Annex

by Rich Larson

  A minute later, the other kids were all assembled, dragged out of their cots. Most of them were blinking stupidly in the flashlight beam, too dull from the drugs to know they were being rescued. A few of them were clustered around Bree and Ferris, whispering and casting excited glances at the fallen whirlybirds. Those were the ones who had figured out how to get their water from other places.

  Jon had taken his backpack off and was pulling out the extra blackjacks Elliot had made, laying them on the concrete floor.

  Wyatt stepped forward.

  “Who here is brave?” he asked. “Who’s got guts?”

  “Who are you?” one of the sharp-eyed kids demanded.

  Bree cuffed him on the ear. “He’s Wyatt,” she snapped. “He saved your fat ass just now.”

  “Relax, Bree,” Wyatt said, then turned his gaze to the other kids, hard as flint. “I think if any of you had guts, you would’ve gotten out by now. The rest of us did, right? But maybe you can prove me wrong. Tonight, we’re busting the warehouses wide open. We’re killing every last whirlybird. We’re getting revenge.”

  Ferris was first, giving Bree’s hand a last squeeze before she walked up to the line of blackjacks and picked one. She caught Bo’s eye and he gave her a nod. He felt a trickle of guilt. Wyatt wasn’t telling them everything. Freeing them was only a distraction. The warehouse revolt was supposed to draw the pods’ attention, and the Lost Boys intended to be long gone by the time they showed up.

  The boy Bree had slapped came up next, still rubbing his ear ruefully, and then the other whisperers and even some of the glazed-looking ones, maybe because Wyatt’s words had gotten through or maybe just to do what everyone else was doing. Bo didn’t think they had much chance of getting away themselves, never mind freeing the kids in the other warehouses.

  Wyatt was opening his mouth to speak again, but his next words were cut off by the sound of shattering glass. Bo looked up and saw fragments raining down from the skylight, glittering in the beam of Elliot’s flashlight. He recognized the dark shape an instant before it dropped into the warehouse. Long mechanical arms were already sliding out from its underbelly.

  “Pod,” Wyatt barked. “Gilly, Saif, Alberto—ready up. Everyone without a weapon, get out of the way.”

  Bo adjusted his grip on the bat, wondering if the pod had been drifting up there in the dark all along or if it had come all the way from the ship. They were fast when they wanted to be. Maybe the whirlybirds had sent some kind of signal. Maybe more were already on the way.

  In the corner of his eye he saw Jon shove the fire door open and Jenna start herding the newly freed kids through. Some of them were crying, most of them just staring. The ones who’d picked weapons stayed where they were, but apart from Ferris, they looked ready to run at any second. Gilly and Saif and Alberto had the water guns out, pumping furiously. A plastic part had already snapped and fallen out of Saif’s. He looked terrified.

  The pod was descending. Its harsh yellow light flashed over the scene, over the huddled kids and metallic wreckage of the whirlys. Bo squinted hard against it. The pods knew who he was and they knew what he had in his stomach. Maybe they knew who Wyatt was by now too, because the pod dropped right at him.

  Wyatt was ready, ducking under one arm and swinging at the other. The crowbar clanged and screeched, throwing sparks, then he jerked it free and drove it up into the pod’s underside. A familiar low moan, and the pod’s second arm came back to send Wyatt sprawling. Bo jumped in, and so did Bree and Ferris, battering the pod from its blindside until it retreated up into the air.

  Gilly and Alberto darted underneath, spraying up at it with their water guns, dousing its slick black skin. It would’ve seemed funny if not for the pungent smell of gasoline filling the air, slicing at the back of Bo’s nose and throat. He knew what was meant to happen next.

  The pod was turning, still trying to track Wyatt and Wyatt’s crowbar, when Elliot scampered in with one of the lighters. Bo heard the click and the whoosh, saw his pointed face illuminated in the blossom of flame, teeth biting down on his lip, concentrating. Then Elliot lobbed the lighter straight upward.

  Elliot dove, Gilly dove, Wyatt dove, but Alberto only stood there, transfixed, as the lighter whirled through the dark, spinning like a tiny sun. Bo shot the gap, hooking Alberto under both armpits and sprawling him away. Both of them rolled across the concrete and Bo found himself looking straight up at the pod as it burst into flames.

