The guards continue pulling her forward.
She tilts her head upright to look at the sun. I see the pain and frustration in her eyes.
And that’s when I recognize this girl.
My stomach lurches.
“Rika!” I say in shock.
“No way,” Gadya breathes, looking closer. “Where?”
I point at the girl with the ragged hair and sunburned face. “That’s her!”
Gadya squints. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” I feel a sinking sensation in my stomach. I can see beyond her hair and poor physical condition to recognize the face of my close friend. “It’s definitely her.”
“You’re right,” Gadya says, after scrutinizing the girl for a moment more. She sounds shocked too. “Why is she even in the UNA? There’s no way she passed the test to come here! No way!”
“Agreed.”
Rika was one of our best friends in the village on Island Alpha. She was the cook for our entire camp, and is one of the sweetest and kindest girls I ever met. But I’m also thinking about how Rika secretly joined us on the trip into the gray zone those months ago. How Veidman asked her to be a spy for him. There’s clearly more to her than appears on the surface—just as there is to almost everyone that I encountered on the wheel.
“There must be a reason,” I say. “But it doesn’t matter now. She’s been caught. We have to help her.”
I watch numbly as Rika is dragged toward a metal box sitting out in the sun. It has a row of small airholes in it but nothing more.
I realize that the guards are going to put her in there. I can feel Gadya shifting next to me. I know that both of us are wishing that we could use our guns right now. Just two bullets would take care of these soldiers. But of course that would give our position away.
Rika is led to the box.
One of the soldiers pauses and flings the lid open.
For a second I’m startled. There’s another girl already in the box. Her face is smeared with blood and dirt. She raises an arm, crying out for someone to help her. But instead of helping, the second soldier just shoves Rika into the box with her, the two bodies tumbling together.
Rika tries to struggle against the soldiers but she’s easily overpowered. The first soldier slams the lid of the box and locks it. Even from our distance I can hear Rika and the other girl hammering on the metal sides to get out.
“We have to do something,” I murmur. I feel sick watching a friend get treated this badly. I know it must be well above a hundred and twenty degrees in the box, and the day is only going to get hotter.
“They’re punishing her for something,” Gadya says. “Good. At least that means there’s some fight left in her. They haven’t broken her spirit.”
I can’t believe that we came here to find Liam and found Rika instead. “Do you think David knows she’s here?”
“Probably. He seems to know everything, although I don’t know how.”
“Maybe that’s why he sent us here first. To rescue her.”
Gadya nods.
David once risked his own life to save Rika’s, on the icy lake back in the gray zone on Island Alpha. I doubt he’d let her remain captive in a place like this. We were probably always meant to rescue her.
“Do you think Liam’s here?” I ask Gadya. “I mean, inside somewhere.”
“I hope so,” she says, musing. “We could get Rika on the way out, after we get Liam. It’d be easier then because there’d be three of us.”
I’m scouting the fortresslike buildings. “Getting Liam is going to be harder than it sounds. This place is swarming with soldiers. Look.”
She follows my gaze. I see a group of about fifteen men with guns standing in formation at the edge of the main building, doing basic drills. They’re jumping up and down in the heat as their captain barks at them.
“I don’t understand what this place even is,” I say. “I wish David had told us more.”
“Same here. But that’s David for you, isn’t it?”
Abrupt movement catches my eye again. “Check it out,” I say.
Gadya and I both watch as another formation of soldiers appears on the other side of the building. They are walking across the fields toward a large glass tunnel that leads into a laboratory.
It takes me a moment to realize that there is a person inside the formation. Someone that the soldiers are guarding with guns. My heart leaps. Maybe it’s Liam! But then I realize that it’s not. It’s a larger, twisted figure.
“What the hell is that?” Gadya whispers into my ear as she watches, sounding both startled and horrified.
I keep watching too. As the soldiers grow closer, their captive becomes more visible. It’s a boy, but one about seven feet tall, and horribly disfigured, with raw, red skin. “It’s a mutant,” I say. “Like the one I saw in Minister Hiram’s building.”
Then I catch a glimpse of the back of the mutant’s neck and almost throw up. There are tubes running down it and into his spine. But unlike the ones that were implanted temporarily in me and Gadya, these are fused deeply into his flesh. He’s some kind of machine-like cyborg. A mass of flesh, tubing, and electronics. He’s wearing a gas mask, so I can’t see his face.
“This must be a research facility,” I say, exhaling shakily. “A laboratory. A place for them to do experiments on kids like us.”
Gadya continues to eye the huge lumbering boy warily. “I’m not sure who we need to be more concerned with—the soldiers or the mutant.”
“Either way, we have to get Liam and Rika out of here right away.” I pause. “Even if we’re outnumbered. I’m not sure what to do.”
“We have the element of surprise.”
“Is that really such a big advantage? There’s probably about a hundred soldiers down there, and even more UNA officials and scientists in those buildings. Not to mention crazy mutant kids. Once we go down there, we’re going to get slaughtered.”
Gadya looks back at me. “What choice do we have?”
I sigh. “We don’t have one.”
