The Gift (7 page)

“Then whose is it?”

“Mine,” Byron announces with a ridiculous chest heave. “While Whitford’s been reciting love poetry and Janine’s been nursing
Mr. Heroic back to health, you’ve all missed the majority vote of the group back at Home Furnishings for leader of the week.”

He clucks as we stare at him, gaping. “Next time, you might want to make sure you pay more mind to your civic duties.”

I guess you can take the kid out of the New Order, but you can’t take the New Order out of the kid.

Wisty

HAVE YOU EVER TRIED to cut off
all
of somebody’s hair with a pair of scissors?

It’s incredibly hard to do without achieving a certain insane-asylum look. I actually do a pretty good job on Whit—he looks
kind of like a war-movie hero. Apparently Emmet’s hack job on my head doesn’t fall into the same category, though. (I wouldn’t
let my brother come
near
my hair with scissors.)

“At least you don’t have to worry about that witchy red color any longer.” Byron cackles as we pull up to the Acculturation
Facility. “Except for a couple of patches.”

“Who invited you on this mission anyway, B.?” I grumble, even though I know we don’t have a choice. He’s our way in—but I
can’t help but fear this is a trap. I can’t bring myself to actually trust Byron Swain.

At least Sasha and a few others are with us—but they’re
back manning the escape vehicles hidden beyond the tree line.

Byron unfurls his folio of various New Order badges and medals and memberships and ID cards at the guards at the entry, and
then he drags us, handcuffed, through the door to the registration area.

The whole place has that oh-so-distinctively-generic-New-Ordery blandness to it. If it were a turtleneck color in my K. Krew
clothes catalog, it would be called Dirty Dishwater.

“I’ve got Stephen and Sydney Harmon here,” Byron says with an exaggerated bluster of authority. He plays the part so well.
Maybe because he
is
the part? “Transfers from AC Facility #625. The One Who Reassigns is expecting them—I just spoke to him an hour or so ago.”

“Certainly, Mr. Swain. They’re expected. The elevators are down the hall to your left.”

Byron’s in his element as he theatrically yanks us this way and that and into the elevators. Once we sink down a couple of
levels, he shoves us out the door. “Okay,
Harmons.
” He grins. “You’re on your own. See you on the other side.”

As much as I sort of hate Byron, I have to admit, getting into an N.O. joint has never been so easy. His timing is perfect—as
the elevator doors close behind us, we encounter a group of passing kids and join the rear of the party.

They’re heartbreakingly pathetic, these “students.”
Skinny, hopeless, haunted-looking, and silent as monks. The spirit of youthful anger and rebellion has already been sucked
out of them. No complaints, no sarcasm, no anything. They’re so beaten down, they don’t even seem to notice our arrival.

We follow the procession as it pushes through double doors at the end of the hallway.

At first we’re almost blinded by the bright blue-white light bombarding us, but when our eyes adjust we find ourselves in
what looks like it might have once been a school auditorium but is now something very different, and sinister.

All the theater seats have been removed, and the large room, including the stage, is now occupied by machines, chemical vats,
and dozens of sick-looking kids in numbered shirts, working like diamond-mine slaves. Some of the kids in here are carrying
sacks, some are stirring vats, some are pushing around technical equipment.

Our eyes are stinging as if there’s something poisonous in the air. The whole place stinks like burning rubber, ozone, and,
weirdly—
Could it be?
—chocolate.
Toxic
chocolate. Is there such a thing?

Then there’s a weird flutelike note, a middle C if I’m not mistaken, and I look over to see a squad of kids—all wearing the
number twelve—suddenly stop working.

And then I see the one adult in the room, a stiff-backed man in a white lab coat with a silver pitch-pipe thingy on a cord
dropping out of his mouth.

“Attention squad twelve!”
he screams. He waits a moment, and the veins in his neck slowly subside while his eyes roll.
“Does anyone remember? You may
not
—under any circumstances—drop the pods!”

He blows a different note on the pipe, and they all nod robotically.

“Since these two sacks contain damaged specimens,”
he says, hoisting a couple of bags over his head,
“you are all hereby required to work through the night without sleep!”

“Bu —,” a sunken-eyed girl starts to say before catching herself.

“But?”
screams the man. “
Did you just say ‘but’ to me?
Need I remind you that the penalty for arguing with a senior scientist requires
level two corporal punishment?
” The man rushes forward to heave the girl—who is probably only a quarter of his size—against the wall.

I want to charge in and sack the guy myself, and I have to reach out and grab Whit’s arm to keep him from doing the same.
We can’t go down in a blaze of glory. Not just yet.

The girl begins to sob, the first glimmer of emotion I’ve seen in this place so far. A look of small-minded disgust seizes
the “senior scientist’s” face, and he blows a harsh F-sharp on his whistle.

As if in immediate response, the girl bangs her head against the wall.

He laughs and blows the whistle again.
Bang
goes the girl’s head.

