It was like the light had a mind of its own, like the pebble was thinking about how much it wanted to show us.
Can we trust it? I wondered, oddly.
But when you’ve barely escaped a dark prison cell and you have only one light—and when you’ve just been purposely plunged into despair and hopelessness—that light is going to be unbearably precious, whether you trust it or not.
I cradled the pebble even more carefully in my cupped hands.
“I wish we had the Internet to look up how it works,” I said wistfully.
“Do you think there was any information about this planet or its pebbles on the Internet we had back on Earth?” Edwy asked. “Or the Internet that Rosi and I had back in Fredtown?”
“The Freds wouldn’t have wanted us to know about any place where children were kept in a prison like this,” Rosi said, so softly that the words came out almost as a whimper. “Without even a trial, without getting to say good-bye to their family and friends . . .”
I could tell she was thinking about Bobo, Cana, and Zeba again.
“Do you think the Freds even know about this planet?” Edwy asked. “Or this prison? Do people back on Earth know?” He turned to me. “Do you remember seeing anything about Enforcer prison planets online before . . . well, before we were on one?”
“No, but, Edwy, I couldn’t have ever seen everything that was on the Internet,” I protested. “There was too much information for that. Even in an entire lifetime . . .”
“But you knew all about the Freds,” he said stubbornly.
Because I hated them, I wanted to tell him. I read about them when I wanted to feel bitter and depressed. Because I always thought they’d ruined my life by not taking me to a Fredtown too.
“I never thought any other aliens besides Freds would ever come to Earth,” I admitted. “And . . . nobody ever wanted to talk about the other species out in the universe. It was too painful. Too much of a reminder, maybe, that humans are so much weaker, by comparison.”
Did he know how almost all the discussion of alien life had taken place in secret, out of the public eye? Did he know how people had talked, before he and Rosi and the other kids from the Fredtowns all came back? People had whispered constantly, How do we even know that those Freds aren’t keeping our children as slaves? How do we know that they’re not doing terrible things to our babies? How do we know that they aren’t bashing them in the heads as newborns . . . and all our children are dead?
I’d seen the horrible websites with their hateful rumors, their doctored pictures, their blatant lies. If I’d lived with parents who’d loved and protected me—or even nannies who’d cared—I never would have been allowed to see such things.
Of course Edwy didn’t know any of that. Pretty much everything he’d learned about Earth and Earth’s people—and reality—he’d learned from Enu and me.
“Why are we talking about any of this?” Enu asked grumpily. “Who cares how some stupid light works, when we’re trapped in a prison? Who cares about what was or wasn’t online, when we’re never going to see any of it again? When there’s not another door anywhere, and this hallway has nothing but one empty cage after another. . . .”
Maybe he was still carrying around the despair from the stairs.
“Are they all empty?” Edwy asked. “What about that one?”
He pointed toward a prison cell at the far end of the light’s reach. I saw a flash of mossy green and brown on the floor of that cell, as if someone had left a blanket or a towel behind. Or just a rag. But something about that barely visible scrap seemed familiar, as if I ought to recognize it. As if I would recognize it, if it weren’t so out of place on this alien planet, in this alien prison.
“Is that—?” Rosi suddenly gasped behind me. Then, even though she’d been raised by ridiculously polite Freds, she elbowed Edwy, Enu, and me out of the way and dashed ahead of us all.
“Cana!” Rosi cried. “Cana! Is that you? Are you all right? Where are Bobo and Zeba?”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
It was indeed Cana.
Enu, Edwy, and I ran after Rosi, all of us calling out questions: “What happened?” “How did you get here?” “How did the Enforcers find you?”
Cana didn’t move.
My heart began to beat faster—much faster than it should have, just from running down a hall.
Rosi reached the section of bars surrounding Cana’s prison cell, and those bars had the same kind of gap our prison cell had had. Rosi darted inside, crouched down, and scooped Cana into her arms. Edwy and I followed.
Enu stayed outside the prison cell, nervously bouncing back and forth on the balls of his feet.
“Shh,” he called, glancing nervously over his shoulder. “Do you have to be so loud? You’re going to wake up all the guards! If there are lots of guards . . .”
Cana groggily wrapped her arms around Rosi, then widened the embrace to include Edwy and me.
“This is the best dream . . . ,” she murmured. “I knew someone nice would find me. . . . What happened before—that was only a nightmare, right?”
What had happened to her since we left her in the Emporium of Food storeroom?
Cana kept blinking, her thick eyelashes brushing her round, childish cheeks. She balled her hands into a fist and rubbed her eyes the way a baby or a toddler would.
She had tear tracks on her face.
“Cana, you’re awake,” Rosi said gently. “This isn’t a dream. And however you ended up here alone, it probably felt like a nightmare. But . . . it was real. Is Bobo . . . Did he . . .”
Now that she was face-to-face with Cana, Rosi seemed almost afraid to ask about her brother.
Doesn’t she even notice that Cana is wincing at every word Rosi says?
“Don’t worry. You’re with us now, so everything’s okay,” I said. My voice came out sounding too hearty. It was like how my parents had talked to Enu and me over the computer when we were little. When I was young and innocent enough to believe their promises and lies.
