The Ones (23 page)

“I'm in.” She looked around and stared everyone in the eye. They all nodded.

“We still have some prep work to take care of,” Kai said. “If it all checks out, we plant the bomb next Wednesday.”

There was a knock on the wooden door concealing their crevice. As Taryn rushed to pull the tarp back over the bomb materials, a voice called out from the other side.

“Kai, you really need to come see this.” It was Daphne, one of the other Weathermen Cody had seen when she arrived.

“Not now.”

“I promise you, it can't wait,” Daphne said.

Kai pulled the door back and stepped into the tunnel. Cody and the others followed Daphne back to the top of the mine, where the Weathermen had set up their base camp. Everyone was huddled around a laptop with a thick cellular antenna. They were watching a live news report.

Cody immediately recoiled as she saw Agent Norton's face speaking into the camera.

“As the head of the FBI office entrusted with keeping our country safe, I've asked an emergency session of Congress to pass this law immediately. The new protocol will ensure that this recent wave of violence comes to an end and will allow us to handle the pressing issue of our genetically engineered citizens in a more organized and productive manner.”

“What is she talking about? What is the new law?” Cody asked in a panic.

“I ask all of the people affected by this law to report to their new residential camps as quickly and peacefully as possible. This is for your own safety. Parents, please help them. After the law passes, if you're not already at your designated camp, the federal marshals on our Equality Teams will escort you there. Thank you, and God bless America.”

Agent Norton stepped away from the lectern, and the Ones all looked at each other in shock.

“They are shipping us to internment camps,” Daphne said. “Congress is having an emergency session later today. Apparently, the camps are already set up, and the buses are on the road.”

Cody tried to imagine how this was possible. Her government was preparing to take one percent of its children and force them into a camp. To steal their lives away from them. To banish them. And then it dawned on Cody what would actually happen to the Ones at these camps. As she realized it, Kai was already saying it out loud.

“They're ready to give us the Vaccine.” He stepped back from the group and began heading down into the mine. “Change of plans. We plant the bomb tonight.”

*   *   *

Six hours later, as the last sunlight slanted through the trees, Cody carried her share of the bomb's weight away from the mine. She walked in step with Kai, Taryn, and Brandon, each of them holding a corner of the heavy suitcase on their shoulders and struggling over the uneven terrain. They looked like pallbearers.

A few hundred yards away, Kai had parked an old van at the end of the dirt road that led to the quarry. They opened the doors and gingerly slid the suitcase into the back of the van. No one wanted to give it the slightest jostle. When it was strapped down securely, Kai climbed into the driver's seat, and Taryn took shotgun. Cody had already noticed that she had her pistol tucked into the back of her pants. Before she hopped into the back to join Brandon, Cody considered what she was getting herself into. She imagined what the worst-case scenario might be and realized she felt like she had already endured it. Surely, though, she wouldn't get so lucky a second time if they were caught tonight. Rushing like this was only going to increase those chances. But Cody agreed with Kai: After the announcement that Norton had just made, they needed to act fast. These might be the final few hours when Ones would be able to move around freely. Cody got in the van and shut the back doors behind her.

They started driving down the slope of Mount Shasta, the racing van keeping time with their adrenaline. After a long period of silence, Brandon finally brought it up.

“Kai, we might not be ready to do this. I mean, the plan we made for next week … it only works if we do it next week. The guard schedules, the night technicians … even if we can make our way in, it might not be empty tonight.”

“We'll see what's up when we get there and figure it out,” Kai said.

“Brandon might be right,” Taryn said. “There's no point if we can't—”

“I said we'll figure it out!” Kai bellowed. He pressed down on the accelerator and tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “We don't have a choice, okay? It's now or never. Tonight or the camps. The plan stays the same. Brandon still has the entry code. If there's a guard, we take him out. I don't care how hard it is, we are blowing up that lab tonight and destroying as much of the Vaccine as possible.”

The matter seemed settled, but Cody knew she had to speak up. “As long as James's father isn't there.”

