“And we’re all going out together?” Jessie asked, her amber eyes transfixed on the massive towers that surrounded us. It seemed this was the first time she’d come up to the fortress; her earlier meetings with Gerard had been on the island’s lower levels.
“Yup,” Gerard replied with a genial smile.
“So, we’ll all be in the same place?” I wondered.
“We’ll tell you more on the way,” Gerard said. Perhaps noting Jessie’s dissatisfied expression, he added, “In real life scenarios, one doesn’t know what to expect upfront, and obviously we want to simulate that for any training as much as possible… Remember, this is all about helping people. We should never lose sight of the goal.”
“Right,” I murmured, chugging down another gulp of the sickly-sweet liquid. But was it really? I sure hoped so, because I wanted to think my efforts—the work that I spent almost every productive minute of my life doing here—were worth something more than imaginary coins deposited into my electronic ring. I wanted to think my efforts had a tangible, positive effect on the world, insomeway.
Back home, the results of our actions were clear to see: we sowed seeds and watched them grow. We reinforced our roofs and kept out the rain. We prepared medicines and cured our sick.
It felt like we couldn’t do any of that here; that I had no direct control ofanythingaround me, and all I could do was follow a path chalked out by someone else. Follow their rigid set of rules for how my life should be.
Then again, maybe I never had control of anything, and it had just been an illusion that I had. After all, it had all been swiped from us so brutally and quickly.
“That’s the Burchards’ tower.” Anna drew my attention back to her. She pointed to one of the inner three turrets, wherea tall, lithe, dark-haired man appeared to be briefing a thick-set, brown-haired male whose back was turned to us.
For a moment my heart went to my throat, as the latter man suddenly made me think of Robert. But then I looked more closely and realized he was too short for my friend, his brown hair several shades too light. The profile of his face when he turned to one side revealed features that didn’t belong to anyone I recognized.
Still, it made me instantly fear that others from our group might have been chosen. “Nobody else has talked to you about this, right?” I asked Jessie under my breath.
“No,” she said, her eyes also darting about, clearly getting the same idea as me.
I hoped nobody from our immediate families, at least, had been chosen. As much as it could increase their earnings, I didn’t think my nerves could handle worrying about more of my loved ones. I was still knotted up about my parents, uncertain about their progress since I hadn’t yet received an update from their new hospital. And my sister was still living with a stranger.
My uncle had managed to move up to slightly higher paying jobs, but he was older, so I doubted he would have been a prime pick, given that it appeared peak physical condition was favored for outreach. Nico had also moved up to higher paying jobs, but perhaps he hadn’t accepted as many as he’d wanted, since Zina had started to succumb to morning sickness.
I tried to scan for any other familiar faces, but due to the distance separating us from the other turrets, couldn’t make out anyone else’s features clearly enough to determine the truth.
It looked like we’d find out soon enough.
“Time to head off!” Anna said. She nodded toward the open cockpit.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The visionof Fairwell rapidly bled away from us as we soared outward, over the ocean. I stared back at it, through the rear window, feeling a strange sense of loss. It wasn’t my home, but it was now the only familiar place I had in the world, and as we sped away from it toward the giant mass of waves, it felt closer to home than I’d thought possible.
Homewas a strange thing. Once immovable, now something fleeting and relative.
I could only feel selfishly thankful that Jessie sat with me. I felt the tenseness of her knee next to mine, and reached out to touch it. She placed her hand on top of mine, providing some sense of calm.
Neither of us spoke, we just stared ahead at the vast universe of water unfurling before us. Even Anna and her brother, who acted as pilot for the journey, were quiet. It really did seem endless.
And, apparently, it could provide all the resources one needed to survive, if one just had the knowledge and ability to harness them. If only more people could have escaped to theocean, perhaps many more would have survived the End. More than the elite founders of Fairwell.
I wondered if therewereany other islands which contained survivors—islands which weren’t under Fairwell’s control and somehow had managed to survive and thrive on their own, the way we had in the jungle for centuries. Surely, there had to be others who had figured out life on the ocean as well?
Or had many of them also been victimized by plunderers? Hayden, from what I’d gathered, hadn’t had any solid base, just lived aboard ships for most of his life, I guessed stopping occasionally at docks. And even he, somehow, had been targeted.
How did the nomads even get their resources? From what I saw of them, their equipment didn’t look nearly as advanced as Fairwell’s technology. But still, where did they get it? Where did they build their machines? Did they have any solid base at all to call home? Surely, they must have places where they kept supplies and equipment. They must have commandeered some kind of laboratory as well, in order to create that deadly gas.
They appeared to be organized. Which meant they must have some kind of leadership structure.
An entire organization set up just to tear other human beings down. Who could imagine forming such a mission?
Despite my doubts and unanswered questions about Fairwell, at least they had done some good. We were still alive. We weren’t starving. There was at least the hope that we could somehow make a better life for ourselves in the future.
It occurred to me then that targeting a force as toxic and destructive as the nomads surely ought to be the priority of Fairwell’s outreach department. After all, the nomads were a huge cause for why people required Fairwell’s assistance in the first place. They had been the reason we needed help, as well as why Hayden needed it. Surely, if they were combatted andweakened, that would render a large portion of Fairwell’s outreach unnecessary?
