Page 24

Endless training.

Constant threats.

Everything the Orphan experienced in his life had led to this moment, a war that he’d doubted at times would actually happen. But the bullets firing off in the distance convinced him it was real. Would the Godhead even survive an attack like this? No ragtag Alaskan army of Pilgrims could ever be a match for the Orphan Army. Minho continued to lead the group inland, through forest, over hill and rockslide. Far enough to be safe, far enough from the attack until things calmed down.

“How long does something like this last, anyway?” Miyoko asked while looking through the binoculars. Minho knew she wouldn’t be able to see anything. The tree cover was too thick.

“From the history books, wars can last months . . . years . . . decades,” Roxy said. Minho would have to to ask for one of her grandpa’s war stories later, but for now he wanted silence. He needed to hear what was happening in the distance.

Orange took her binoculars back from Miyoko. “It won’t last longer than a day. This skirmish will be over by sunset or tomorrow’s sunrise.”

Minho had to agree with her, especially from what he’d heard about the people in this city of Gods. Lacking weaponry and its people unskilled in the ones they had.

Dominic held up his knife like a candle. “I just want to point out that I was the only one who voted to go home.”

“What’s going to happen . . . ,” Sadina asked in a whisper, walking slower than the rest of them.

Minho certainly didn’t love the answer to that question. He could only think of two possible outcomes, and figured he’d better be honest with her. “Either the Remnant Nation will take over the city of New Petersburg and kidnap the Godhead or the Remnant Nation will take over and the Godhead will be dead.”

The group got quiet.

War raged on in the distance.

Their building had as many bedrooms on the upper floors as it did safety pods on the floors below, and it didn’t take Ximena long to find the small room that had belonged to her mom. She sat down on the bed and looked out the window at the dusty sunset, wishing she could go back home and tell her Abuela about everything: Kletter dead, her mom and Mariana buried on the island of the immunes, how she couldn’t bring herself to tell Carlos until she knew more.

Until she had a plan.

Estar entre la espada y la pared, her Abuela would say. She was in between the devil and the deep blue sea. A rock and a hard place. Ximena wanted to run back to her village, through the desert and the littering of dead jackrabbits to her home and curl up in her favorite blanket and just mourn everything. Drink tea with her Abuela and spend time with those in the village who she had left. But that wasn’t a solution, it was what her mom would call escapism, and she knew that. The world wouldn’t get any better by people hiding under blankets.

That was one of the few pieces of advice from her mom that still stuck in her brain. As soon as Isaac said the words out loud confirming her mom’s death, it was as if all of the precious memories had evaporated in an instant and Ximena couldn’t grab on to anything.

Carlos appeared in the doorway. “You disappeared right quick?”

“Yeah. I’m just tired.”

“You’re disappointed.” He wasn’t wrong, but he didn’t know the full extent of that disappointment, and she wasn’t going to share it all just yet. She knew that once Carlos found out the truth that his grief would overwhelm him to a point of no return. It wouldn’t just be sorrow for Mariana’s death but also for the life they’d planned to have. The baby. Everything. He’d be inconsolable.

Ximena spotted a water container on the dresser and handed it to Carlos. “For the red clover flowers you picked.” Although she knew Mariana would never see the sweet sentiment that Carlos brought for her, hope was important to Carlos.

“Thanks. Hey,” he said excitedly, tipping the water at her like a toast. “Got the dispenser fixed.”

She didn’t know what the dispenser was, and she didn’t care. “Good job.”

“You coming down for dinner?” The words reminded her of her mom, finally, and she was glad for it.

“You’re calling lunch dinner now?” she asked. “You’re working for the Villa one day and they got you changing already.” She suddenly remembered Kletter’s skeletal body and thought she’d probably never eat again.

“Yes, at the Villa it’s called dinner and at the Villa we respect tradition.”

Ximena gave him her best sarcastic smile. “I don’t care if it’s lunch, dinner, breakfast, supper. I’m not hungry.”

“Okay, but don’t miss the dispensing,” he said. “I know it sounds lame, but this is history, they started working on this before you were even born.”

Ximena nodded. She tried a more genuine smile for Carlos and his work, but she knew all too well the things that had started before she was born. Not a single one of them good.

