by Kat Falls
Not a single one answered. They just regarded me with wary eyes and lips pursed tight to hold in any embarrassing admissions.
“No?” I asked. “Lucky you. Well, I’ll be up here if you need me.”
“We don’t need anyone,” Jia snapped.
“I’ll bet you don’t. You all look pretty fierce,” I said, trying for a light tone. “But if you want me, I’m here.”
“For now,” she said sourly.
“For now,” I agreed, and headed up the stairs. Halfway up, I paused and turned back toward them. “And if you want to hear a story, I know some good ones.”
“Huh,” Jia said doubtfully. “What kind of stories?”
I could feel all the kids leaning toward me. I wondered how the stories my dad had told me differed from the stories he’d told Rafe. We’d never had a chance to compare notes. Would the stories he’d told me be too tame for these kids? Maybe I should spice things up.
“There’s one about a girl who fell down a hole and got trapped in a chimpacabra den,” I said casually. “Actually, that one might be too scary.” I studied my fingernails nonchalantly. It was probably the last day I would have clean fingernails — maybe forever. I thought of Chairman Prejean’s fingernails and suppressed a shudder.
“I like scary,” insisted the tallest boy.
“What happens to the girl?” another orphan asked. She was younger than Jia and wore a belt cinched tightly over at least three layers of shirts.
“Come up into the tent, and I’ll tell you.”
Every single kid looked at Jia to see what she thought of my offer. With a shrug, I turned and climbed the rest of the stairs and disappeared into the tent. I chose the only single cot among the sets of metal bunk beds, conveniently located farthest from the doorway, and set my backpack and duffel bag down next to it. When I turned around, the orphans were huddled together just inside the tent flaps.
Jia stepped forward. “We’ll stay for one story,” she said. “Then we’re out of here.”
Someone behind her growled nervously.
“Agreed.” I found the footlocker wedged between two bunk beds and started pulling out wool blankets. “Make yourselves comfortable.” I tossed the blankets toward them, and they settled in on the floor, well out of arm’s reach.
“But first, tell me your names. I know you’re Jia,” I said with a nod toward her.
She didn’t seem the slightest bit surprised that I knew her name. Did she remember me from the night she’d come to the gate with my dad in tow? Or maybe she was just used to being infamous around here. That was more likely.
She introduced the kids, pointing them out as she rattled off, “Dusty, Tasha, Sage, Trader, Rose, Fixit.”
“Okay, then.” I settled cross-legged on my cot. “Once upon a time …” The kids grew still, all eyes on me. “There was a little girl who lived in a glass tower on the other side of a wall that was tall as the sky. Her father collected things for people, fetched them from the wild and dangerous land on the other side of the wall.”
“That’s here, right?” Dusty said. “We’re in the wild and dangerous land.”
Jia nodded.
“One day the girl found out that her father had disappeared and that he might be in danger. So she went to the other side of the wall to find him …”
My eyes blinked open, but it was as if I’d gone blind. I should have brought a flashlight to bed with me. Or left the battery-powered lantern on dim. But I hadn’t and now the darkness pressed in around me, heavy and smothering, like something to run from. Why was I even awake at this hour? Had I heard something? Something like the scritch of claws on the tent’s plank floor. No, not claws. The orphans didn’t have claws. Did they?
I swallowed the bitter taste on my tongue and forced myself to lift my head a couple of inches. After the story, the orphans had fallen asleep on the floor, curled together in their blankets. But now they were gone, probably back underneath the platform. That’s what woke me. The sound of them slipping past tent flaps and down the steps. Nothing to freak out over. Nothing to —
Someone drew in a breath and released it on a sigh.
A scream lodged in my throat when two golden eyes appeared in the dark. I bolted upright and came face-to-face with Rafe sitting on the edge of my bed. I flinched and then drew in a shuddering breath. He lounged, half in shadow, looking as gorgeous as he had when I’d first met him in the supply closet last fall. Sun-streaked hair and tanned chest on full display. His eyes were brilliant blue, not golden as I’d first thought. The chairman had been right — Rafe had come to the base to find me. I sagged with relief. He showed no signs of infection. Not so much as a whisker.