Kai looked into the rearview mirror and met Cody's eyes. He stared at her for a long moment, his wild energy barely able to contain itself. He held her gaze, then finally answered.

“Right. That, too.”

Then Taryn tapped him on the leg and gestured through the windshield.

“Watch out,” she said. They had come to an intersection at the base of the mountain, and a police car had pulled up to a stop sign directly across from them.

Cody felt a cold sweat cover her body. She stared across the road and saw the cop eyeing them. This was someone who could send her right back to the dark, cold corner of her cell. He would only have to glance inside their van.

All four of them held perfectly still as the cars faced each other. They probably would have sat like that forever had the cop not raised his arm and waved for them to come forward—he was gesturing them through the intersection.

Kai steered the van straight ahead, and they passed by the police car with barely a glance from the cop. Cody finally exhaled and collapsed back against the wall. Kai looked back and smiled at her. He reached out to touch the suitcase.

“That would have been one hell of a ticket,” he said, laughing. Everyone else couldn't help but smile. Then they rode the rest of the way to the lab in silence.

*   *   *

They waited for the perfect hour: late enough for the campus to be quiet but not too late to draw suspicion while walking around. Brandon got out of the van a few blocks away from the science building. He needed to use the lab for a chemistry class he was taking that semester, and his student ID was programmed to give him access. He would go first and let the others into the main area. Taryn hopped in the back of the van and showed Cody a schematic drawing of the building. Adjacent to the lab was a locked room that only Professor Livingston had the code for. That was where they wanted to put the bomb, but they couldn't figure out a way in. Kai had come up with a simple work-around: Make the bomb so damn big that it didn't matter. If they left it pressed against that door and everything went as expected, the room with the Vaccine would be obliterated. The bomb had a cell-phone-activated detonator that they would call from the car.

They waited for Brandon to gain entry, then pulled the van closer to the building and stepped outside. Taryn popped open the back doors, and the three of them struggled to pull the suitcase out. They got it on the ground, wheels on the bottom. It would be heavy to roll, but it was better than lugging it through the forest.

Kai took the point and walked ahead. Taryn followed at a twenty-pace distance, rolling the suitcase behind her. Cody brought up the rear, another twenty paces behind Taryn. They approached the entrance to the building.

One after another, they swiped in with student IDs, Cody using a card borrowed from Daphne. The campus security guard in the building barely looked up.

Kai took the stairs, Taryn pressed a button for the elevator, and Cody joined her. They took it to the second floor and emerged into a bright, clean hallway.

Rounding a corner, Cody saw that Kai was approaching an armed soldier sitting in front of the lab door. Kai, his posture oddly crooked, had a ratty backpack slung over one shoulder, and he was holding a notebook open as he walked up to the soldier. Kai got very close to him, and the soldier lifted his arm to maintain some personal space. His heavy assault rifle hung off one shoulder, just like Kai's backpack, and Cody was struck by the odd similarity. Then, in a blur of motion, she saw Kai pull something from his own back pocket and jam it hard against the exposed skin of the soldier's neck. Cody gasped, certain that Kai had just killed him.

As Cody and Taryn caught up, however, they saw that Kai had used a Taser on the soldier. He lay still on the ground, the acrid smell of burned flesh hanging in the stuffy hallway. Kai reached down and zapped him again for good measure. Then he knocked on the lab door with a precise series of raps.

Brandon pulled it open and smiled. They were in the lab.

Kai pulled the limp body of the soldier in behind them and shut the door. “Let's go,” he said. “We should be out of here in three minutes.”

He handed out headlamps to everyone. Cody turned her light on and began to look around the lab. She felt a surge of excitement at seeing all the beautiful science equipment. It put her high school to shame and obviously was a far cry from the antique science junk that she collected. She imagined what she could do with such perfect tools. This was somewhere she would have aspired to work one day, that future outside of Shasta where she fulfilled the promise of her lucky break and tried to pay it back. But that future didn't make sense anymore, and now she saw the gleaming microscopes and trays of beakers for what they were: tools to destroy the Ones. She turned to Brandon.

