The Resisters (11 page)

“Ow! Go easy, would you?”

“You’re lucky it’s just your hair I’m ripping out, Blackwood,” she muttered.

She looked him over. “Missed a spot.” She squeezed
more gunk out of the tube and rubbed it onto the back of his head. “You’re going to make a pretty blond,” she said with a snort of amusement.

Camouflaging hair dye. It was part of their plan to sneak back and get the wasp fighting suit.

Once Ethan had told them he’d hidden the suit in his neighborhood, they’d grabbed him and flown away from the wrecked bus, up and over the mountains, zooming
through
the forest to hide from aerial surveillance, stopping and then moving at precisely timed intervals to avoid what Felix called the “satellite web”—and then they came to this abandoned barn.

They’d changed into school uniforms. They even had one for Ethan … obviously stolen property, because the name tag inside read:
HAROLD
SMIDES
.

Had this uniform been for the third member of their team? The one they’d lost?

It was probably a bad idea to ask. It had been a sore point before with Madison … and the last thing Ethan wanted was to make her
more
angry.

“What is it?” Madison said. “You have the same stupid look as those dairy cows in the pasture.” She took some hair gunk and applied it to her head, then drew her hair back into a ponytail.

“Nothing … except you called the wasp suit Infiltrator I.C.E.? What does
that
mean?”

Madison rolled her eyes as if everyone ought to know. “I.C.E.—Insectoid Combat Exoskeleton,” she said. “The
wasp is an Infiltrator model. It’s got moderate armor and weapons systems, designed to penetrate enemy defenses quickly—accomplish whatever its mission is—and then get out just as quick. It’s devastating in running combat but not meant for prolonged engagements.”

Ethan nodded, understanding. The wasp was fast, nimble, strong, but it wasn’t the fastest or the strongest. It was a little good at everything.

“Your suit? And Felix’s?”

“My dragonfly …” Madison’s voice changed, and she got a far-off look in her eyes. It reminded Ethan of how some girls sounded when they talked about horses. “She’s Reconnaissance I.C.E. Light armor, light weapons, but capable of
supersonic
flight. No one can catch us once we’re in the air.”

She exhaled and looked normal again.

“Felix’s beetle is a brute,” she said. “Juggernaut I.C.E. It can barely fly, but it’s designed for sustained combat, with the heaviest armor, beam weapons, bombs, and missiles, and so strong it could tear down a mountain if it had to.”

Felix finished heaping hay over the giant insects, brushed his blue-black bodysuit free of the straw, and joined them.

“Suits secured,” he told Madison. “I activated the proximity sensors. If any Ch’zar come within a mile, I’ve programmed the suits to return to base. If they can’t … they have orders to self-destruct.”

She flashed him a lethal glare. “Now we’re risking
all
our suits to get the wasp. Why? They’re bound to have it by now.”

“Do we have a choice?” Felix said. “If the Ch’zar get our technology, we lose the tiny edge we have in this fight … and there’s that
other
reason I want the wasp back.” He returned her glare a moment and then turned to Ethan. “So, where did you put it? And did the adults say anything about the suit before they shipped you out?”

“The last place I saw it was at the school,” Ethan said. “In a shed. I can show you. It wasn’t really hidden … just kind of covered with a tarp.”

Madison made a disgusted sound.

Ethan was about to tell her that he’d done his best … considering he’d just crash-landed at two hundred miles an hour into solid titanium—when he remembered something Coach had said that didn’t make sense.

“They don’t have it,” Ethan told them. “They
really
wanted me to tell them where I’d stashed it. Even a simple search would have turned it up, so I don’t understand why. They said they weren’t able to track it in the air, either … something about it having ‘stealth technology.’ Does that make any sense to you guys?”

Madison and Felix shared a quick look of astonishment.

“A lucky break …,” Madison whispered.

“One we need to take advantage of,” Felix said. “Fast.”

