were they distributing some questionnaire designed to guide us in the right direction, like, Here, tell me about yourself, and I’ll tell you what you should do for the rest of your life.
We were asked to remain silent throughout this important hour dedicated to our future, but all I could focus on was the fly buzzing around the classroom window. It twirled in circles over and over again before flying right into the glass, a soft tick resonating throughout the room.
Sighing, I reached for my pencil, dropped my head into my palm, and stared at the questions. It was the kind of quiz that made you select from a scale, with 1 being the lowest score and 5 being the highest score.
Where did I see myself in five years after graduation? I’d never given it much thought. I always figured that things would fall into place—that whatever I was meant to do, that’s precisely what I’d end up doing. I scribbled away at the answers, wanting to get it over with, and during the entire quiz, the same question kept popping into my head.
What the hell am I going to be?
By the time I finished the quiz, I was still mulling the question over in my mind.
“Name here,” said Mrs. Tyson, pointing a dark, heavily ringed finger at the bottom of my screen.
I leaned forward with my Tech Pen and scribbled my name at the top of the exam. She then placed her small UpPod at the corner of my screen—a tool designed to upload documentation within seconds—and continued on to the next desk.
Melody, my best friend, turned to me, her thick black-rimmed glasses almost falling off her face. “How’d you do?”
Smiling at her, I shrugged. “I don’t know. Don’t really care. I have my whole life to figure out what I want to do.”
Unexpectedly, a loud smacking sound exploded throughout the classroom and I flinched so hard I threw my Tech Pen off my desk.
Jackson, one of the jocks in my class, held an old-school paperback flat against the window. When he pulled it away, a flat fly sat crippled with its guts spread across the glass. Jackson gave everyone his goofy grin—the kind that said, What? I did what had to be done.
Then, another loud smack filled the air around me. This time, it was followed by a loud scream.
“Well?” Rainer snapped, turning toward me. “Are you going to tell me how to use the transponder?”
The transponder… The toy.
I stared at Hawkins, who now lay flat on the floor with blood spilling from her split lip. Her eyes, a lifeless gray, remained fixated on me as if she were trying to communicate telepathically.
She knew that I knew the truth… The transponder was a fake. If Rainer found out, Hawkins had no leverage over her.
Hawkins let out a pleading moan, and at the same time, Isaac smashed a foot down on her calf. She yelped in pain again, her eyes disappearing behind small black lines.
I knew what Hawkins was thinking.
Don’t tell Rainer the truth.
Before Rainer could order her son to hurt Hawkins again, I snapped the back panel of the fake transponder back into place and started dropping the miniature screws into their holes.
“I know what this thing is,” I said, sensing Hawkins’s penetrating gaze.
Without saying anything, Rainer took a step toward me and waited, a tight grip fastened around her sword.
“It’s a C-42 Transponder,” I said, matter-of-factly. “I’ve seen this before when I was in the scouts.”
I’d never been in scouts, and I hadn’t the faintest idea what I was doing. But I did know one thing—Rainer wanted answers, and if I didn’t give her any, she’d kill me. It was better to give her false information to buy us some more time than to tell her this thing was nothing more than a toy; if I did that, she’d likely kill us all in a fit of rage.
“It’s being used to communicate with one specific man,” I continued. “The reason he isn’t responding to you is probably because Hawkins uses code language.”
Rainer tilted her head like a predator preparing to attack its prey, and I swallowed hard.
“I can get him to talk,” I added. “Maybe even get him to drop the supply boxes.”
Hawkins closed her swollen eyelids and let out a long, relieved breath.
CHAPTER 1
Rainer turned around, fingers resting against her chin in a pensive manner. “So, you’re telling me if you speak a certain way, this… man, whoever he is, will listen to you?”
Glancing at Hawkins, I nodded. “I can show you.”
Rainer threw her chin out at me as a way of saying, Go ahead.
Pulling the fake transponder up to my lips, I allowed my index finger to cover the same button Hawkins had pressed when showing me the device for the first time. Now that I’d seen the inside of the device, I knew this button was one of the play buttons. There appeared to be several different recordings, but I hoped to God the button I was about to press was the basic message I’d heard more than once.
