Talker 25 (24 page)

“My mother was a hero.” He never asked me that question, but those are my words, spoken with absolute certainty.

“In some ways, she was,” Simon says. Back to the Shadow Mountain lookout photo. Flames appear at the edges and slowly consume it. “A hero for the dragons. Now she’s dead and her daughter’s in a mental institution. This is what happens when you join the other side.”

The credits roll.

“I didn’t realize your mother knew my father,” Lorena says, the first words either of us have spoken since the episode started.

“Honestly, I don’t know what’s real anymore.”

She squeezes my hand. “Your mom was a good person, Melissa. Nobody will believe that stuff about her attacking Arlington. That’s crazy.”

I want to believe her, but I know it’s not true. We’re no different from dragons to them.

Villains.

No.

Monsters.

I pull Lorena into the blind corner of the bathroom, employ a tactic I’ve seen a couple other girls use. Since we’re
not allowed any writing utensils—Eleven was reconditioned because he stabbed one of the ER Mengeles in the eye with a pen—they converse by finger drawing words on their blankets or body parts. Slow going, but safer.

I trace out the word on my arm.
Escape
.

She shakes her head.

I have a plan
.

It takes a few tries before she deciphers my words. She taps her CENSIR. “Doesn’t matter.”

“I have to try.”

“Others have tried.”

“I have to.”

“What if . . .” She writes the number
15
on my forearm.

I can’t wait to die here.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

Two
nights later, Big Brother Billy has a midnight date with Lorena. Lantern in hand, he beelines it toward the back. Lorena intercepts him. She runs one hand along his pants, grabs the lantern with the other, and sets it on the floor. Several girls start humming. Kissing him, Lorena strips him from his winter clothes. He kicks off his boots. She grabs his hand and pulls him toward the bathroom.

“Hold up,” he says. He grabs the lantern. In its light, his grin is wicked. “I want to see you.”

As she enters the bathroom, Lorena looks back at me and gives a little wave. Then the door shuts and darkness returns.

Hands extended in front of me, I look for Twenty-One. She’s not in her bed, nor in the corner where she sometimes
sleeps. “Twenty-One? Allie?” I whisper several times. No response.

Billy’s quieter than the others, and I can’t hear him or Lorena over the humming. He’s only visited once before. Lorena said she’d delay him, but for how long?

Something rustles beneath my bed. “Twenty-One? Allie?”

She doesn’t respond. Asleep?

I lower myself to the ground, reach for her. Our hands meet. Hers is cold and soft. So small. She opens my fingers, places the dragon brooch in my palm.

“Keep it safe for me.” I give her the brooch back, curl her fingers around it. “We’ll get to that island.”

I scramble to my feet before my resolve fails me.

I find Billy’s pile of clothes. As I change into his jacket, the humming intensifies. Are the other girls actually covering for me, or am I just imagining it? Billy’s boots swallow my feet. His gloves come past my wrist. I search for keys in his pocket, have a moment of panic before remembering that most military vehicles don’t use keys.

I feel my way to the door, enter the key code, the one I’ve seen Lester use every time we return from dinner, tug. Locked.

“Reverse it,” Evelyn says from the nearby bed.

It works.

I glance over my shoulder. In the haze of sunlight, Evelyn’s expression is distant, unreadable. Has she tried this before?

I squeeze out the door, squinting against the brilliance of blue sky. Other than the whip of sharp wind, the world is silent. I slip into the Humvee, teeth chattering, and almost crush a pair of sunglasses on the seat in my rush to get out of the cold.

Dad once let me drive one of these behemoths down Reservation Road. I don’t remember much about the controls, nothing like those in a Prius, but I remember enough to get it started. I max out the heater, put on the sunglasses, and accelerate toward the glow of caged dragons in the distance.

I need a long-range radio or a sat phone, something that will allow me to contact the outside world. Antennae sprout through dragons skulls from several of the buildings near the cafeteria. One of them must be a communication station, but it’s undoubtedly manned 24/7. My best bet is the hangar.

The speedometer needle hits fifty-five, doesn’t want to go much higher. The engine whines and whirs, the Humvee trembles. As I race through the dragon skeletons that mark the entrance to Georgetown, a gust of wind crashes into me, sends the Humvee sideways several feet before I regain control. Thankfully, the road’s deserted except for the caged dragons.