“Where's the room with the Vaccine?”

He pointed to the back of the lab, and they all walked over, with Taryn rolling the suitcase behind them. They gingerly laid it down against the door and unzipped it. The wires and tubes of the bomb sparkled under the glare of their headlamps. They were all staring at it.

Kai got on his knees and started to connect some of the wires. He turned on the cell phone that was attached to the detonator. As Kai worked, Cody stepped close to the door of the Vaccine room. She tried the doorknob—it was locked, of course—and Cody could feel how heavy the door was. This is as close as she would get. Whatever scientific miracle James's dad had figured out, she wouldn't get to see it. She hoped no one would.

“All right, she's ready,” Kai said, and stood up.

They all instinctively took a step back from the bomb.

“No use hanging around—let's go,” Taryn said.

They walked briskly back toward the lab entrance. The soldier on the ground was beginning to stir. Kai bent down and used the Taser on him again.

“What are we going to do with him?” Cody asked.

“Let's drag him to the stairwell. He should be protected from the blast there. Come on, give me a hand,” Kai said.

They each picked up a limb and shuffled out of the lab and into the hallway. Taryn pushed open the door to the stairwell, and they dropped the soldier and proceeded down the stairs, their pace quickening. They tried to act normal as they passed the security guard in the lobby, but they were practically racing. And then, finally, they were outside, approaching the van and climbing into it, now just a phone call away from watching the beautiful explosion in their rearview mirror.

That was when Cody saw the car.

She would have recognized it anyway, but she had also just driven in it a few days earlier. It was the old-fashioned station wagon that James's father drove.

Cody watched as Arthur parked right in front of the building, turned the car off, and started walking inside.

Meanwhile, Kai was steering their van out of the parking lot and taking out a cell phone, ready to dial.

“Kai, wait! It's him! He's going inside!”

The others looked up and watched Arthur enter the building. There was no doubt he'd be entering the lab in a matter of seconds.

“Kai, you promised me,” Cody said sternly. “Don't you dare dial that number.”

“Cody, he'll find the bomb. We don't have a choice,” Kai said.

“I don't care. Put the phone down.”

“Kai, dial the number,” Taryn said.

“Shut up!” Cody shouted. “We can't kill him. We agreed.”

“Cody, I'm sorry. He picked a bad time to come into work,” Kai said.

“Kai, put the phone down,” Cody said again.

“I didn't mean for this to happen, but he deserves it. I know he saved you, but he still created the fucking Vaccine!” Kai yelled.

“Kai, don't. Please, I beg you.”

“Damn it, Kai, just do it!” Taryn shouted.

“Put the phone down, Kai, you don't have to do this!”

“Do it, already!”

Cody saw Kai lift the phone and start typing in a number, and she knew she'd never convince him. So she flung open the van doors, jumped out into the road, and started sprinting toward the science building. She had to pay her debt to James's father. She had to pay her debt to James. She couldn't let him lose his dad.

After two steps, Cody was at top speed, flying across the pavement back through the parking lot, fifty yards from the science building. She heard Kai shout after her, but she didn't turn around. She ran straight toward the doors, ran as if her life depended on it, ran as if her soul hung in the balance. She ran to save herself, and she ran to protect James. She ran to be different from Ms. Bixley and Marco and Agent Norton. She ran to thank her mother. She ran because she still knew right from wrong.

And then the explosion blasted her straight into oblivion.

 

CHAPTER 18

JAMES REFUSED TO
speak at his father's funeral.

It was a beautiful Saturday, three days after the explosion at the laboratory, and the church was packed. His mother encouraged him to say a few words, but James couldn't do it. He knew what he was supposed to say, but he also knew it would have come out hollow and insincere. That didn't help anyone. So he told his mom that he was too crushed to give a eulogy. She understood. She didn't speak, either.