Titan Base (17 page)

“And since,” Ethan said, cutting her off, “like our I.C.E.s, the Ch’zar I.C.E.s are part mechanical and part
biological
, that means they might have some—”

“Medicine,” Emma finished for him.

“Maybe something that can help Angel,” Ethan said.

They hadn’t found any medicine for radiation poisoning in Ethan’s hospital room. Why should they have? Santa Blanca kids normally didn’t come in contact with radiation (rare leaks from their nuclear-powered athletic suits aside). But Ch’zar I.C.E.s had microfusion reactors and flew through restricted regions all the time.
They
had to have a way to deal with radiation.

Ethan and Emma searched a rack of equipment near the ant lion. Ethan found arc welders, air-impact wrenches, and hydraulic fluid tanks. Nothing that would help.

“Over here,” Emma said. “A first-aid kit, I think.”

He went to her and a large chest she’d opened.

It was full of those flat living bandages the Resistance used to make field repairs on their I.C.E.s. Smaller versions had been used on himself, Felix, and other wounded pilots.

He poked one of the caterpillar-like creatures. It squirmed.

One tiny box had a strange dash-and-dot Ch’zar icon. It looked like jumbled Morse code. Ethan ran a finger over it. The icon’s meaning snapped into focus in his thoughts.

“That’s the alien symbol for radiation, isn’t it?”

Ethan didn’t know how he knew that. It worried him.

Emma’s eyes narrowed at the icon, and she nodded.

Ethan slipped the latch on the box and opened it. Inside was a syringe. The sight of the needle made him pull back. So many times people had tried to poke him with needles—it kind of freaked him out.

Next to the syringe were six clear vials. Within them was a liquid that glowed an intense lime green … a color similar to the toxic radiation warnings on their flight maps.

“Radiation,” Emma said. “Does that mean it’s a cure for it, or that it
is
radiation?”

Ethan touched one of the vials. It was warm.

The icon on this box lacked any context. Emma was right: it could be a cure for the radiation, or it could
be
radioactive.

“What it is is a chance for Angel,” he whispered. “Unless we take a risk and try this, she has
no
chance at all.”

Emma pressed her lips into a single white line of concern.

Ethan snapped shut the box and scooped it up. He
tried to adjust the flimsy hospital gown he’d been put in but failed to feel any more covered.

“So what now, Lieutenant?” Emma asked. “Do we stick to the plan and find Felix and the others and get back to the Seed Bank?”

Ethan hesitated. Ultimately all of this was his responsibility—their mission, their lives, now even the fate of the Seed Bank and the last free-willed humans in the universe.

Things had been so easy a few months ago, when all he had to worry about was how to win his next soccer game and how to pass the occasional pre-algebra quiz.

He was Lieutenant Blackwood, though, not just a soccer player or pilot. He felt confident
and
terrified, all at the same time.

“We’ll stick to the plan,” he finally told Emma. “But there’s one place I want to go back to first, a place I have a feeling we’ll never get another chance to see unless we go now.”

He looked at her.

Emma’s face contorted with confusion, then smoothed, and one eyebrow shot up.

“Home,” he told her.

   
19
   
NOT YOUR HOME ANYMORE

ETHAN AND EMMA SNUCK THROUGH THE STREETS
of Santa Blanca. He felt ridiculous still wearing the hospital gown. It was very … breezy. There was no time to search through backyards to find laundry drying on lines.

There was really no time left to go back to their old house either.

But Ethan felt that he
had
to go back, just one more time, to see the place where he and his sister had grown up. They had to go there because Ethan had the weirdest feeling that he’d missed
something
when he’d searched his house in a rush.

Whatever it was, it called to Ethan, pulled at him like a magnetic force.

His parents?

Franklin and Melinda Blackwood wouldn’t come back here, not if any part of their selves remained. They’d only be back in Santa Blanca if the Ch’zar had gotten to them.

Ethan shivered. This hospital gown barely covered his body. The streetlights on cranes were dark. A low fog clung to the streets and oozed over the neighborhood lawns.

Flashlights stabbed through the misty darkness ahead.

Ethan pulled Emma up a driveway. They crouched behind trash cans.

A pack of a dozen adults walked down the sidewalk past their hiding spot. This was not a Neighborhood Watch, because there were kids with them, still dressed in their pajamas, some almost as old Emma, but some so young their parents had to carry them. The kids murmured complaints. None of the adults spoke.

Emma started to whisper a question, but Ethan held a finger to his lips and pointed down the street.

More groups of adults and kids crossed at the intersection. They moved to where the school used to be.

Something was going on.

Maybe the Ch’zar had already figured out they were missing from the underground hospital. That wouldn’t rate a full-scale evacuation from Santa Blanca, though. Were Bobby and the other Grizzlies causing trouble? Were Felix and the rest of Sterling Squadron doing something? If they’d gotten the I.C.E.s cleaned and operational, there could be a full-scale battle raging in the city right now.

Ethan strained to hear anything—the whisper of giant wings in the sky, the clash of exoskeleton armor, a distant explosion.

But there was nothing. Not even the crickets were awake at this hour.

