“So, you know what’s going on?” Finch asked, directing his question to Eric.
Eric ignored him.
“Maybe these men did,” Yoshi said, pointing ahead. More bodies, these ones half covered in salt and sand. Cade had almost missed them.
Cade took a few steps closer, giving Finch and his crew a wide berth. Jim may have been a party boy, but Finch and Gobbler were prone to unprovoked acts of violence.
Now that he looked around him, he could see that there were many more corpses, at least a dozen. But these looked different from the previous one. They wore faded, patterned pants and had been better preserved, perhaps due to the sand that half covered them. Cade felt his gorge rise at the sight of them for a second time, and once more he resisted the urge to throw up.
They were all emaciated, bearded, and hollow-eyed, but he could still see the dried blood from the wounds that had killed them. Not claw marks, at least not as far as he could tell, but instead what looked like stab wounds to their torsos. In fact, he saw what might have been an arrow sticking from one’s shoulder, but he didn’t want to get closer to check.
Still, even taking in all these details, the strangest part was their skin. They were pale, with a hint of yellowing from desiccation, but all were tattooed with strange whorls of blue, seemingly from their faces to their toes.
“Weird-looking bunch,” Finch said, stepping over the body. “Come on, boys.”
He swaggered on with a confidence that Cade thought had to be an act. Cade fell back with Eric, Scott, and Yoshi.
“You have a better plan?” Scott asked Eric with genuine interest. “You got us this far.”
Eric gazed after the trio ahead of them.
“Better to stick together.”
They caught up with the others, and as they moved away from the corpses, Cade took note of the ground. The area surrounding them was uneven, and made entirely of soil, scattered only with sand and salt. There were the remains of what had once been grass beneath his feet, roasted to a yellow crisp by the hot sun. Nothing like that should be able to grow here.
Stranger still, the area seemed to be formed in a perfect square, as if someone had built a giant soccer field in the middle of the desert. Had someone teleported a giant hunk of earth and dropped it on top of the salt flat? Just like he had been dropped on the ledge?
As they walked back onto the salt, more bodies appeared, these ones lined up in a row. They resembled the first—dressed in ragged red cloth and with no beards. If anything, it would appear that two opposing forces had done battle here—the blue-skins against the red-cloths. And the red-cloths had won.
“Well, that’s not a good sign,” Scott groaned.
“Somebody put all those bodies there,” Cade said. “Laid them out. And look at the ground—it’s all torn up.” He could see footprints in the salt, like a cheap sandal might leave. “There were people here, a lot of them.”
“Hey, check this out,” Eric called
Cade walked around the bodies, and his heart leaped at the sight ahead. Among what looked like a pile of trash—bits of wood, scraps of cloth, and other detritus—were pots. Or vases. Whatever they were, they could be a sign of the one thing they needed most. Water.
They stumbled toward the pile like zombies, mesmerized by the sight. Cade lifted one of the vases by the handles on both sides and heard the slosh of liquid within.
“It’s a freaking miracle,” Scott yelled hoarsely, picking up one for himself. The top had been plugged by a cork, but Scott tore it out with his teeth and tipped the pot back, drinking its contents without so much as a sniff to check it.
He gulped for a few more seconds, then came up for air with a gasp.
“Too good to be true,” he said, bringing it back up to his lips. The others rushed to collect their own, and Cade was thankful that there were more than enough to go around.
The next few minutes were spent in silence but for the groans of relief and the guzzling of water. Cade could feel the life returning to his body with every mouthful. But with each sip, he couldn’t help feeling uneasy.
It was too good to be true. Who would leave water here, in the middle of this desert, among rows of bodies?
This had been planned. The water, certainly. Maybe even the disk around that corpse’s neck. It was like a test … a puzzle. And they were the guinea pigs.
If this was a puzzle, then Cade knew that every detail mattered.
He looked at the jug in his hands. It was a faded rust color, like the terra-cotta pots his mother used for plants. But older, like the containers he’d seen in museum trips his historian father had dragged him on. He’d learned there that they were called amphorae. The drinking vessels of the ancient world.
“What did the disk say?” Cade asked, his curiosity finally outweighing his fear of Finch. It could be a key piece to this puzzle, and he needed to see it.
Finch held his gaze for a moment, then shrugged. He tossed it over, smiling as it fell short and Cade had to scramble in the salt to get it.
Cade picked it up and stared down at the markings there. It was rough, the letters and numbers made up of holes punched through rather than genuine engraving. But the alphanumerics were clear as day, and they shocked Cade to his core. He stared, his mouth flapping open. It was the last thing he had expected to see.
“Maybe not so useless after all,” Finch said, his piercing blue eyes boring into Cade’s face. “Spit it out.”
Cade let the token fall to the ground, trying to wrap his head around it. It had to be a trick. This all had to be a trick.
“I said spit it out,” Finch snapped.
“It says … Legio I X,” Cade said, spelling out the last two letters. “Then Hispana.”
Finch stared at him blankly. Only Scott had any reaction at all, furrowing his brows as if trying to remember something.
“So?” he asked.
“It says he was a Roman soldier,” Cade said, hardly able to believe his own words. “From the Ninth Legion.”
CHAPTER
8
1 month earlier
Cade gasped and staggered to his feet, nausea roiling through his stomach like a coiled snake.
“Again!” the counselor shouted. “Three more.”
Down he went, flat on his belly, then up into the push-up position, an awkward hop into a crouch, and finally the jump straight into the air, his hands pointed at the sky.
Burpees, they called them, a terrible, full-body exercise that used his own weight against him. Cade had thought the name funny at first. It wasn’t funny anymore.
“Down,” the counselor barked. “Faster.”
Cade went down.
It had been so stupid. Gobbler had tripped him up in the canteen, sticking out his leg when Cade walked past. Cade hadn’t been looking, too focused on finding a table among the crowd.
Usually, he sat with Eric. Not beside him, but at the same table. Even though Eric pointedly ignored Cade, he was safer territory than the others. Having somewhere to sit made Cade’s life a little easier.
In any case, when Cade had fallen, he’d smacked his face on the floor. Just a minor bruise on his cheek, but the wardens had seen it later that day and threatened him with punishment if he didn’t tell them who else had been involved in the “fight.”