Ximena tried to portray excitement to Carlos when he showed her all the hard work he’d put into the hydraulic thingy, even if she didn’t have much belief in the Villa anymore. As far as she was concerned, working for the Villa was like working for the devil. La hierba mala nunca muere, Abuela would say in defense of the villagers who did just that: the devil looks after his own. But Annie Kletter was something worse. She’d failed to protect the people under her wing.

But Carlos beamed with pride. “You’ll see. The whole Villa will see today. It’ll work, I know it will.” She’d never seen him so taken by one of his own achievements.

She responded half-heartedly. “I’m glad you could fix it, if it means there’s hope for the future.”

“This isn’t just hope for the future, Ximena, if this works—it’ll fix some of the errors of the past.”

She had no idea what he meant. As they left and walked into the main lab, she saw another young girl her own age, with Professor Morgan. It shocked her so much she almost stumbled. Ximena felt an instant connection to this human standing in front of her, merely because they were the same age. How silly, yet how remarkable a feeling.

“Ximena, good morning,” Morgan said. “Before you do rounds in the basement, I want you to take Jackie here and put her in a safety pod down with the others. She’s healed enough that she can reunite with the group.”

Dios mío.She was one of the immunes. “Sure,” Ximena said, and her eyes landed on Jackie’s grass-braided bracelet. Exactly like the one she’d found near the scene of Kletter’s murder. “Where’d you get that?” She checked her back pocket, half-expecting it to be gone, stolen. Still there.

Jackie touched the bracelet on her wrist, “I made it. With my friends.”

“Oh.” Ximena didn’t know what to think of that response. “I found one just like it. Near Annie’s body.”

“Who?” Jackie frowned.

Morgan didn’t seem to care about bracelets right then. “Put her in the back pod, the furthest corner. The front pod will be for the rest of us when we come down later to test.” The professor smiled. Morgan never smiled.

“Come down later to test?” Ximena asked. She had never once in all her time at the Villa seen any of the lab techs go into a safety pod. They had people like her go in and out with cots and amenities, cleaning, whatever was needed. It was as if the scientists themselves were afraid of the pods. “What do you mean? The lab techs, too?”

“All of us.” Carlos was practically skipping. “To watch the hydraulics in action.”

He was way too excited about whatever was about to happen. It made Ximena nervous. She looked behind her shoulder at the others in the lab, all of them shuffling around, busy busy. They had a buzz about them. ?Qué estaba pasando?

“Just come with me,” Ximena said to Jackie, then led her down the hallway and then the stairwell. With every step Ximena took, her stomach tightened. Something bad was going to happen. Maybe it was because she had never before seen a kid her age, here, or because the lab techs and Carlos were losing their monkey minds about this test they were going to do. Even as they reached the last step to the basement, she couldn’t let the feeling go. She pulled Jackie into a corner.

“What are you doing?” Jackie asked.

“Shh. There aren’t any cameras in this spot.” Ximena pointed to the rounded safety viewers in other places. Safety pods, safety viewers, everything was meant to make guests feel safe—but Ximena knew it was the exact opposite. Everything inside the Villa was a risk. The scientists simply tried to minimize the casualties involved. “I need you to be honest with me.”

“Okay,” Jackie whispered, then shrugged. The immunes were too trusting. Too weak. Too kind.

“Annie—” Ximena corrected herself, “Kletter. Who killed her?”

“Oh, um . . .” Jackie smacked her head in a funny way, as if they hadn’t just met. “I can’t think of their names. The gentle giant and the weird lady with him. They kidnapped Isaac and Sadina and cut Kletter’s throat. It was horrible.”

Her story matched the others, and she certainly didn’t seem the murdering type. But there was something else Ximena wanted to know. “And what about the crew on the ship with Kletter?” She’d only gotten so much out of the other immunes: That her mom didn’t suffer, that they buried her on a plot of land with honor, but she needed to know more—like why Annie killed eight people, and how.

“Oh, that Kletter friend of yours was something else. Gave that whole crew a sleeping drug and then shot them in the head. Right in the center.” Jackie tapped her forehead.

Ximena tried to slow her breathing, tried to wrap her mind around the horrific details. She could hear Morgan at the top of the steps. “We’ve got to go,” she whispered.

