“One last look at you, before I kick you out of my tent,” said Sarah, brushing past Cass. She set her black bag against the wall, then stood over Farryn, hands on her hips. “I’ll take another look at the wound, then get you on your way. The sooner you get up and moving, the better, now that you’re past the worst danger. I’m not running a hotel here.” She looked up at Cass, and gestured for her to come closer. “Let me show you how to check for infection, clean the wound, and re-bandage,” she said. “You’ve got the stomach and the head for it, and I’ll be needing the help once the fighting starts, I’m sure.”
She knelt down and began to move the sheet, but Farryn stopped her. “Hold on,” he said. “Cass . . . you don’t . . . you should go.”
It hurt, to see him suddenly look ashamed. She didn’t care about seeing the stump of his leg—the surprise was beginning to wear off. But she understood. “Okay, I’ll see you soon,” she said.
“Come back when you can,” said Sarah. “I’d like to show you a few things.”
Cass nodded, and left.
She was still a bit in shock as she walked slowly toward Clay’s tent. That had been her first kiss, as far as she could remember, beyond a few ridiculous dares at kidbons that were more jokes than anything else. What had surprised her most was how she had launched into it before she even realized what she was doing. She smiled, thinking about how shocked Farryn had been, how she had almost knocked him over.
And then her smile died as Clay, standing outside her tent, came into view. She was wearing camo pants and a short-sleeved green T-shirt that looked like it was a pre-Rev synthetic. The shirt was sleeveless, showing Clay’s lean, strong, tan arms, and Cass could see, as she walked up, a black tattoo on her left bicep. It was an eagle, with a fierce beak, and outstretched talons that were dripping blood.
Clay glanced up from the vidscreen she was holding for just a moment, noting Cass’s presence.
“So you saw your brother off?”
Cass didn’t reply.
“Suit yourself.” Clay turned her attention back to the vid. Suddenly Clay’s comm piece buzzed, and a voice came through. “General, we need you on the other side of camp to review the armory.” Clay looked annoyed, but reluctantly got up. She stepped into her tent, then reappeared a few moments later without the vid.
“Back in five minutes,” she said. “Wait here.” Clay strode away, south, quickly disappearing into the trees.
Cass stood there, feeling like a fool. And then she had an idea, and before she could think about it too much, and decide it was insane, she went ahead and ducked into Clay’s tent. A quick look at the vid—maybe she could find something useful, some hint about the General’s plans. Grennel and Clay were constantly referring to the vidscreen—it had to hold some special type of information . . . and if she knew Clay’s plans, she could maybe help her birth parents. Was she really going to attack a City? How could she possibly? What was she planning to do with the True Believers? Her City parents—would Clay have them killed?
Cass looked around the small, tidy tent, her heart pounding. She had to move fast, but she also had to be careful. . . . Clay would know if anything had been moved around. . . . Cass opened a canvas pack that was propped up against the bedroll. Spare socks. A few shirts. A pair of pants. She moved the clothes as little as possible, trying to see if anything was underneath, seeing nothing. She closed the pack, then stood, and looked around again. What else? She should probably get out of the tent. . . . It would be bad, very bad, if Clay caught her in here. It was a stupid, probably pointless risk, she admitted, and she was about to leave the tent, when she found it.
The vidscreen was tucked under the pillow on the bedroll. She lifted the pillow and tapped on the dark screen. It flared to life, glowing brightly, asking in black lettering for a password. “Rust,” she whispered. She tapped the screen again, to turn it off, but the screen continued to glow. Feeling a twinge of panic, she searched along the sides of the vid, looking for a switch, a button, but there was nothing. “Idiot,” she said. Kevin would know what to do, how to turn the damned screen off. But Kevin wasn’t here, and she had to turn it off herself, and she had to get out of the tent. . . .
She tapped on the screen a few more times, accomplishing nothing, the screen still glowing, still asking for a password, and she was starting to hyperventilate because her five minutes had to be almost up. Desperate, she placed the pillow back over the glowing vid and hurried outside. She knew she’d see Clay standing there, probably with a blast rifle already in her hands. . . .
