Titan Base (9 page)

Then he spotted a green splotch on the map and remembered something.

Radiation.

It was a long shot. A complete gamble.

But a chance nonetheless.

“I know a place we can clean our suits. A place where we can get Angel help, too.”

Madison sidled closer to look at what he was staring at on the map. Her eyes widened. “You can’t be serious,” she said.

“Totally serious.”

Ethan pointed at the dot centered on his map.

The label beneath the dot read
SANTA BLANCA
.

   
9
   
COMMAND HEADACHES

ETHAN SAT IN THE PASSENGER SEAT OF A
Blanca Dairy delivery truck. He had an extreme feeling of déjà vu. He’d been inside a truck like this just a few months ago—kidnapped by Madison and Felix after his last soccer game.

He grimaced at how innocent he’d been, worrying about getting into high school, for crying out loud, instead of realizing that he had to save the world.

Tonight everything was different.

Including the fact that he smelled like old banana peels and rotten tomatoes. His flight suit needed a bath in
the worst way. At least it was covered with a milk delivery person’s white coveralls.

Emma was in back, perched on a milk crate and intently staring out the front, as if this were the first time she’d seen the pastures outside Santa Blanca.

In a way, she
was
seeing them for the first time, seeing the place for what it really was. Santa Blanca was a rural township full of happy families and surrounded by farmlands and mountains.

It was also a prison where kids like them were raised to join a race of mind-controlled slaves when they hit puberty. A place where no one knew the truth.

Madison drove. Of the three of them, she was the only one who knew how to drive a car. The steering wheel was huge in her tiny hands, but she expertly handled the vehicle, speeding along the moonlit road at nearly twice the posted speed limit.

Emma moved up and nudged Ethan’s shoulder. “Tell me again why we didn’t bring Felix?” she asked.

Ethan shook his head, wondering if Emma had a crush on the big guy. She was a year older than him, one year closer to puberty … and a year closer to the end of her aboveground activities.

“Felix and Paul know the cleaning protocols for the
I.C.E. suits,” he said. “They need to direct the others. It’s a huge job, and they’re the only ones able to pull off that part of the mission tonight.”

Ethan missed having Felix around. He knew he could always depend on him.

Which is exactly why he’d put him in charge of that part of the plan—Ethan’s “brilliant” plan that he’d dreamed up on the flight into Santa Blanca.

He shifted in the tattered seat, uncomfortable about how much was at risk.

They’d flown straight for Santa Blanca and landed near the dump far from the city. Ethan wasn’t sure how well the Ch’zar could track their radiation-contaminated suits, so they had to move fast. Sterling Squadron had then “liberated” a few trash trucks. They’d loaded the I.C.E.s inside the cavernous metal bellies of the vehicles. That would hide most of the radiation on the suits.

He hoped.

“I get that we need some antiradiation treatment,” Emma whispered, “but was
this
the only place? I mean, won’t they know us in Santa Blanca?”

“Ch’zar-controlled adults would recognize us
anywhere
,” Ethan told her. He suppressed a shudder just thinking about this. “If one of them here sees our faces, the
entire alien hive mind will remember us and respond. They’ll send everyone in the city after us. We’ll have to be supercareful.”

“Getting our I.C.E.s back to Santa Blanca is our only choice,” Madison said, and looked over at Emma instead of watching the road, which drove Ethan crazy every time she did it. “If your brother is right and there are antiradiation chemicals here, Felix and Paul can get the suits cleaned, and the squadron will be back in business.”

“The chemicals are here,” Ethan assured them. “Along with showers to clean up malfunctioning athletic suits. Our I.C.E.s are bigger, but it’ll work.”

That’s what Ethan had been trying to remember before. Earlier this year, an athletic suit had had a reactor breach. The hazardous materials team from the fire department came and set up huge showers and doused the suit with chemicals. Coach Norman told him the hazmat team had special rinses that captured and washed off radioactive particles.

Felix and Paul and the rest of Sterling Squadron were driving their commandeered trash trucks right now to the Santa Blanca firehouse to find a way to secretly “borrow” those showers and chemicals. At least, that was the plan.

“I’m worried about the radiation on our suits,” Emma
said, irritation creeping into her tone. “But I’m more worried about finding a treatment for
Angel
.”

“Oh … her,” Madison replied, and looked back at the road.

Of course, Angel … Ethan was so worried for her.

“This is the best chance we have to save Angel,” he said, keeping his voice steady, although he felt a choking in his throat, remembering how she had been so limp and lifeless after her wasp had spit her out.

“The Resisters and the Ch’zar have similar technologies, but they’re not identical,” Ethan went on. “Dr. Irving said he borrowed a lot of their tech to make our I.C.E.s. We use old human technology, though, especially in our medicine. The Ch’zar might have another way to deal with radiation. They’ve collected science from a dozen other species in the galaxy.”