Whatever the Ch’zar were up to tonight was making the hair on the back of Ethan’s neck stir.

He signaled to Emma and they moved out.

They were like ghosts in the neighborhood where Ethan and Emma had played hide-and-seek, sold lemonade on the corner, gone trick-or-treating, shot off those great model rockets, and had the time of their lives.

Ethan would have given anything to feel that untroubled again.

They rounded the street corner, and he halted to draw in a deep breath.

A Victorian house stood in the dark. Its wide wraparound porch beckoned to them like open arms. Even at
night, Ethan could still make out the friendly gingerbread trim.

The Blackwood residence.

His heart sank, though, as he spied the mailbox. It read
THE HANSENS
.

Of course, someone else had to be living here now. The Ch’zar wouldn’t waste a perfectly good house.

Emma and Ethan circled around back. Through the window on the back porch, he saw the light over the oven was dark. His mom had always kept it on. It felt wrong to see it unlit.

Ethan eased open the back door—there were no locks on any Santa Blanca house—and they slipped inside. He felt like a thief in his own house.

But this wasn’t his house anymore, was it? The Hansen family lived here. Probably a gaggle of kids and parents who were part of the Collective … which meant they were dangerous.

“I don’t think anyone’s here,” Emma whispered. “It feels empty.”

Ethan felt it, too. Not a creak. Not a breath from another human in the entire house.

They snuck upstairs and checked every room.

The beds were unmade. Clothes had been tossed onto the floor. It looked like everyone had left in a big hurry.
The Hansens might have been one of those groups they’d seen on the street.

“What are we looking for?” Emma asked.

Ethan shook his head. “I don’t know … something.”

He wandered into his room. There were posters of van Gogh sunflowers on the wall. The homework on the desk had the name
Jane Hansen
scrawled across the pages.

Ethan felt strange that the room he’d grown up in was now a girl’s room.

His eyes widened. “Mr. Bubbles!”

His betta was on the windowsill. The blue fish was asleep.

Ethan tapped the bowl and Mr. Bubbles twitched, woke up, and swam to the top, looking for food.

He’d completely forgotten about his pet. He was so glad someone was taking care of him.

Ethan sprinkled food for Mr. Bubbles. “There you go, guy.”

Emma crossed her arms. “We came here to feed your fish?” She looked around his room, snorted, and strode out.

Ethan tapped the side of Mr. Bubbles’ bowl, sighed, and then reluctantly left him. Jane Hansen was taking better care of him than he could.

Emma went to their parents’ old room.

“You said there’s a secret compartment in Mom and Dad’s closet?” Emma opened the closet door, searched, but found nothing.

“This side,” Ethan told her. He pushed on the closet wall. It felt solid. “There has to be a catch.”

Emma pulled Ethan out of the closet. She took two steps back, then turned around and planted a martial arts kick smack on the wall. The Sheetrock caved in, leaving a hole the size of a dinner plate.

“Don’t!” Ethan said. “You’re going to get us in trouble.”

Emma’s eyebrows quirked and she gave him a look that said,
my poor stupid brain-damaged brother
.

“Seriously?” she asked. “You’re worried about a busted wall after you burned down the school, crushed the Geo Transit train, and blew up a hundred other things?”

Ethan frowned.

He pulled at the edges of the hole Emma had made in the wall.

Within was the safe he’d seen before. It wasn’t locked and opened with a tug.

There was nothing inside.

“The Ch’zar must have cleaned it out,” Emma muttered. She exhaled a huge sigh. “Come on. There’s nothing for us to find here.”

Ethan couldn’t believe it. He’d been so sure there’d be another note, or some
super
secret hidden compartment.

He double-checked, smoothing his hand along the inside of the safe.

There was a single half sheet of paper in the dust.

He pulled it out, his heart racing.

Emma moved closer. Standing on tiptoes, she peered over his shoulder.

Together they read it:

Ethan’s heart sank.

“It’s a first draft of the letters they wrote us,” Emma whispered, the disappointment thick in her voice.

He squinted at the page, turning it over and over. There was nothing on the back. It was basically the same letter his parents had written to them—just with a bunch of words crossed out. Nothing more.

Tears pricked his eyes. He missed Mom and Dad so much. He wished this had been instructions, an explanation, a note telling him where they were now, something … but it was only confirmation that he and Emma were on their own.

“I don’t get it,” Ethan said. “Mom and Dad had so much of this planned.” He riffled the note. “Why leave
this
in the safe? Why not tear it up so the Ch’zar wouldn’t find it? Or just burn it?”

“Maybe they were in a big hurry,” his sister replied.

Ethan’s mom measured out every ingredient, put them in bowls, and lined them up alphabetically before she started baking cookies. His dad had every tool labeled and up on Peg-Boards, sorted by function, inside the shed.

They
didn’t
just leave scraps of paper around for their enemies to find.

A tremor shook the house and rattled the windows.

Ethan and Emma rushed to the bedroom window.

A huge shape moved in the shadow of the maple tree in their backyard.

Ethan caught a flash of gold in the starlight and inhaled sharply.