Whistle.
Bang.
Whistle.
Bang.
It’s sickening, and I can’t help myself any longer. I can’t hold back.

“Sir!”
I yell indignantly.
Oh cripes. Oh crud. Oh kill me now.

Of course he immediately spins and sends a daggerlike glare across the room.
“You two, come here!”

Whit

I LOVE MY SISTER, but she sure doesn’t have the, um,
emotional DNA
of a spy. She’s 99 percent passion, 1 percent plan. But before I have a chance to step up and fix this situation, the crazed
senior scientist starts lurching toward us like a zombie on meth.

“
Don’t you know getting caught without the proper squad uniform is grounds for solitary confinement?
I’ll give you
three seconds
to tell me what you’re doing here before I set off the alarm and have you
jailed!
”

I pull Wisty forward confidently. “
Sir!
Stephen and Sydney Harmon, reporting to squad twelve for pod duty,
sir!
” I salute him for effect, and Wisty follows my lead.

Suddenly the Lab Boss’s popping, pulsing veins soften into a more easygoing throb. “Ah! The famous Harmons! I wasn’t expecting
you so soon, but I’m delighted you’re here.”

He turns to his “students.” “Squads! The Harmons are
triple-A-grade pupils from Facility #625. They’re leaders in their category, awarded triple Sector Leader’s Stars of Honor,
and will serve as role models for all of you. This is good! This is excellent!”

Score!
It looks like Byron’s intel was good—these Harmon kids were actually being transferred today, but we intercepted their arrival,
as planned.

The Lab Boss steps in close to Wisty and me. His breath smells like something I haven’t whiffed in ages but that is all too
familiar: alcohol. Strictly forbidden by the New Order. “Your first assignment, Harmons, is to supervise the lab for a few
minutes. Nature calls, you know!” He laughs inanely. “You of course know how the Command Pipe works, correct?”

“Absolutely, sir,” I say, even though Wisty and I don’t have a clue.

He presses the whistling instrument into my hands and turns to the rest of the group.

“Squads!”
he shouts as if everyone here is deaf. “If productivity doesn’t
increase by ten percent
in my absence, you’ll
all
be sent to the
Office of Electrical Corrective Punishments!
”

And, leaving us with that happy image of shock treatments and Lord knows what else, he disappears through the lab’s double
doors.

“Did he just put us in control of this entire lab?” Wisty cocks her head and whispers to me.

“Looks that way. But I’m not sure what that gets us.”

“And these kids are all controlled by that pitch pipe?”

“Like border collies, I guess,” I say, remembering the headbanging little girl.

“Only it couldn’t be
that
easy, could it?”

I look down at the pipe, wipe off the bully’s slimy saliva on my sleeve, and blow in it full force like a referee on a basketball
court.

The entire roomful of bodies freezes and, almost in slow motion, every single kid collapses to the floor. No, no, no, no,
no. What have I done?

Whit

“OH MY GOD, Whit. Are they —? Are they —?” Wisty is suddenly stuttering. I toss her the pitch pipe and run to the nearest fallen boy
to check his pulse.

“Alive,” I tell her, relief rushing over me. “But we’re
all
dead if the Lab Boss comes back now. You’ve always been the musical one, Wist—you try it. Quick!”

She takes the pitch pipe and methodically plays a bunch of different scales across the three octaves in the instrument’s range.
After about a half dozen of them—
Holy frijoles
—every single one of the squad members is looking at us transfixed. But at least they’re alive.

“Say something,” whispers Wisty. “Give them a command.”

“Stand up!” I bellow.

There’s not even a pause. We stare dumbfounded as an entire room of kids gets up off the floor—and then starts
bouncing
in place. The weirdest part is… they’re all
smiling
as they bounce.

“Wow,” I say. It suddenly occurs to me that this is probably the most fun-resembling thing they’ve done in recent memory.
That’s my best guess anyway.

Wisty has to blow a couple of dozen notes just to get them to stop. In the process we manage to figure out that one note equals
one command.

I’m getting anxious. “Sydney, the boss has just taken the longest wizzer ever, and he’s gonna be back in seconds.” Spy rule
#1: Remain in character at all times. “Let’s do this thing!”

My sister quickly plays about six scales and, pointing at me, yells, “Follow this guy!” And I take off out the lab door.

We burst into the hallway, with Wisty bringing up the rear of our sickly white-smocked platoon.

The only problem is that not twenty yards down the hall, coming back from his relief mission, is the Lab Boss.

“Stop, stop all of you! Stop in the name of The One —”

Without missing a beat, I charge forward—it’s a Hail Mary move. I deliver a devastating right shoulder to the guy’s solar
plexus, sending him sprawling onto the institutional linoleum, where, before he can cover himself, he’s promptly trampled
by twenty-four groups of underage slave lab workers.

My head feels as if it’s about to split open from the
overpowered alarms that have somehow been set off and are now screaming from every corner. The hall’s gone entirely dark except
for emergency strobe lights.