Clay was nowhere to be found. Cass breathed a quick sigh of relief, then felt a sick rush as Clay appeared, coming back up the path. Ten more seconds . . . if Cass had stayed in the tent just ten more seconds, she would have been caught. Stupid, stupid, stupid, she thought. She tried to slow her breathing, to calm her thumping heart. She forced a look of what she hoped was calm and boredom onto her face. As long as Clay didn’t go back inside for her vid, and as long as the damned thing eventually turned itself off. . . .
Clay nodded at Cass. “Come,” she said. “I have work for you.” She walked back down the path, away from the tent, away from the glowing vidscreen under her pillow, and Cass, dizzy with relief and still silently berating herself, followed.
CHAPTER 12
THEY HEADED EAST OUT OF CAMP. IT WAS A CHILLY, CLOUDLESS MORNING, and the glints of sunlight through the trees hurt Kevin’s eyes, so he kept his head down. Grennel walked in front, leading the way, and Oswald and Wynn trailed behind Kevin. Being back out on the trail, separated again from his family, heading back to the Island . . . Kevin couldn’t decide if he was excited or scared or sad.
Nobody spoke. They just walked, stopping occasionally for Grennel to check his bearings on the tiny vid built into his wrist comm. It had grown into a warm day after the damp morning, and Kevin’s back was soaked with sweat under his pack. At lunchtime they continued their silence, until finally Kevin couldn’t take it anymore. He turned to Oswald and Wynn. “So what’s your story?” he said. “How’d you end up with the rebels?”
Wynn frowned, which made her scar appear bigger. “I tried Freeposts for the first few years after the Revolution, but I preferred fighting to hiding.”
Kevin waited for more, but apparently Wynn’s speech was over. She went back to her lunch. “What about you?” Kevin said to Oswald.
“None of your damned business,” Oswald calmly replied.
All right, then.
Kevin slept poorly that night. He dreamed about his grandfather being lased, and Tech Tom strapped to the cold metal slab, and his mother looking at him with confusion, not knowing who he was. Three or four times he woke, his heart pounding, sitting up to catch his breath and get oriented, and each time he saw a different guard on watch in the murky starlight. First it was Grennel, then Wynn, and finally Oswald. Grennel and Wynn ignored him, but when Kevin woke during Oswald’s shift, the man turned to look at him, swinging the muzzle of his burst rifle toward Kevin. Oswald held his gun pointed toward Kevin, who lay back down and waited, watching the whites of the man’s eyes glowing in the moonlight. The sclera, he could hear his mother’s voice telling him. The whites of the eyes are called the sclera.
Kevin woke in the early morning light, more tired than when he had gone to bed. He stood, and yawned, and bent down to roll up his pack, and then he heard the crackle of underbrush from the far end of the clearing, twenty feet away. Oswald yelled, “Cover!” and swung his rifle from his shoulder into his hands, and Kevin felt a blur of motion as Grennel rushed past him, toward Oswald. Oswald triggered a crackling burst just as Grennel flew into him with his shoulder, knocking him sideways.
There was a scream, and at the edge of the clearing a man fell to his knees, clutching his right arm.
“Idiot!” said Grennel, looking down at Oswald, his foot on Oswald’s rifle, pinning it to the ground. This was the first time, Kevin realized, that he had seen Grennel truly angry. “You shoot before you even see wha
t you’re shooting at?” He kicked the rifle away from Oswald’s hand, then hurried over to the man who had been shot. Kevin and Wynn followed close behind.
The man was pale, his face dirty, with a patchy, thin beard, and he was obviously in a great deal of pain. He held his arm tightly against his body. His shirt arm was burned ragged, and Kevin could see, under the man’s hand, the blackened skin of the lase wound on the man’s bicep.
“Who are you?” said Grennel.
“You shot me,” the man said between teeth clenched in pain. “You didn’t have to shoot me.”
“You’re right, we probably didn’t,” said Grennel. “Who are you?”
“I know you,” said the man. “You’re Grennel. From the Island. I’m from the Island, too.” He rocked back against his ankles, and closed his eyes. “Ah, rust, this hurts!”
Grennel reached down and helped the man to his feet. He kept his hand on the man’s good arm. “What are you doing out here?” he said.
