Grounded

by G. P. Ching

  I shake my head.

  “Don’t bother denying it, honey. I’m going to help you, but then you’re going to help me.” A blinking light on her console makes her brows knit. “We’re slowing down. There’s a roadblock. They’re checking for you two.” She frowns at me. “Get into the pottery crate. Him too. Let’s hope it’s standard procedure.”

  Mounted to the wall of the van is a coffin-like box. I open the lid and see a large misshaped pot inside.

  “Just place it on the floor. I can’t sell it anyway.”

  I remove it and work the boy’s dead weight over the edge of the crate. Arm. Leg. Roll. The thin material of his pajama-like tunic leaves nothing to the imagination. I try not to think too much about what I’m doing as I climb in on top of him. I’m thankful that the crate is long enough that I can straighten my legs, but the narrow width means the boy’s shoulders don’t lie flat. I have to curl my arms awkwardly against his chest and tuck my face into the crook of his neck to get the lid closed. He smells of blood, sweat, and something else. Burning—smoky, like a campfire. It is the closest I’ve ever been to a boy, even Jeremiah. I don’t even know his name.

  The van stops. Several minutes pass, and then the vehicle creeps forward for a few bumpy seconds before stopping again. The boy groans softly into my ear.

  “Shhhhh.” I tip my ear toward the lid of the crate.

  Under me, the boy seems to figure out our situation and runs his fingers silently over the lid before settling his hand on my shoulder. I can’t fault him for it. There isn’t room for him to put it anywhere else.

  “Good evening, ma’am. Have you seen this boy or this girl?” a man’s voice says. I can feel the night air seep through where the boards of the crate connect. Paper rustles.

  “No, sir,” Helen says. “What’ve they done anyway?”

  “Scampers. If you see them, call this number immediately.” Another rustle of paper. “Don’t try to handle it yourself. They are very dangerous.”

  “Dangerous? How so? Since when are scampers dangerous?”

  There is another rustle of paper. “I just relay the information, ma’am. Carry on.”

  The van begins to move again. The boy turns his face into my hair and inhales. Is he smelling me? He sighs into my ear.

  “You can come out now,” Helen says. “We’re back on the grid.”

  I press my hand against the wood and flip open the crate. In a series of uncomfortable movements, I lift myself, trying hard not to land an elbow or knee in the wrong place on the boy. I roll over the side and onto the floor of the van. He groans. I help to pull him up to a seated position. Wincing, he makes the effort to climb out, then eyes Helen suspiciously.

  “Glad you could join us. Care to share your name with your rescuer?” Helen asks.

  The boy crouches behind her, hooking his fingers into the grate. “My name is my business.”

  “You might as well be friendly. We have the same enemy, after all. I’m a potter from Badlands Province and unfortunately, CGEF is overcharging us for power. Some kind of political mumbo jumbo. I don’t give a crap. Between running my potter’s wheel and making deliveries, I’m barely getting by.” She shakes her curly head. “Factories in Central Province can pump these things out for half the cost. I need your help. I help you, you help me.”

  “For how long?” the boy asks.

  “For as long as I need you.”

  My stomach twists. I’d thought Helen was helping us. I’d been naive. This is what Jacob had meant about the English world. The people here act like electricity is as valuable as their own blood. Helen isn’t trying to save us; she’s trying to steal us.

  The boy leans his forehead against the grate, frowning toward the floor.

  Helen reaches for the dashboard. “We’ll be in Badlands in fifteen minutes.” She keys something into the blinking panel.

  Working his fingers through the squares in the grate, the boy attempts to reach for the back of Helen’s head while she’s hunched over the dashboard. The palm of his hand is too wide to fit through the hole. The grate is built for industrial purposes, to keep the cargo in the back from hitting the driver. It’s not that the squares are so small; his hands are just large. For that matter, he is large. Despite being utterly wasted by whatever they did to him at CGEF, his broad shoulders and tall stature are undeniable. He raises an eyebrow in my direction, eyeing my much-smaller hands.

