And maybe that’s all we’d been to each other, anyway. Not just the fat kid and me, but Crow and Alpha and Zee. The whole damn lot of us. All we’d wanted was to find those trees.
Something to believe in. To bring us back home. Something to make us free, maybe. Or just something to sell.
The agents were all over me, blocking Sal from view. But the strength I’d saved while I’d been under, it all came racing to the surface now. I pushed and kicked at some bastard in a purple suit that I’d never seen before, but here he was trying to control me. Trying to hurt me. Trying to murder my fat little buddy right in front of my eyes.
I must have been spitting, I was crying so hard. And for a moment I reached him, somehow Sal was next to me, we were breathing in smoke from the fire, gloved hands all over us.
That kid stared at me like his eyes were windows and he was trapped inside there somewhere, tired of hiding.
“The number,” I said to him, or I tried to say it anyway. And what good was it? Now everything was lost.
But the kid surprised me. His voice popped out.
“There was no number,” he said, the suits lifting him up, shoving him at the flames. “I made it up,” he said, as he disappeared from me forever. “So you’d take me with you.”
And then he was gone. Still high, I reckon. Because I never even heard him scream.
I felt the hands working me over, and I thought that was it. Thought I was just going to burn right then. And all I could think was how Frost must have already made it. He had his coordinates. His GPS. And somewhere, he was out there. And my father was out there, too. Surrounded by trees and murderers.
“Wait,” one of the agents was yelling. “He should be tested.”
They yanked me to my feet.
I didn’t do a thing. I couldn’t even feel the needle go in or the blood coming out. But I watched it, that deep dark red. And because of the blood draining out of me or my previous show of strength, whatever it was, I was suddenly empty. And as they pulled the needle from my skin, I sank inward as every light inside turned black.
Weirdest thing about whatever they’d doped me up with — awake you felt like you were dreaming, but pass out and no dream would come. It was a void. The darkest night. Untouched by the motion of the world or the swell of whatever you kept hidden inside.
Sometime on the boat, though, they let us come around. And somehow I knew that meant we were almost there.
They fed us. Juiciest damn corn I ever tasted. They gave us water and then they stripped us of clothes and shaved off our hair. I waited. Still coming back to life. Shielding my eyes from the neon lights. But soon as I could, I stumbled across the giant cargo hold we’d been allowed to wake up in. I made for the exit. And I found my way onto the deck.
I don’t know what time it was. Early morning, maybe. I stood alone, bony beneath the plastic sheet they’d draped across my shoulders. It was so cold out there, made me feel brand new and old as anything, both at the same time. The cold hurt, too. I almost turned back inside with the others. But I just bit at my tongue as the freeze enveloped me. I watched my hands shake and my toes turn blue.
I found my way to the center of the deck and I watched the water and I stared around at the boat. A cockpit sat on top of the cargo hold and above that was a gun tower. Everything black and silver. No purple. No GenTech logos. It sure wasn’t the biggest boat I’d ever imagined, but it didn’t need to be. The water was flat. And it stretched in every direction for as far as my eyes could see.
I pulled the sheet around me and hunched my shoulders in. My breath blew steamy, the same color as the clouds. Air was so cold it was hard work just to breathe it. But it helped my mind come back into focus, even if my body felt like it might snap apart.
I stared back at the steel walls of the cargo hold where my fellow survivors were now huddled together, escaped from the fire. Escaped from the burn.
But still taken.
I remembered Sal. Too high to be scared, robbed even of emotion as they’d tossed him to the flames. And I reckon I’d been a bastard to Sal, pretty much right from the beginning. I mean, what had he done? Other than live up to the way the world seemed to treat him. Father like Frost and what chance did he have? I pictured Hina holding the kid, giving him some sort of feeling, and I figured that was such a good thing to have done for someone. To give without wanting nothing in return. But Hina was gone, too. I shuddered as I pictured her about to tell me her secrets but then stolen away and lost in that swarm. And who was left? Me. Crow?
I stared at the cargo hold.
And what about Alpha?
I’d not seen her in the factory, or whatever you want to call that place. I’d not seen her since the cornfields. The back of the wagon, where she’d been dying in my arms. Dying from a poacher’s bullet I might as well have shot from my own gun. May as well have killed them all with my selfishness. Running around without thinking, instead of doing what I’d promised and finding the trees.
And you know what? For a moment I didn’t even care about the damn trees.
All I wanted was my pirate girl back.
I wanted her the same way as when I’d run barefoot through Old Orleans with my hands empty and my heart full. The way you want something when every part of you says that you ain’t going to get it.
I was scared to go looking for her. So scared to know full out she was gone. She probably hadn’t made it to the factory at all. And if somehow she had, then she’d likely been thrown like poor Sal into those hungry flames. And how could I stand not seeing her among the stolen and shaved sat huddled on this ugly barge? What would I do if she was ash and smoke when she should have been beside me with her voice soaring free?
Eventually, though, I staggered up to go try and find her. Because even when there is no hope, somehow you can still find a place to pin inside the things that you need.
I started across the deck but I tripped and fell. Landed on my face and began crawling, dragging myself through puddles of icy water. And as I tasted the water, I stopped crawling and just stared off the boat.
Water. Flat water. All the way to every horizon. And this water wasn’t just flat — it was fresh. Like out of a river. Water you could drink, not salty like the Surge. We were on a lake. Cold and deep and wide.
The freeze in the air told me we were north. Way north. Had to be somewhere above the molten wastelands, this cold this early. Somehow GenTech must have figured a path through the steam and ash of the Rift. And I figured if this was a lake, then somewhere there had to be a shoreline. A place they were taking us. And some kind of reason we had been kept alive.
I crashed back through the steel doors and let the warmth and the stale air consume me, felt every bit of skin and bone I had come roaring back to life. I steadied myself against the door as I thawed out. And then I stared around the cargo hold.
There were agents stationed along the walls, their bright purple suits in contrast to the white paint and the pale neon blast. The agents were weaponed up, no doubt about that. Pistols on their belts, spiky clubs in their hands. But I tell you, those agents had nothing to worry about. My fellow prisoners might have been moving some, but they still looked like corpses.
Vacant eyes. Lips too tired for screaming. We were a broken crew. Silent. I thought again of King Harvest and his hull full of bodies. That’s why they’d needed so many, I guess. That damn test they were running. Take some of us off across the water and burn up the ones left behind.