“How did you get past the gate?” I asked.
“Trade secret,” he said softly, his voice strangely cold.
“But if the guards find you —”
He pressed a finger to my lips. “You remember your promise?”
I cringed back into my pillows. His narrowed glare burned like dry ice on skin. During our time in the Feral Zone, I’d exasperated and frustrated him, but the one time I’d witnessed his rage, there’d been nothing cold about it.
“Say you remember,” he hissed.
My body felt bloodless, and yet I managed to whisper, “I remember.”
“Good.” He rose, aqua eyes glittering like jewels. “I’m waiting for you.”
“No, it’s not time.” I threw my legs over the side of my bed. “You’re not a danger to anyone yet.”
His eyes grew as luminous as any nighttime predator’s. “Guess again.”
As he turned away, something whipped across my arm. A tail! Long and hairless like a rat’s. My lungs spasmed, locking in my scream. Fur glimmered across Rafe’s shoulders; stripes darkened his back like marks from a lash. I clapped my hand over my mouth to keep from keening at the sight.
“It’s time to put me down, Lane,” he said, sounding gentle for the first time.
I shook my head so hard my hair clung to my cheeks. “Dr. Solis is working on a cure. When he finds one, I’ll bring it to you.”
“Too late. The tiger is already here …” He held up a hand, fingernails ripped and dangling where his emerging claws had broken through. “You promised.”
“I know! Wait,” I cried as he turned away. “Don’t go.”
“I can’t stay here. I’m not human,” he said without looking back, and pushed through the door.
I scrambled out of my tangled blanket and staggered after him. But Rafe was already, impossibly, at the far end of the dimly lit hall — just a dark silhouette, disappearing around a corner.
My bare feet slapped the cold linoleum as I tore down the tunneling corridor. Finally I reached the corner and slid around it, only to slam into three handlers in leather aprons, dog whips in hand. They grabbed me before I could sprint away. I bucked and punched, but they forced me down, pinning me to the floor as soft footsteps padded toward us …
Chorda, the tiger-king, paused over me, his auburn eyes burning like embers in the darkness.
I clawed my way from under the handlers, but my bare feet slipped on the slick tile. From where I knelt I stared up at the velvet-robed tiger. Three-inch claws sprang from his nail beds, and I lost all semblance of courage. With a sob, I crab-scuttled backward, only to bang into a wall, trapping myself as Chorda reached for me, claws extended, long and curved. My hands went numb. I couldn’t push myself up, so I floundered on the floor, silent and helpless as Chorda plunged his claws into my chest.
But it wasn’t Chorda. It was Rafe. Horribly mutated now — fangs bulging past his split upper lip, yellow eyes gleaming with insanity. “I told you to put me down. Now it’s too late.” As he tore my heart from my body, a scream finally ripped loose of my throat.
I snapped upright on my cot, my hands burning with the pricks of a thousand needles as I pressed them over my heart, protecting it from … nothing. There wasn’t a single deranged tiger-man in sight. Chorda was dead, and Rafe was on the other s
ide of the river. Not here and — oh, please, please — not feral. Not yet.
My breath came out in small bursts as I focused on the empty bunk beds around me. I’d been on Arsenal Island for more than two weeks, and yet I was still jolting awake from the nightmare that had tortured me in the West. I’d thought somehow things would be different on this side of the wall, that I’d be different. No and no. Rafe was as relentless in my dreams as he was that night in the zoo when he’d made me promise to kill him if and when he went feral. If I could just see that he was okay, maybe then the nightmares would stop.
I got up, shivering from head to toe. I was done sleeping for the night. Even without the nightmare lingering at the edge of my brain, I wouldn’t be able to drift off again. There was nothing comfortable about the orphans’ platform tent with its planked wood floor and metal-framed bunk beds. The morning was cold enough that I didn’t take off the long underwear that I’d slept in. I just added more layers — regulation fatigues and a very un-regulation hot-pink hoodie. Officially, I wasn’t a guard, so why limit my color choices to gray and speckled gray? I pulled my un-regulation-length hair into a ponytail and woke up my brain by tightening the rubber band until my scalp hurt.
