Enders (28 page)

I twisted out of Trax’s hold and ran forward. I turned to see Michael holding Trax’s gun arm, and Trax resisting, aiming it wildly in the air, then at Hyden, even me. Hyden rushed to help, knocking away Trax’s gun with his own. It fell and spun on the ground. Trax tried to go for it, but Michael held him back.

Then Hyden pulled out his plexi-cuffs and Michael cuffed Trax’s wrists and ankles.

I watched and rubbed my arm, sore from Trax’s grip.

“Is it true Brockman didn’t know you came out here?” I asked.

Trax nodded.

“So you knew we were coming,” I said.

“I saw you on the grid,” he said. “That’s part of my job.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Michael asked.

“Because he had his own agenda,” Hyden said. “Revenge.”

Trax’s long white hair hung over his face. He shook it off. “I got what I wanted. Humiliated you in front of your girlfriend.”

“I’m not …” I couldn’t even repeat the word.

“He’s never cared about anyone the way he cares about you.” Trax looked to see if he’d gotten a reaction out of Hyden.

I kept my eyes on Trax during the awkward silence when no one wanted to speak.

“What do we do with him?” Michael asked.

“Leave him here.” Hyden patted down Trax, taking something metal from his pocket.

Michael pulled me aside, away from Hyden.

“What do we do now?” he asked in a low voice.

I rubbed my temples. The desert was playing tricks on me. The cacti seemed to be moving, vibrating.

“My father’s so close.”

“But can we trust Hyden?” Michael said. “Talk about a trap.”

Doubts crowded my brain. But I needed to make this work.

“You can trust me!” Hyden shouted.

I turned back and took a few steps closer. “Why?”

“Because one thing Trax said was true. About me and you.”

“It’s a trick.” Michael took my arm and pulled me away from Hyden. “You can’t listen to him.”

My stomach ached. What Michael said made sense. But we needed Hyden.

“If Hyden was leading us into a trap, I don’t think Trax would have come out the way he did. Trying to separate us. And Hyden never helped Trax, he fought against him.” I shook my head. “I don’t know. I can barely wrap my mind around this.”

I looked back at Hyden, standing there in the desert moonlight.

“All this time,” said Michael, “he was the one behind the mask. Think about that.”

I thought about all the things I’d done with the Old Man while he was in Blake’s body. How much I liked that guy—not Blake. And how it had horrified me to learn it was really the Old Man. I didn’t know how I could live with that. Now it turned out he wasn’t a creepy Ender after all, but a Starter. A Starter I thought I knew.

But who was he really? And could I trust him?

No matter what, there was one thing I knew. One thing I wanted. And it was true in spite of Hyden and his lie.

“We have to save my father,” I said. “So let’s go.”

“With him? Shouldn’t we cuff him?”

I thought about it for a second. “What good would he be to us then? We need all the help we can get against Brockman. I believe he hates his father. He’ll want to take him down as much as we do.”

We left Trax, still cuffed, lying on the backseat of his jeep. Before we took off on foot, I looked back at the mask lying on the desert floor. Random pixels were still pulsing, doing their sad dance for no one but the cacti and the stars.

The three of us still had a long walk to go across the hardened sandy soil to Brockman’s compound.

“Callie, talk to me,” Hyden said. “I know you must have a million questions.”

“I don’t talk to liars, you lying liar.”

“Come on, ask me anything,” he said. “I’m serious. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

“Where do I begin?” I shrugged. “How about what the heck was going through your mind? Why?”

“It isn’t what you think,” Hyden said. “I was trying to save the unclaimed Starters.”

“By turning them into permanent rental bodies?” I asked. “Putting them to sleep forever?”

“I was never going to do that. I just wanted the Enders to believe that. I was in complete control. I never would have let anyone hurt the Metals.”

I stopped to take this in. “But you used us. You sold our bodies for profit.”

“I had to establish the business to attract the rich Enders. And to get them used to switching bodies. Revolution isn’t cheap.”

“So you were going to kill the Enders?”

“Keep them in a deep sleep. Somebody had to do something,” he said. “I was going to set their alarm clocks for one minute after I made the world a better place.”

I tried to let this sink in, but it was the opposite of everything I had believed about the Old Man.

“I was going to find out where they kept their money so I could drain their bank accounts,” Hyden said.

“So you’re a thief,” I said.

“To use the money to finance change. To get the Starters
out of the institutions and then disband that system altogether.”

“But you had nothing to do with Helena?”

“I was suspicious of her. I followed her and that’s when I met you. At Club Rune.”

“And you kept track of me so you could keep track of her.”

“Partly.”

“And you wanted to see what my altered chip could do.”

“Partly.”

“You wanted to see if I could kill. And I almost did.”

“But I also came to help you. To help save you.”

I glanced at Michael. He was walking with his hands in his pockets, just listening.

“What do you think, Michael? Would you trust him?”

“Are you kidding?” He pointed at Hyden. “He kidnapped your little brother and put a chip in his head!”

“I would never. That was Tinnenbaum, Trax, and a doctor under my father’s thumb.”

“How did you even get yourself in that position?” I asked. “Running Prime.”

“When my father wanted to sell off the research to the wrong people, I had to create an Ender identity to front Prime. And it worked. People believed I was an Ender. I was already wearing some protective gear.… ”

“Because you were scared of being touched?” I asked.

