The Defiant (25 page)

“We should kill him,” Gadya says.

“No need,” I say. “He's not gonna get too far with a cracked skull. He'll probably die out here anyway.”

Gadya strolls over to him. Suddenly, without warning, she stamps on his ankle. I hear the bones crack. “Just in case,” she says. “I don't want him tracking us again.”

I want to throw up. I glance down at Mikal's shattered face and cracked skull. There was no need for this brutality. He forced it upon us. We drag his body into the bushes and leave it there.

“So what's the plan?” I say, swallowing hard, as we start walking again. I look at Liam.

“David gave me instructions,” he says. “He contacted me before I got sent here.” Liam looks from me to Gadya and back again. He exhales. “At this point, I guess we have to trust him, but you know I'm always skeptical when it comes to David. Telling the truth isn't his strong suit.”

“Did you argue with him?” I ask, worried that friction between Liam and David will make it harder to achieve our goals. I know we don't have much time left.

“No. I just listened. I thought he was crazy at first, but he spelled everything out for me. And now I'm telling you. Whether it's true or not is for us to decide.”

“So we have to detonate a bomb or something, right? Something back at the lab?” I ask.

“No. The device is on board a satellite, a mile above us.”

“What do you mean?” Gadya asks. “Explain.”

“It's complicated.”

“Try us.”

Liam stares at me and Gadya. “According to David, the UNA has nuclear warheads in space, small ones attached to satellites. They're hidden there, so that its enemies don't know about them. The scientists have figured out that if we detonate a handful of them at a certain exact time, then the resulting high-altitude electromagnetic pulse, known as an EMP, will wipe out all the UNA computers and technology. They call this thing a HANE. A ‘high-altitude nuclear explosion.' The pulse will destroy all electronics and circuits.”

“Nuclear weapons?” I ask, confused. “That can't be the answer.”

“Yeah, won't that kill us?” Gadya asks.

Liam shakes his head. “Supposedly not if it's done right. The bombs are so high up, we won't be affected much by the radiation. But the pulse will fry anything electric, and all computer circuits. Cars will stop working, along with all the government computers and machinery. It will put the people on equal footing with the government.”

“I've heard about electromagnetic pulses,” I say. “They're supposed to be bad things, not good ones. How is any of this going to help us?”

“Because the people will have a chance to rise up. The government won't be able to control us. They'll be taken off guard. According to David, the rebel cells are ready to take action. We'll use primitive weapons to take back the country.”

“Wait, wait,” I say, trying to figure this out. “But how are we going to detonate these bombs? This sounds like a crazy plan, even for David. And who put him in charge of everything?”

“I don't know. And I agree that the plan sounds crazy. But he had a lot of details to back it up. There are five nuclear devices. The scientists figured out which ones we need to detonate. They
will create the most evenly spread electromagnetic pulse so that the government is completely wiped out. But it will be localized to the UNA. Other nations won't be affected. The European Coalition will still be able to step in and help us.”

“And we're supposed to detonate all five warheads? How?”

Liam shakes his head. “Just one. There are four other teams somewhere out here in the UNA with us. Made up of kids, and rebels and scientists. We just have to detonate one of the bombs, perfectly synchronized with the other teams at the exact same time, so the UNA doesn't have a chance to stop the explosions.” He pauses. “And we don't have long. David told me we had to do it by four p.m. tomorrow. That gives us about twenty-four hours.”

“What?” I ask, startled.

“Yeah, how the hell do we do that?” Gadya asks. “I mean, if the bomb is up on a satellite?”

“David said that you'd have a key?” Liam asks me. “And that he gave you instructions. An address that we need to get to?”

I pause. So do Liam and Gadya. “I have a key, but no address. David left it for me in an envelope.” I take the key out from under my bra where I have been hiding it. “Look.”

Liam and Gadya peer at the key.

“That doesn't look like the key to a detonation device,” Gadya says, sounding puzzled.

