The Gift (14 page)

Whit

I WHEEL around immediately. I’d rather face a troop of charging bears than The One Who Is The One. Heck, I’d rather face a lake filled
with piranha, a full stampede of tyrannosaurs, a mechanized infantry division… I could go on and on.

But even as we turn away, the trees of the forest weave their yellow-leaved branches and trunks together and seal up the path
as if it had never been there. There’s no way through, no way out.

The ground buckles and sends us sprawling backward toward the middle of the clearing. Wisty topples off my back and lands
with a whimper on the ground.

She’s still too messed up by the drugs to stand, but The One doesn’t cut her any slack—tree roots shoot out of the ground
and quickly smother her in a dirty wickerwork of wooden tendrils.

“Whit!”
she screams. “I’m trapped! I can’t move!”

There’s nothing worse than hearing someone you love scream your name in desperation. Rage boils up inside me. I spin and charge.
Five hundred pounds of furious Siberian tiger ready to snap his bald-headed neck like a toothpick, ready to send my sharp
teeth into whatever part of him I can reach first.

Unfortunately, The One Who Is The One has other ideas. Suddenly the wind kicks up so fiercely I have to close my eyes. And
it’s as if I’m a stuffed tiger, flimsy as a carnival prize—and somebody has turned on a giant leaf blower. I’m flipped into
the air, and I can’t tell up from down. Leaves and dirt are pelting me, stinging me, cutting through even my dense fur, and
then—wait!—the wind has stopped already.

For a split second I can see the sky.

And then, oh no—I can see the earth! I make out Wisty’s form
so far, far below,
pinned on the hilltop way down there like some human sacrifice. I must be a thousand feet above her.

I hear laughter.
His
laughter… echoing up as if the entire forest is mocking us.

And then I’m no longer a tiger.

I’m just
me
in my torn clothing.

Falling.

Helpless.

He’s taken away my mojo, my magic, probably my life.

“HAVE A SEAT,” says the solemn, tight-lipped man behind the heavy metal desk.

Byron Swain nods nervously and sits on the threadbare couch as the man finishes some official-looking paperwork.

“You took your time getting here,” says the stern adult, putting down his overchewed pencil.

“I had to observe all the protocols —”

“No excuses!”
yells the man, spraying spittle across the metal desk at Byron. “Children of Ones don’t make excuses!”

He again snatches up his battered pencil as if he is going to either break it in two or throw it at Byron’s face.

Byron meekly recedes back into the couch, wishing he could somehow slide between the cushions like some accidental pocket
change.

“And you will stand up in my presence! Who do you think you are, Byron?”

“I’m sorry, Dad.”

“And
stop
calling me that! I am
The One Who Tallies The Internal Revenues
.”

“Yes, sir, I’m sorry, sir,” says Byron, remembering how the Freelanders call his father “The One Who Counts The Beans” and
making a mental note not to mention that. “I just —”

“Excuses!”
he screams. “By order of the New Order, and at the specific request of The One, you will now give me a complete report!”

Byron feels a little pain growing like a cancer in his chest. He isn’t happy spying on the Freelanders, but what choice does
he have? Wisty continues to reject him. He is nothing to her. To any of them really. And he is under direct orders from his
father.

Byron stands at attention and, shaking slightly, begins telling him everything.

Wisty

TRUST ME, you don’t know pain till you know what it feels like to wake up after getting nailed by a New Order tranquilizer dart. Or
three. Or twelve.

My eyes ache like they’ve been loaded on rusty metal springs. My temple throbs like somebody’s just nailed a red-hot horseshoe
around the inside of it. The back of my head pulses like somebody’s trying to inflate it with a bicycle pump.

And my mouth—my tongue feels like it’s a slug that’s crawled halfway across an equatorial desert and died, and my throat feels
like it was just the parade route for a troop of hermit crabs.

And my stomach… sloshing around like I’m in a car with no shock absorbers driven by a drunk who’s decided to take a shortcut
through a timber yard. “Carsick” doesn’t cover it.

“Hey, Wist, how you feelin’?” asks Whit.

I wince and croak back, “What’s with all the noise and the bumpety-bump?” I’m still not able to open my eyes properly to see
where I am.

“We’re having another New Order van ride,” he says, helping me sit up.

“Water?” I croak.

Whit shakes his head. “Strangely, they didn’t give us the van with the minibar.” He leans up toward the front seat. “Anywhere
up here on the right will be fine,” calls Whit through the grate, as if we’re riding in a taxi going to a Sunday matinee.
He’s trying to cheer me up, I guess.

