Authors: Jay Budgett
“I’m not talking about Vachowski,” yelled the chancellor. “I’m talking about Charlie.”
So—he knew the truth about Charlie. And still he was parading her around as Mila. He knew the jury would execute an innocent girl, and he was willing to let it happen, just to prove a point. He was sick. I slammed my wrist against the tower. The cord attached to the grappling hook gun jerked in his hand.
He smiled again, his lips twisting into a grin like the Cheshire cat’s. “We could help each other, you know.”
“I sincerely doubt you’d help anyone in the world other than yourself.”
He grabbed the cord and pulled it up toward the ledge, hand over hand. “I could grant you a pardon.”
“Cut me down!” I yelled. “Or Dummy Dart me to hell. Really, whatever you have to do, just don’t pull me any closer. Your breath probably stinks like… fish tacos.”
Admittedly, not my best insult, but I hoped the confidence I feigned in my voice and the insults I hurled would be enough to provoke him. Get him angry enough to just cut the cord.
The insults rolled off his shoulders “The girl, too,” he said. “She doesn’t have to die.”
I felt my pulse rise and the blood boil in my chest. “It’s
your
fault!
You’re
the one who wants her to die—you even know the truth!”
“Come, now, Bradbury,” he said, shaking his head. “I think we both know it’s Mila Vachowski I want dead. I couldn’t care less about your friend Charlie. But, unfortunately, the public wants her head served up on a silver platter. And as chancellor, I’m forced to make that happen. Now, if I could serve the
real
Mila Vachowski’s head instead… well, that’d certainly make things easier for everyone. Wouldn’t you agree?”
I tightened my jaw, and told myself to think of Charlie. Of all the people she’d helped. The young girl on the Tube she’d probably saved. The way she snorted when she laughed, and the way the chopsticks in her hair made people stop and think. “You want Mila?” I said finally. “That’s all you’re after?”
He grinned again, and the hairs stood on the back of my neck. “I want
all
of them, Kai. Every single Lost Boy. Phoenix. Mila. Dove. Bertha.
All
of them.
All
the enemies of the state.
All
the terrorists. The ones trying to bring the Federation down.”
I felt a small amount of peace knowing he hadn’t learned about Sparky or Kindred. Both worked behind the scenes and didn’t go into the field. They were safe regardless of what happened today.
I closed my eyes, felt my wrist burn from the grappling hook’s pressure, and took a deep breath. “You’d let Charlie go, then? And clear my name? Absolve me of the charges against me?”
The chancellor nodded.
“Why would you do that?”
“Because,” he said slowly, “I’m tired of innocent people, soldiers, civilians getting killed trying to find five teenaged felons. I know you haven’t been doing this long, Bradbury. Otherwise we’d have had you on the record sooner. The Pacific Northwestern Tube was your first attack. Now, I don’t really believe you’re a bad man… just confused. And I’m willing to give you a second chance. Please, Bradbury, let me give you another chance.”
“How could I get them to you?”
The chancellor grinned. “I’m guessing the Lost Boys have a radio?”
I nodded.
“I trust that if you can hack into the Ministry of Health, you can hack into the Light House’s radio signal.”
He had a point. I had no doubt Sparky could. I stared into the chancellor’s blue eyes—he’d been pulling me higher as we talked. His face was only five feet from mine now as he leaned out the hole in the warehouse’s wall.
“And why should I trust you?”
He laughed. “I could ask you the same thing about the Lost Boys: how can you trust
them
?” He pulled me all the way up now, and held his face inches from mine. “Come now, Bradbury. I’ve done my research. And though you haven’t been with the Lost Boys long, I’d have expected you to do the same. I know who you care about; I know the people you’re looking for. I’ve got Charlie, Bradbury—but who’s got your mother?”
My throat tightened, and my heart burned in my chest. “Keep your eyes open, Bradbury. I’ll be expecting your call.”
And with that, he cut the rope.
The ground hurtled quickly toward me. What did the chancellor know about my mother? Why hadn’t he told me more? When would everything finally make sense? I was falling now, like the drops of rain around me. My clothes became damp as I raced through a cloud. In seconds, I’d splatter like an egg on the ground.
