The Ones

 

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DEDICATED TO LA-U AND VOLCANO MAN

FOR THE GENES, AND THEN EVERYTHING ELSE—THANK YOU.

 

PROLOGUE

YOU BLINK AWAKE,
already terrified. Maybe it was a distant footstep or the sound of keys clicking against each other. You crawl quickly to the corner of your cell and hide in the darkness, hide from whoever is coming down that hallway. It never works, not once in all the weeks you've been here, but you do it anyway. You hope that maybe this time they will leave you alone.

You press yourself into that corner, embracing it, begging the walls to help you, literally whispering into the cinder blocks. You love your cell because it is not the interrogation room. It is cold and hard and dark and teeming with roaches, but nothing bad has ever happened here. If only you never had to leave this cell; that is a compromise you'd be willing to make. Especially right now, with a key pushing into the lock on the door.

A woman stands in the doorway and looks down at you. All it takes is a point from her long, bony finger and you know what to do: Stand up, scurry past her down the hallway, and step into the other room. If you resist, she'll drag you anyway. And you don't even have to look, you can already hear them, smell them, taste them—the two empty bags looped through her belt.

The clear bag is for suffocation. They hold it over your head, and you can see through it as you begin to asphyxiate. Watching them look on passively as you struggle to breathe always makes it worse.

The black bag is for water. You are totally blind as they strap your torso down and pour water over your face—buckets of it, freezing and unending. Eventually, you have no choice but to gasp and inhale the water and drown yourself.

Most days they stop just short of killing you. On other days you pass out and wake up in your cell, your torso bruised from the chest compressions they performed to bring you back to life. And somehow you are thankful as you blink awake on that filthy floor. They could have killed you, but they didn't. They tortured you to the brink of death, but no further. Back in your cell, you are safe again.

Until tomorrow.

Before you know it, a day passes and it is time to do it all over again. Or maybe it isn't even a day, just an hour, or maybe even a minute, for all you can tell. There is no time here, no dawns, no dusks, no clocks, no light. No parents, no friends, no school, no hope. There is just your cell and the room with the bag lady. And every time, before she chooses a bag, she smiles and reminds you of the facts of your new life.

You are a terrorist.

We can do whatever we want to you.

You will die in here.

Unless …

Unless you answer their questions. It could all be over if you cooperated. You could sleep in your own bed tonight, if you would just answer these few basic questions.

When is the next attack?

Where is Kai hiding?

Who is helping him?

What is the Ark?

What is the Ark?

What is the Ark?

You barely even know what they are talking about, but you can sense their panic, their fear, their determination. You explain that you don't have any answers. They don't believe you. It doesn't make sense to them.

Why would you help these people?

They are ruining America.

Don't you want to protect your country?

They insist you tell them something. But what little you
do
know—any single scrap that might somehow be useful to them—you protect with every fiber of your being. You store it away, hide it, forget it, deny its existence, and make it impossible to retrieve. That is the only contribution you can make now. And giving up on that would feel worse than the bags.

Today the clear bag comes first. The taut plastic is yanked over your head, and by now you know not to shake too much—that only makes things tighter. You know not to jerk your arms—that cuts your wrists against the handcuffs. You know not to panic—that wastes the air too quickly. So you sit calmly as the bag gets tighter and tighter against your face, your throat starting to burn now, your head beginning to feel light, your heart racing. All you can do is stare through the clear plastic at the bag lady and her colleagues. You know they will take off the bag eventually, but each time they seem to wait longer and longer, as if to set a record. You start to gasp now, and you gasp and you gasp and you gasp, but there is no air left to breathe. Still, you know it's too soon for them to stop; you aren't close to the end.

And right here you take a second to consider the absurdity of the situation, as you sit there dying slowly and painfully while public servants from your own government look on, not lifting a finger or even breaking a law. You try to hold your gaze on these people, to judge them, to implore them, to connect in any way possible, but your vision is gone. And then you reach the end and you gasp at nothing now, realizing there is no point, but your brain makes you do it anyway. You are just a dying body, incapable of any more thoughts or decisions. You are nothing. It's over, and they will either let you die or remove the bag. You fade away before you can find out. This is your life now.

You are a terrorist.

We can do whatever we want to you.

You will die in here.

