“When you escaped, Dr. Reynolds went nuts.” I can hear the regret in her voice over telling me. “The doctors in the Ward, the Guardians, even your mother. Everyone was punished.”
“And Rice?” I wince at the concern in my voice, but I can’t help it.
“He’s fine. He wasn’t suspected.”
In spite of myself, I’m flooded with relief.
“I’ve got to get Baby out of there.”
“No. You’ve got to go to Fort Black and find my brother. Ken. That’s how you can help Baby.”
“Why? What can he do?”
“He’s a researcher. For New Hope. But he’s in Fort Black working on developing a Florae vaccine.”
“Why?”
“New subjects. Also, Dr. Reynolds doesn’t want all his researchers in one place. So he’s got a lab set up there.”
“What does that have to do with Baby? What can Ken do for her?”
“He’s ruthless about his research. He’d do anything to get a test subject like Baby for himself, even if it means breaking her out of New Hope. And he could do it. He’s been with Reynolds for a long time, since before the Floraes. He has access.”
“But he just wants to run tests on her too!”
“Yes, but you could monitor the situation. You could protect her. As long as she’s away from Reynolds.”
My mind races. She’s right. I could never take on New Hope alone. This is the only option.
“But where—”
“Gotta go. Someone’s coming. Be—”
“Kay?” For several minutes I yell her name, but she doesn’t respond. Kay’s gone.
Chapter Four
I try to get some sleep, but after a couple of hours I give up. I need to leave, to get to Fort Black. I pack up everything the Guardians outfitted me with when I left: my Guardian gun with spare clips, my water filter, a map. My sonic emitter. I’ve barely used my gun, so I still have plenty of ammunition. I throw my backpack over my shoulder and pause to look around. The tree house has done me well these past few months, but I won’t miss the solitude.
It takes eight hours to reach Fort Black by foot. I could have made it in less, but I didn’t want to push myself and arrive exhausted. The journey is surprisingly uneventful. Nothing more than a long, tense walk, my backpack biting into my shoulders. If it weren’t for the synth-suit, my skin would be wet with sweat. Even though the suit controls my temperature, I was still pretty hot once the day broke, my face sweating in the early morning sun. I sighted some Florae, but they backed up when I got close, fleeing from the emitter waves. I silently thank Rice for the gift (he gave it to Kay) and Vivian, who invented it.
The bigger danger is other people. I have no idea what things are like at Fort Black, or how often people leave to scavenge. I’m certain there are plenty of people who would kill me without a second thought if they knew what was in my pack.
Once I’m a mile out, I stop to rest on a highway overpass. A few years ago, this road would have been full of speeding cars. People hurrying to work, worried about getting to a meeting on time. Now there are no meetings. No work, other than to stay alive. The only cars now are abandoned, left to rust in the elements. My father used to go on a hippie anti-fossil-fuel rant about how the car-to-person ratio in America was nearly one to one. Now it’s a hundred thousand to one . . . give or take a few thousand. Not that a car would be much use to me. Sure, I could have made it the twenty miles very quickly, but I would have had to find a car with keys and plenty of gas. Besides, they make too much noise, and I never learned to drive anyway.
I walk around one of the many abandoned cars to the edge of the highway and peer over the railing. I can see it now, in the distance: Fort Black. It takes me a moment to process what I’m looking at as I study the surrounding area. Then it hits me that Fort Black isn’t a fort at all.
Fort Black is a prison.
Chapter Five
Formerly the Fort Black Correctional Facility, the walls of Fort Black jut up, cutting into and marring the blue-white sky. The sides of the great prison are three hundred feet high, at least, and laced at the top with two rows of barbed wire. There are few windows, and the ones that are visible are covered in thick metal bars. Around the Fort, there’s nothing but brown dusty earth.
I pull my canteen from my pack and take a long sip of water, then look back and forth, surveying the area and the sun-scorched ground around the walls. A long ribbon of broken asphalt leads off to my left, linking the jail to the highway, which curves out of sight over the distant hill. I study the road from the top of that hill until it slips beneath me, under the overpass where I now rest, and disappears around the bend to my right. There are no Floraes that I can make out, yet my hand goes automatically to the emitter.
The feel of the small plastic device comforts me. I reach into my pack for my Guardian sunglasses—standard-issue, but better than the best binoculars. I adjust the zoom until I can see Fort Black as if I were standing next to it.
The place is humongous, its gray concrete more formidable than I’d originally thought. Men patrol the high, broad walls, armed with rifles. At each of the guard towers rests an immense crossbow on a thick post. Even from here, I can feel the hum of too many people living in a small space. The noise sets my skin tingling. It’s strange to hear it, after all the miles I traveled alone and in silence. Now that I’m so close, I can’t bring myself to walk the last stretch. I rummage inside my bag, allowing myself another sip of water and a bite of food. I don’t know when I’ll get to eat again, or if my food will be confiscated or stolen inside those dark walls.
I stand again, narrowing my eyes at the massive, dark structure. My mission: find Ken. He’s the only way to save Baby. I know it won’t be easy, but there’s a chance, a sliver of hope. And Kay will help if she can by contacting me on my earpiece. My hand goes to my ear to reassure me it’s still there, the one thing that can keep me in touch with Kay. It’s small, like one of those micro–hearing aids from Before. There are three buttons: The top one turns the earpiece on and off, the middle one activates the sound amplifier, and the bottom one calls in. When I was a Guardian, the earpiece was set to automatically call all the Guardians, but there’s a central hub in New Hope where all the earpieces are programmed. Gareth is a bit of a hacker and has mine deactivated remotely . . . until Kay needs to contact me.
A glint on the scorched landscape catches my eye and I snap my head up. A shape is moving quickly over the road toward the prison. I crouch down and turn on the sound amplifier on my earpiece, then quickly drop my hand to my Guardian glasses and zoom in on the figure.
It’s not a Florae. It’s a man.
Chapter Six
The man is on a bicycle, pedaling furiously. Something is wrong with his bike, though, and every few seconds it makes a grinding sound, like metal moving against metal. Behind his bike is a hitched trailer, the kind parents used to haul their kids around Before. The trailer is filled to the brim with bundles of cloth and canned goods.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see movement, and then I see Them. Two Floraes have topped the rise on the highway. Their pea-green skin almost fades into the baked landscape, their milky, yellow eyes useless, but their heads move, searching for sound. The man’s bike makes that horrible grating noise again, and the Floraes focus their attention, quickly sprinting down the road to the prison, hot on the cyclist’s heels.
From the prison wall, an arrow flies through the air, narrowly missing the nearer of the two Floraes. Another arrow hits the second Florae in the shoulder, slowing it down slightly, but doing nothing to lessen its hunger, its craving for the man’s flesh. The first Florae is a few feet away from the cyclist. Just when I’m certain the guy doesn’t have a chance, the first Florae drops to the ground. Because of its incredible speed, it skids a few feet before stopping completely. The second Florae is taken down just as I hear two loud cracks echo toward me.