The Island (17 page)

When they finally touched the beach, Rachel was too tired to feel nervous. “How far now?”

Jim looked down the beach, eyeing the tide. “It’s just past that little cove. We’ll be there before you know it.”

They trudged on. Neither of them saw the furtive figure behind them, darting from the cover of a dune to a clump of sea grass.

“I am sorry, you know.” Jim spoke so quietly that Rachel had to strain to hear him over the sound of the waves.

She looked up at him and saw he was crying. He swiped at the tears on his cheek almost angrily.

“I didn’t know. I didn’t know about Filina, how she was controlling me.”

“She controlled a lot of people.” Rachel stepped over a waxy kelp bulb. “I just wish we could make her undo what she did to Hannah. At least then
one
family wouldn’t have lost so much.”

“What do you mean?”

“Wiping her—making her forget everyone, even Tom.” Rachel thought of the slim fabric packet, all that was left of Hannah’s love for Tom.

“Filina didn’t do that. It was Lethe.”

“Who’s Lethe?”

Jim stopped walking. “Wait a minute.” He bit his lower lip as though it helped him think. His expression went from thoughtful to excited. “Lethe! Filina said she could take them away and bring them back.”

“What are you talking about?” Rachel wondered if he’d gone mad.

Jim took hold of her shoulders. “Lethe is a little girl—a stray I think. She’s the one who takes their memories. Filina’s kept her a secret for years. Filina said
she can take, but she can give back, too
. I think maybe she can reverse what she’s done to Hannah.”

Rachel stared. “Do you know where she is now?”

Jim nodded. “As soon as we get back I’ll get her. She’s locked in her unit—Filina made sure of that.”

“You’re late.”

The voice startled both of them. Jim instinctively reached for his knife, but stayed his hand at the sight of the stunner pointed at him. The man who held it shook his head.

“I wouldn’t.” He waved the stunner, directing them to move ahead of him. “What took you so long?”

Jim replaced his knife in its sheath. “We got a late start this time.”

The man spoke into a comm unit clipped on his shoulder. “On our way.” He stepped closer and gripped Rachel’s arm. “I can take it from here.”

Jim stood, looking uncertain. “We usually meet in the shack.”

“Well, you were late. Made me come out here in the wind to find you.” The man made a shooing gesture. “Go on, now. I said I can take it from here.”

Rachel hadn’t taken her eyes off the stunner. She rammed her body hard into the man’s side, knocking him off balance. As he fell, she grabbed for the stunner but it flew from her hands, landing in the sand a few feet away.

“Get it!” Jim threw himself on the man, trying to hold him down. Rachel scuttled over the sand, almost there, reaching, but a hand slammed down on top of hers just as she grasped the stunner. The man pried her fingers off and rolled, pointing it at Jim. Rachel watched him fall. She tried to scramble away, but the man kicked her feet out from under her. She landed on her back in the sand.

The last thing she saw was the stunner, as the man raised it and pointed it at her face.

S
he’s fine, lucky for you.”

Rachel woke to the sight of two men in uniforms, one snapping a scanner back into its case. The other she recognized as the man on the beach. She was lying on a metal cot that was attached to the wall. She tried to sit up, but her wrist was shackled to one of the cot brackets.

“Settle down.” The man with the scanner case frowned at her. “You’ve caused enough trouble. Just relax and enjoy the ride.”

“The ride?” Rachel became aware then, of a humming sound. There was a jolt, and the humming sound grew louder.

“Full speed ahead.” The man from the beach looked at the ceiling. “I’ll go above, see what they want to do about the whole thing. They were still waiting on a return comm when I came down.”

“They won’t do much. They still want a steady supply of these, from what I hear. If they blow the whole bunch up, who will they run their experiments on?”

“You’re probably right.” The man from the beach ducked through a hatch and disappeared. Rachel could see his legs and then his feet as he climbed a ladder just outside the hatch.

They were in a boat. And they were moving. Rachel felt a wave of panic rush through her body. She tried to slow her breathing—she needed to think.

The map. It was in her jacket pocket—but her jacket was gone. She reached for her pocket but her jacket was gone. “Where’s my coat?”

The man who remained shrugged. “Who knows? You won’t need it where you’re going.”

“You have to find my coat!” Rachel struggled to sit up again.