“Did Zeba and Bobo come here with you?” Edwy asked.
“They stayed in that food place,” Cana said. “They were asleep. I saw everyone else leave, and I just wanted to see . . . And then there was a light. . . . And . . . I ended up here. I’m here. Are you here?”
Cana didn’t sound like herself.
How do you know what she sounds like normally? I chided myself. You didn’t even spend a full day with her. And we were running away from Enforcers practically the whole time.
But even when we ran around like rats in a maze in the basement of the Emporium of Food, Cana was the one to take my hand, which calmed me down. Cana was the one who noticed the STOREROOM sign first.
I didn’t exactly have a lot of experience hanging out with five-year-olds, but she’d seemed old for her age; she’d seemed a lot older and more mature than Bobo.
Now she sounded like she was younger than five.
How long had she been alone? Had she started to wonder if she would ever see any of her friends again?
In my mind I could see Enu and me when we were little. The image was as grim as what the Enforcers had shown me on the stairs, but I was the one calling up this memory. One of the places we’d lived had had dark shadows that crawled across the walls every night; that was one of the periods when we’d had a particularly mean nanny. It was hard to remember now, but back then Enu and I had fallen asleep every night holding hands. We’d whispered to each other, Don’t look! Keep your eyes shut! There’s nothing there! Really, there isn’t!
We truly had watched out for each other, back then. But what if I hadn’t had Enu? What if I’d faced those shadows and that mean nanny alone?
Even with Enu around, I’d cried a lot back then.
Maybe that had all happened when I was five.
I lifted Cana from the floor, pulling her away from Rosi and Edwy.
“We’ll get you out of here,” I promised.
“Good luck with that,”
Enu said sarcastically.
I turned: While the rest of us had run into Cana’s prison cell, he’d run past it, and past the next two empty cells too. I hadn’t noticed, because I’d been so focused on Cana, but Enu had found another door. This one was right in the middle of the hallway, not at the top of any stairs. So it was doubtful that it led up to the planet’s surface. Still, Enu was tugging on the door handle. Then he kicked it and beat his fists against the smooth surface. His muscles bulged and the veins in his neck stood out with the exertion.
The door didn’t budge.
“Weren’t you just telling us to be quiet?” I asked him. Still holding on to Cana, I stepped toward the gap in the bars of her cage. Instantly the gap slid closed before me, and Cana let out a whimper.
“I’ll help you get out,” Edwy said. “Then you can pick the lock for Enu.”
He moved toward the new gap that had opened up. The bars slid toward him, and that let me step out.
“It’s not going to do any good,” Enu grumbled. “Nobody could pick this lock. There isn’t a lock.”
“I can take care of it,” I said with confidence I didn’t actually feel.
But when I stepped up to the door, I saw that he was right. The doorknob was smooth and solid and seemingly all one piece with the door. I couldn’t even see how it might turn, let alone how to pick it.
I felt like the walls were closing in on me.
“We are completely and utterly trapped,” Enu said, and the hopelessness in his voice was as thick and overwhelming as anything I’d felt on the stairs, under the Enforcers’ control. “There’s no way out.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
We might have stood there all night, staring hopelessly at an unmovable door, if Cana hadn’t started crying again. This roused Rosi and Edwy, who huddled around her and began patting her arms and head and murmuring, “There, there. It’s okay.”
“We have to do something,” Rosi whispered. “Little children need to know that they are loved. That they’ll be protected and kept safe. When . . . when they’re going through bad times, they need to know that there are grown-ups they can count on. Or . . .” She glanced back and forth between Edwy, Enu, and me. “At least older kids who know how to take care of them.”
I didn’t know how to take care of Cana. I didn’t know how to take care of anyone. Enu had sweat running down his face in a totally different way from when he came back from playing basketball. I was pretty sure that if I touched his forehead, it would be cold and clammy—like he was so panicked it had made him sick. Edwy was biting his lip so hard it had begun to bleed a little, and his eyes were too large and terrified. Maybe his face had shrunk. He already looked like a smaller version of Enu, so that made it doubly painful to gaze at him. His distraught face made me worry about both my brothers.
Even Rosi, who was composed enough to put actual sentences together, looked awful. Her dress was ripped and sagged off one shoulder. Her hair stuck out as if it’d been snagged. Her eyes were just as round and dazed as Edwy’s.
“Are you crying because you’re scared?” Rosi asked Cana. Her voice was so gentle it made me feel a little comforted. “We won’t let anyone hurt you.”
“You can’t promise that!” Enu protested. “You don’t know anything about what’s going to happen! When the Enforcers take over our bodies, and we don’t have any choice what we do, then—”
Rosi shot him a surprisingly firm glare.
“Shut up, Enu,” I said.
“Maybe we’ll feel better if we just all go to sleep,” Edwy said.
“You go to sleep, and everything looks better in the morning,” Cana chirped through her tears.
“That’s right,” Rosi said.
All three of them looked more cheerful already, as if the words they’d spoken had been more than words—a balm, maybe, a salve, a good-luck talisman. This kind of thing had annoyed me back at the Emporium of Food, but here . . .