  There was a chemical roar as the pod’s gasoline-soaked skin caught fire, then a sound Bo had never heard a pod make before, not even when he’d used the knife back in the storage unit. It was a raw panicked wailing that put goose bumps on his skin. The pod was a fireball now, invisible behind the unfurling tongues of hot orange flame. Black spatter struck and steamed on the concrete—melted flesh or metal, Bo didn’t know—and then the pod fell, spun, plunging out of control into one of the shelves. Alberto gave a ragged shout of triumph from somewhere under Bo’s arm.

  The fire caught. Bo saw it lick from the pod to the crates, race up and down the shelves, springing from one to the next. Thick tarry smoke was billowing into the air. He scrambled to his feet, yanking Alberto upright on the way.

  “That’s our cue, right?” Wyatt had appeared through the smoke, the crowbar set jaunty on his shoulder, lips peeled back off a grin. “Let’s get going.”

  Bo spun his head toward the exit; Jenna and Jon had it propped open and the other Lost Boys were hurrying through. Gilly stopped to unscrew her half-emptied canister and hurl it back toward the encroaching blaze. The inferno swelled.

  “Is everyone out?” Bo demanded, shouting it over the roar and crackle of the fire.

  Wyatt didn’t answer. He made for the exit; Bree too, clipping Bo’s elbow on the way past. Alberto was gone. Bo stayed where he was, spinning to see if all the rescued kids were out or not. The smoke billowed suddenly thick, stinging his eyes.

  The acrid smell flung him back in time to his burning-down house and he didn’t know if he was looking for the kids or looking for his mom in the blaze. Panic welled up in him, rooted him to the spot. The shelves were still toppling and in the middle of them he thought he could see the shape of the pod writhing, swelling like a balloon.

  He felt Gloom wrap around him from behind. A cape of motes shielding him from the heat, nudging him toward the door.

  “We need to leave, Bo,” his tinny voice reverberated. “Fire is dangerous to humans.”

  Bo couldn’t see anything more through the smoke. He dropped low and let Gloom guide him, holding his breath until he was outside on the tarmac. He saw Gilly, Alberto. Jon and Jenna. Elliot with Bree and Ferris and some of the new kids. More silhouettes up ahead that he could only see dimly. Everyone was staggering away from the blaze, trying to get distance from the heat. Bo looked back just in time to see the warehouse roof explode outward like a star going nova.

  Whips of flame snapped up into the sky; shattered glass and superheated metal rained back down. A wall of rippling heat slammed over him, blistering his eyes dry. He kept moving. Gloom shielded him from the worst of it but he still covered his face with his sleeve too. Away from the warehouse and the wormy wall, toward the docks. Bo remembered the pod swelling and swelling, remembered what Wyatt had said about the gases inside them. Go off like a firework, he’d said. Bo had never seen a firework do this.

  Through the roar of the fire he could hear someone laughing, and for a wild moment he thought it was himself, but then he pulled his arm away from his face and saw Wyatt, head thrown back as he jogged along, looking happier than Bo’d ever seen him. The other kids weren’t laughing. Some of the Lost Boys were darting nervous looks at Wyatt and then each other. Bo saw fear on their faces, not admiration. For once, Alberto was nowhere near grinning. His eyes were glassed over with shock.

  They didn’t stop moving until they were on the pier, far from the heat but still able to see the flickering orange light. His head was still a jumble and his throat still
searing.

  “It really fucking worked.” Wyatt was grinning, gripping Alberto’s shoulder. “Good shooting, man.”

  Alberto nodded numbly but didn’t reply. The freed kids were huddled up in a group, smeared with soot, some of them coughing ragged coughs. Bo tried to headcount. He knew before he finished that they weren’t all there. Not nearly. And if the fire spread to the other warehouses, to all those slow, dull-eyed kids sleeping inside …

  “Where’s Saif?” It was Jenna who asked it, her voice high and trembling. “Alberto, where’s Saif?”

  The words sent a jolt through Bo’s whole body. He looked at Alberto.

  Alberto looked back. “He said he was right behind me,” he choked. “He said. But then I looked. And. He wasn’t.”

