The Child Thief 5: Ghost Towns

by Forrest, Bella

  A new fleet of ships met us in the air over the woods. I braced myself, expecting them to be government ships, but they began to rain down fire on the government ships instead. They were on our side.

  The government ships broke formation around us to evade this new attack, and I could suddenly feel the coolness of the night air again as the heat of the ships began to dissipate in their absence. I looked down, and immediately regretted it. The airships had been slowly gaining elevation as we climbed the ropes, and now we were at least a hundred feet above the ground. A fall from this height would certainly be lethal. But this was our chance. We would need to get up the ladders before the enemy airships returned.

  I pulled each rung of the ladder toward my chest painfully as I made my way up. Nelson, Bridge, Jackie, Gabby, and a few other medics and techs were at the mouth of the hatch now, ready to help us up. We were almost there.

  I was finally close enough to feel the air coming from inside the ship. The bright light from within bathed us in a glow that felt safe and complete. I steadied myself on the ladder and stretched a hand toward Nelson.

  Almost there.

  The airship lurched suddenly, shaking all of the ladders and even the people at the hatch. I watched in horror as Nelson almost toppled right out of the ship. A government airship had returned and released a volley of artillery fire upon us. I watched sparks fly as bullets hit the hull of the ship.

  “Robin!” Nelson screamed.

  I looked back up at her. She had her hand reached down to grab me. I gathered all of the strength I could muster and threw a hand up, locking it onto her forearm. Nelson and several others quickly pulled me aboard.

  I hit the airship floor in a heavy heap and lay there for a while to steady myself. The ship was still rocking dangerously, metallic clangs ringing off the hull as we were shot at. I turned my head to watch the others get pulled up. Ant, Abe, Jace, and Juno were all pulled aboard. It took a few more people to pull Kory into the ship, but I knew he was tired and injured.

  But we’d all made it.

  “We need all medics over here!” Bridge yelled out suddenly.

  I craned my neck to see what was happening. They must’ve been attending to Juno. I slowly and painfully got to my feet so that I could go check on her. But, while a small team was tending to Juno and loading her onto a gurney, the majority of the medics running past me to join Bridge were crowding around someone else.

  Kory.

  Jace was on his knees beside Kory, his face red and his eyes wide. He was tearing open Kory’s shirt to reveal a purple and angry-looking gunshot wound in the center of his chest. Blood pulsed gently out of the hole. Kory’s face was pale and his eyes were listless.

  “Kory!” Jace yelled. He turned behind him to look at the medic team. “We need forceps. A tourniquet. Bandages. Hurry!”

  Bridge just stood there. He held an arm straight out in an obvious signal for the other medics to cease and step away. Slowly, they all stood and stepped back, looking sadly at Kory. No one was helping him anymore.

  “What are you doing?” Jace shouted at Bridge and the medic team. “Hurry! He needs help!”

  Bridge looked down and shook his head softly.

  “What?” Jace sputtered. He was looking around frantically now, searching the crowd for answers. It was obvious to everyone except Jace.

  There was nothing that could be done. Kory had been hit right in the middle of his chest. Blood was pulsing out of him with every last sputtering beat of his damaged heart.

  He couldn’t survive that wound.

  I walked over and knelt beside them, placing my hand on Jace’s back.

  “No, no, no, no,” Jace was muttering softly to himself. “Kory, please.”

  And then, at the sound of his name, Kory opened his eyes. He looked around the airship cabin slowly, his eyes seemingly unable to focus on anyone until they met Jace’s. But looking at his lifelong friend, he managed half a smile before he exhaled once more and closed his eyes forever.

  36

  For a moment, no one moved. I kept my hand on Jace’s shuddering back as the sobs came, and Jace held Kory’s limp frame in his arms. And the circle of medics, techs, and Team Hood members surrounded us in a ring of sympathy and mourning. Then the airship lurched again, and we all remembered that we weren’t out of danger yet.

  Bridge knelt down beside us and spoke to Jace. “We have to get him on a gurney and to the back of the cabin so everyone can get strapped in,” he said, gently but firmly.

  Jace’s face was wet with tears as he clutched Kory to his chest. But it was obvious that Bridge was right. We still had to get out of here alive.

  Bridge assisted Jace while he stood with his departed friend in his arms. Then the two men moved to the row of gurneys at the back of the cabin. I wanted to follow Jace and keep close by his side to ease him through his grief, but the airship was still rocking precariously in the sky. It was hard to stand still as we tried to evade the enemy’s fire. We needed to get strapped in and get out of here to minimize our injuries.

  Juno was being quickly loaded onto a gurney near the hatch, and I needed to make sure that she was all right. I stumbled to her side as teams rushed around me, carrying out the orders that Bridge, Sy, and Alexy were calling out. A short, redheaded woman was bandaging her thigh when I approached.

  “How does it look?” I asked the medic, steadying myself as the airship dipped again.

  “Well, she was lucky it didn’t hit an artery. Though, she still lost a lot of blood. She should be all right as long as we can get back to base quickly,” the medic replied, glancing up at me intermittently as she worked.