Their choked roars follow me, a rumble of angry noise that cannot keep up with my heartbeat.

Tick-thump, tick-thump, tick-thump.

Any moment now, Billy will find his clothes missing, the Humvee gone.

I swerve onto the runway. The hangars are too far away. The Humvee’s too slow. If I actually do contact somebody, what do I tell them? I’m in Antarctica. Where? An entire continent of tundra and ice. No visible landmarks.

Tick-thump-tick-thump-tick-thump.

Major Alderson was right. I’m a needle in a frozen haystack. This was a mistake. I should turn around. Maybe I can make it back in time.

But I don’t slow, I don’t change course, and I reach the first hangar.

The code doesn’t open the door. Nor the reverse code.

Tickthump-tickthump-tickthump.

I push another four numbers. Then another four . . . my fingertips go numb. Breathing hurts. My vision blurs. I steady myself against the wall, manage another four numbers. No, I already did those. A tear freezes on my cheek, makes me laugh, which stings my lungs. I laugh some more, slam my palm into the keypad. Pain sizzles up my arm.

The door opens. A man in a flight suit and bomber jacket stands there. He holds a wrench in his left hand.

He gapes at me. In his eyes, I see confusion and what I pray is sympathy.

“Help,” I mumble.

He reaches for me, and I strike with a side kick to his stomach. He doubles over; the wrench skitters across the floor. I follow with a knee to the chin that knocks him senseless. On a nearby workbench, adjacent to a soldering iron and some rubbing alcohol, is a box of tie wraps. I use thick black ones to bind his hands and feet.

There are two gunships in the hangar. The engine’s open on one, a ladder beside it. I spot an array of electronic equipment on the bench against the far wall, including a phone attached to a metal controller of some sort. Terms like
X
5
DATE
/
REM
and
MODE
:
P
1-
P
6 cluster around numerous dials and pronged interfaces.

I flip the various controls, but don’t hear anything. I check the adjacent computer, but it’s password protected.

Tickthumptickthump-tickthumptickthump.

I sprint back across the hangar, where I retrieve the wrench. Overhead vents blast heat everywhere, but I’m shivering more now than I was outside. I clutch the wrench tighter, consider using it to ring his doorbell, then remember the bottle of alcohol.

I pour half of it onto his face. He startles awake, curses, blinks back tears.

I tap his forehead with the wrench. “Tell me how to use the radio.”

“Huh?” He continues to blink rapidly, his face squeezing up as he tries to look at me. “Who are you?”

I jam the wrench handle hard into his thigh. He cries out. “Tell me how to use the radio.”

“Who are you trying to contact?”

I raise the wrench over his kneecap.

“Look, girl, you can bludgeon me to death, but without a little information, I can’t help you.”

“I need to contact somebody in Michigan.”

“We’ve got a thousand-mile throw on our signal. You aren’t reaching topside. You’d be lucky to reach McMurdo.”

“What’s that?”

“A civilian research outpost. Come on, girl, put the wrench down. Let’s figure this out. I can help you.”

“You have no idea who I am, do you?” I jab the wrench at the gunship. “Can you fly me there?”

“To McMurdo? What’s going on? Why are you so scared?”

“You won’t fly me?”

“I’d need clearance. Without it, they’d shoot us down.”

Tickthumpthumpthumptickthumpthumpthump.

I use a pair of sharpened pliers to cut the tie wraps around his feet. “Fine, you’re gonna contact McMurdo for me. Hurry.”

He squirms to the wall, edges himself up. “What’s going on? Who are you?”

I wave the wrench toward the radio. “Hurry.”

“What do you want me to tell them?” he asks as I follow him past the gunships.

I consider. “Tell them that they’ve imprisoned dozens of boys and girls to help them kill dragons. That they torture us if we don’t help.”

He grimaces. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

I pull back the jacket to show him the
TALKER
25 label on my scrubs. I lower my hood to reveal the CENSIR.

“What is that thing?”

“The torture device.” We reach the radio equipment. He extends his bound hands. I want to trust him. Need to. This is already taking too long. I cut him free.