  I think I understand. While the van is snapped to the grid, it drives itself. This may be our only chance to get free. If we can incapacitate her, it might be possible for us to safely gain control of the vehicle and escape.

  I work my hand through a square while Helen is distracted with the dashboard. He must want me to grab her by the neck while he disables the vehicle in some way. I can’t ask without revealing the plan so I just do it. Before I can reach her, she removes her hand from the keypad, and the boy thrusts my arm into her head by my elbow. The blue juice I’d sensed in the elevator stretches like stringy taffy up my arm to my fingers and into the old woman.

  Her body twitches and falls to the floor.

  “What have you done?” I yell. “Is she dead?” My heart pounds and my breath rattles. I’ve never hurt anyone before, not by my own hand. The thought of killing someone wrings my throat.

  “She’s not dead, just knocked out. But we have to get up front before the vehicle leaves the grid. Help me pull off the grate.”

  “Help you? How can I h-help you? You’re the scamper. I’ve never done anything like this.” My voice breaks with panic. I stare at my hand, clenching and opening it like it was only recently attached to my body. The events of the day catch up with me all at once, and I completely lose my composure, shaking violently.

  The boy narrows his eyes at me. “You’re denying that you’re a scamper now? After the elevator? I pulled electricity from your body.”

  “But I’m not. It’s just something that’s in me, like a miracle.” Tears rain down my cheeks. “Everyone here thinks I’ve broken the law, but it just happened.” I slap the floor out of frustration.

  The boy snatches my hand and wraps his fingers around my palm. The energy drains from my body. I fold forward, too exhausted to hold myself up. A purple bruise has formed between my thumb and pointer finger. With my cheek pressed into the prickly carpet, I watch the bloody pink center widen into a sore.

  Using the power he’s taken from me, he melts the bolts and then yanks the grate off the frame, maneuvering it behind us. Only then does the boy notice my state of exhaustion. He lifts my hand and stares at the sore in disbelief.

  “Who the hell are you?” he asks breathlessly.

  All I can produce is a whimper.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he says. “It really is part of you.” He gathers me into his lap. The light in the van keeps blinking in and out. Or is that my vision? I can’t hold my head up. It lolls to the side, and I slump like a ragdoll, helpless, against his chest.

  He pushes the hair out of my face. “I’ll take care of you. Don’t fall asleep yet. I know you’re drained. I’m drained too. We’ve got to find someplace safe first.” He slides us over to the driver’s seat. Punching a sequence into the dash, he redirects the van. I drift in and out of consciousness until the van slows and he grabs the control stick. We veer onto a ramp.

  On the side of a deserted road near an underpass, he parks. Carrying me, he abandons Helen and limps across the dark highway. I have no idea what time it is but the full moon is the only light. Eventually, he lowers me to my feet. “Just a little farther,” he says. We hobble the considerable distance to a narrow hallway beneath the bridge, where an orange door is the only break in the concrete.

  The boy touches the knob, and I feel what’s left of my strength flow from the place where he holds my waist. The mechanism clicks, and he shuffles us into a small storage area. He collapses to the floor with me in his arms. The door slams shut behind us from its own weight; the room plunges into darkness.

&n
bsp; “Get some rest,” he says.

  I don’t have the strength to argue. Curled into his chest, I give myself over to sleep.

  7

  Squares of light filter down from above. I blink, allowing my sleepy vision to adjust and memories of the night before to come back to me like a forgotten nightmare.

  “Good morning,” the boy murmurs. His voice is deep and smooth with a hint of trouble to it. A voice with secrets.

  I push myself up from the concrete. The grate above us casts enough light for me to see him clearly. Surrounded by orange traffic cones and road signs, hazel eyes peer at me from under too-long black hair. The ashen tone and blue lips are gone. His skin is naturally olive, although still pale. His cheeks are gaunt, and the sores on his arms are crusted over in the early stages of healing. They look a bit like the sore on my hand.

  Despite his wrecked appearance, I am comforted by his presence and my mind wanders to the night before, when I was stretched out on top of him in the van’s storage crate. His breath against my ear. The weight of his hand on my shoulder. I cast the image aside, annoyed at my misaligned reflection.

