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They stared at one another, dumbfounded. Finally, Glass spoke. “How is this possible? What’s your name? Where did you come from?”
“My name’s Anna. I was in a dropship that went off course. I’m not sure what happened, but we crashed far away.” She winced, and Glass briefly closed her eyes as memories of her own terrible crash came flashing back. “It was awful,” Anna continued hoarsely. “Eleven people died on impact, and a bunch more over the next few days. It’s funny. You spend your whole life being told that Earth is this paradise, and then it turns out to be one horrific nightmare after another. I wished I’d just stayed behind.”
“The ship was dying,” Glass said, flinching as she remembered the faces of people who realized they had nowhere to go as the air leaked out of the ships.
“I know. But at least I would’ve been with my family. There’s nothing for me here. I hate this planet,” she said bitterly.
“It’s not all so bad,” Glass said. A wistful note crept into her voice as she thought about walking through the woods with Luke, about waking up in his arms to the joyful trill of birdsong.
Octavia shifted closer to Anna. “So what happened after you crashed?” she asked curiously, the terror of her capture momentarily overshadowed by the strangeness of meeting a new Colonist.
“It was awful. No one could agree about what to do. We all wanted to find the rest of you, of course, but we didn’t know how to get there. In the end, we split up into smaller groups, which I realize now was dumb. Together, we might’ve had safety in numbers. But apart, it was easy for them”—she jerked her head toward the door—“to attack. I fought as hard as I could. I even knocked out a few of one guy’s teeth.”
Next to her, Octavia snickered and said, “Well done.”
“But it wasn’t enough to get away,” Anna continued. “They took me and a few of the boys I was with, and we’ve been here for the past few weeks.” She glanced around the room warily, as if afraid of being overheard. “So what happened to you?”
Glass’s stomach clenched. Had some of the boys from their camp been captured too? She prayed that Wells wasn’t among them.
She listened as Octavia gave Anna the short version of their story. Glass was slightly surprised by the animation in her voice. In her experience, Octavia had always been a little reserved around strangers, which made sense once Glass learned about the childhood spent in hiding, the adolescence in the ship’s care center, and the traumas she’d endured after landing on Earth.
In the dim light, Anna’s eyes grew wide as Octavia spoke. “You had cabins? And enough food for a feast? That’s amazing.”
“We used to have cabins,” Octavia said grimly. “These Protectors blew most of them up. Bellamy is probably losing his mind.”
“Bellamy?” Anna repeated. “Is that your boyfriend?” Was Glass imagining things, or was there a hint of disappointment in her voice?
Octavia shook her head. “No. My brother.”
“Your brother? You’re from the Colony and you have a brother? You’ll have to tell me all about that.” Anna sat back down, patting her mat to invite the girls to sit. Octavia immediately claimed the space right beside her.
“Why are they doing this?” Glass whispered, settling onto the other end of Anna’s mat. “What do they want with us?”
Anna looked around again and lowered her voice. “Well, all the girls in this room are just what they call recruits. They’re people they’ve captured along their way here from wherever they were before this. According to the Protectors, we’re here to serve Earth. Which really means to serve them. Cooking, cleaning, laundry. Whatever makes us useful…” Anna trailed off and bit her lip.
“So we’re just servants?” Octavia asked.
“No,” Anna said, her voice barely audible. “That’s all I’ve been doing for the past few weeks, but I think there’s more.”
Despite the warmth of the room, Glass shivered. “What?”
“I’m not sure. When we first got here, they forced us through some sort of cleansing ritual in the river, but they said we weren’t ready to become Protectors. That we wouldn’t officially join their ranks until the Earth gives them permission to lay down roots. Apparently they need to have a sign from Earth that this is their new home, and then we’ll pass some sort of final test to prove we’re true believers. But I’m not sure what that test is, and I’m worried there’s some other way we’re useful to them.”
Glass’s stomach roiled as she looked around the room, at the girls sitting on their mats, all of them at the mercy of these unhinged people.
“I’m happy to show them just how useful I can be,” Octavia said, a dangerous edge to her voice. “As I stick a knife in their backs.”
“A girl after my own heart,” Anna said. “Nothing I like more than a killer with a red ribbon in her hair.”
Octavia brought her hand to her hair. “I told them I would strangle them with it if they so much as touched it, so they let me keep it.”
Anna grinned at her. “For some reason, that doesn’t surprise me.”
Footsteps echoed in the distance, and Anna’s face went suddenly grave and pale as she scrambled to place her feet back on the ground.
Glass and Octavia exchanged glances, the same unspoken question running through their minds. What on earth was going on here?
CHAPTER 9
Wells
“You run like a wounded rabbit, boy! Do you have a thorn in your foot? Pick up the pace!” The Protector’s rancid breath in Wells’s face nearly made him gag. He’d been running for what felt like an hour, and every cell in his body burned.
After a seemingly endless ride in the putrid wagon, they’d arrived this afternoon at the Stone: a five-sided fortress with crumbling walls. They weren’t even given a moment to recover from the journey. After tumbling out of the wagon, they’d been marched toward a row of what looked like chemical vats. One by one, the Protectors had shoved the prisoners up and into the tanks without explanation. Eric was the first to stop yelling and realize they were submerged in nothing more than ice-cold water.
“Wash,” the Protectors had shouted, and Wells had, almost gratefully. He’d felt awake, finally, alert. Then the Protectors had dragged the prisoners out, letting them air-dry in the frigid autumn wind as they walked to collect new uniforms from a pile of white clothing. Wells’s new uniform still had the name “Laurent” written on the collar. He wondered who Laurent had been: A prisoner? A true believer? Or did that amount to the same thing if you were here long enough?