A metal prong flew past, and a thin cord spread out across my body like saran wrap—the same type of net used by the Caravite copters to grab the Indigo. A helicopter roared as it turned in the air. Suddenly my stomach settled in my chest—I was no longer falling. I hung from the side of Bertha’s copter like a caterpillar wrapped in a cocoon.
Federal copters dropped down from above, hovering over Bertha’s blades. They had no guns, no bullets, not even any darts. But still, they hung above us. They weren’t trying to kill us. They were just trying to push us down.
Bertha dropped her copter even lower in the sky. I couldn’t have been more than twenty feet from the ground. The Feds continued to hover overhead.
Below me, I saw two groups of men fighting against one another. The Feds, in their black and green uniforms, and the Caravites, dressed like ragtag gypsies in all sorts of attire. One group of Caravites stood farther from the rest, away from the outskirts of battle on the ground. The men in that group were tall, like the Federal guards, but lacked the standard black and green uniforms, their casual clothes instead confirming they were, indeed, Caravites. The Federal copters, looming over Bertha’s blades, were slowly forcing her in the direction of this lone group. I wondered why they didn’t just crash down on us now. I guessed they wanted us alive—wanted to learn more about the virus Phoenix and his team had created.
In the center of the isolated group of Caravites, I saw a single woman. The men hustled her from side to side. Her hair was in matted patches. She smiled and cried at the same time as her lips perpetually babbled and her tongue pushed in and out of her teeth. Her bright blue eyes wandered aimlessly. She was a woman clearly on the brink of psychosis.
One of the men mouthed something. Another put a hand to his ear and nodded before putting a gun to the woman’s head. We dropped lower in the sky. My saran-wrapped cocoon swung just a few feet from the woman’s head.
For a split second, her eyes stopped wandering, and I noticed her nose was angled sharp from the side. I knew that nose. Her eyes met mine.
Mom.
For a moment, she was lucid.
Kai
, she mouthed.
Then the man with the gun pulled the trigger.
Dove’s face was solemn as he pulled me into the copter. “Balls,” he muttered. It was probably the only thing he could think to say. Mila and Phoenix sat facing forward. They stared straight ahead without saying a word.
The Caravites had killed my mother. They’d held her prisoner all this time—tortured her to insanity, held a gun to her head—and now they’d killed her. My neck was damp. Probably all the rain. I wiped it with my hand. My fingers were stained red. Blood. I felt sick to my stomach. I puked in the cabin’s corner. My heart was on fire. It burned, and burned like hell. Like someone had torn off a piece of it and then lit it on fire. I knew immediately the burning would never go away. My heart would never feel the same again: Mom was gone.
And if the Caravites had their way, then soon I would be too.
Bertha twisted the controls, and we shot into cloud cover. Apparently she thought we’d lost the Feds, but I knew that they’d never really been chasing us. The chancellor had only wanted to make sure I saw what they—the Caravites and Lost Boys—had done to my mom.
There was something I didn’t like about the chancellor—something slimy, a thirst for power maybe—but he’d been honest with me. He’d admitted he’d been holding Charlie to get to me and the other Lost Boys. He’d shown me the truth about Mom. It was horrifying and heartbreaking and scarring, but it was still the truth, and it was more than Phoenix had ever given me. Phoenix was right, after all: the lies chewed you, but the truth devoured you whole.
Now we raced home to New Texas. I wondered where they’d dropped the nets filled with the Indigo cases, but I wasn’t really in a position to ask. I sort of figured they’d passed it on to the Caravites somehow. I guess it didn’t really matter. Not now. Not anymore. The Feds would get it all back soon, anyway.
Bertha broke the silence. “Well,” she said. There was more silence. She fiddled with the controls. Mariachi music blared. Mila pounded the back of Bertha’s seat. “TURN THAT SHIT OFF!” Bertha muttered curses under breath and turned off the music. More awkward silence followed.
Dove sighed. “Balls.” He breathed against the copter’s windowpane and drew a frowny face in the fog that was left. Underneath he wrote “
Sory Kai
.”
The poor guy was at least eighteen and he still couldn’t spell—but it was a nice gesture in his own way.
It was too late for gestures, though. My resolve had already hardened. I’d known from the beginning not to trust them—that everything they’d told me was a lie. Especially the stuff they’d said about Mom. They
knew
the Caravites had her this entire time, and they’d lied to me about it, hidden the truth.