Felix marched out of the barn and to the nearby farmhouse. Ethan and Madison followed. He went to a green
minivan in the driveway. He opened the driver’s door and motioned for them to get inside.

Felix bent under the dash and fiddled with the wires.

They were stealing this? Ethan looked around. They were going to get caught!

But no one in the farmhouse noticed.

And maybe no one would. Stuff like stealing cars just didn’t happen in Santa Blanca.

Ethan saw the obvious advantages any criminal would have in a place like this. It felt wrong.

“When an Infiltrator suit goes into stealth mode,” Felix explained, still rummaging under the dash, “it blocks radar and scrambles the mental signals used by the Ch’zar. Kind of a mental static, not enough to harm anyone’s brain, but it does make a blind spot. Mind-controlled people see the stealthed wasp but don’t pay any attention to it.”

“Doesn’t work if you fly into a crowd of adults,” Madison said. “Or if there are other kids around.”

“Tonight they’ll send in sensor bugs to sweep the area,” Felix said.

“That only gives us an hour to get there and get out,” Madison whispered, an edge of worry creeping into her voice.

Felix twisted wires together. The minivan started.

He put on his seat belt and asked Ethan, “What do you think? Is there time?”

Ethan was surprised. Felix was treating him like he was part of his team … and after all the trouble he’d caused.

More than trouble. Ethan had almost gotten Madison and Felix
killed
. Twice!

Of course, they hadn’t exactly treated him fairly either—kidnapping him and forcing him up that mountain. But what else could they have done? He hadn’t believed Madison when she had told him the truth.

And if they hadn’t taken Ethan, in a few months he’d have hit puberty and been one more brainwashed Ch’zar slave.

But he wasn’t the only one about to be absorbed into the Collective.

Emma! She was leaving tomorrow! He had to warn her.

One crisis at a time, though. Ethan didn’t deserve a second chance, but he was getting it. He wasn’t going to mess it up. He’d help Felix and Madison get their suit back, then he’d find his sister and figure out how to save her, too.

“Time’s not the problem,” Ethan told Felix. “It’s a fifteen-minute drive. Getting into the school will be the tricky part.”

“That’s no problem,” Madison replied. She let her hair down, smoothed out the spikes that had popped up, and almost looked like a normal pretty girl.

“We’re just three students,” she said. “Who’s going to know the difference? Besides, if the Ch’zar know you escaped, the last place they’d be looking for you would be back at brainwashed-central elementary school.”

Felix snugged a baseball cap over his shaved head.

Ethan didn’t say anything.

Sure, they had school uniforms, and his hair was a different color … but Ethan had spotted Felix and Madison easily at that soccer game—superpale, Madison’s wild eyes, their antisocial attitudes. No matter their disguise, those two just didn’t fit in.

Felix pulled out of the driveway and sped down the road.

“Just one more thing bothers me, Ethan,” Felix said. “How did you get away from the fight on the mountain? You vanished off my sensors. I’m not blaming you for freaking out. I’m astonished you got the wasp to move as well as you did. Most pilots don’t do half as well on their first attempt.”

Ethan shrugged. “It was an accident.”

He explained how he’d unintentionally jumped off the cliff, how he had wished he wouldn’t hit the ground and could fly like Madison—which was when the wasp’s wings popped out.

He paused to consider that technically the fighting suit couldn’t be a wasp, because a wasp’s wings didn’t fold under its carapace like a beetle’s. Of course, if the Resisters could engineer a giant fighting insect suit, they could probably cut and slice enough DNA to make a wasp’s wings fold under its exoskeleton.

Meanwhile, Madison’s mouth dropped open. “You flew just by
thinking
about it?”

“That
would
explain how he got back to Santa Blanca
so fast,” Felix whispered to her. “As improbable as it seems.”

“It’s the truth,” Ethan said, feeling defensive.

They expected him to believe their story about alien invasion and mind control, and they couldn’t cut him a little slack about flying the suit? “What’s so weird about that? You guys fly.”