Unless …

Unless nothing. There are some things worth dying for.

 

CHAPTER 1

Four weeks earlier

THE BREATHING HELPED
Cody relax. She ran right down the middle of the street and took huge gulps of air, each breath serving to calm her down. The town was silent, the streets empty, but the quiet actually scared her even more. It reminded her of those eerie moments before an earthquake, when all the birds and insects and animals disappear to somewhere safer. Where do they all go? And how do they even know?

Maybe they all had a mother like Cody's—the type of mom who would, without any warning, sometimes give you a look that sent shivers down your spine. Cody always wondered what was in that look, that weird combination of love and hope mixed with something much darker. She had come to sense that it was guilt. Guilt over the choice her mom had made for her. A choice that, in hindsight, was putting Cody in danger now. Cody didn't see it that way, but it still made her uncomfortable. As they sat together watching their old, boxy television, waiting like everyone else to hear the news, she felt her mom staring at her with that look. So Cody grabbed her tattered sneakers, threw on a faded T-shirt, and slipped out the door. Running was always easier than talking. When she ran, she could breathe.

Outside, Cody loped across her patchy front yard and down her gravel street and opened up her stride as she left her crumbling neighborhood behind. She sliced through barren intersections, ignoring the glow of televisions coming out of every home, her dark green eyes staring straight ahead, her thick burgundy hair streaming behind her. Inside those homes, the whole country was watching now, waiting for the decision. But Cody knew what was coming, could smell it in the wind like the birds did. She knew how the Supreme Court would rule and what that would mean for her. Before it happened, she wanted to find James.

Her legs beat a winding path two miles across town, her usual route now too dangerous to traverse. There were houses she didn't want to run past, people in town she'd rather not see. Flags and signs and graffiti everywhere that she wanted to avoid. If she zigged and zagged at all the right places, she could forget about what the rest of the world thought of her.

When she made it to the stately brick house at the end of Argyle Street, Cody cut across the perfectly manicured lawn and went around to a side window to peer over the square hedges. Sure enough, James and his whole family were huddled in front of the TV in their living room. James sat with his perfect posture, his expression calm under his mop of brown curls, even in the face of what he was watching. Cody knew that if she waited a moment, he would catch her gaze eventually. James was oblivious to a lot of things, but never to her. Not the worst trait for your seventeen-year-old boyfriend.

When James finally looked over, she gave him a flick of the eyes, and a minute later he joined her in the street. Before they could speak, Cody was running, James was rushing to catch up, and they were off, the only things moving as dusk settled on Shasta, California.

To see these two run together was like watching a pair of hawks carve through the air or two dolphins crest a wave. The motion suited them, as if they were born for this exact activity. Their bodies were perfectly proportioned, legs and arms churning in mathematically ideal ratios, their powerful inhales timed with exact symmetry to their powerful exhales. They were both beautiful, and the ground flew by underneath them.

They ran to the edge of the residential neighborhood, then climbed the scraggly foothills on the outskirts of town and entered the thicker pine groves, the trail growing rougher, narrower, and steeper. Their gait remained true, each step agile and soft on the dark, rocky earth.

And then, miles above the town, they emerged into a clearing and finally stopped, catching their breath in the clear, piney air. Below them, the town was still, half-lit in the fading sunlight, and a cold autumn wind blew up from the valley.

“What do you think happens next?” Cody asked, finally breaking their silence.

James never lied, so she knew he'd answer honestly, even if he was worried. She looped an arm behind the small of his back and leaned into his body, trying to find shelter from the wind and everything else.

“I don't know,” he said. “But no matter what, we're going to be fine.”

She pressed into him tightly and tried to believe it.

*   *   *

On their walk back down the trail, they couldn't resist playing a favorite game: trying to kick a single pebble all the way down the hill without picking it up. Most days the pebble would eventually skitter off a ledge or get lost in a bush, but if they ever got it down safely, Cody would take it home and save it. Nothing like a pile of rocks to make your bedroom look cool. They complemented the rest of the mess on her floor—the various telescopes and scales and old medical junk that she liked to pick out at flea markets. It was all part of what James called Cody's “unique” aesthetic: science-geek chic filtered through a vintage lens. But a stranger seeing her room would probably make her out to be a Wild West snake-oil salesman.