“So we’re going to just sneak into Santa Blanca General Hospital and hope we find something,” Madison murmured, unconvinced.

“You have a better plan?” Ethan asked.

She shrugged. “It’ll work, Lieutenant. Piece of cake. Angel gets her skinny little neck saved and the Resistance gets more effective antiradiation medicine—what’s not to like?”

Madison wouldn’t meet his glare. There was an edge to her words that Ethan did not like one bit.

He half suspected if it were up to Madison, she’d actually let Angel
die
.

What if that was the correct command decision? Was Ethan soft for risking everyone’s life to save one team member? And the most troublesome team member at that?

Maybe … but it was the only way he could operate as a commander.

He would have done it for
any
person in his squad, but like Angel said, he and she were both “different.”

Emerson’s gas station was ahead. It was closed for the evening, but Madison pulled up to a pump anyway.

She hopped out, ripped off the panel of the gas pump, got it to work, and started filling the milk truck’s tank.

“I want a full tank,” she told him, “in case we have to make a break for it.”

Ethan nodded, although he wasn’t sure where they’d run to if there was trouble. Without I.C.E. suits that the Ch’zar couldn’t track … without a way to contact the Seed Bank … they might be stuck here for a long time.

Ethan turned to talk to Emma, but he stopped because she had both palms pressed to her forehead in obvious pain.

“You okay?” he whispered.

“Headache,” she murmured. “I felt something like this
back in New Taos … only it was a little buzzing, and
this
is more like a hammer of pounding blood. It’s hard to explain.”

She looked up. Her dark eyes were glassy, her forehead creased with tension.

He reached out to pat her on the arm. He was going to suggest that she grab some aspirin from the first-aid kits, but when he touched her, Ethan felt what she felt, too.

It was like the pulses of a hundred other people thundering in his head. The pressure was intense.

He let go and sat up straighter, both hands involuntarily rising to his head to put pressure on the pain.

Was his sister being affected by the Ch’zar mental domination? She was technically old enough to hit puberty. It wasn’t like puberty was a switch, though, that just got flipped. The physical changes could take months to completely manifest.

Dr. Irving had told him there was a critical point, however, when the chemistry in the brain changed. When Madison’s brother, Roger, was taken over, it was only a matter of minutes.

“It’s not that,” Emma told him. “It’s not like I can’t push the feeling out when I concentrate.”

It bugged Ethan that she could so easily guess what he was thinking.

Was that a symptom of a Ch’zar hive mind?

No … he didn’t think so. He and Emma had always been able to guess the other’s thoughts most of the time.

He took a deep breath and tried not to freak out.

“Let me know if it gets any worse, okay?” he said.

She locked eyes with him. The pain eased from her gaze, and the tension on her face smoothed. She slugged him—hard—in the shoulder. “You’ll be the second to know.” She snorted a quick laugh. “I’ll be fine. Worry about more important things.”

Ethan relaxed a little but wasn’t entirely convinced his sister was 100 percent okay.

He knew one thing, though: with Angel’s deadly radiation poisoning, the alien-controlled adults of Santa Blanca who could recognize them at a glance, and his sister acting “quirky,” the clock was ticking.

It was only a matter of time before
something
went very wrong.

The gas tank of the milk truck gurgled and overflowed.

“Done,” Madison chirped. She hopped back into the milk truck and they sped off.

They approached the edge of Santa Blanca. Things were different in his former home from the last time Ethan was here. The normal warm streetlights had been
replaced with tall banks of lights mounted on cranes that cast harsh illumination over entire city blocks.

It was bright enough to see that on every corner, two adults in green Neighborhood Watch jackets stood on lookout.

Emma tossed Madison a Blanca Dairy jacket and cap.

“Take the wheel,” Madison told Ethan.

He did, and she shrugged on the jacket and cap, pulling the hat low so no one could see her face. She then grabbed the wheel back.

Ethan slumped into the passenger seat.

They drove ahead … right past the adults.

He peeked through the window. The adults didn’t give them a second glance.

Posters covered the brick walls of Barker’s Drugstore and the public library.

One poster showed an adult kneeling next to some kids. They all smiled. Under this was the caption:

On another poster, there were a pair of blue eyes and the words:

A third poster had a father and a mother holding a baby in their arms, both cooing at it. The poster read:

But next to this one on the brick wall was spray-painted:

The paint still looked wet and drippy.

“What’s going on here?” Madison whispered.

“I don’t know …,” Ethan whispered back.

He had a vague idea, though.

Before he’d joined the Resisters, he’d returned to Santa Blanca in his wasp to rescue his sister. He’d failed, but there’d been a titanic battle between him and the Ch’zar at Northside Elementary School. Felix and Madison had flown back to help and together they’d
totaled
the school.