“Forget it.” Madison tried, and failed, to wipe the sneer off her face. “Beginner’s luck.”

Felix burned rubber, pushing the minivan as fast as it would go—then downshifted and screeched to the posted speed limit once they hit the neighborhood. He casually pulled into the Northside Elementary parking lot like he owned the place.

They got out and marched onto the campus.

Madison and Felix strolled down the hallway.

Ethan felt like he had a big red sign plastered to his back that read:

But no students were here. The last class had let out ten minutes ago.

Ethan’s heart stopped.

The principal and three adults in suits turned down a side corridor and walked straight toward them.

ETHAN THOUGHT HE’D DIE. THE PRINCIPAL AND
three adults in black suits and ties saw them. They had to.

He knew it’d attract attention, but Ethan couldn’t look away.

He wondered if he should run for it … or, as impossible as it sounded to him, try to walk nonchalantly like he was off to some after-school drama rehearsal.

The adults didn’t even glance at them and turned down another hallway.

“See?” Madison not-so-playfully bumped her shoulder into his (which sent him stumbling off balance). “When the Ch’zar makes up its collective mind—in this case that you’ve escaped—it takes a lot for them to change it.”

“You mean you guys were gambling that’s what they’d think?” Ethan whispered. “Couldn’t they have just as easily decided I’d come back to get the suit? Set some huge trap?”

“It’s a good gamble,” Felix replied. “The Ch’zar think logically, and what we’re doing … no one in their right mind would try it.”

Madison narrowed her eyes, and her tone changed to dead serious as she asked Ethan, “Now where’s the suit?”

Ethan led them past the new soccer field … which yesterday had been acres of smooth green titanium. Now it was crumpled metal ruins with an impact crease that looked like a meteor had struck.

“Whoa,” Felix whispered. “
You
did that?”

Ethan flushed. “I got the flying part down okay,” he said, “but I need help with my landings.”

He led them past the field, around the gym, and to the campus heat plant. Nestled in the shadow of the larger building was the gardener’s shed.

Ethan stopped, looked around, and made sure no one had followed them.

He opened the shed door, they all went in, and he closed it behind them.

The scent of weed killer was overwhelming.

“Here,” Ethan said, and marched to the corner. He pulled off the plastic tarp.

The giant wasp was there.

He sighed with relief.

He couldn’t believe that Coach had missed it in his search. Felix had to be right. He’d probably come here and taken a quick look, and that “blind spot” thing must’ve
kicked in. Even though he had to have seen a huge lump covered with a tarp, he’d ignored it.

“Oh no!” Madison cried. She knelt by the insect.

The wasp was curled up on the floor and looked much like an insect you’d find on a windowsill … an insect
long dead
.

Ethan pressed his hand to his own chest, and he could almost feel the thing’s too-slow heartbeat.

Madison touched the golden armor here and there, but it remained unmoving. “Hibernation mode,” she told Felix.

Felix’s mouth set into a grim frown and he shook his head. “We have to abort, then. I’ll set the self-destruct for ten minutes. I want to be far out of town when it goes off.”

“What are you talking about?” Ethan asked.

“No.” Madison set her hand flat on the wasp’s thorax. “We were so close … and this is all I have left of him.”

“I’m sorry,” Felix said to her. “I wanted his suit back as much as you did, but there’s no choice. He would’ve wanted it this way. You know that.”

She hung her head and pinched the bridge of her crooked nose. “He would have wanted the mission
finished,
” she whispered, and her voice broke.

“But we found it,” Ethan said, more confused than ever. “So it’s in this ‘hibernation mode’ thing. Just wake it up. Or we drag it back to the minivan. If we ditch the back seats, we can stuff it inside.”

“An unloaded Infiltrator suit weighs
three tons,
” Felix said. “And even if we used this”—he gestured at the riding
lawn mower—“it’d be slow and attract way too much attention.”