Maybe when my dad came to the fence to visit me tomorrow night, he’d take me back to Moline with him. Right. And maybe the orphans would stop digging through the dumpsters for food scraps to stash away “in case.”
It had taken a week of nightly bedtime stories to get the kids used to drifting off inside the tent. They didn’t always stay inside all night, and none were into the bed concept. Instead, they piled together like puppies in a nest of blankets on the floor. I was just thankful that they didn’t expect me to pile in with them. For one thing, I wouldn’t be able to sleep smashed between seven wriggling, snoring kids. For another, they might get used to it — or I might get used to it, and I already missed my pets crowding my bed. Missing a person was so much worse. I’d learned that when my mother died. As orphans, these kids had learned it too.
There was a whimper by my knees. I bent to find Dusty asleep on my duffel bag, a grimy fist tucked under his chin. When I smoothed back his dark curls, my fingers came away wet. The first time it happened, I’d panicked, thinking he was in the first stage of Ferae — incubation — which brought on a high fever. Now I knew that Dusty broke out in a night sweat every time he fell asleep, and the cause wasn’t fever. His dreams were even worse than mine, going by his cries and what I knew of his past. For three days, he’d huddled inside a broken oven as his father, newly feral, had torn apart the abandoned house they’d been living in, searching for him.
I stroked Dusty’s back. “Shh, you’re safe,” I whispered, using the magic word. It soothed the orphans like nothing else. Being safe was all they cared about, and it was all the more precious because they knew it was temporary. Once they showed signs of puberty, they’d be returned to the Feral Zone. Dr. Solis said teenagers didn’t do well on base. Their hormones made them rebellious. At eight, Dusty didn’t have to worry about that yet. He rolled over to blink up at me in confusion.
“You’re safe,” I repeated — as if saying it often enough would make it true. “It was just a nightmare, and now it’s over.” As if any nightmare was just anything. I wanted to gather him up and hold him tight, but he’d just thrash free. The orphans didn’t tolerate hugs or any touch that felt like restraint.
“Wake the others,” I said, and tousled his curls. A small touch. Nothing alarming and nothing he’d miss later. “And we’ll get breakfast.”
As I waited for the kids to pull on cleanish clothes, I stood at the edge of the raised platform with my face tipped up to a sky so overcast there was no sunrise, only a brighter strip of gray along the horizon. Our tent didn’t have indoor plumbing. No surprise there. But at least we lived apart from the barracks.
Interacting with the guards at mealtimes was hard enough. It turned out my first impression of the orphans as innocent victims was not quite accurate. In fact, they liked nothing better than to rile up the guards. I did what I could to keep them in line, since staying on base was my best chance of finding out what had happened to Mahari. Also, apparently the melting pot society of the Moline compound was not functioning as well as it once had. According to Dad, it was the Wild West over there. As the mayor, my dad’s girlfriend, Hagen, supposedly had authority to enforce rules, but she had little backup. Until the Moline compound settled down, my father felt it was too dangerous for me to live there — which was all the more reason he didn’t want me taking risks on base. He’d asked me not to search the island for Mahari, but he’d had no luck tracking down Rafe.
What Dr. Solis had said on our first night back was true: No one in Moline had seen Rafe in the past six months, nor had the hacks who traveled between the compounds heard anything. It was as if Rafe had disappeared from the zone. The only ones who might know something — the lionesses — weren’t talking. Sometimes I’d catch glimpses of them at dusk, slinking along the tree line, waiting for me to bring them Mahari. Despite my dad’s explicit orders to leave it alone, I’d tried to find her, only to hit a dead end with every person I’d questioned and every building I’d searched. The only building I hadn’t been able to scour was the virology lab, where Everson spent his days. I had put it off, knowing that Chairman Prejean’s ever-present cameras would record my visit and that she’d assume I was there to see Everson. A small obstacle. And now that I’d searched the rest of the base, it was time to find a way around that problem.
