Page 61 of Butterfly Effects

“‘Speciesist’ is more accurate, darling, and no. You’re allowed to dislike the people who abduct you,” said Alice. “All we need to do now is find Sarah and we’re all home free.”

“Sarah?” he echoed, brows knitting together as he frowned. “Sarah isn’t here. I would know if Sarah were here.”

“I think she’s gotten better at masking her presence from you,” I said. “She’s been to the compound in Portland a few times in the last year.”

He looked hurt, shoulders hunching inward like he wanted to make himself as small as he possibly could. “She knows I want to see her. Why would she do that?”

“My dude,” said Sam, who had only known Artie for a little while before he’d been deleted, and was thus more comfortable with Arthur than most of the rest of us. “You know why she’d do that. She doesn’t want to see you, and she’s never going to start wanting to see you.”

“I can’t get her out of my head,” said Arthur, frustrated.

“Yeah, because she put you in your head, and sort of sent herself along for the ride.” Sam shrugged. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this here?”

“Here,” said Alice, digging another anti-telepathy charm out of her bag and offering it to Arthur. “Put this on. It should make you effectively invisible to most Johrlac. It’s going to be a lot easier to get you out of the building if they can’t hear you thinking about escaping the whole way.”

“Oh, fun,” he said, taking the charm and slinging the cord over his head. Then he embraced Alice, head low and pressed against her shoulder while he gathered her close to him. “Thanks for coming to get me, Grandma.”

“Of course, baby,” said Alice, skating her hand over his hair. “I’d do it for any of you kids and you know it.”

“Yeah, but sometimes I don’t believe that ‘any of us kids’ applies to me,” he said, letting go and stepping back. As he almost always did when in the field, he looked to me, waiting to be told what we were going to do next.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s keep moving.”

We checked the rest of the cells along the hall. Two more of the Johrlac actually noticed the motion of the hatch and rushed over to accuse me of being a saboteur, working against their queens in some way they didn’t explain but also quite clearly didn’t approve of. Neither of them would tell us what they’d done to get thrown in here.

We made it all the way to the end without any sign of Sarah.

She wasn’t here.

Fifteen

“A child’s a child. Species is the next best thing to irrelevant.”

—Angela Baker

The top level of a giant wasp’s nest, surrounded by prison cells

WE WALKED BACK TOWARD THE office we’d entered through, Alice at the front, Thomas and Arthur behind her, and me and Sam bringing up the rear.

We were about halfway there when someone shouted. We all froze, turning toward the sound, but I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, and judging by the expressions of the people around me, neither did anyone else.

“Why would they yell?” whispered Sam. “They’re telepaths.”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “But we should get out of here.”

We began walking faster, and had just reached the closed office door when there was another shout, this one from in front of us. Again, we froze. This time, however, Alice started swearing softly, putting one hand on the pistol she wore low on her hip.

“Dear?” asked Thomas.

“It’s a hunting tactic,” said Alice, voice low. “Remember I mentioned that prey species on telepathic worlds will tend to develop shields against telepathy? They don’t want to get caught and ripped apart, so they become mentally invisible.”

“Yes,” said Sam, warily.

“Well, if you can’t hunt your prey the way that seems most natural to you, you’ll find other ways of doing it. Flushing them out into the open is usually the opening salvo. They know we’re in here, and they’re just trying to startle us enough that we’ll reveal ourselves, yell or bolt or something.”

“But they can’t see us,” I said.

“They can, if they switch over to looking the right way. We need to consider that they might have started paying attention with other senses. Move very carefully from here, and if you see a Johrlac that isn’t Sarah, don’t let them touch you.”