The Resisters (15 page)

ETHAN SAT ON THE COT IN HIS NEW ROOM
feeling sorry for himself.

He stuffed those bad feelings deep inside and tried instead to come up with a way to save his sister.

He couldn’t risk the lives of the pilots in the Resistance to save her. And even if he
was
willing to do that … Colonel Winter wouldn’t let him.

Once those kids from Santa Blanca got on the zeppelins, how would Ethan be able to attack the aircraft without hurting the very people he was trying to save?

Dawn was just a few hours away. Time was running out.

And why use zeppelins? Why not a jet or a helicopter? The Ch’zar could have been in Santa Blanca by now. Why be slow
on purpose
?

Ethan looked at his bruised and scraped hands. Two
days ago everything had been going his way, and the entire world had made sense.

Now … nothing did.

There was a tap at his door.

“Come in,” Ethan said, although visitors were the last thing he wanted.

Felix opened the steel door. He looked almost normal in jeans and a black T-shirt.

“You okay, Ethan?”

“I just need time to think,” Ethan said.

Felix’s forehead wrinkled with concern. “I understand. We’ll talk tomorrow. Take all the time you need, buddy.”

That was the problem. There was no time left.

Madison pushed the big guy aside and moved into Ethan’s room. She wore green sweats. Her hair was wet. She was no longer a blonde—rather, her hair was jet-black.

“I’ve got something to tell you,” she said, and flashed a defiant look at Felix.

“Why don’t you give the guy a break, Mad?” He looked sympathetically at Ethan.

“Let her say whatever she wants,” Ethan said.

Ethan figured he had it coming. She and Felix had probably rushed in and risked their lives to save his neck after he wrecked the train and the wasp.

Madison stomped a foot at Felix. “Just leave, would you?”

She gritted her teeth and wrung her hands as if it was uncomfortable for her to be in the same room as Ethan.

Felix eased out of the room. “Shout if you need me,” he said to Ethan. “I’ll bring help.” He clicked the door shut.

Ethan guessed Madison wanted some privacy to slug him in the face. Instead, she surprised him and sat on the cot—as far away from Ethan as possible. She looked at the floor.

“Going off on your own to take out that train,” she said, “was the most moronic thing anyone’s ever done in the history of the universe.”

“I didn’t have a choice.”

She sat in silence for a long time, and finally she told him, “I get it.”

Understanding was the last thing Ethan expected from her.

“I know how you feel,” she said.

Ethan didn’t want her sympathy. She hadn’t been raised by parents who’d turned out to be something else. She didn’t have sisters or a brother who would one day be slaves to some alien empire.

“How could you know anything about what I’m feeling?”

“I do,” she whispered. Her head dropped and her hair fell over her face so Ethan couldn’t see her expression. “My brother …” Her voice choked off.

Ethan’s thoughts about his own misery and family screeched to a halt.

He’d been so stupid. He should’ve guessed this before.

“Your brother was the third member of your team? The pilot of the wasp?”

She nodded and wiped her eyes. “Roger was a year older than me,” she said. “He
had
to save those kids. It was the first solid lead we had—we knew where and when they’d be taken by the Ch’zar. But he had this thing on his neck covered with a Band-Aid. He told me it was a nick he’d gotten working the hydraulics on his suit. I should have known it was a
pimple
. We’re all trained to watch for them. It’s one of the first signs of puberty. And I should’ve known he’d be stubborn and arrogant enough to think he could do one last mission.”

She ran a hand over her neck, smoothing the skin, unthinkingly feeling for any blemish.

“An hour out from Santa Blanca, Roger had trouble flying,” Madison said. “The radio malfunctioned and he landed. At first, Felix and I thought it was the suit. That particular wasp I.C.E. is tricky to work. It’s always trying to dominate its pilots. In fact, Dr. Irving thought for a long time that we’d have to destroy it. Roger was one of the few to ever control the thing. He said it was the best wasp he’d ever flown.”

“So it landed,” Ethan said, leaning closer. “What happened then?”

“It turns out Roger
was
having trouble with the wasp, but not like we thought. It’d been sensing the change in him … I guess it could feel him getting absorbed into the
Collective.” She took a deep breath. “And so the wasp grounded and ejected him. Roger tried to get back inside, but the cockpit sealed and locked. That’s when the Band-Aid on his neck fell off and I saw that pimple—that’s when the wasp poised in an aggressive threat stance—and that’s when Felix and I knew for sure what’d happened to him.”

Madison laced her hands in her lap and huddled inward.

“Roger said we should come with him, that the Ch’zar’s way was best. If we could see what he was seeing, for even an instant, then we’d understand.”

Madison let out a shuddering sigh. “One second he’d been my brother … then he wasn’t. Felix rushed him. Roger used one of our own flash-bang grenades on us, and he got away.”

Ethan wanted to put a hand on her shoulder to comfort her.

He decided not to. Sure, it would have been the same consoling gesture he’d used before with his soccer teammates after they’d lost a match … but it’d also feel a little like when he’d held Mary Vincent’s hand at the Sadie Hawkins dance.

That
would’ve felt just too weird between Madison and him.

“Why didn’t you set the wasp’s self-destruct?” Ethan asked. “Roger—the Ch’zar—they would have known where it’d grounded and come for it.”

Madison nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I said, too. But Felix decided that any I.C.E. suit that could detect and fight a pilot under Ch’zar influence was worth trying to save. If Dr. Irving could figure out what made the wasp so smart, maybe every I.C.E. could be bred that way. So we half dragged and half flew the suit a mile up the mountain to that cave. Felix had found the place on another mission, one without Roger, so it’d be hard for the Ch’zar to locate. Then we had to find a pilot stubborn enough for the wasp to accept—at least enough so its autopilot would kick in.”