“I’m just . . . I don’t know. I got out, after the bots attacked. I didn’t know if anyone else got away. . . .”
“Bots?” said Kevin. “You mean the Governor’s bots? Like 23?”
Grennel glared at Kevin, but didn’t say anything.
“No,” said the man. “No, we ripped apart all the Island bots. . . . I’m talking about after . . . after the fighting. The real bots came. The City bots. They bombed the Island, and they killed us, and they took us away. They took the Governor away. . . .”
Grennel tightened his grip on the man’s arm. “The Governor? The bots took the Governor?”
The man nodded. “I saw them taking him out of his lab. I was hiding under a section of the Wall. . . . They blew up the Wall. . . . They had lased him.”
No, thought Kevin, it wasn’t the bots that lased him. Grennel gave Kevin another look, a warning, and Kevin kept quiet.
“Oswald!” Grennel called.
Oswald walked up. “He came bursting into our camp,” he said. “It looked like he had a weapon.”
“Shut up,” said Grennel. “Patch him up, and take him back to the General’s camp.”
“But my orders were to help guard the boy—” began Oswald.
Grennel stepped toward Oswald. “Deliver him safely or you’ll answer to me. Understood?”
Oswald nodded. “Got it,” he said.
Grennel looked back at the injured man. “My apologies,” he said. “Oswald will take you to safety. He won’t shoot you again.”
The dazed man could barely grunt in reply.
“This is worse than our scouts expected,” Grennel said to Kevin and Wynn. “Let’s go see what’s left of the Island.”
Kevin could smell the Island before he saw it. There was a smoky char in the breeze, like the ashes of a campfire.
And then he saw the remains.
The Wall, completely exposed without the control unit, was in ruins. The wood logs lay twisted and cracked and burned in toppled piles. Here and there, throughout the timber, the veins of conduction wire glinted in the sunlight. Sections of the Wall still stood, refusing to topple completely, leaning at awkward angles.
Kevin was remembering Freepost chaos—screams, neighbors lying broken in the dirt, smoke, and explosions. He hadn’t let himself think about his devastated Freepost, his home, his friends, in weeks. But he couldn’t hold back the memories as he stood there, staring at the wrecked Island Wall and the burned and crumbled buildings beyond.
Grennel nudged his shoulder, hard enough for him to stagger forward a step, making him trip over rubble.
“Come,” said Grennel. “Let’s not linger. In and out.” He began walking between the two piles of wrecked lumber and conduction wire that used to be the entry gates.
“You did this,” Kevin said to Grennel’s back as he followed the huge man.
Kevin thought he saw Grennel’s shoulders stiffen momentarily, but the movement was so quick he might have imagined it. “No,” Grennel said without looking back, or even slowing his stride. “The bots did this.”
“They couldn’t have done it without your help,” Kevin said.
This time Grennel did stop and turn. “I don’t help the bots,” he said slowly. His face and voice seemed calm, but there was a hint of anger just beneath the surface. “I fight them. I do what has to be done to help the General, because she’ll do whatever it takes to defeat the bots.”
“Including this,” Kevin said, nodding at the destruction they were about to enter.
Grennel held Kevin’s stare for a moment, then turned away and walked into the wreckage. Kevin followed.
Fifty feet into the Island, Kevin saw the first corpse. He noticed the man’s arm first, sticking out from under a pile of stone from a collapsed wall. The skin was pale and the fingers were clenched into a claw shape. Then he saw the rest of the man, partially covered under the rubble, easy to miss if you weren’t looking right at him. He was dead, unquestionably dead, eyes open and staring up unblinking into the sun.
“Rust,” Kevin whispered. How many more were there going to be? Was he going to find Otter, or Cort, or Pil, lying in the dirt?
Grennel glanced back at Kevin, then followed Kevin’s gaze to the corpse. “Come on,” he said, his voice, Kevin thought, surprisingly gentle. “Keep moving. We have one hour.”
At the mess hall, they found three more bodies. These were badly burned, and their limbs were twisted at odd angles—it looked as if they had been hit by an explosive. Kevin couldn’t even tell if they had been men or women. He clenched his jaw and looked away, fighting down a wave of nausea and fear.