  Juno’s eyelids fluttered and then opened. She looked confused and in pain as her eyes weakly searched the airship cabin. Then they settled on me. I watched her eyes struggle to focus on my own, and then, when I could be sure that she saw me, I flashed her a small smile to let her know that everything was going to be okay. The airship had steadied itself slightly, and I could feel us rapidly covering distance. I felt like we were escaping now, like maybe we were going to get away and get back to Edgewood almost intact.

  Juno did something strange as I looked at her. She narrowed her eyes at me as if she was examining me. Then her eyes went wide, almost like she was realizing something important.

  It almost looked like recognition.

  The airship bucked in the air, and a blast of gunfire sounded against the metal hull again. We weren’t out of the woods yet.

  “You need to find a place to sit and buckle yourself in,” the medic chastised me. “Before you wind up on a gurney, too.”

  Then the medic was wheeling Juno to the back of the room, where more medical equipment was present. Juno’s eyes closed again, and I watched her being rolled away.

  “It’s nice to see you looking like yourself again,” Nelson said as she walked up behind me. I guessed that meant that the mask had completely dissolved. “Now, why don’t we get buckled up so we can survive this escape?”

  I turned and embraced her without words or warning. I was so happy to see her and the rest of the team. I knew we weren’t out of danger yet, but I could already feel myself falling into a dark hole of sadness at the loss of Kory. I needed to hold Nelson so I wouldn’t slip away.

  Nelson hugged me tightly in return. But more gunfire almost sent us flying to the ground.

  “Robin, we’ve got to go sit down and let Alexy get us out of here safely,” Nelson said.

  I was in no mood to sit idly by. Not yet.

  “Where’s Nathan?” I asked. We had things to talk about.

  She pointed to the front of the ship, where Alexy was on the controls and Nathan was working on the flight path coordinates.

  I jogged up to the front of the ship to speak to Nathan directly. He looked stressed and busy as he worked, his graying hair frazzled and his lips taut. At my approach he took his mind off his work and instantly turned to me.

  “Robin,” he said softly. His eyes looked
sympathetic and comforting.

  “Are we still being trailed by the government ships?” I asked, bracing for his response. We were moving fast and chaotically still, but the sound of gunfire seemed much more distant now, as if we were breaking ahead of the battle.

  Nathan nodded. “I think they’re being kept distracted by other ships for now. But we’ll have to take a roundabout way back to Edgewood to ensure we aren’t followed.”

  I looked back over my shoulder at Juno. Would she survive a “roundabout” path to the Edgewood hospital? Nathan followed my gaze.

  “She’ll be all right,” he said. “I’ve spoken to Bridge. They have her stable for now.”

  I turned back to him and chewed on my lip. There was so much swirling around in my head at that moment, and I wasn’t sure where to start. “Nathan, I need to tell you what I saw in there,” I said suddenly.

  He pressed his lips together gravely, then started to walk toward an unoccupied corner in the back of the cabin. I followed him obediently. The flight felt much smoother now, but team members were still racing around us to fulfill their responsibilities, and I didn’t want to say anything until we were in a relatively private place. Once we were out of earshot, he turned to face me again.

  “What did you see?” he asked.

  The truth was, I didn’t know what I saw. But I knew what it looked like.

  “I think that they were lobotomizing townspeople,” I replied. The sight of the silver stake and small mallet, wielded so haphazardly in the surgeon’s hands, came flooding back to me, filling me with dread. I remembered the blank stares and silence coming from the patient rooms. Then I thought back to the townspeople learning their shapes again. I couldn’t think of any other explanation.

  Nathan didn’t flinch. He just stared at me, his face pensive but otherwise emotionless. Finally, he spoke.

  “Did you see one of these procedures?” he asked.

  I nodded. “There’s a huge hospital on the grounds. I saw a surgeon with a stake and mallet. It looked like a brain surgery.”

  Nathan nodded slowly. “This would confirm some of the information we have found through Artemis on Helping Hands,” he said. “Some internal government memos referenced an ‘Operation Guidance,’ which Helping Hands is touting as the unveiling of a new, lower-cost workforce.”

  I considered this new information. Helping Hands publicly flaunted their vocational programs. Was this it? Lobotomizing poor people so they’d work without complaint? Or maybe even without wages? So instead of paying poor people the meager salaries they had previously meted out, and dealing with their injuries and illnesses and occasional riots, they’d have a slave army to work for free? Is this what they were experimenting with on people from Dry River and Ironfield and Millville?

  I opened my mouth to speak again, but Nathan looked down quickly at his wristwatch. He was getting a call.

  “You’ll have to excuse me, Robin,” he said, stepping away in preparation to answer. “My better half is calling from Edgewood. We’ll continue this conversation shortly.”

  I watched him walk away to speak to Corona, wanting desperately to continue the conversation, but also needing the time to decompress. It was a lot of information to take in so suddenly.

  I looked around the airship and saw Ant, Abe, Gabby, Jackie, and Nelson together near Kory. Jace was nowhere to be seen. Still, I walked toward the group.

