By the time I reached Brook Meadow, I saw the world through resentment-skewed lenses. The flashy building and the new tech made available to every student simply reminded me that life, as I knew it, was malignant. On the surface, I was prodded to join Unity, but on the inside, I wanted to join. Time and distance would be the scalpel that finally separated me from my life.
And now, three weeks later, despite the tumorous sixteen-year-old growth still fresh in my mind, I find myself appreciating beauty.
Blue water stretches to the horizon, where lines of white clouds slip through the sky. Gentle waves roll against the reshaped beach, commingling with lines of soil pulled out by the retreating waves. The contrast of white, blue, tan and brown is captivating. Even the salty scent of the water contains a kind of beauty. The concept of a beautiful smell had never once occurred to me before. It draws a laugh from me.
And then a frown.
I’m drugged, I realize, trying to sit up and failing. The pain that wracked my body has faded, but it’s been replaced by numbness.
I’m not feeling anything.
My head lolls to the side as I take a look around. To my right is all beach, bending away. It’s littered with bits of jungle. So is the water. I’m supported by a lounge chair of go-packs. Above me is a fluttering stretch of plastic, held up by two branches. It’s blocking the sun.
I turn left and flinch backward when I come face-to-face with Daniel.
“I think you gave her too much,” he says.
Gwen sits up behind him, looking me over. “She needed to rest.”
Gizmo approaches; each step through the sand is labored. He drops to his knees beside me and holds up a water bottle. “Your body and mind can’t recover if you’re not hydrated.”
I understand now that this is a Base’s way of saying, ‘You’ll feel better if you have a drink.’
I take the offered bottle, unscrew the cap and chug the contents in four gulps, squeezing the water out the way Howard used to do beer from cans. When I’m done, I find three shocked faces staring back at me.
My voice sounds like a frog’s croak. “What?”
“There were four bottles of water in the go-packs we recovered,” Daniel says. “Now there are three.”
“We need to ration what we have,” Gwen says.
“Or,” I say, “We find more.” I try to push myself up again, but only make it a few inches. “What did you give me?”
“Morphine,” Gwen says. “Immune boosters. Electrolytes. The works. The painkillers will wear off in an hour. I wouldn’t move until then or you risk injuring yourself further. You’re okay, by the way. No broken bones. No internal injuries. There are five stitches in your forehead.”
I touch my head and feel the prickly ends of the wire sticking out of my skin. “Thanks.”
“Wasn’t me,” Gwen says.
I’m surprised to see Gizmo smiling, his teeth brilliant white. “I like to fix things.”
“But...your nickname. I assumed electronics were your thing.”
“People and machines aren’t that different,” he says. “Moving parts. Electrical impulses. Wires. Cables.”
Daniel moves away, looking paler. “Ugh. If you can handle the blood. Computers don’t bleed.”
“You play violent video games,” Gizmo says to Daniel, a smile on his face. Of all of us, he seems to be the most resilient, like this is...fun.
Isn’t it fun? I ask myself, horrified by the idea.
Aren’t you enjoying this?
Don’t you feel alive?
It’s the morphine, I decide, and I push the offensive questions from my mind. People died last night. Kids. I almost died last night.
But you didn’t.
You survived.
You found friends.
“The blood in video games doesn’t smell like dirty pennies,” Daniel says. “If it did, I wouldn’t play them.”
Looking past Daniel and Gwen, I see a pair of small booted feet. “Is that Mandi?”
The joking boys lose their smiles. Gwen looks over her left shoulder, and then back to me. She gives a straight-faced nod.
“Is she...”
“In a coma,” Gwen says. “I think. She’s breathing, but that’s about it. Without a way to get fluids or nutrients in her, she’s not going to last more than a couple of days.”
“We won’t be here a couple of days,” I say.
The three stony faces staring back at me sour my stomach.
“They’ll know we crashed.”
“We can’t assume that,” Gwen says. “We need to prepare for the worst.”
I don’t want to ask, but I do. “Which is?”