“I know,” I tell her. “I don't know what it's for.”

Liam sighs. “So David gave us each part of the puzzle. Typical.”

“I'm guessing that he didn't want to tell each of us everything in case one of us got caught,” I say. “Then the whole plan would fall apart if they used truth serum on us.”

“But what if you'd been shot back there?” Gadya asks me. “We wouldn't even know about the key. It would have gotten lost.”

“Maybe there are more than five teams out here. There are probably some fail-safes,” I tell her. “In case we don't make it.”

Gadya nods.

I glance down at the key again. Then I hold it up close to my face. I've inspected it many times before. “It just looks like a normal key,” I finally say. “Nothing more exotic than that.”

“So David didn't give you an address?” Liam asks. “He lied?”

I shake my head. “Maybe he left the address with someone else and we need to find that person.”

“Let's hope it's not Rika or we're going to end up just like her—” Gadya breaks off, remembering that Liam doesn't know what happened to her.

Liam glances over at Gadya. “Rika? Is she here with us?”

I take his hand. “We didn't want to tell you. But yes, she made it here and she fought bravely. If it weren't for her, we wouldn't have been able to get to you . . .”

My words trail off because I don't want to start crying, and I'm right on the verge.

Liam keeps looking at me. “So she's dead.”

I nod.

Liam sighs. I can tell that he's upset. “Another pointless death. She never should have been sent here. She wasn't cut out for this stuff.”

“That's what I said,” Gadya adds. I can hear the quaver of emotion in her voice. “She should have stayed back on the island, where she was safe.”

“How could you not tell me about her?” Liam says to me. He almost sounds mad.

“I didn't know how,” I say. “There wasn't time.”

Liam looks at me closely. “Is there anything else you're keeping from me?”

“No, of course not!”

Silence falls for a moment. There is nothing we can say or do to make her death feel any better. We carry the wound of her passing with us. I don't want to fight with Liam.

“Rika came here because she wanted to conquer the UNA,” I finally tell him. “I don't know how she got here, but obviously someone thought it was a good idea. It was probably her. Despite calling herself a pacifist, she never shied away from a battle.” I pause. “And look. If it wasn't for her, we'd be dead. She ended up being able to fight just as capably as anyone else. She saved our lives. She proved that she had every right to be here, just like you and me.”

“Someone should have stopped her,” Liam says.

“Remember when we hiked into the gray zone, back on the wheel?” Gadya asks him. “She came after us then to be a part of it. Nobody could stop her if she wanted to do something.”

“Yeah, she was a fighter,” I say. “No matter what she said, or what she looked like.”

Liam finally nods. “I can't disagree,” he admits. “I just wish she were still alive and with us right now. I was friends with her for a long time.”

“Same here,” I say. I try not to think about Rika's final moments. I choose to remember her as she was on the wheel—with her braided hair and freckles, and her sunny smile. That's how she will live on in my heart.

Afraid that I'm going to start crying again, I take out the piece of paper that the key was wrapped in to distract myself from the pain. I kept this paper with me the whole time. For some weird reason it was in my clothes at the farmhouse. No one took it from me.

“What is that?” Gadya asks.

“The key was inside this paper, in an envelope,” I say softly. “But there was no message, at least that I could find.”

“Let me take a look,” Liam says. I hand it over to him and he scrutinizes it. Gadya leans in too. He turns it over and back again. Nothing.

He holds up the key. There are no numbers or letters on it. No information to identify it. It looks completely nondescript. The only reason I know that it holds any importance is the fact that David left it for me.

“Did you try to see if David wrote a secret message on the paper?” Gadya asks me. “Like invisible ink or something, so that no one could see it if you got captured?”

I shake my head. “I don't know.”

“This sounds crazy, but remember science experiments in school when we were little kids?” Liam says. “You could make invisible ink with lemon juice or baking soda. Or maybe he used something that's only visible in ultraviolet light.”

“If so, we're out of luck,” I say.