  “Robin!” Gabby cried when she saw me. She pushed out of her seat, staggered up to me, and hugged me tightly.

  Ant and Abe offered me weak smiles from behind her. Jackie managed a smile through her tears.

  “I’m so glad you’re safe,” Gabby said. “We were so worried.”

  I pulled back and rested a hand on Gabby’s shoulder. Then I spoke to the whole team.

  “Thank you guys for everything you did to get us out of there,” I said.

  “I just wish we could’ve done more,” Jackie said. She covered her mouth to choke back a sob and turned and buried her face in Ant’s chest. Ant wrapped his arms around her and rested his chin on her head.

  “You did everything you could,” I said. “Please don’t blame yourselves.”

  The thought of Team Hood thinking they were responsible for Kory’s death broke my heart. There was only one group responsible for taking the life of our friend.

  “The government did this,” I finished, coldly and resolutely.

  “And they’ll pay for it,” a voice said from behind me.

  Jace was walking up to us. His eyes were still red with pain and suffering. But they also looked impassioned with fury. It was an intimidating thing to witness, but truthfully, I felt the same way. The government had already taken so much from Jace, like it had from all of us, but Kory’s loss was a fresh blow that united us in our cause. And I could feel the rage coming off of Jace.

  He wanted to fight. And he wanted to do it now.

  “All techs to the front of the ship!” Alexy suddenly yelled back over her shoulder from the airship controls. Her voice had a strange strain in it that instantly made me uneasy.

  Nelson looked at me as if she had heard the same strange intonation. Something was wrong.

  “Guess that’s us,” Gabby said, looking over to Nelson.

  Gabby and Nelson walked to the front of the airship with a few other techs who had been milling around the cabin. But Nathan wasn’t with them.

  I followed the tech teams to the front.

  “Check the new flight path,” Alexy barked as the techs walked up. “We need an active stealth team and a flight coordinates team.”

  New flight path?

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  Alexy’s jaw was set tightly. She stared straight ahead as she spoke. “Brightbirch. Another Little John base,” she replied.

  I stared at her in shock. Why weren’t we going to Edgewood? Why were we being redirected to another base that we had never been to before? And what about Juno? She needed medical attention immediately.

  “Why?” I asked simply.

  “Nathan’s orders,” Alexy responded in a flat and short tone.

  Nelson and Gabby looked as confused as I felt, but they quickly set to work on their respective duties.

  “Alexy, what is going on?” I probed further. I was tired of being given the runaround when it came to answers. I wanted to know what was happening now.

  “You need to ask Nathan that,” she said.

  I stared at her. She looked anxious and afraid. I was frustrated with her answers, but I wasn’t going to waste any more time waiting for a response.

  I turned quickly to find Nathan. I couldn’t see him in the main cabin, which meant he was probably in a separate room at the back of the ship. I walked confidently back to find him. We deserved answers for our sudden change in plan.

  “What’s happening?” Jace asked as I walked past him.

  “I need to find Nathan,” I replied.

  Jace followed me to the back of the cabin, but I didn’t pause to wait for him. When I found Nathan, he was sitting inside what looked like a makeshift office. There was a small desk and chair in the room, as well as several monitors showing surveillance activity around the ship. There was a radar system beeping incessantly in the corner, and there were papers spread over the desk. But the most frightening sight was Nathan himself. He was sitting in the desk chair with his head in his hands in a pose of total despondency. Jace and I shared a look of confusion and fear.

  “Nathan,” I began.

  He didn’t look up. He didn’t move.

  “Nathan, why are we going to Brightbirch?” I asked.

  Jace stood directly beside me as we both stared at the man in front of us. There was an awful atmosphere of fear and tension in the room. Something was very wrong.

  “Because we can’t go to Edgewood,” Nathan said quietly. The tone of his voice sent a chill up my spine.

  “Why?” I asked, almost afraid to know the answer.

  “Because there is no E
dgewood anymore,” came Nathan’s response. “Corona called during the evacuation. She escaped, but many did not.”

  I tried to steady myself on my feet. My mind raced through the people we had left back in Edgewood. What about Rhea? And Gabby’s family? And Denver and Alf?

  “How?” Jace asked. “What about the projection?”

  Nathan raised his head to look at us. A dark shadow seemed to pass his face before he continued.

  “Someone deactivated the projection from inside Edgewood,” Nathan said. “Someone betrayed us from within. And the government was waiting.”

  * * *

  Ready for the final book of Robin and Jace’s story?

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for reading Ghost Towns. I hope you’re feeling ready for the final installment!

  Book 6 — Zero Hour — is the grand finale of the series, and it releases March 7th, 2019.

  I’m going to do my very best to make it worth the wait!

  Pre-order your copy now for convenience and have it delivered automatically to your reading device on release day:

  For the US store, tap here.

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  Australia: tap here.

  For any other country: tap here.

  I’ll see you there…

  Love,

  Bella x

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  Read More by Bella Forrest

  THE CHILD THIEF

  The Child Thief (Book 1)

  Deep Shadows (Book 2)

  Thin Lines (Book 3)

  Little Lies (Book 4)