Emery dismisses the soldiers, straightening her blazer as she leaves with the general, whose normal bulldozer frame has shed at least fifteen pounds since his time with the Common. The last wisps of hair on his bald head have disappeared, sacrificed to the cause. Life as a dissenter has been hard on him.
Before the door closes, I catch Emery withdrawing a fidget cube from a hidden pocket, her deft fingers working the buttons and wheels so expertly, it’s clear she knows the stress reliever well. Her responsibilities after the coup must be weighing on her more than she lets on.
“Alexander just cost us our last search drone!” Barend shouts, throwing a hammer-like punch into his left palm, and then emitting a sharp hiss at the pain. Ciro removes his synthetic leather gloves and takes hold of his bare hand to soothe him.
“I really thought we’d get the bastard,” Owen murmurs, the last of his vibrant radiance snuffed out. “The intel was surefire. I really thought this was it.”
All at once the heat proves too much and standing feels too big a task. I plop my backside on the hard floor and stare up at my sister, too scared to close my eyes.
I don’t want to see the vacant, swollen faces of ten Common members who have less than an hour left to live.
“We’re going to get Roth,” Ava states with enough strength to sustain us both.
“And Theo,” Kano says, taking a seat beside me. “He might have been a spoiled northerner, but he showed us he’s one resilient rebel. He’s still out there, and we’ll find him.”
I want to believe that too.
THEO
There’s this spot off the coast of Vancouver where I’d go to get lost. It was one of those hidden beaches that’s a forty-minute slog through trees to reach. The place somehow managed to avoid ever becoming a geotag, which meant I usually had the knockout sunsets and pebbled shores to myself. Pretty ideal. Just like my childhood.
My parents first took me there so I could learn how to fish. A rich person’s hobby I never got the hang of. In British Columbia, civilians need all these special sport-fishing licenses that cost a family fortune to procure, and of course, my dad had them.
My dad had everything. Or so I thought then.
The fish don’t feel pain, mijo, he told me when I caught my first Pacific jack mackerel, as big as my forearm. I cringed when I saw that the white-bellied fish had swallowed the hook whole. My naive nine-year-old eyes were centered on the steady line of blood dripping from its open mouth. But it wasn’t audibly moaning or screaming, so I was dumb enough to believe him.
Looking back now, I understand how the fish could have been such a fool. It trusted the shiny bait, because why not? How could it have known the lure was just a lie? A sham?
I, too, swallowed all kinds of lies whole. My entire identity, for example. My whole family’s identity, actually.
And my dad was wrong. The hooks do hurt. A lot. I feel every jagged cut, the deep and the shallow, created by the incalculable lies he fed me for eighteen years.
Life has been painful since the wool was ripped from my eyes.
“¡Mierda!” I scream when I hear bus-sized tires speeding across the rocky, rust-colored sand. Shit!
The Beast is here. I made it ten minutes longer than my last attempted jailbreak, but a tracker drone wasn’t even used this time. And yet they still found me.
I refill my lungs and scream again, if for no other reason than to let the world know how pissed off I am. I’ve long since cast off any hope someone useful will hear me, no less help me. There’s no one else out here in whatever bone-dry hellscape I’m trapped in.
Concentrate.
Three minutes is all I’ve got before the Beast catches up to me.
No, that’s being optimistic.
Less than a minute.
My legs are beat. My path is a Hail Mary sprint straight through thorny vegetation. I’m so cut up and sore, it’s a miracle I’m able to move at all. I’m dehydrated to the point I’ve seen multiple heat-induced mirages on the horizon, and the real kicker is I have no idea where the hell I am.
Somewhere in no-one’s-land, Texas. A whole other world. I’m easy pickings.
But the desire to survive is a hard instinct to kill.
I take stock of my surroundings. Where can I hide? Large mountain ranges, spiked like a dragon’s back, tease of shelter in the distance.
Too far.
Eight-foot-tall shrubs that smell like rain are scattered across the valley.
Too sparse.
Those are my options, and they for sure won’t do me any good. I know because I’ve already tried them both on my previous failed escape runs.
That’s it. My less than a minute of freedom is up.
Like a black angel of death, the Beast hurtles in front of me, skidding to a stop at an angle to block my path fifty feet ahead. The sun’s reflection bounces off the sizzling metal of the giant military vehicle like a laser beam, impairing my vision, and I’m forced to draw back.
On cue, the front door bursts open, and a Guard dressed in all black charges me like a grizzly at a dead sprint.
I try something different this time.
Instead of running the opposite direction, I stand my ground. It’s the gutsiest move I’ve attempted yet, but I wait until the last possible moment, right up until the Guard can almost grab me, before I spin on my heel, causing the Guard to blow clear past me.
My success is short-lived. The Guard rebounds fast. Blindsided by sheer muscle, I pitch forward to land hard in the dirt, ripping open my palms and the knees of my pants. I manage a few defensive kicks that land nothing but air before I’m manhandled to my feet and dragged toward the armored vehicle that looks like a limo on steroids.
The back door of the Beast opens, and the Guard unhands me. I can feel the AC from where I stand, but I won’t be tempted. I dig in my heels. Or what’s left of them, anyway. The soles of my runners have all but melted off, and the bottoms of my feet are cut and seared so bad it feels like I’m balancing on the tips of newly sharpened knives. Every step I take is self-inflicted torture.
But I could have done it. I would have. Made my way back, I mean.
To Mira.
“Get in,” the Guard orders.
“No thanks,” I tell him.
His hands, puffed up like fattened sausages from the heat, make their ham-handed way to his utility belt. Dark shades conceal his eyes from me, but he’s for sure glaring down at the symbol I crudely carved into my right wrist. Hate burns from him, almost crueler than the sun’s blaze.
His name escapes me, but the Guard who looks like an extra-large reptile with his scaly, sunbaked skin can’t seem to remember mine either. He keeps calling me Roth.
My last name’s Wright, I told him time and time again, back when my resolve and pride were still intact. But now it feels like almost everything about me has been shattered.
A Guard’s baton can do that.
The soldier jams his metal club into my ribs, making sure to block the vehicle’s window with his mammoth frame, so no one sees. His pudgy thumb presses down on the handle, and the electric shock of a taser jolts me backward. I bite my lip hard, tasting blood, and absorb the pain in seasoned silence. After three weeks with this guy as my personal guard and travel companion, I’ve learned to take a hit.
I drop flat on my back, my head narrowly missing a rock the size of the Beast’s tire, and squint up at the blinding sky.