He nodded. “I added more and created a disguise. But the whole reason Prime existed was to end the slavery of Starters.”

He stared off at the moon over the desert landscape. “But when you broke apart Prime, there went my plan.”

“How do I know you’re not working with your father
now? He admitted that he was using the Old Man’s electronic voice.”

Hyden nodded. “That was him at the mall in your head. And ever since Prime came down.”

“Why would he do that?” Michael asked.

“To test it. He wanted to gain access to her chip, to map it. Once Prime fell, Trax gave him as much tech as he could get.”

“Testing,” I said.

“And messing with your head. Power plays,” Hyden said. “Because that’s what he does.”

“So what else is a lie? What else should I know?”

“The rest is true. My father is evil. He’s got an auction planned for the richest Enders in the world, and he’ll sell the Metals and the technology to the highest bidder. And odds are, they’ll use it against us. Against our country.”

“All that stuff you just said.” I pointed at him. “How he was messing with my head, that he likes the power—it was really about you.”

“No,” he said.

“Because you’re a lot like your father after all. That’s how come you understand him so well.”

My words had the effect I wanted—he looked pained.

I stopped walking and faced Hyden.

“We need you. So we have to work together. But it doesn’t mean I forgive you or even trust you, after what you’ve done.”

“I don’t blame you,” Hyden said. “Just give me a chance to win back your trust.”

I wasn’t about to grant him anything at that point.

Brockman’s facility was in the middle of the desert, and yet it seemed oddly unprotected.

“There’s no fence,” Michael said. “How come?”

“It’s pretty isolated out here,” I said.

“It would draw more attention. And there are more dangerous barriers than fences,” Hyden said. “It’s like saying to the world, my security’s better than some puny fence.”

We walked around, past the side of the building. There was no landscaping, just some small cacti around the edge. Windows dotted the upper part of the building, too high to do anything but let light in during the day.

Hyden went to a set of tall double doors that formed the back entrance. I looked at the back parking lot, which was huge. There must have been room for over a hundred cars. At this late hour, I counted only seven. That was consistent with what Trax had said. It gave me some hope that we weren’t facing overwhelming odds.

Hyden pulled out a passkey from his pocket that he waved over a metal panel to the right of the doors. We heard a click. Then one of the large doors silently swung open.

“Thank you, Trax,” Hyden whispered. He motioned for us to follow him inside.

We were in some sort of lobby. An illusion of green bamboo stalks was projected onto a glass floor. I spotted two doors to the right labeled
Employee Lockers
. One was for women, one for men. We all had the same idea at once. Michael and Hyden ducked into the men’s room, and I slipped into the women’s locker room.

Inside, it looked like what I’d seen in the holos as a luxury spa. More illusion floors, teakwood cabinets, giant bamboo plants and orchids, even a waterfall. I imagined that during the day they probably played peaceful flute music.

I opened a locker and found their version of a lab coat—a
short white kimono. I put it on over my clothing and tied it at the waist. I put on a white surgical hair cap. When I came out, both the guys had their kimono lab coats and caps on as well.

“Now what?” I said quietly.

“Let’s go to work,” Hyden said.

Hyden opened the door leading to the main part of his father’s facility. I looked over his shoulder and saw only a dark expanse of hallway.

While we held back, Hyden started down the hallway, which blossomed with gently glowing lights as he made his way. Hyden had decided that he would go first and look for a computer while I split off to look for my father. He turned a corner and disappeared. Michael was set to go last and be on the lookout for our Metal friends.

I made my way down the sterile hallway, moving between shadows and pools of light. I cradled the holstered gun underneath the kimono, hoping I would not have to use it.

I opened a door at the end of the hallway and stood there a moment, stunned at what I’d found. The room stretched on forever and contained a wild profusion of plants and small trees with low-hanging branches. I entered the lush space. The air felt warm and smelled rich and earthy. It seemed like they’d modeled it after a rain forest—a total contrast to the desert outside.

I spotted Hyden in one of the side rooms, working on an airscreen. He looked up and motioned for me to join him. I popped in.

“I’m in, so take this.” He gave me Trax’s passkey and I slipped it into my pants pocket.

I went to the back of the jungle room and exited through
another door. It opened to a hallway that had a wall fountain halfway through. The sound of the bubbling water filled the space. I walked on, peeking in what appeared to be offices or meeting rooms. They’d decorated the spaces in the style of various countries—India, Russia, Japan. I recognized them from my school studies before the war. School. Would I ever have a chance to return? Not to a Zype School, to a real one.

At the halfway point, near the fountain, all the rest of the rooms had closed doors.

I loosened my kimono for faster access to my gun and went to the first closed room. Even with my ear to the door, I couldn’t hear any sound inside. I held up Trax’s passkey to the metal plate to the right of the door.
Click
. Slowly, I opened the door.

My eyes quickly adjusted to the dim lighting. In sharp contrast to the spa atmosphere of the rest of the place, this was clinical. No plants or pictures here. The large room was crammed with metal platforms that served as beds. Night-lights dotted the walls, illuminating the bodies. One perfect body after another, all with flawless faces, all asleep. The Metals were bound to their beds with restraints around their wrists.