  “Who are you?” I hug my knees to my chest. “Why were they keeping you in that place?”

  “I should ask you the same thing,” he says. His eyes bore into mine, like he’s trying to read something off the back of my skull. “I’ll go first. I’m Korwin, and obviously I’m an electrokinetic, just like you.”

  “Electrokinetic?”

  “Well, you said you weren’t a scamper. Were you lying? Are you using some new technology?”

  “No. I’m not a scamper. I’m not… from here. I don’t even know what electrokinetic means.” Uncomfortable under his intense stare, I squirm and shift my gaze toward the floor.

  “Huh. I doubt that very much, but I’ll play.” He frowns. “An electrokinetic is a person who can do what we did last night. I prefer the slang term ‘Spark.’ A Spark can create, absorb, store, and transmit electricity… in his or her cells. No device required.” He wiggles his fingers in the air.

  “People here are born like this?” I look down at my hands, remembering how the electricity flowed in and out of me. “Did I catch it?”

  He tilts his head, his eyes squinting in my direction. “No, sweetheart. We’re made like this. Sparks are made, not born.”

  “Made? I wasn’t made!”

  “You said your name was...?”

  “Lydia.”

  “Lydia, where exactly are you from?”

  I don’t answer.

  “I don’t blame you for being tight-lipped. It’s amazing you’ve stayed hidden this long. But you don’t have to be on guard with me. I’m a Spark, and so are you. Scampers don’t get electro-scurvy.”

  I blink at the sore on my hand and then slowly shake my head. “I know this is confusing for you, Korwin, but I’m not what you think I am. My power was a gift from God so that I could save you and myself. Now that the purpose is served, I’m sure it will go away.”

  One side of Korwin’s mouth peels back from his teeth, and he looks at me like I’m insane. “I think after all we’ve been through together, we should be honest with each other.”

  “I agree.”

  “The doctor who chased after you at CGEF, that was Dr. Konrad, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what do you know about Dr. Konrad?”

  “Nothing. I met him yesterday. He thought I had scamping equipment inside my body.”

  Korwin runs a hand through his mop of hair. “Twenty years ago, Dr. Konrad led a secret government-funded study in biotechnology at Crater City University. The Alpha Eight, four men and four women, were injected with a retrovirus designed to make them electrokinetic. Konrad’s sponsor, Senator Pierce, thought the technology would boost his political career. But the study ended in disaster.”

  I lean forward on my knees. “What happened to them?”

  “Their bodies became unstable.” He held out his arms. “Uncontrollable scurvy. They went insane and eventually died. But there was a pregnancy, and the baby had none of the problems of the first generation.”

  My head begins to ache. “What happened to the baby?”

  “He’s sitting in front of you.”

  I swallow the lump in my throat and press my fingers into my lips.

  “See, up until now, I thought I was the only surviving child, but now I wonder. It begs the question… so, again, I ask you, who are you and where are you from?”

  The ground shifts beneath me. My stomach lurches like I’ve jumped from the haymow. I hold my head. “My name is Lydia Lane. I grew up in Willow’s Province.” The lie rolls clumsily off my tongue.

  He squeezes his eyes shut and leans his head back against the concrete wall. “Willow’s Province? How is it possible we never found you?”

  “You don’t understand. I never had any power. It just happened yesterday.”

  Korwin turns a quizzical eye on me. “And you grew up in Willow’s Province?”

  The lie burns in my throat. I can’t stand it. Korwin saved me. If I don’t tell the truth, it’s going to eat me up inside. “No,” I say so softly, I wonder if he hears me.

  He crawls forward and places a hand on mine. “I won’t hurt you. You can trust me.”

  Warmth from his palm infuses the back of my hand. I’m temporarily bemused by the way the olive tone of his skin contrasts sharply against my milky complexion. There’s something about him; I’m completely drawn in. I can’t pretend anymore. “I’m from the Amish preservation,” I say. My voice quivers. “This is my first time to Crater City. I know I didn’t come from the same place as you. I know my father. I grew up behind the wall.”