We stare at each other. This might be the end for us. There is no way either of us is letting Liam and Rika rot in a place like this. Even if it means our lives. Besides, we can’t hide out in the forest forever, or we’ll eventually be caught. I wish David’s voice would turn up and guide us, but that’s not going to happen.
A few moments later, we race down the hillside headed toward the farm below. I know we don’t have long until we’re spotted. Both of us clutch our guns with our fingers on the triggers. We move low in the grass.
I see the metal hot box where Rika is being held captive to our left. There’s no time to get her now, even if we wanted to. We keep rushing forward. No one has seen us yet.
We are approaching the laboratory, its glass and steel walls shimmering in the sun, when I suddenly hear alarms start to blare.
“We’ve been spotted!” I yell to Gadya. We must have triggered some kind of automatic perimeter defense system.
The soldiers start looking around, almost as if they’re surprised.
Gadya and I duck down behind a stone wall low in the grass. It gives us shelter. We’re not far from the buildings.
“What do we do now?” I whisper to her.
She raises her rifle. “We go get Liam.”
I swallow hard.
Then I peer around the stone wall. Amazingly, the soldiers don’t seem to have spotted us yet. They’re looking around for whatever triggered the alarm.
“Let do this,” I say.
But then I hear a loud buzzing noise in the sky. I whip back around behind the wall again.
I recognize the sound.
It’s a feeler.
I haven’t heard one since the specimen archive on the wheel was shut down, and they all fell to the earth, destroyed. I can’t believe they now have feelers back home in the UNA, and are using them on their own people.
I stare up at the sky as a dark shape moves toward us. Unlike the soldiers, t
he feeler knows exactly where we are. It must be able to track our heat or motion. Or maybe it has zeroed in on us via satellite.
Gadya and I crouch there, frozen for a moment. If we run back into the trees, we might get hunted down anyway, but we’d also have a chance to escape.
But then what will happen to Liam and Rika?
I know that if we try to fight and reach our friends, we will probably be snatched by the feeler, or gunned down by the soldiers.
The feeler is getting closer. It descends out of the clouds now and I see it clearly. It looks different from the other kinds we’ve battled before.
There are no blades to slice at things, and no metal tentacles to snatch kids. Only guns mounted underneath it as it buzzes its way forward.
I feel Gadya’s hand grab mine.
I squeeze her hand back.
If we were caught by soldiers, maybe we could surrender. But there’s no way to surrender against the flying machine zooming its way in our direction. The soldiers are now following it, using it to track us to our hiding place behind the wall.
“It’s time,” I say. I know that we can’t afford to wait any longer. “Let’s do this for Liam!”
“For Liam!” Gadya agrees. We let go of each other’s hands.
Then we roll sideways in opposite directions and burst out from behind the wall with our guns raised.
I start firing right away, blasting away at the wretched machine in the sky. It opens up its guns on us at the same instant. I roll sideways in the grass to avoid getting hit by the bullets plowing into the earth around me.
Gunfire tears up a path of mud and grass right next to me. I keep rolling. The machine passes overhead. I manage to get into position, and I squeeze off more shots at it. Sparks fly as my bullets clash against its metal frame.
“Go!” Gadya is yelling at me as she races forward.
The machine is circling around for a second try at us. And the guards are rapidly heading our way, also firing shots.
We no longer have the element of surprise. And we can’t afford to get captured. David never said it would be like this. Our best option now seems to be retreating into the trees. But it’s probably too late for that.
I fire off more shots at the machine in the sky. I see a piece of metal fly off it, and the machine veers sideways. That gives me a second to move.
I start running again. The metal box that Rika is trapped inside is just a few paces away from me now. I can shelter behind it. I also realize that because getting to Liam is too hard, I might as well save Rika and the other girl trapped inside.
I race over to the box and shoot at the lock, as I dodge bullets. The lock splinters in a spray of sparks. I yank the metal sheet upward, opening up the box.
Rika and the other girl stare back at me, dazed.
Loud gunfire behind me makes me turn quickly. Gadya has seen what I’m doing and she’s holding the guards at bay. At least for the moment. I don’t have long.
“Rika! It’s me!” I yell at her, as Rika blinks against the light. She looks sick and confused.
“Alenna?” she says back, her voice a broken rasp. The other girl just huddles there, dirty and scared.
I grab Rika’s arm and pull her out of the box. The other girl follows rapidly. All I hear are gunshots. My ears are ringing.
“I can’t hold them off much longer!” Gadya yells at me. She’s crouching behind another nearby stone wall. More soldiers are flooding out of the building and heading in our direction.
I turn and fire at them. They run for cover as my bullets spray wildly at them. Then I turn back to Rika. I huddle behind the metal box with Rika and the other girl.
Rika is coming back to life. “What are you doing here?” she asks me.
“Rescuing you!” I tell her. “Why are you even back in the UNA?”
“Long story,” she says.
I raise my gun again and peer out from around the metal box. I take aim as a row of soldiers approaches. I start firing. I hit one in the leg and he goes down. Instantly, bullets rain all around us. I feel one whisk past my elbow and I yelp.
Gadya races back over to us. The machine in the sky never recovered from our bullets. It is lazily on its way toward crashing into the trees. But the guards keep on coming as the sirens wail.