The man raised his hand above her head, holding it there as though he couldn’t decide whether to hit her or not. “Listen, quiet down.” He frowned and lowered his hand. “You’re not in a position to be making demands. They’ll get you all the clothes you need when we get there.” He smirked. “All of them will probably tie in back and flap in the wind, too.”

A siren began to wail. At the same time, a red light set into the wall near the hatch lit up. “What now?” The man went to the opposite wall and pushed a button. He spoke into a mesh square that reminded Rachel of Ms. Moore’s front door intercom. “Gordon here. Should I report?”

A tinny voice came from the mesh. “One of them stowed away!”

“What? What did you say?”

“One of them stowed away and he got a stunner. Almost blasted Ramsey before they got him. They’re bringing him your way, so pop another cot. Received?”

Gordon turned to look at Rachel. He twisted back to speak into the mesh, never taking his eyes off of her. “Received. Over.” He let go of the button on the wall and stepped closer. “What’s this, then? One of your friends didn’t want to say good bye?”

Rachel shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I need my coat.”

“Sure you do.” Gordon turned his back on her, bending down to unlatch a cot on the opposite wall.

There was noise in the hall, and someone banged on the ladder. A disembodied voice called out. “Gordo! Come help me with this guy.”

Gordon stepped out and Rachel could see him reach up toward the ladder. He wrapped his arms around something and began to back into the room.

“Wait—watch his head.” The voice was closer.

Rachel saw what Gordon had hold of—the lower half of someone’s body. She watched as it dropped from above, then jerked to a stop as the man who had called for help grabbed an arm.

“Almost dropped him, you fool!” Gordon staggered a bit and adjusted his hold. He lifted the legs higher as the other man reached the bottom of the ladder still clinging to the body’s arm. The two hauled the person into the room and plopped him onto the cot Gordon had readied.

Rachel could only stare.

It was Pathik.

His face was bloody. Rachel could see a rip in his pants. His arms flopped limply when the men put him on the cot. Gordon immediately wrapped a cuff like the one Rachel had around Pathik’s wrist and snapped it onto the cot bracket.

“Got it from here?” The other man wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. He was breathing heavily.

“Yep.” Gordon smirked at the man. “You ought to do more push-ups, don’t you think?”

“Shut up.” The man didn’t smile. “They said to check the head wound. He got hit pretty hard.”

Gordon nodded. “Will do.

The other man ducked back out through the hatch and Rachel listened to the clanging sound his feet made as he ascended the ladder. Gordon unsnapped the scanner case and ran the device over Pathik’s forehead. He pushed Pathik’s hair away and winced at the wound. “Bet that hurt.” He re-cased the scanner and popped open a bin, rummaging for something. Withdrawing a flat packet, he ripped open the top of it and removed a moistened pad.

Rachel smelled a stringent scent. “Is he all right?”

Gordon twisted his neck to look back at her. “He’s fine. Nothing a little alcohol swab won’t fix.” He scrubbed at Pathik’s forehead, removing most of the blood. “He’ll be sleeping a while, though.”

Rachel couldn’t stop the tears welling up in her eyes. “I need you to find my coat.”

Gordon raised his eyes to the ceiling and made a sound. “And I need you to shut up.” He shook his head. “Your boyfriend here is nice and quiet. And I think it’s time for
you
to go nighty-night, so Gordo here doesn’t have to listen to your blather all the way back to port.” He popped open another bin and took a small, preloaded hypodermic needle out. Stepping over to Rachel, he uncapped the needle and without a word, he stuck it in her upper arm. She jumped at the pain, then realized what he had done.

“No! No. I need you to find my coat, I need—” Rachel’s head lolled to the side.

“There we go.” Gordon tossed the needle and the alcohol pad into a trash receptacle. “That’s better.”

She awoke in a small room. She lay on another cot. There was a toilet. That seemed to be all. The front of the room was glass, with wire embedded in it in a crisscross pattern. The back and sides were cement. There was a door in one of the sides. She didn’t have to check to know that it was locked. She looked down and saw that she was dressed in a jumpsuit, made from some thin, plastic-feeling fabric.

She could see a duplicate of the room she was in across from her, beyond the glass wall and a hallway. Someone lay on the cot there, wearing the same sort of jumpsuit she had on. The person wasn’t moving. Her eyes didn’t seem to want to focus enough for her to tell if the person was Pathik.