“The size of the wave that struck the island last night, the time it took to arrive after the impact and the fact that we could see the impact’s glow over the horizon, all suggest that it originated perhaps six miles away. This island is volcanic. We’re basically sitting on top of a mountain. So when the wave approached, it didn’t rise up the slope of a continental plate, it crashed against a wall of stone. But when that wave reached a true coastline, it would have grown. Maybe a hundred feet tall and moving five hundred miles per hour.” Daniel sags under the weight of his own knowledge. “The point is, the Unity carrier was off the coast of San Diego, where the wave has certainly already struck. Even if they were alerted when our transports lost power, which is possible, and even if they discovered that we’d survived the crash—unlikely—there might not be anyone left alive who even knows where we are.”
Gwen brushes sand from her hands. She’s not looking at me, but she’s definitely speaking to me. “Unity taught us to react to every situation like it was a worst case scenario, because it’s the best way of preventing them. But in this case, we can’t prevent what has already occurred. We can only react. But we need to do it smart. And that means we need you to think before you act.”
“I was only there three weeks,” I say.
“I’m not reminding you of something you already learned,” Gwen says. “I’m teaching you something you haven’t.”
My impulse is to argue. To defend my intellect against a girl who is younger than I am. But I long ago accepted that Sig knows more than me. Why not Gwen? I’ve been subjected to more than a few IQ tests over the years, and the ‘superior intelligence’ results have been waggled in my face in response to low grades. But now my 137 IQ is probably the lowest on this island.
“Okay then, teach me,” I say. “Tell me what to do.”
Gwen rolls her eyes and groans. “Teaching you and telling you what to do are different things. If I could confidently decide on a course of action, and take it, I’d be a Point. But I’m not, I’m a Support. Did you even finish testing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you receive any hand-to-hand combat training?” Gizmo asks. The words ‘hand-to-hand combat’ sound funny coming from him, but the implications aren’t funny at all.
“No.”
“Flight simulator?” Gwen asks.
“What? Are you serious?”
“What about psy-controls?” Daniel looks from me to Gwen. “That comes before flight sims, right?”
“I don’t even know what psy-controls are,” I say, feeling suddenly inadequate.
Gwen squints at me. “Three weeks, you said... Why would they group you with us?”
“If they had no other choice,” Daniel guesses and raises his hands to me, placating. “No offense.”
I give my head a slow shake. “I’m as confused as you.”
Silence returns to the beach. I close my eyes. My mind feels dulled by the morphine. Maybe this will all make more sense when it wears off? I doubt it. So I let my thoughts drift. I hear the waves, gentle and soothing. The stiff shaking of plastic in the ocean breeze. And nothing else. No hum of civilization. No signs of life beyond this beach.
Sig.
My eyes snap open. “How long was I out?”
“Six hours,” Gwen says.
“What time i
s it? How long until nightfall?”
Gwen turns her head toward me, eyebrows furrowed. She’s confused by the sudden determination in my voice. “Four in the afternoon.”
Daniel has a slight grin on his face. “This time of year, sunset will come in roughly five hours.”
I push myself up and am consumed by dizziness. I hold still, wait for it to pass and then move again. Getting to my feet feels like it takes the same effort as clinging to that water-propelled palm trunk last night, but I manage it with just a single stumble. Once I’m up, I stretch, take a deep breath and say, “Pick up your gear and Mandi.”
“What?” Gwen says. “Why?”
“We don’t know what caused that wave,” I say. “We don’t know if it will happen again. If we’re treating this like a worst case scenario, the beach isn’t a safe place to be. We need to find shelter in the next five hours.” I point up past the ruined hillside, where the trees were untouched by the wave. “Up there. Tomorrow, we’ll find food and water.”
And Sig.
“There isn’t time to sit around waiting for me to feel good.” I pick up one of the go-packs that I had been leaning against, put it around my shoulders and strike out inland, focusing all 137 points of my IQ on not face-planting in front of everyone.