  Bo’s heart stopped. Saif, with his shy gappy grin. Saif, with his little rhymes and his plastic dinosaurs and his shaky handwritten notes. “We have to go back for him,” he said. “We have to go back and look.”

  Wyatt shook his head. “Do or die,” he said. “Saif knew that. He was a Lost Boy.” He put his hand on Alberto’s shaking arm. Lowered his voice. “I loved him too.”

  Bo sank to a crouch. He rubbed his stinging eyes and took a deep breath of the cold salt air coming in off the sea. Tried to clear his lungs and his head both. He looked out over the harbor, past the dark shapes of boats bobbing in their berths. Floating out on the black water like an enormous spiny sea creature, the eerie yellow glow from its underbelly illuminating the depths, was the ship. Their goal. He had to focus on their goal. Had to forget Saif.

  The pods were swarming above the ship’s hull, but as he watched, they started to break away. Wyatt ordered everyone down on their bellies as the pods flew toward the docks, toward the blaze. Bo saw some of them swooping down to skim the glossy black surface of the harbor. He realized they were scooping water to put out the fire. Pressed against the damp wood of the pier, Bo felt his heart thump hard against the beams. His Parasite squirmed as the pods passed overhead.

  He knew now that Wyatt had always meant to set the warehouses on fire. Freeing the kids wouldn’t have been enough to get the pods’ attention. Bo rocked to his feet before Wyatt gave the order. He watched the pods circle over the blazing warehouse, long streams of water arcing out into the flames. He tried to tell himself that they were protecting their stock, and that was it. If something went wrong with the door, they might need more keys. More Parasites.

  Violet’s words echoed back to him. Never think they care about you, Bo. They only care about what they put inside you.

  But it didn’t look that way. It looked like they were trying to save the other kids from the spreading fire, and the Lost Boys were leaving them to burn the same way they’d left Saif.

  “We have them looking the wrong way,” Wyatt said. “We did good. Everyone did good. Now some of us go on, and some of us hide, right?” He jerked his head for Jon and Bree, the two he’d picked plus Bo to go to the ship. “No crying,” he added. “We have a job to do, and we’ll be back once it’s done.” He paused, looking at Alberto, who was still shaking. “Jenna, you’re in charge of the Lost Boys. Ferris, you’re in charge of yours.”

  Ferris’s face was screwed up with tears, confused and angry, and Bo thought for a second she would protest. He knew what she was feeling. She’d been reunited with her cousin for only a few minutes and they were already being ordered apart. Gilly flung herself at Bree and wrapped around her, saying how she could come too, how she’d been practicing her shifts and she would be so, so useful.

  Bree broke away from both of them. “Watch out for Gilly too,” she murmured to Ferris.

  Gloom had already picked a tiny yacht and slithered inside, making it rock back and forth. Jon shook Gilly off his back, then clambered in after him. Wyatt swung over the side next. Then Bree, and then Bo was the last one standing on the dock. Gilly and Jenna hugged him hard and Elliot nodded to him. Alberto didn’t seem to see him.

  If everything went wrong, and they were caught, and the other ships came through the door, Bo wondered if the four they were leaving behind could keep the Lost Boys going. Them plus the new kids who’d been freed. He wondered who would sleep in Saif’s corner.

  It was better not to think about it. Better to think about him and Lia and Violet coming back to the dock alive and well.

  Bo hopped into the boat, steadying himself against the side. Everyone shifted around to even out the weight. Gloom was seated in the very back, at the rudder, and he made his fingers sharp to slice through the rope that held them tethered to the quay. They started to drift free. The other kids were moving back down the dock as scurrying shadows.

  “He knows how to drive a boat?” Bree asked, shooting Bo a dubious look. Her voice was still thick from goodbyes.

  In answer, Gloom eased himself off the back of the yacht, dipping his lower half into the water. A droplet splashed onto Bo’s skin and he recoiled. It was cold as ice, but Gloom didn’t seem to mind. Under the surface, Bo saw his trouser-clad legs meld together, then peel apart into a twist of thick tendrils that started to slowly churn like a rotor coming to life.