She listened. There was nothing to hear. When her vision had cleared more, she sat up, relieved to find that she wasn’t shackled to anything.

She felt so afraid.

What if this was it? What if she never saw Pathik again, or her mother and father? Her thoughts raced, and she shivered, though it wasn’t cold in the room. She tried to remember what her father had said about his time as a prisoner in the Roberts camp. About how he’d been sure he was going to die, about how he thought of her and her mother all the time. It made him brave, he said.

Rachel didn’t feel very brave.

The figure on the cot across from her stirred. Rachel stood and went to the glass, pressing her hands against it. “Hey.” She spoke softly. “Hey, are you awake?”

It wasn’t Pathik. It was a woman, her hair bedraggled, her face worn. She looked dully over at Rachel. Slowly, she sat up, but she didn’t get off the cot. “You the new one?” She squinted. “Who are you? I don’t recognize you.”

“I’m Rachel. Who are you?”

The woman shrugged. “You must have been little when they took me.” She rose slowly, and walked to her own glass wall. “I’m Melissa.” She tilted her head at Rachel. “Did you ever hear about me? Is any of my family still . . . there? Wherever
there
is.” The woman frowned. “Still, I don’t remember a Rachel. And you’re old enough you would have been . . . what? Eleven? Twelve years old when I was still there?”

“You’re the first one they took, right?” Rachel remembered Tom telling the story about Melissa on the beach, about the men coming from nowhere. About Filina, handing her over. “How do you remember?”

“What do you mean?”

“I thought Filina took you to Lethe before she handed you over.” Rachel waited, but Melissa didn’t say anything. “Lethe, the one who makes them all forget.”

Melissa nodded, then. “The little girl, right? She took me to her. I didn’t understand what was happening.” She looked up and down the hallway. “The others don’t remember anyone at all. I think the little girl wasn’t as good with her talent back then, when she did me.”

Rachel looked down the hall, too. Are they here? The others?”

Melissa nodded. “You can’t see from your cell, but there’s a whole row. When they take you to the labs, you walk by.” She bowed her head. “That’s the only time I see them.”

There was a sound far down the hall—the sound of a door opening. Melissa shrank back from the glass. She ran to her cot and lay down, turning her face to the wall. Rachel felt her heart beating fast. She could hear footsteps echoing down the hall, coming closer and closer. She wanted to run back to her cot, too, but she forced herself to stand, calmly, at the glass.

M
algam burst through the unit door. Nandy had brought Nipper here to get him away from the people in the office. They still didn’t understand about Nipper; they only saw a huge, wild animal. Many of them had seen him attack Filina on the platform, too. All the sideways looks he was getting had made Nandy nervous. “Pathik’s gone.” Malgam sounded as close to panicked as Nandy had ever heard him.

“What do you mean, gone?”

“Gone!” Malgam took a breath. “Sorry. I don’t mean to yell at you. But he’s gone. The boat’s gone, Rachel’s gone, and now Pathik.” Malgam’s jaw muscle jumped. “Jim said he didn’t see him following but I bet he was.”

“He wouldn’t be seen if he didn’t want to be.” Nandy hesitated. “Do you think . . .” She looked away.

“What?”

Nandy wished she hadn’t spoken. “Could you try to see? See if he’s . . .”

Malgam nodded, understanding immediately. He could use his gift to try to see what Pathik was seeing. If he was alive, he’d know.

Nandy held his arm. “I’m sorry.” Malgam had used his gift like this before, and that time, he’d seen the death of his father, Indigo. He’d never spoken of it since, but Nandy knew it caused him immeasurable pain.

Malgam sat down on a stool. He closed his eyes, concentrating.

“Do you think he could have gotten on the boat?” Nandy was worried.

“Shhh.” Malgam gave her a look.

“Sorry.”

Once again Malgam closed his eyes. He focused deeply, searching for his son’s sight. He was tentative at first, filled with dread at the prospect of seeing only emptiness. Emptiness meant death. Behind his eyelids, shapes swam in and out of focus. They began to form other shapes, until they all came together. Malgam could see cloth, a strange sort of fine cloth. He saw a hand come into focus, resting on the cloth. He knew the hand—would know it anywhere. “He’s alive.”