He holds the paper up to his face. “I don't see anything.”

“It could be heat sensitive,” Gadya says. “The travelers used to do that kind of thing to send secret messages, and David was tight with them. The travelers would use langsat juice and write on leaves. It was invisible, but when it got heated, it would turn brown and you could read the letters.”

“We don't have matches or a cigarette lighter,” Liam points out.

“Mikal does,” I say. I walk over to his body, followed by Liam and Gadya. I don't even want to touch Mikal. He's lying facedown, unconscious. I can see the outline of the lighter in his back pocket. I quickly reach in and extract it, and toss the lighter to Liam.

He catches it, flicks it, and then begins running it a few inches
under the paper—so it heats the page up. Gadya and I help hold the paper flat and tight so it doesn't catch fire.

We all stare at it. I'm startled to see very faint brown letters beginning to emerge on the page.

“Look at that,” Gadya murmurs.

We all crane in closer.

“It's an address,” I say, as the words start appearing. “And then some.”

Liam reads the note out loud: “
Get to Dr. Carl Urbancic, 700 Woodbourne Trail, New Dayton, New Ohio.
”

Gadya holds up the key. “So it's a house key?”

“Maybe,” I say. “Or perhaps it opens something inside the house.” I pause. “How are we going to get from here to New Ohio by four p.m. tomorrow? It seems impossible. We're going to have to figure out a plan and then hurry.”

“Have you ever been to New Ohio? Have you ever heard of Dr. Urbancic?” Gadya asks me and Liam.

I shake my head. “I've never even heard of New Dayton.”

“There's a large military base there,” Liam says. “I remember reading about it when we were stuck at Southern Arc. The base at New Dayton is a UNA stronghold.”

“Great. And we're supposed to burst in there and do what exactly?” Gadya asks.

“Locate the device that detonates the weapon,” I say. “Who knows what else. Maybe David will meet us at the location on the paper.”

“It always comes back to David, doesn't it?” Liam says out of the blue.

I shrug. “It seems to.”

“Do we even know why?” Liam asks.

“Supposedly he's been trained since he was twelve to fight for the rebels. And he's smart too. Almost scarily smart.”

Liam doesn't say anything more about it. I wonder if he still harbors doubts about David. I'm guessing that he does. But he's going along with David's plan. Maybe David has proved himself enough to Liam. It's hard to tell.

I trust David, but I'm still puzzled that he is playing such a major role in the rebellion. We have deviated very far from the plan that the scientists made with us on the wheel. David has become such a vital part of everything, but he's only been off the wheel for two months. He must have been involved from the start. From the very early planning stages, and we were just kept in the dark. I can't think of another explanation, no matter what he or the scientists claim.

Gadya spits in the dirt as she shoulders her rifle. “Let's just get to New Dayton. If we keep standing around, this will become a suicide mission.” She smiles a bit. “Not that we haven't been on some of those already—and survived.”

I smile back, even though it's not funny. “Suicide missions are becoming our specialty.”

Liam smiles too.

But the moment is short-lived. We need to get out of the forest and away from the Hellgrounds for good.

There's obviously no way to walk all the way to New Ohio. So we decide to find the nearest road and try to hijack a car.

It takes about half an hour of hiking north through the woods to finally reach a road. It's just a two-lane highway heading through the fields. There are no cars on it. I'm guessing this is the upper edge of the Hellgrounds.

We hide in the grass at the edge of the road for a moment, trying to figure out a plan.

“I guess someone's going to have to stand in the road,” I say. “I'll do it. I'll pretend there's an emergency and try to flag someone down.”

“No, let me do it,” Liam says.

I shake my head. “It's better if it's a girl. Less threatening. You look like a warrior. They won't suspect me as quickly. And Gadya is drenched in blood. It will scare people off.” I glance down. My own wound has stopped bleeding and is barely visible. It doesn't even hurt.

“I don't agree,” Liam says. “I'll do it. Stop putting yourself in harm's way.”