As the others gather their gear, and Mandi, I hear Daniel whisper, “See, that’s why she’s here,” and I’m glad at least one of us has faith in me.
8
“Why did you dip your hair in orange?” It’s about the tenth question from Gizmo since we struck out from the beach, but it’s the first I bother to answer.
“I like orange.” Probably not the insightful answer he was hoping for.
“I like green,” he says. “But I wouldn’t put it in my hair.”
I step over a fallen palm that’s leaning on a large rock, blocking our path like a security gate. I pause to help Gizmo climb over, lifting his light frame under the armpits. He smiles as I put him down, like we’re out for a casual nature hike. Daniel handles the obstacle on his own, leaping it with his hands on the trunk, whispering a ‘Wha-cha’ sound effect in time with the jump. While I haven’t felt like a kid in a very long time, it’s clear that Daniel and Gizmo are not only young in age, but also at heart. Gwen accepts my hand and moves carefully over the tree. While my balance, and full-body pain, have returned with the morphine’s fading effects, Mandi’s limp form has Gwen in a permanent state of instability. And she refuses to let me take the girl. They were either good friends, or Gwen is over-committed to the Support dogma.
Daniel, in the lead now, says, “People modify their bodies for a variety of reasons. The first was likely spiritual. Circumcision, for instance.”
Gizmo pauses to shake his body and say, “Ugh.”
“Gross,” Gwen says. It’s one of the few things she’s said since we left the beach.
“It’s not like people don’t still do it,” Daniel says. “And there are other reasons. Social. Aesthetic.” He lifts his right hand, showing his Base brand. “Identification. The most recent and soon-to-be prevalent body modification is technological upgrading. And I’m not talking just the 3D-printed replacement organs. Full-on cyborgs. Enhanced physical capabilities.”
“Like ExoFrames inside the body,” Gizmo says.
Daniel thrusts a finger in the air, head down, watching his step. “Exactly.”
“Sign me up,” Gizmo says. “I don’t want to be weak forev—”
“You’re a Base,” Gwen says. “Strength is not a requirement.”
“Maybe I don’t want to be a Base,” Gizmo says, waiting for me to lift him over another fallen trunk. This one is low to the ground, and I think he could easily make it over, but he pauses, lifts his arms slightly and waits for me to hoist him over.
Are we bonding? Is this what bonding feels like? Is he doing it on purpose or is this a natural thing? Survival bonding?
“Body piercing,” Daniel says, unfurling a finger with each word. “Tattoos. Scarification. Subdermal implants. Tongue splitting.”
“Okay,” Gwen says. “Enough. Seriously.”
“That’s not even the grossest stuff,” Daniel says. His voice has become higher, almost bird like. He’s getting a kick out of this. I think he meant to razz me, but he’s satisfied with grossing out Gwen. To his credit, he doesn’t push the subject any further into the obscene. “The point is, people change their bodies for a variety of reasons, but not simply because they like a color. It’s an outward expression of the psyche, or psychosis, depending on the person. Which brings us back to Gizmo’s question, why color your hair orange?”
I sigh. In addition to being smart, another Base trait seems to be persistence. “This is the most I’ve had to talk in years.”
“You’re doing great,” Daniel says with fake exuberance and a smile, turning around and giving his fist a chipper thrust. The move nearly spills him on his butt and gets a laugh from everyone, including me.
“Fine,” I say. “My foster-mother hates it.”
“Is she nice?” Gizmo asks.
“This one is. Most of them weren’t.”
“Oh.” His forehead furrows, but he continues onward and upward. “Why not?”
“I was a way for them to get money.” I take a few steps and realize there’s more to it than that. “And I wasn’t an easy kid.”
“None of us are,” Gwen says and then clarifies, “Unity recruits. Daniel, Sig, even me. We’re different. Most people don’t understand the way we think.”
“But we do,” Daniel says. “It’s why you and Sig became friends. It’s why you like us.”
The argument against this statement comes and goes like a breeze. I do like them. Having friends feels alien, and while I can admit it to myself, I don’t really want to talk about it, or rehash the ping-pong match between foster homes that was my childhood.