  Seconds pass as he scrutinizes my face. He laughs. “You’re joking.”

  Out of habit, I lower my eyes but then force myself to meet his gaze again. I shake my head only once.

  He winces as if I’ve played him for a fool. But the longer we stare at each other, my face carefully impassive, the lines of hard skepticism in his expression soften to mild suspicion. “No.” He snorts.

  “Yes.” I put as much conviction in my voice as possible. The drama of yesterday comes back to me and I shake visibly.

  His eyes grow wide. “Holy crap, you’re serious!” He scoots away from me. “You’re an unvaccinated, animal-eating Amish? For real?” He says “unvaccinated” like it’s a curse.

  I flinch, insulted, but nod.

  “How did you get over the wall? It can’t be true. How in the world could you get all the way out here? How could you be like me?”

  “We occasionally visit in secret. Nothing like this has ever happened before to any of my community. Honestly, like I said, I think God gave me this power to save us. I think this is a miracle.”

  He snorts derisively. “A miracle?”

  “Yes. From God. I’ve never had such crazy things happen to me. It must have been divine providence that sent me to you, to help save you.”

  He scoffs. “Wow.” For a long moment, he stares at me, the silence growing awkwardly between us. When I think I can’t stand it any longer, he rises and extends a hand toward me. “Well, come on, my miracle. I’m hungry, and we still have to find a way home.”

  “Yes. I’m staying at fifty-four Lakehurst. Can you take me there?” I accept his hand and allow him to pull me up.

  “Lydia…” He looks at me with pity. “You can’t go back there. As of yesterday, you’re wanted by the Green Republic. You broke out of CGEF and aided and abetted a criminal.” He taps a finger on his chest. “If you go back, they’ll just arrest you again.”

  “You don’t understand. I have to go back. I have friends who are worried about me. People waiting for me. I have to get home,” I say.

  Korwin holds up one hand. “Where I come from, people are used to keeping secrets. My father will know how to help you, but you need to come with me. I can guarantee the Greens will be keeping close tabs on your friends. It’s not safe for you to go there.”

&nb
sp; I know he’s right, I just never thought of it. Fifty-four Lakehurst is where Officer Reynolds found me and most certainly will be the first place CGEF looks for me. I don’t have a choice. I need to trust Korwin. “Okay,” I say.

  He turns away and plants his ear against the door. Cautiously he cracks it and extends his head into the passageway. Stepping out, he motions with his hand for me to follow. We seem to be in an area meant for road service workers. It borders an underpass, but there is no traffic, at least not at the moment. Korwin moves fast, and I have to jog to keep up with his long strides. His head is down, his gaze sweeping over the concrete.

  My stomach growls. I fold my arms across it, hoping the noise isn’t as loud outside as in.

  “Here,” he whispers, advancing toward a round grate in the pavement. “I’m sorry to have to do this to you. I’d try hitchhiking but…”

  “We don’t need another Helen,” I say.

  “We’ll have to go through the sewer.”

  I nod. I have no idea what exactly I’m agreeing to.

  He reaches down and flips a metal bar up from the circle, then cranks it, turning the section in the concrete. Eventually the round grate pops out, exposing a hole in the pavement. A foul odor permeates the hallway, and I cover my nose and mouth with my sleeve.

  “I wish there was another way,” he says.

  I straighten my back and approach the hole. “Let’s be thankful that there’s a way at all.” Positioning my foot on the ladder within the hole, I climb down into the sickening odor.

  Korwin follows, closing the cover over us as we descend. “You’re brave,” he says from above me.

  “No. It’s prideful to turn down the gift of freedom just because it’s disguised as a sewer. It’s the same reason I eat eggs, even though they come out of a chicken’s butt.” I laugh, reaching the last rung and stepping into a gigantic pipe. I have to balance on the raised edge to stay out of the sludge that flows in front of my toes. Only a trickle of light reaches us. The tunnel is a nest of shadows and foreign shapes that leave me twitchy.

  “You’ve convinced me.” He positions himself on the ridge next to me.