“Me,” Ethan said.

“You,” she replied.

She set a leather wristband between them on the cot. Laced on it was a bead with red, blue, white, and gold stripes.

“He took this off before he left,” she told Ethan. “It’s an electrical resistor. Roger’s idea. He gave each of us one. We’re Resisters—spelled with an
e
. This is a resistor—with an
o
. Get it? Ha-ha.”

Ethan had seen electrical resistors when they’d studied circuits in science class.

“It’s cool,” he said.

“He was telling us we need symbols and heroes to take risks to inspire everyone.” She looked up. Tears streaked her cheeks. “Like you did for your sister.” She nodded at the wristband. “Keep it.”

“I … I couldn’t,” Ethan said. “It was your brother’s.”

“You earned it.” She got up and went to the door. “
You
destroyed that train, and that’s what Roger wanted more than anything … to finish that stupid mission.”

Madison swung open the door with a violent motion.

She paused and said, “It’s lights-out in five minutes. They take that seriously around here. Guards patrol every ten minutes. So stay in your room, Blackwood.”

She was back to calling him Blackwood and not Ethan anymore. Great.

“I should have done more to save my brother,” Madison whispered. She looked away, and said so softly that he barely heard, “You better do whatever it takes to save the people you love … or you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”

She left and gently shut the door.

Ethan couldn’t believe it. Was she saying that he should go save his sister? After she’d chewed him out for trying to save her the first time?

What about risking everyone else’s lives? Or keeping the Resisters a secret?

Why were girls
always
so confusing?

He picked up the wristband. The electrical resistor was scuffed. It’d seen a lot of action. It was something someone a lot tougher than him would wear.

A fighter would wear this. A rebel. A Resister.

He set it down. It wasn’t his.

The lights in his room went out.

A line of illumination filtered in from under the door.

Now what? Sit here in the dark and keep thinking? Eventually fall asleep? And when he woke up, Ethan would’ve lost his sister.

What else could he do?

Madison had said:
You better do whatever it takes to save the people you love … or you’ll regret it for the rest of your life
.

Coach Norman had told Ethan:
Superior long-range strategy always wins over superior immediate tactics
.

And suddenly Ethan knew what he had to do.

He had run away from his first fight with the Ch’zar. He wasn’t ashamed that he’d been scared on the mountaintop. Anyone would have … the first time.

The second time he’d run away, he’d left Felix and Madison behind in a desperate attempt to save Emma … and ended up putting their lives at risk in the process.

And now?

Yes, he was scared. Scared to death. But he
was
going to fight.

And yes, he was desperate, but he had a strategy this time. He wouldn’t be risking anyone’s life but his own.

Muffled voices came from the catwalk outside.

Two shadows flashed under the door.

Those had to be the patrolling guards.

According to Madison, they patrolled every ten minutes … so he’d have to move fast.

As soon as he could no longer hear them, Ethan eased the door open—and he ran.

ETHAN HALF CREPT, HALF JOGGED DOWN
the catwalk.

It was nighttime in the huge farmland cavern. Crickets chirped. The lights on the ceiling were dim and looked like moons in the sky.

He spiraled up the stairs to the hallway of fusion reactors. Their sparking glow lit his way.

Ethan kept to the shadows. A pair of adult guards tromped up the stairs behind him, and Ethan ducked behind one of the house-sized reactors as they approached.

Static electricity from the reactor made Ethan’s hair stand straight up.

They passed … and didn’t see him.

He exhaled the breath he’d been holding, waited a minute, and then continued toward the hangar.

Ethan passed several doorways he hadn’t noticed earlier. He peered inside and saw caverns glowing with bioluminescent blues and greens and filled with thousands and thousands of insect eggs, some as large and colorful as beach balls, others the size of baseballs that looked like solid gold, and still others as big as cars, bumpy and black.

There were also bulbous pupa cases with pulsing and squirming things inside.

Gross … and so cool. What other kinds of bugs did they have? Ones that flew, burrowed, or swam? What kinds of modifications had they made to them?

But his curiosity had to wait.

If he survived one more day, he’d let someone else do all the hero stuff. Ethan would ask Dr. Irving if he could become his assistant. Then he could learn all he wanted—in a safe laboratory.

He tiptoed into the hangar.

Hundreds of giant insects stood motionless, hooked up to electronic monitors and beeping computers. Occasionally an insect leg would twitch, as if the bugs dreamed.

They were supercreepy.

He saw a dozen wasps, but none of them was the wasp Ethan knew he could fly.

Had it been taken away? Had it died?

He felt a cold lump in his chest.

Something told him it wasn’t dead, though.

Ethan turned and moved toward the back of the
hangar. It was so dark there he could barely see … but he could feel a familiar presence.

His eyes adjusted, and he saw the outline of a wasp. As his eyes adjusted more, he saw those weird caterpillar bandages plastered over its armor. The large hole in its thorax had been welded together. It still only had one antenna, which tracked Ethan as he approached.

“Remember me?” Ethan whispered.

There was a gentle pull at his mind … and an invitation to link again with the bug.

Ethan resisted.

He thought it’d be a good idea to heed Dr. Irving’s warning:
When it comes to human-insect telepathic connections, we’ve learned to be cautious
.

“I’ve got to ask you something.”

Ethan hadn’t planned this part. What he’d planned was to risk his own life—fly off alone to Santa Blanca, grab Emma, and fly out before anything could stop him.

He’d forgotten that he’d be risking the wasp’s life as well.

Okay, it was stupid to ask. Ethan should just get inside the thing and go.

It was alive, though. It was smart, too … maybe smarter than any bug here, if Felix was right about it. If it was going to risk its life, then it deserved a vote.