  The boat pushed soundlessly into the harbor. More pods were flying overhead, toward the blaze, but Gloom steered well around. Nobody spoke. Bo couldn’t properly see the shadowed faces of Bree and Wyatt across from him. He couldn’t hear anything but the lap of water along the sides of the boat as they knifed through the dark toward the waiting ship.

  29

  Something was happening. Violet crouched low in the shadows as another pod rushed past her hiding place. Her Parasite twinged, still aching and throwing sparks from the surge, or whatever you wanted to call it. She’d barely been out of the tuning room when it hit. The bone-deep hum and the static, stronger than she’d felt it yet in her newly tuned Parasite, had seemed to fill the entire ship. She’d thought maybe the door was opening and it was already too late.

  But the static storm had lasted only a few moments. Then she’d kept moving, eventually finding her way here, to a hall that looked dimly familiar. It was full of jagged black machinery and pale yellow tubes of light that seemed to swim across the ceiling like little glowworms. A pod had barreled right past her almost as soon as she’d entered, missing her in the dark.

  Another had followed, and now Violet was hiding behind a bank of the whirring machinery, trying to figure out why, if the pods were trying to recapture her, they were heading away from the tuning room instead of toward it. Maybe something had gone wrong with the door. Maybe Bo had survived, found his way back onboard with Gloom’s help, and was wreaking havoc on the other side of the ship.

  She waited another minute, and when no more pods came, she stood up. Her Parasite wasn’t sparking anymore, but it had settled into a strange steady rippling. As she walked down the hall, it intensified. She frowned, putting her hand to her stomach, trying to calm the Parasite down. It didn’t help. When she steadied herself against the smooth black wall, the rippling grew even stronger.

  Maybe being tuned wasn’t all it was cracked up to be if it meant her Parasite was permanently caffeinated. She didn’t think Bo’s had ever been like this. Violet stared down at her pale stomach, at the tendrils moving underneath her skin. Suddenly she had a flash of Bo lifting up his shirt and showing her the same rippling motion, back when they’d been crouched inside Gloom’s improvised tunnel. More Parasites up there, Bo’d said. Active ones. He could feel it.

  Violet put both hands against the wall. The rippling turned urgent. She’d known the tank room had to be close. She hadn’t expected it to be quite this close. Brushing back her hair, she put an ear to the wall to listen. Nothing she could detect. No whirlybird whine, no pods chugging for breath.

  She drew the static up again and hoped she wasn’t going to vanish any of the kids floating on the other side.

  When they drew closer, Bo saw that only the very top of the ship extended above the surface, like the tip of an iceberg. The bulk of it, lit from below by the ghostly
yellow glow, stretched down into the depths of the harbor. Bo had never realized how deep the water was until now. Deeper than any swimming pool. He tried to ignore it.

  The ship’s hull towered over them like a black wall by the time the boat knocked against it. It stretched up and away, curving slightly, not so high but too sheer to scale without help. They had Gloom, though. Jon and Wyatt wrestled the anchor over the side to make sure the boat didn’t drift on them while they were gone. The chain clattered and scraped, oscillating like a snake as it rushed and splashed into the water. When it finally snapped taut the boat gave a lurch.

  Gloom slopped his way back over the side, the water streaming off him in rivulets. “Now we climb, children,” he said. “Hold onto me.”

  He sprang gracefully out of the boat, onto the hull, clinging to it like a gecko. They watched as his coattails twined together and stretched down to them in a thick black cable. Bo reached to grab it, but it had a mind of its own, wrapping around his waist instead. It looped Bree next. She stood stock-still and grimaced as the motes touched her. Then Wyatt. Jon and his backpack last; he gave the black tendril a suspicious look as it circled his thick waist.

  Gloom started to climb, and Bo found himself jerked into the air. Bree, yanked forward, smacked against the side of the hull with a muffled curse. Gloom didn’t seem to notice. He kept climbing, his hands and feet suctioning to the surface. Bo could imagine the individual motes digging into the sleek black hull. He tried to find handholds and footholds where he could, to take some of the weight off. Below him he could hear the others doing the same thing, scrabbling against the side.

  Then they were over the edge, all five of them, and Gloom’s cable loosened. Bo stood up. He rubbed the spot under his rib where it had knocked a bruise. The cable slithered back between Gloom’s shoulder blades and disappeared.