“You can’t think about it,” said Bertha finally, still staring at the controls. “Thinking about it won’t make it easier. Not now at least. Better to pretend it didn’t happen—”
“Come on, Bertha,” said Dove. “Let the little man grieve for a minute.”
Her nostrils flared. “For Christ’s sake, Doveboat, there are worse ways to die than by a gun—”
“And how would you know?” I asked. My blood was boiling. “HOW THE HELL WOULD YOU KNOW?”
For once, Bertha fell silent. Everyone was silent. We just stared at the gray horizon. At the clouds that never went away—that just sat there, floating. Hanging, and would continue to hang until the end of the world.
Today of all days, however,
my
sky was a bit more gray.
It wasn’t easy when Dad died. I guess it’s never easy to say goodbye. It doesn’t matter how long you know it’s coming. When you watch someone get on their train, and they leave you standing at the station, it’s hard not to feel the rain.
Euthanizations weren’t easy. They were manufactured goodbyes. Cold and artificial. But they were still goodbyes. They didn’t feel like this—like someone had pulled apart the threads of your heart’s fabric.
The five of us stayed silent as Bertha landed the copter next to the New Texas fort. Dove squeezed my arm. Bertha caught my eye, sighed, and frowned. Phoenix and Mila did nothing. I guess they were still planning when to kill me. Probably would try to throw me out in the ocean. Make it look like an accident or something.
“We should’ve told him,” Bertha whispered to Phoenix as we walked toward the fort.
“Told me what?” I said.
“Nothing,” snapped Phoenix. “We don’t have anything to tell you, kid.”
“Is it time for my pill again?” I asked, wondering how long it’d been since I’d taken the last one. “When do I get my pills again?”
Phoenix frowned. I was pushing his buttons. Soon, he’d have no choice but to reveal his intentions.
“Since I’m apparently never getting vaccinated,” I continued, “don’t you think it’s about time for me to get them again?”
Bertha’s eyes widened, confirming my suspicions. The pills they’d given me were bullshit, like hormones they gave to cows to sedate them before slaughter. Never meant to be a lasting solution to the Carcinogens—just a temporary one to keep me quiet until they pulled the gun.
I ran into the fort. Why had they needed me at all? Why had they kept me around? Why had they insisted I go into the field with Phoenix for every mission if they were just going to kill me in the end? I closed my eyes and thought about the look on Mom’s face, her lips as they’d mouthed my name, the book I’d seen sprawled open in the Caravan’s library…
And suddenly, everything clicked: they’d been after Mom all along. The moment they had me in their hands and realized who I was, it became all about
her
. It was never about
me
at all. They’d been using me as a way to keep her cooperating, working on whatever sick plans they’d hatched for the megalodons. There was a reason the megalodons appeared whenever the Lost Boys got in the water. They were controlling them, some way, somehow. Just another one of Phoenix’s ways to start a revolution, I guessed. Mega sharks and microscopic poisons. God, what a guy.
As the others filed into the fort, I ran to the control room. I had to call the chancellor and stop whatever plan Phoenix was hatching. I didn’t trust the chancellor, but I trusted the Lost Boys even less. And, if I helped Hackner, there might still be a way to save myself and the nation. And Charlie.
Sparky swiveled in his seat as I entered the room. “KB!” he shouted. “You’re back, and you’re alive! Kindred and I were worried. We wondered if—”
I grabbed a gun from the table, and Sparky hesitated. He pulled Tim from his neck and stood. “Easy there, KB… Feel free to put that gun down at any time…”
I fidgeted with the trigger and fired a round at the floor. Darts bounced off the tile in lieu of bullets.
“Dummy Darts?”
Sparky nodded and stepped back.
“How strong?”
He stepped back again. I pointed the gun at his chest.
“Pretty strong,” he said. “Bertha added sedative to them. One Dart would knock you out for a few hours—maybe send you back a day or two.” I pictured Phoenix and Vern with several rounds of Darts in their chests. Tongues out, eyes dazed, brains scrambled—Fryers.
I kept the gun pointed at Sparky’s chest. “Show me how to work the control panel.”
He shook his head. “I just—I don’t think so, KB.”
I fired a Dart at Tim. He rolled from the panel to the floor. Sparky rushed to help him.
“Show me how to work the control panel. I need to know how to work the radio.”