Maybe I wanted to believe in their good-luck talismans now too.
“No, that’s stupid,” Enu said. “We go to sleep, we wake up, the Enforcers take over our bodies again. We’re back to square one.”
“But we’ll be well rested,” Rosi said firmly. “Our brains will work better. And we’ll have another day to figure things out. We can search for an exit again tomorrow night, when we’re fresher.”
“When our pebble light probably won’t work anymore,” Enu scoffed. “Or the Enforcers have taken it away from us. Or . . .” I could practically see Enu’s brain working, trying to come up more reasons to mock Rosi.
“Rosi and Cana and I are going to sleep,” Edwy said, and even though his voice squeaked a little, he sounded more grown-up than Enu. “You and Kiandra can do whatever you want.”
If I’d said something like that, it would have come out like a taunt, and it would have been clear that I was really saying, I think you’re making a stupid choice, but whatever! Go ahead and ruin your life—I don’t care! But Edwy made his words sound like . . . kindness. Acknowledging that we all had free choice.
“We only have one light,” Enu said.
“We don’t need a light to sleep,” Rosi said.
She lifted Cana from my arms, and it was weird how bereft that made me feel—as if I was holding on to Cana to comfort myself, even more than I was comforting her.
“Maybe I want to sleep too,” I said. I swayed with exhaustion. “Maybe the little kids are right. Maybe it’ll help.”
Enu narrowed his eyes at me, as if we were supposed to be on the same team and I’d just betrayed him.
“Fine,” he practically spat. “Give up. But you should all go back to the same prison cells we were in before, so the Enforcers don’t know we figured out how to get out. The four of us should go back to our cage, and that girl”—he pointed at Cana—“should go back to hers.”
Cana’s chin quivered, as if she was barely holding back sobs. I thought again about Enu and me holding hands in our own childhood, warding off shadows and nightmares together.
“We are not doing that to Cana,” I told Enu. “If there are consequences . . . I’ll pay them.”
I waited for Enu to protest again. This was another promise I couldn’t be sure of keeping. It just sounded good. It just felt good.
Apparently, I liked trying to be a hero.
Enu kept glaring at me. It felt like anything could happen. He might beat me up, just to let off steam. He might start screaming and screaming and screaming, letting out the fury and fear the Enforcers had poured into him after his five runs up the stairs.
Or he just might give up.
Enu’s shoulders slumped.
“It’s not like any of this matters,” he said, shrugging. “It’s not like we have any control over anything.”
Somehow that felt like the worst response he could have chosen.
We went back to our original cage, carrying Cana with us. She was asleep before we’d even taken two steps. I thought I would fall asleep just as rapidly, once we all lay down on the floor of our prison cell and I hid the pebble light so it was totally dark again. I was beyond exhausted; my body had done hard physical labor all day long. But I lay there wide awake for what felt like hours after all the others slipped into the slower breathing of sleep. At first it felt good that we were all huddled together. But then Edwy began to twitch, probably from a nightmare. Rosi moaned and called out plaintively in her sleep: “Bobo! Bobo . . .” Cana’s hand on my shoulder and even Enu’s forehead pressed against my hair felt like responsibilities, like goading reminders: You can’t blame Enu for breaking that TV back at the Emporium of Food. It’s not actually his fault we’re here. You’re the one who led him up the stairs. You’re the one who had to go find out what was happening, instead of staying safe and secure. . . . You’re the one who needs to get us all out of here. . . .
I felt for the pebble in my shorts pocket, where I’d tucked it so the light wouldn’t show. That was a responsibility too. We had to keep it hidden from the E
nforcers—we had to keep it, period.
But the way I was lying, it could easily roll out. I closed my hand around the pebble, holding it tight. I knew from holding hands with Enu when I was little that I was capable of holding on all night long, even in my sleep.
Apparently my brain was too tired to think clearly. Because in the morning when I woke up, I was still holding on to the pebble—but that wasn’t a good thing. No alarm sounded this time; when I opened my eyes, it was because the Enforcers had taken control of my body again. They made me open my eyes, even though there was no light around to see with; they made me spring up and move robotically toward the feeding trough at the back of the prison cell.
I could still feel the pebble nestled in my clenched hands. Could the Enforcers tell it was there too?
What would they make me do with it?
What would they do to me for having it?
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
My face plunged into the feeding trough, my chin hitting the same slimy gruel I’d eaten the day before. I tried to remember: Yesterday morning, had the Enforcers made me lift my hands to hold on to the side of the trough? If they made me do that today, would I drop the pebble onto the floor—or into the gruel?
If it landed in the gruel, would the Enforcers make me eat it?
I almost gagged just thinking about it. But the Enforcers didn’t even let me do that. My face stayed immersed in the gruel; my mouth kept gobbling it down.
At least my hands didn’t swing up to hold on to the feeding trough.
But I will have to open my hand once I’m outside and holding on to the shovel. If I’m still holding the pebble then, I’ll lose it. I won’t have any light to see by down here again, unless one of us manages to smuggle in another one.
The thought of losing the pebble and its light made me want to scream. It made me want to throw myself to the floor and flail my arms about in the biggest tantrum ever.
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