She led Jackie into the lower level with the others.

“This place is really weird,” Jackie said as she followed. “I mean, I know you guys saved my life and all, but this doesn’t feel . . .” She stopped talking once she saw her friends locked inside safety pods. “What’s going on?”

“Don’t worry, they’re okay. Just don’t make a scene.” She walked Jackie back to the designated safety pod in the corner and talked as quickly as she could before shutting the glass door. “Listen, the lab techs are coming down here to initiate a test.” She said it just loud enough for the others to hear, as well.

“To test our blood?” Isaac asked through his glass speaker.

“No. It’s more than that. It”s something they’ve never done before.” Mantengase Calma. She didn’t know if the message to stay calm was for her inner self, her hands shaking, or if it was for the others. “Just remain calm. Whatever happens, stay calm.” She fought the urge to not lock Jackie’s pod, to just release Isaac, Frypan, and Cowan right there and tell them to run for it. But even if she wanted to help them, Cowan was growing sicker by the day. And the devil took care of its own. She needed time to think.

The Villa workers began to arrive. Professor Morgan came into the room first with a walkie-talkie in hand. Why did she need that? Carlos headed into the glass pod closest to the doorway and waved Ximena over, but she was frozen in front of Jackie’s pod. Thinking of Annie, shooting her mom, Mariana, the others, right in their heads. Why would she kill every single one of them like Cranks? They couldn’t have had the Flare. There was no way anyone from their village could have gotten any variant of the Flare. They must’ve finally been turning on her. To see her lies for what they were. There was a chance that the crew of eight finally realized, out there on the vastness of the ocean, what Ximena had seen in Annie all along. That she was a poison. A germ. A disease.

An overhead light flickered and Ximena blinked.

“What’s going to happen?” Jackie asked.

Ximena shook her head; she really had no idea. The other lab techs filed in and crowded inside the largest of the glass pods. Ximena locked eyes with Isaac, and he looked as if the air had just been sucked out of his own pod. She knew the feeling from when she’d been a child, but unlike back then, the Villa wouldn’t be testing on her today.

Ximena stepped away from Jackie’s pod but turned back to her. “Sorry,” she mouthed.

“We didn’t want to come here,” Jackie said listlessly. “We voted. We didn’t want to come.”

“You shouldn’t have,” Ximena said to herself as she walked away.

With every lab tech and assistant that came on to their floor, Isaac felt like he was drowning in another foot of water. Frypan sat on the floor of his pod, arms relaxed on his knees, but Isaac knew better—the old man wasn’t relaxed. Not with this many people looking at them like test subjects.

“Jackie!” Isaac shouted to get her attention but beyond that he didn’t know what to say. He wanted to tell her that everything would be okay like some kind of hero, but he didn’t know that for sure. He didn’t know anything for sure anymore. And Cowan barely looked alive. How had she faded so quickly overnight? Why weren’t the lab workers able to help her like they had done with Jackie?

Isaac turned to watch Morgan in the larger pod next to him. She held a black box in her hand, surrounded by workers, what seemed like every single person who was a part of the Villa. What was happening? He looked at Ximena, questioning with his eyes, but she just dropped her chin. Morgan nodded to those in the pod and then walked out, into the center of the room.

Morgan, square box in hand—with what appeared to be a little antenna jutting from the top—walked over to Cowan’s pod and unlocked it. “With Kletter gone, and your infection spreading,” the blonde-haired scientist spoke to Cowan as she entered her glass pod, “we have very few options for your treatment.” She gently unhooked Cowan from her IV, helped her stand up, then led her outside the pod.

What nonsense was this?

“You see, Kletter’s work was quite advanced and may have seemed unorthodox, but she was ahead of her time, like many of the scientists of old.” Morgan tapped Cowan’s shoulder three times, gently, as if to say you’ll be okay before walking back to the large safety pod with the others, then sealing the door. She’d just left the sickly woman standing, weakly, all by herself. “Please stand by and await the test.”

“What test?” Isaac yelled, but no one responded. Half of the scientists and lab workers watched Ms. Cowan and the other half watched the main entrance as if expecting a special visitor.

What test?

“Release the dispenser!” Morgan shouted into the walkie-talkie, and every muscle in Ximena’s body tensed. The lab techs whispered to each other in anticipation.