A squad jogged past the orphan tent with inhuman syncopation. A childish part of me hoped one of the guards would trip, so the others would trip one after the other like a ten-car pileup. No one missed a step, of course, and not a single guard acknowledged me, though they had to have spotted me up here, lounging eight feet above them. They’d taken on Captain Hyrax’s opinion of me, which was that I had no place in the patrol hierarchy and, therefore, no business being on base at all. But I didn’t care.
Well, except in one case.
With Everson living on the south end of the island and me on the north, I rarely saw him. We’d exchanged greetings in the mess hall, but anytime he’d tried to say more, I’d found a reason to excuse myself. Luckily, the orphans provided me with endless excuses, and I’d hustle off to put a stop to whatever trouble they were getting into. But now it was time to risk talking to him. Who knew if he could help me? It was time to get him alone and at least ask if he knew what the guards had done with Mahari.
“Get back here, you brat!”
Nice. It was barely dawn and already a guard was hollering at an orphan. Jia raced up the platform’s wooden steps and flew into the tent with a flushed-faced guard three steps behind her. I ducked into the tent in time to see her scramble under my itchy patrol-issue blanket.
The guy was older than the average recruit. Probably a career guard with a cushy staff position, meaning he didn’t go out on patrol to scour the riverbank for quarantine breakers — human or manimal. I inserted myself between him and Jia, a move I’d perfected thanks to all the practice I was getting. “You can’t just barge in here.”
“She stole something from the mailroom!”
I poked the girl-sized lump under my blanket. “Hand it over.”
A hand appeared and offered up a candy bar. I took it and tossed it to the guard. “Your blood sugar must have flatlined if you ran halfway across the island for this.”
He threw the candy against the tent’s canvas wall. Two of the orphans scrambled under a bunk to find it. “She took a package,” he snarled.
“Did not!” Jia thrust aside the blanket and held up her empty hands.
“It’s under the covers!” the guard shouted.
The other kids watched this exchange with wide eyes. Jia’s indignant act didn’t fool me, but I’d confront her when we were alone. “You need to leave. Now,” I told the guard. “This is our tent.”
His expression turned a darker shade of truculent, and he cros
sed his arms over his chest. Good tactic. The orphans always responded so well to intimidation.
“If I find any stolen items, I will bring them back to the mailroom myself,” I told him.
“Like I believe that,” he scoffed. “You’re not even a guard.”
“Nope,” I agreed.
“What is brass thinking? Letting you stay here, taking up valuable space?”
“Someone needs to keep jerks from bullying little kids.”
He snorted. “They’re not kids.”
One by one the other orphans angled closer, some hunched, others crouching, but all glaring with narrowed eyes and parted lips. I sighed.
“They’re animals,” he went on, getting sweatier with the vehemence he put into each word. “Just like their grupped-up parents.”
The growling started then, of course, along with some low-pitched yammering. The guard’s eyes bulged in his head. At the first snarl, he fumbled for the tent flap but then paused long enough to toss one more comment my way. “Do us all a favor: Dump that litter of freaks across the river where they belong.”
The snarling got louder, and Rose, whose brother had been infected with rhino, heaved out great snorts of air. At that the guard hauled his bulk out of the tent. The orphans quieted only after his heavy boots pounded down the platform steps and squelched into the mud below. I faced Jia, who was now lounging cross-legged on my cot. “Don’t make enemies,” I scolded. “I won’t always be here to stick up for you.”
“We can stick up for ourselves,” she scoffed.
“Yeah, but the way you guys do it just gets you in more trouble.” I leveled a look at the others. “What did I say about using words?”
Out of the seven of them, five dropped their eyes and two started growling again — Sage and Trader, the oldest boys, though both were under twelve. “Act human,” I snapped. “Or you two can eat with the patrol dogs while we go to the mess hall.” Sage’s growl turned into a whine. Trader fell silent, though he continued to glare. That, I’d accept. Humans glared.