This was a huge risk… I was going in blind based on assumptions. But what choice did I have?
I pressed and held the communication button—the one that did nothing but crackle—and said, “Ace, Hawk in the sky, over.”
Then, with my index finger, I pressed the play button and held it down—the holding it down part was a total gamble, but I assumed that if Rainer hadn’t been able to produce any sound out of it, Hawkins had ensured some sort of protective mechanism to avoid having the wrong hands press all its buttons. Then, as I held the button, that familiar man’s voice came blasting out through the transponder’s black speaker. “Ace in place, over.”
Rainer lunged straight for the transponder and tore it out of my grasp. She brought it up to her lips, her wild eyes darting from side to side, but then stopped herself as if realizing that another unfamiliar voice might interfere with her ability to obtain supply drops.
With a stiff finger trembling at the transponder, she said, “Tell him… Tell him to bring us more supplies. Tell him I want weapons. I want grenades. I want seeds.”
Behind her, both her sons stood tall with balled fists on either side of their waists. With slouched postures, bearded faces, and a fiery curiosity in their gazes, they reminded me of primates. That’s when I realized they’d never seen any form of technology before. The idea of sound being emitted from a piece of metal must have been far beyond their understanding. It would have been equivalent to pulling a man from Ancient Egypt through a time machine and into modern civilization.
Their minds couldn’t comprehend it.
Zsasz and the other Northers had had similar reactions, no doubt the result of being raised on this island. Rainer, however, had grown up in the real world before being sent to the island pregnant.
“I’m happy to help,” I lied, “but this is going to take time. I don’t know anything about this man.”
Rainer, now blowing air out through her flared nostrils, slid her sword back into its leather sheath. “You have one day. Tomorrow, I expect to have additional resources landing on this island.”
I nodded, though what I truly wanted to say was Are you insane?
Even if the fake transponder had been some military-grade piece of equipment, and even if a man had been waiting at the other end… No way would any request be met within twenty-four hours. What about travel time? Resource preparation?
Regardless, it was never going to happen because the communication device was a fake.
And Rainer was a lunatic.
Without warning, Isaac marched across the room and grabbed me by the arm as if I weighed as much as a pigeon’s feather. I fought to catch my feet but ended up hanging by the arm, the tips of my toes dragging across the cold floor.
�
��Make her comfortable,” Rainer said, flicking a finger in the air. “If I don’t have those supply drops by sunset tomorrow, you, Hawkins, and your friends here are all dead.”
CHAPTER 2
I stared at Isaac’s dark bulging back as he left the room and closed the small wooden door behind him, leaving me alone with Hawkins’s toy and twenty-four hours left to live.
Surprisingly, the space wasn’t what I’d expected. The bed was a perfect rectangle with cotton sheets—a luxury I hadn’t seen in as long as I could remember—and right above it was a small circular hole in the wall, no larger than a basketball, to allow for natural light to enter. I was thankful for this seeing as Isaac hadn’t left me with any torches; assumedly, they didn’t want to give me any tools that could help destroy Rainer’s lair.
Whether this window had naturally formed or had been carved out by the Northers, I didn’t know. But either way, I appreciated the white light and the scent of fresh leaves sweeping through the hole. I stopped myself from sticking my entire face against the hole when I noticed large dead insects lying still throughout the tunnel, their stick legs wiggling as the gentle gust of fresh air came through.
Would this be the last of outside I would get to see? The last earth-scented air I’d pull into my lungs?
Twenty-four hours wasn’t much time, and as exhausted as I was, I couldn’t allow myself to be tempted by the small wooden bed in the corner of the room.
I wasn’t here to sleep.
I was here to figure out how I was going to save myself and my people from Rainer’s blade. Squeezing the fake transponder in my fist, I stared at the room’s wooden door. It appeared to be held together by metallic screws, which had no doubt been taken from the plane wreckage. Its handle wasn’t a typical handle—it was a groove in the wood, and on the other side was a locking mechanism with a latch that slipped in and out.