So I deflect like a pro. “The orange streak is a warning.”
Daniel looks at me with wide eyes and a half grin. He likes the sound of that.
“It says I’m different. I’m unpredictable. It says I’d rather not knock your lights out, but I will if you mess with me.”
“Like a poison dart frog,” Daniel says. “Other frogs hide. Try to blend in. But the poison dart frogs are brightly colored. They’re easy to spot, but no one messes with them because the color says, ‘Eat me and die.’ So it’s the frogs who try to hide that get eaten.”
I smile. Always an example with this one. “Doesn’t always work out that way, but yeah. That’s the idea.”
Gizmo stops at a log I know for sure he can make it over and lifts his arms. “Cool.”
I lift him up, but stop short of putting him back down. The jungle ahead has caught my attention. We’re nearly at the crest of one of many hills, all rising toward the barren volcanic cone several miles inland. Fifteen feet ahead is a line of destruction, where the flood waters deposited their passengers and slid away. Beyond the piles of debris is the untouched jungle.
I put Gizmo down, looking at the trees.
Gwen stops beside me, sweaty and out of breath. “What is it?”
“Look at the trees,” I say. “The water line ends here, but the trees ahead are thin. You can see the sky through them.”
Daniel hops on top of a large rock, scanning the treeline. “You’re right, but maybe the jungle is thinning because of the elevation?”
“We’re not that high,” Gwen says.
“I still don’t see the problem,” Daniel says.
“It means there’s a clearing,” I say. “And in a jungle like this, that doesn’t happen naturally.”
“Oh,” Daniel says, and then his face brightens up. “Oh!” He leaps down from the rock and charges up the hillside, scrambling over the last few feet of torn up terrain. Then he’s in the trees, bolting into the shadows.
“Daniel! Wait for us.” Gwen shouts after him, but then Gizmo breaks for the trees, too.
“I’ll get him!” the small boy says.
Gwen isn’t as worried as she is annoyed. “Can you stay with them?”
“You sure?” I ask, thinking more about how much it’s going to hurt to chase after them than I am about not leaving Gwen behind.
“I’ll catch up,” she says.
The pain in my legs flares hotter as I double-time my walk. But my pace isn’t nearly fast enough to catch the spritely boys. So I shift into a jog, and the invisible cleavers slicing through my muscles nearly make me cry out. But by the time I leave the awkward footing of the debris field behind and step on the more cushiony earth of the jungle, my legs have already begun to limber up. As my eyes adjust to the jungle’s shade, I find relief from the hot sun. Moisture trapped beneath the canopy collects on my face.
“Guys,” I say, keeping my voice hushed for some reason.
No reply.
I look ahead to where the sky once again cuts through the green ceiling. The trees have definitely been cleared. The question is why. As I near the jungle’s edge, I crouch walk, moving with caution. Again, I’m not sure why. Something about this doesn’t feel right. Of course, nothing has felt right since I was roused from a sound sleep and tossed on a transport. So this is just one more thing in a growing list of wrongness.
The jungle ends at the crest of a downward slope. I drop to my hands and knees, crawling up to the edge. Still in the shadows, I lie on my belly and take in the scene below.
A bowl of vegetation in the center of a valley has been cleared. Every plant and tree has been mowed down and dragged away, leaving patches of tall, windblown grasses and lumps of embedded stone. At the center of the clearing is a flat rectangle of concrete, bleached by the sun, but still dark enough to see the white lines painted on the surface. The paint divides the concrete into three equal-sized squares. Each segment contains a large Unity triangle with a T in its core. It doesn’t take a Base to figure out that this is where the transports were supposed to land. Three transports. Three landing pads.
We nearly made it.
Whispering to my right pulls my attention away from the landing site. I put my hand atop a large fern and slowly lower it. Daniel and Gizmo are lying on the ground, just a few feet away, staring into the clearing and having some kind of argument.
Unity Page 5