“We need to leave right now,” Rika says to me, her words tumbling out rapidly. “This place is a nightmare. You don’t know what goes on here!”
“I saw the mutant. I have some idea.”
Gadya reaches us. “To the trees!” she yells. “Run! There’s too many of them!”
We start racing back toward the forest, firing off shots as we go. Rika and the other girl stumble along with us.
Then I hear a sharp cry of pain. The other girl stumbles and falls to her knees. I think that she has tripped. I reach back to help her up. But blood is coming out of her mouth and from her nose. I realize that she’s been struck by one of the guard’s bullets.
“She’s been hit!” I yell.
Gadya tries to help her up too. “Come on!” Gadya screams at her. The girl tries to say something to us, but more blood comes up, spattering the grass.
Rika suddenly screams at us, in a voice thick with fear and horror, “No! Stay away from her body! You don’t understand! Something terrible is about to happen!” Rika starts backing away herself.
I’m completely confused.
“We need to help her—” I begin to say, ducking my head as more bullets fly past. Gadya returns fire. For some reason, the soldiers stop firing at us.
But then I glance at the bleeding girl. She’s shaking. I can’t see where the bullet hit her. Maybe her head or her neck. Then she opens her mouth wider. I’m expecting that more blood will come out, or that she’s going to throw up.
Instead, I see a thin, wiry metal tentacle emerge from her lips.
I’m so stunned I can barely move.
“What the hell is that?” Gadya yells in total shock. She grabs my arm. We both start backing away.
“Run!” Rika screams at us.
But I can’t tear my eyes away. The girl continues to cough and gag, falling onto all fours, as some kind of mechanical creature pries its way out of her mouth.
The girl can’t even get enough air into her lungs to scream. The mechanical creature looks like a miniature electronic spider. It slips from her mouth in a whirring frenzy of gears, and a pool of saliva and blood. It lands on the grass on its six spindly metal legs.
“Don’t let it get near you!” Rika yells at me and Gadya, trying to pull us even farther away from the girl. The girl is still coughing and bleeding.
“What’s going—” I begin.
“She’s dying!” Rika cuts me off. “And if you don’t run, you’re going to be dying soon too!”
I gaze at the mechanical spiderlike creature. It remains stationary on the grass. I hear whirring and buzzing. I can’t believe this came out from the girl’s body. I just keep staring in numb horror. Then Gadya shoots it, and it gets blasted into tiny pieces.
“Let’s go!” Gadya yells, pulling at my arm.
Gadya and I start racing back to the forest. But Rika just stands there.
“C’mon!” I yell back at her, stopping for a moment. “You said she was dying! What are you doing? You’re going to get shot! We need to run right now!”
Rika is still watching the girl. The girl curls up on her side in a fetal position. Blood continues to seep from her nose and mouth. I can only imagine that the metal creature tore up her internal organs when it exited her body.
“Yeah, c’mon, Rika!” Gadya screams at her.
“I can’t go with you!” she yells back, her face contorted in frustration and anger. I’ve never seen her look like this before.
“Why not?” I yell back, pausing for a moment. The soldiers are continuing to make their way in our direction, although I’m surprised they’re not shooting at us. I know that soon another of the flying machines will find us. “There’s no time! Rika
, what are you doing?”
Her answer devastates me:
“I have one of those things inside me, too,” she says, looking like she wants to throw up. “It’s to stop us girls from running away. Angelica—that was her name—must have set hers off accidentally, or maybe she got shot and that set it off.”
“You have one of those machines in you?” Gadya asks, sounding horrified.
“Yes. They put them in all of us. If we leave the grounds of this farm, they get activated.”
“Are you sure?” I ask Rika.
She nods. “I was awake when they surgically implanted it in my stomach.”
Gadya looks sick. I feel the same way.
“Is Liam here?” I ask desperately, realizing that he could help fight this battle for us. And maybe he would know how to help Rika.
“I’ve only seen him once. He was being taken to a different work farm, that way.” She points into the forest, to our left. I see a narrow trail. “That’s where they take a lot of the boys to break their spirit before they experiment on them.”
“Is there any way to get the machine out of you?” I ask her desperately.
She shakes her head. “No. It stays curled up until it gets a signal to activate. Then it claws its way out.”
“We have to get you out of here,” I murmur.
“There’s no hope for me,” Rika says. She doesn’t sound stoic or brave. She just sounds resigned. She has already come to terms with her fate. “Save yourselves. And find Liam, too.”
A bullet hits a granite rock near me, sending off little chunks of rock and making me startle. The soldiers have started shooting. We hide behind rocks.
“Rika—” I begin. But I don’t know what to say. Angelica is dying now, her breath shallow as she bleeds out on the grass.
“Give me one of your guns,” Rika says. “I’ll head in the other direction and draw their fire while you two make a run for it. Liam will be in the fields, in chains and shackles, digging the foundation of a new building for them. Or at least that’s what I’ve heard the UNA is using the boys to do right now.”
I nod.
“Now get moving before it’s too late!”
Gadya and I look at each other. I can’t believe there’s no way to save Rika. There has to be a way.
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