His gives me a rueful smile before sitting down at the radio. He picks up the phone, plugs in a cable, adjusts a couple of dials. “Come in, Mac Ops, this is Golf Tango One. Urgent. Over.”

I lean closer to hear. A reply comes in through the receiver seconds later. “Reading your five, Golf Tango. What’s the emergency? Over.”

“Prisoners treated outside the boundaries of the Geneva Convention. Over.”

“Say again.”

I snatch the phone from him. “The military’s enslaved a bunch of kids and is torturing them. Over.”

“Copy. You are OTG. Not sure how we can help. Over.”

“Off the grid,” the pilot explains at my questioning look.

I hand the phone back. “Give them our coordinates.”

He swallows, looks toward the ceiling, whispers something I can’t hear beneath his breath that sounds like a prayer. Finally he puts the phone to his ear. “Come in, Mac Ops. Relay as you see fit. Coordinates to follow. Wait.”

He accesses the computer beside the radio, navigates to a map. He types in a command and hundreds of multisized squares appear, most located in the United States. Greens, reds, blues. A handful of black ones are scattered in remote locations across the globe. Georgetown, the largest black and the only installation in Antarctica, sits in the southern middle of the continent.

He clicks on the Georgetown square. A password entry box appears.
BLACK LEVEL
. From his pants, he pulls a metal rectangle. A digital bar across the middle displays a super-long passcode of numbers and letters. A few seconds later, the code shifts to something new. He hands the rectangle to me. “We have a minute before it updates again.”

I read aloud. “A—7—5—T—R—H—1—2—K—”

My CENSIR shocks me.

“Captain, you’ve been decommissioned.” The words
echo through the end of the phone. The voice belongs to Major Alderson.

The front of the pilot’s head erupts in a spray of blood. The computer screen shatters. I hear the whistle of a bullet an instant later.

I whirl around. Alderson, a sniper, and some guy with a metal backpack stand near the hangar entrance. Alderson hands the phone to Backpack Guy. The sniper redirects his rifle at me.

“She’s far too valuable for that,” the major says to the sniper as he strides toward me.

He lifts the pilot’s head by the scruff and turns him so I can see the carnage. “Well done, Twenty-Five. You have helped us deal with a dangerous security threat.”

Bile rises in my throat. I swallow it back, breathe through my nose, force a smile. “Glad to be of service.”

He wraps an arm around my shoulder. “I think you deserve a reward.”

I expect him to take me some reconditioning dungeon, but we return to the barracks. He activates overhead lights with his tablet. Several of the girls wake up too quickly to have been asleep. Twenty-One rushes over and grabs my hand. “You’re back. Can we go to the island now?”

“Not yet,” I whisper.

“Keep getting those dragons, and you’ll be on that
island in no time, child,” Alderson says. “Sorry to disturb you so late, ladies, but I’ve got some good news. Thanks to Twenty-Five’s diligence, we discovered a weak link in our chain. She has earned you a day off from your duties. Good night, ladies. Sleep in.”

A cheer goes up. He leaves. In the second before the lights go off, I see Evelyn grinning at me.

I want to cry and roar, but most of all, I want to hit something. Somebody. My CENSIR shocks me. I repress the urge, focus on the mental image of the captain’s head exploding. I wait a few minutes before slinking from my bed. I can’t see anything, but I know this room inside and out. I know where Evelyn sleeps. I tiptoe forward so her guard dogs won’t notice me.

On a good day, I might give the queen bitch a chance to defend herself.

I don’t remember the last time I had a good day.

I’m almost there when my CENSIR shocks me again. But it’s not just me. Other girls are stirring. A beep sounds, the screen turns on. I freeze.

The video on the screen, shot via drone and labeled
25
, is focused on the sidewalk adjacent to Confections of a Chocaholic. I last visited my aunt and uncle in Ann Arbor five years ago, but I remember that candy store vividly. I loved the chocolate-covered raspberries; Sam preferred the
double-stuffed turtles.

Apparently, he still does.

The drone tracks him from the store to a house a couple blocks away. It zooms in on a window, shows Sam sitting on his bed. He’s waving.

“He knows it’s watching him?” Lorena says. Her arm’s around my waist. I don’t remember her putting it there.