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. . . and something about “. . . familiar . . .” but Willow’s shouts made it impossible to hear the rest of what they were saying.
“Let. Me. Go!” Willow insisted again. There were boots grinding in the sand and bodies bumping together and grunting, lots of grunting. I couldn’t pinpoint where any of it was coming from. One second it seemed far away, and the next it was right on top of me. But the entire time I heard Willow, screaming indignantly to be released.
I told myself this would be the perfect time to “get pissed” as Simon called it. Except I wasn’t so sure what I would do, exactly. Move some sand around? And against what . . . an army of weapons?
Besides, those weapons they had weren’t just aimed at one person. Even if I could manage to knock one of these guys out with a rock, or some other suitable object I just so happened to find lying in the middle of the desert, then what? Wouldn’t that just make the others trigger-happy? I couldn’t risk putting my friends in danger just to prove I had some control over this strange ability of mine.
After several seconds of struggling, there was the sickening flat and hollow sound of meat slapping against meat—and I knew someone had struck Willow. Then she was silent too.
I tried to roll away from whoever had me pinned, but Simon was right, these guys weren’t messing around. And before I realized what happened, I felt a sharp slam against the side of my head. Stars swirled behind my eyelids and it took several attempts before my vision cleared. But unlike Willow, I only had to be warned once to stop my struggling.
When I was yanked to my feet, I saw Simon shoot a concerned glance my way.
“What?” I mouthed, trying not to draw any more attention than necessary.
Simon lifted one shoulder, indicating the right side of his face. But he didn’t mean his face, he meant mine.
My face.
The guy who’d had his knee digging into my back let go of my arm. I brushed my fingertips across my temple, to the place where he’d smacked me with his rifle. Tentatively, I pulled my fingers away and glanced down at them.
There was so much blood.
“Oh, no,” I breathed. I glanced uneasily at the swarm of people who’d just disabled our vehicle and were holding us at gunpoint. “You’re not . . . ,” I started to ask the guy almost absently, and then my eyes shot back to Simon as I mouthed, “They’re all . . . ?”
There were so many more of them than us, and they so didn’t fit the image I’d conjured in my head ever since Jett had used the word “activists.” I expected throwbacks to the Flower Power communes of the ’60s rather than the militant-looking, gun-wielding combat mongers they’d turned out to be.
But now that I was looking—really looking—they appeared too much like normal people. The idea that I might have just poisoned them, the same way I had Tyler, made my knees wobbly.
Simon just shook his head, looking around at our abductors. “Returned,” he mouthed back.
I exhaled audibly. They’d be okay. And then I realized that the kid next to me, on closer inspection, really was just a kid . . . a boy. He wore a sleeveless shirt and flexed biceps that were a little too defined for how short he was, almost like he had a kid-sized head on a man’s body.
I realized then that my first impression of them was somehow . . . off.
It wasn’t that they didn’t have a military vibe, because they sort of did. But only in the sense that they all carried guns—rifles, handguns, that sort of thing. It was more the way they were dressed that I’d gotten wrong. These kids weren’t dressed for combat, not like the guys back at the Tacoma facility, the ones wearing fatigues with the black grease paint smeared over their faces.
Heck, not even like Natty had dressed for this operation.
No, these kids looked more like they were heading out into the wilderness, ready to go backpacking or mountain climbing. They wore hiking gear—boots and vests. Plus there was that whole bandana thing. I didn’t think it was Old West–y. Instead, I wondered if it wasn’t for keeping the dust out.
I glanced uneasily at Simon, and then to Thom, silently letting them know what I thought of their having brought us here. Returned or not, we didn’t belong here.
“How’d you do that?” the kid next to me asked curiously, when I’d healed in less than thirty seconds. “Never seen anyone do that before. Not that fast.”
I was saved from having to explain when a girl with a shaved head shoved Simon from behind, giving him the Start moving signal.
“Where we going?” Simon asked, even as his shoes started crunching softly in the sand beneath him.
The girl shoved him again, harder this time. “No questions.”
I got the same nudge, and without looking, I was pretty sure Thom, Natty, Jett, and Willow had gotten it too. Since there were no more arguments coming from Willow, I assumed she’d finally taken Thom’s advice and submitted.
Around us, the footfalls of dozens, maybe a hundred or more, fell in sync. We didn’t bother trying to run. Our car was out of play and there was nowhere to go for miles. Even if there had been a town, who would we run to? The authorities were out of the question. Our parents, those of us who even still had parents, were just as bad—my own mom had tried to hand me over to Agent Truman in the first place. My dad . . . well, who knew where he was now.
We were on our own, and our best hope was here, holding us at gunpoint.
Seventeen minutes into our trek, Thom finally broke the silence. “Where’s Griffin?” he asked.