“What is this?” Ximena asked Carlos.

“Just watch.” His eyes didn’t leave the doorway, as if he might miss something if he looked away for a single second. Ximena turned her gaze back to the middle of the room to see Cowan sway on her feet. Barely standing. Metallic, staccato noises from the stairway clanked loudly but it didn’t sound like footsteps. Ximena had been up and down those stairs a thousand times, but she didn’t have a reference for what that clanking sounded like.

A hush came over the techs.

Silence.

Clanks had turned to clicks and whirring. Loud, mechanical clicking. But there was no preparing Ximena for what she saw next. As soon as the long, spikey, silvery legs came into view, she felt a fear that Cowan must’ve felt a thousand times stronger, pumping through her weakened veins.

There was a collective gasp in the pod from all the scientists, except Carlos, who just smiled. A Griever made its way on to the main floor. Different from the ones of old—those fleshy, sluglike monsters in stories of the Maze Trials. This new version was almost completely machine. Mostly gone were the biological elements that had once slowed them down, though enough remained to give the impression of a live, breathing nightmare.

“It’s working . . . ,” Carlos whispered in awe.

Ximena had never seen anything so terrifying in all her life. So ugly. So big and frightening. The Griever paused at their pod and hissed at everyone inside with its wet, slimy beast-like face, then sniffed the air in front of Isaac’s pod. Ximena instinctively grabbed the knife from her back pocket, knowing it would accomplish nothing if things went awry.

Isaac banged both fists on the glass.

I wouldn’t do that,Ximena thought.

“How can you do this to her?” Isaac screamed at Morgan and Ximena could see how betrayed he felt. Ximena understood, feeling the exact same amount of distrust toward Carlos, who continued watching the Griever with a fanatic, childlike glee.

She slapped him on the arm. “This is what you were working on? How could you!?” She screamed the words, everything she’d thought she’d known about him vanished, like vapor in wind. The Griever rolled forward, using all of its appendages, whirring and clicking with each movement, a sound that sent Ximena’s mind to a dark place.

Cowan was at first frozen in terror, but she now stumbled backwards, crab-walking past Frypan’s pod toward the one in the back that held Jackie. The burst of adrenaline that made her move was a sight to behold. All the while, the Griever sniffed and snarled and clicked its legs forward. “Stay calm!” Morgan instructed, as if the horror story in front of them wasn’t happening. Of the islanders, only the old man named Frypan came even close to following her order—he looked unusually calm.

Ximena couldn’t hear Jackie over the terrifying noise of the Griever and people yelling and shouting, but she was trying desperately to open the pod from the inside for Cowan. But they didn’t have the keys, Ximena did.

Isaac gave her a pleading look.

The keys.

She could do something.

Ximena reached in her pocket and fingered the pod keys as she walked forward. This felt like the first time in her life she could really and truly help someone in need. If she could just get past—

“Stop.” Carlos grabbed her arm like he’d done a hundred times before. Always in charge, always telling her what to do or what not to do. She shook off his grip, done listening to him.

“No! Not this time!” Her hands shook as she reached for the door handle, as she pulled the keys from her pocket. But then Morgan stopped Ximena with nothing but her voice.

With just a gentle whisper she held Ximena in place. “It’s going to work. I know it will.” Ximena could not move. “Fear is an important tool in the healing process.”

Cowan had reached the wall, her back against it, trembling in terror. The Griever slowly moved closer, as if it had been programmed to stretch out the agony. As if it had been programmed . . .

Ximena turned to Carlos, who was still smiling. She didn’t know if she could ever trust him again. His naive hope for the future had turned into darkness, had spilled over into blind trust in the Villa. Blind trust could get you killed.

Morgan spoke as if she were giving a lecture to students, even as the Griever inched closer to Cowan. “When the body feels true fear, it pumps the blood faster and releases special chemicals and endorphins to its each and every part. Amazing, really. Terror boosts white blood cells, and Cowan needs that most right now. She’ll need as many white blood cells as possible to help with the incoming dosage.”

Mechanical growls vibrated the glass of the pod. Cowan had gone rigid, obviously in shock as the Griever crawled ever closer to her. The Villa scientists, doctors, and lab techs watched it all with an almost sickening display of anticipation, bordering on pleasure. A reckless power watching their experiment unfold.