“We should—we should bury them,” he said. They couldn’t just be left like garbage on the ground.
Grennel shook his head. “No time,” he said.
“So we just leave them here?” Kevin asked angrily.
“I’m sorry,” Grennel said. “It would take too long.”
Kevin shook his head, frustrated, although he had to admit, a small part of him was relieved that he wouldn’t have to handle the corpses. He forced himself to look away from the bodies, to push the horror and disgust back. He had a feeling he’d be having nightmares about those bodies, sometime soon . . . but for now, he had to focus. He searched the ground, moving rubble with his legs and hands. He had seen 23 and a few others of his grandfather’s bots taken down here by the angry mob—hopefully they were still here, somewhere. . . .
He searched for a few minutes, Grennel and Wynn joining in the search, although he didn’t tell them what he was looking for. And then he saw it: fishbelly-white neo-plas skin, under a plank of wood. He pulled and pushed the wood out of the way, unearthing one of the Island bots. Was this 23? Kevin wondered sickly, as he stared down at the bot. He couldn’t tell—the bot’s face had been crushed, the neo-plas and leather patches shredded and ripped, and there was no way for Kevin to know if the pattern of leather patchwork had been 23’s. He studied the body, surprised that he felt almost the same level of unease as he had when staring at the human corpses. He clenched his jaw. Enough, he told himself. No time to be a baby.
He examined the bot’s body more closely. It was missing its left arm, and its chest cavity had been scorched, like it had been hit by a lase. Both legs were intact. Good, he thought. He’d figure out how to detach one, or just hack it off somehow if he had to, although he did want to preserve the circuitry and mechanics as much as possible . . . and then he realized something, so stupid it almost made him laugh out loud. He wasn’t sure which of Farryn’s legs had been amputated. He tried to picture Farryn, in the cot, one leg unnaturally short, wrapped in gauze—he thought it was the right leg, but he wasn’t sure.
He shook his head ruefully. “Just have to take both,” he said to himself. He stood and turned to Grennel. “I need the legs,” he said. “And the head, too, for the control circuitry. Can we hack them off, as cleanly as possible?”
Grennel unsheathed his hunting knife, bent down, and impossibly fast, leveraging his weight against th
e blade, with a few grunts of effort he removed the legs and head from the torso. He sheathed his knife, picked up the legs, and tossed them to Wynn, who caught them neatly. Then he grabbed the head and tossed it to Wynn, who quickly shifted both legs under her right arm and caught it with her left hand. She grinned. Kevin felt vaguely sickened.
On the short walk to the supply shed Kevin saw four more human bodies, but no more bots. One of the bodies was small, definitely not an adult. Kevin didn’t look closely. He didn’t want to know.
The door of the supply shed was crumpled and lying on the ground, and the contents of the building were in disarray—most of the equipment was on the floor, in jumbled heaps. Kevin picked through the mess, not sure what he was hoping to find. He needed something to help him solve the puzzle of the camouflage suits, but he didn’t know what that thing might be. Nothing he found helped. Basic circuitry, conduction wire clamps, some cracked and shattered vidscreens—useless. He found a few tools that might help his tinkering—a nanosolder, a set of scope glasses that had miraculously survived intact—but nothing else. He nodded at Grennel, who was watching him from the entrance. “Done,” he said, pocketing the few tools he had scavenged.
Grennel held out his hand. “I’ll hold the tools,” he said.
“What am I going to do, use my scope glasses to look you to death?” said Kevin.
“I recall a report of your misuse of a nanosolder not long ago,” said Grennel, still holding out his hand. “You can have them when we return to the camp.”
Kevin scowled, annoyed, but he handed over the tools. He pushed past Grennel and headed toward his grandfather’s workshop. This trip was starting to look like a big mistake. The Island was nothing but an open graveyard now; he didn’t think he was going to find anything to help him with the camouflage suits, and judging by the complexity of the little he had seen of the bot leg circuitry, he wasn’t going to be able to do much with them to help Farryn. What had he been thinking? His grandfather had been a genius; he was just a kid who had been taught to tinker with power grids by his dead friend Tom. He trudged forward in silence.
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