The goon riding shotgun—and wouldn’t you know it, he actually
has
a shotgun—slams the bulletproof-glass divider closed.

“Nice fellow,” says Whit. “Maybe a little too intense.”

A wave of panic engulfs me now. I don’t know if I can go through another imprisonment—the endless hunger, the mind-splitting
thirst, the soul-crushing hopelessness.…

Whit senses that I’m freaking out. “We’ll be okay,” he says. “We wouldn’t be here today if we weren’t survivors, and if we
stunk at jailbreaks, right?”

I know he’s trying to be sweet, but what an idiotic thing to say. I’d scream at him if my head didn’t hurt so much. “We wouldn’t
be here today if I hadn’t fallen for…”
Eric.
I
can’t even say it. Just the thought of that sad, pitiful, god-awful betrayal is like another knife in my gut.

“Look,” Whit says, pointing to the window at the back of the van. “At least this time they gave us a view. Want to take in
some Overworld scenery?”

I shrug listlessly. I can still see Eric in my mind, and all I want to do is stay curled in a ball and just give up.

Then I see Mrs. Highsmith in my mind’s eye. And I remember the music.
Positive energy
… beating the blues. So I let Whit help me up.

Now I can see what’s going on.

We’re speeding down an empty six-lane highway with those New Order billboards lining both sides—giant ones, every tenth of
a mile or so. It’s kind of hard to stay positive watching all of this pathetic crap—His Resplendent Baldness cavorting with
upper-level bureaucrats, unveiling plaques to renamed Freeland cities:
ONETOWN, NEW ORDER ACRES, VICTORYVILLE, BRAVE NEW ESTATES
. It’s no wonder Beaners look so glassy-eyed and out of it 24-7.

I’m ready to sink back to the floor when the monotony is interrupted by a giant message in horrifyingly bright-red New Order
lettering.

WE INTERRUPT THIS PROGRAM FOR AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT.

CLASS 1 CRIMINALS ELIZA AND BENJAMIN ALLGOOD ARE IN CUSTODY
.

STAY TUNED FOR EXECUTION EVENT DETAILS
.

THIS IS ANOTHER GREAT DAY.

And there, in the middle of the video displays, are my parents—in orange prison jumpsuits, gagged and shackled.

My knees buckle, and I sink back to the floor.

Whit

AS WISTY FALLS to the floor again, sobbing against my pants leg, I keep my face pressed to the glass, waiting for the details of the
execution event.
I don’t actually want to know, but I have to know. How much time do we have? To find our parents, to plan our escape?

But we’re in between billboards now, and traffic is slowing down. I pound the back of the van in frustration. I’m about to
crumple on the floor next to Wisty, but I’m suddenly jolted alive with a rush of —

Celia.

It’s her scent, no doubt about it. The perfume she wore the day she originally disappeared. It’s like she’s right here with
me, like she never left.

I’ve never heard of a portal in a moving New Order vehicle. Is it even possible? I start pounding on the floor, the walls,
then the back van doors, shouting her name.

“Whit,
stop it.
” Wisty looks at me with red, weary eyes.
“Celia’s gone. You’ve lost it. Our parents are scheduled for execution! Why are you —?”

But I’m pounding the window again. I see her hair. Waving across the next billboard some hundred yards away, streaming in
front of her face.

Whit,
Celia says. Her voice is muffled, as if it’s coming through a loudspeaker outside.
You’re okay. You’re doing the right thing. Don’t give up.

I hurl my body against the door. “Get us out of here, Celia!” I know, at least I
think,
it’s nuts. How can she be a projection on a billboard? But she’s so real. And I can smell her.

Are you even listening to me, Whitford Allgood? I said, you’re doing the right thing.

I don’t even care that she sounds annoyed. I love it. It reminds me of when she’d start telling me about her chem test in
the hall at school, and I’d just give her a kiss right in the middle of her sentence.
“Are you even listening to me, Whitford Allgood?”
she’d say, and I’d feel seriously warm all over.

Am I listening to her now? I am actually. The sound of her voice is like a drug I can’t get enough of.

The van is getting closer to the billboard. My face can’t be pressed any harder against the glass, my body flattened against
the door. We’re passing right by her image, and I practically feel the heat of her breath on my cheek.

You need to turn yourself in,
she continues.
And you’re on your way to The One right now. It’s the only way. If you want us to be together again, it’s the only way.

“Together again?” I ask.

“Together again,” she repeats as we pull away.

And then she’s gone. But I’m still dazed by the lingering image of Celia until we turn in through a very high gate marked
BUILDING OF BUILDINGS
.