“You’re just going to let it sting her?!” Ximena shouted. She should have followed her intuition when she first brought Jackie down to the basement. A pit of deep regret formed in her stomach.

Morgan answered with the utmost serenity. “The Griever takes the patient’s blood, runs it through the algorithm, and then dispenses the Cure dose accordingly. A quantum algorithm that no human could match. From the terror to the dispensing, it’s all part of a beautiful solution. It will save your friend’s life.” She smiled like a proud parent.

“This is the only way.”

Isaac’s heart raced itself to a clatter; his palms slid down the glass of the pod from sweat. Every moment since Ms. Cowan first showed him her rash flipped through his mind in a blur. If only he’d known what the Villa was capable of, he never would have brought her here.

The Griever clicked; the Griever whirred; the Griever crawled forward, prolonging the agony of every person watching. Isaac had no words to describe such a thing. It was half creature, half machine, full-on nightmare.

“Ms. Cowan!” Isaac pounded the glass to get her attention, remembering what Ximena had said earlier. “Just stay calm! Stay still!” She’d gone from shocked stillness to flailing her arms, an impossible effort to ward off the Griever, now right in front of her. Its glistening, shapeless face leaned in, came within an inch of her own. Isaac held his breath. Cowan screamed. One of the Griever’s arms pulled back with a series of clicks louder than all the others, revealing a large needle as if it had one horrible finger. In a snap, it slashed forward and stabbed Cowan right at the shoulder.

Ms. Cowan unleashed a sound from her throat that sounded like all the demons of hell coming back to life. But she didn’t move to resist, and a metallic section of the Griever’s midsection started spinning in place, noisy and clanking.

Morgan’s voice seemed artificially amplified. “It’s calculating your needs for the serum. It processes your DNA at near quantum speed.”

Quantum speed?

The Griever let out what sounded like a series of short, breathless cries of pain. Cowan winced, closed her eyes. Isaac looked around him, helpless. Tears poured down Jackie’s face. Old Man Frypan held his head in his hands. Ximena stared at nothing.

The monster hovered over Cowan, churning out sounds but otherwise staying in place.

What was it waiting for?Isaac wondered. He just wanted the whole thing to end.

Morgan issued more commands. “Open your eyes, Ms. Cowan. It needs to read your face.” But Cowan squeezed them shut even tighter.

Isaac pounded on the glass again. The only choice now was to do exactly as they were told. “Ms. Cowan! Just do what she says! Open your eyes!”

The Griever cycled through several motions with its arms, legs, whatever the hell those spiky things were and raised one at a time until Cowan finally acquiesced and looked, wide-eyed and terrified, at the creature. As if pleased with her obedience, it placed two of its appendages on Cowan’s shoulders, almost lovingly. With a final CLICK, CLICK, CLAAACK, needles flashed out, sinking their points into her skin. Her eyes closed and she slumped to the side. Lying there, limp.

What had they done?

The Griever rolled and whirred its way over to Frypan’s pod and pressed its face against the glass. The old man no longer held his head, but instead stared right back at the monster. Isaac could only imagine the haunting memories of the Glade that must’ve filled his head. Of all the lives that had been lost. Time stretched out. It was as if he and the creature were reminiscing, a silent exchange. Until one of its spiky machine arms pulled back then punched the glass of the safety pod.

It hissed a noise then slammed another of its arms in the same spot, splintering the glass into cracks.

“Frypan!” Isaac shouted. He looked over at the main pod, filled with a dozen Villa workers, “Stop that thing! You’ve got to stop it!” They ignored him, as if no one was really in charge of the Griever machine at all.

Old Man Frypan moved to the back of his pod, as far from the creature as possible, watching in silent terror as it punched the wall again, then again. The next one stabbed its way through, spraying pellets of glass on to Frypan.

Isaac, beside himself, pleaded for them to stop the Griever. But the lab workers weren’t even watching. All of their attention, each and every one of them, was on a lifeless Ms. Cowan. What the hell were they waiting for? Then Cowan suddenly came to life, gasping for air.

Morgan spoke loudly into her black box.

“We’re done. Insert the code.”