The Resisters (4 page)

Basically, it contained your entire life—past, present, and future.

“That’s when they built the neighborhoods,” Madison said. “Places where ‘parents’ could raise their kids in an ideal environment until they were old enough to be taken.” She licked her lips. “This is the hard part, and I’m really, really sorry … but you live in a pretty, suburban test tube.”

Ethan stopped listening, because he saw BLACKWOOD, ETHAN printed on the folder in her hands.

“Hey, that’s mine!” he cried, and lunged for her.

MADISON THREW OUT AN ARM AND KNOCKED
Ethan back.

“Got to be quicker than that, Blackwood,” she said.

“You’re not supposed to have that!”

Madison shrugged. “What can I say? Your school has lousy security. Two locked doors and a jimmied file cabinet and we had access to
everyone’s
records.”

No one was supposed to read that stuff. It was personal and superconfidential.

She flipped through the pages. “ ‘Ethan Gregor Blackwood,’ ” she read. “ ‘Age twelve. Ranked in the top third percentile in standardized tests. Strong aptitude for science.’ Oh—here’s something I missed—‘homemade pyrotechnics shot into a neighbor’s garage’? ‘Disciplinary action required’?”

She leaned back to talk to Felix. “See? I was right. We’ve got a chance with this one.”

Madison’s gleeful expression cooled as she returned to the file. “Only two sisters and one brother? That’s … different.”

Ethan looked away and flushed.

All the other kids in his neighborhood had eight or nine siblings by the time their parents were middle-aged. When Ethan was growing up, they’d all teased him and Emma—calling them “shorties” or “dodos”—like they were genetic dead ends.

That’s why he’d tried so hard to be popular and good at soccer and to get the highest scores on every test … to show them how wrong they were.

He’d been relieved when the twins had come along the year before last.

“It’s funny,” Madison said. “I wonder what makes
your
parents so different.”

Ethan was about to tell her to mind her own business—that his dad and mom were perfectly normal—but the truck stopped.

Felix hopped out and opened the rear door.

Ethan inhaled fresh cold air and smelled pine.

The milk truck was at the end of a dirt road carved into a steep mountain slope. In the distance were the twinkling lights of Santa Blanca.

Ethan had been to these foothills on family picnics.

The mountains, though, were off-limits. There were supposed to be real grizzly bears and cougars here. Some kids got lost up here once and were eaten (or so the stories went).

He backed into the truck and revised his guess about how far he was from home. It had to be a hundred miles.

No one
would find him out here.

Felix scanned the night sky and the glowing band of the Milky Way. “We better hurry,” he said. “We’re lucky to have gotten this far, but the moon will be out in a half hour. They’ll have enough light to spot us.”

They?
Felix must mean his alien bogeymen.

Madison pushed past Ethan and jumped out of the truck. She tossed him a white coat. “Take it,” she said, “or you’ll freeze.”

Felix offered a large hand to help Ethan. “We’re on foot from here, friend.”

Ethan imagined fighting his way past these two—but what was to stop Felix from grabbing him, as before, and dragging him along in a killer stranglehold?

He’d play along and wait for his chance to make a break for it.

“I’m not your friend,” Ethan told him. He climbed out of the truck without taking Felix’s offered hand.

Goose bumps dotted his arms. It
was
cold up here. Ethan reluctantly shrugged into the white parka Madison had tossed him. It had a patch with Blanca Dairy’s logo: a ridiculous smiling cow holding out a big glass of milk.

Madison forged a trail through the woods, going up the mountain.

Felix nodded at Ethan and pointed after her.

Of course they were going to put him
between
them. It’d be easier to keep an eye on him. Harder for him to escape.

He started, turned to Felix, and said, “Your story’s
crazy.
”

“Yeah. But true,” Felix said, moving alongside him and crushing the underbrush like a bull. “You’ll see.”

Ethan’s heart raced, and he wanted to make a break into the woods. Just run. As far and as fast as he could. If Felix didn’t pounce on him, Ethan was sure he could outrun him. Superfast Madison, though, might catch him.

Ethan took a deep breath to steady himself. He’d wait. He knew there’d be a better chance to escape … but he’d probably only get
one
chance.

They trudged up the forested slope. There was a game trail, but it was dark, and Ethan stumbled and tripped.

Felix and Madison seemed to be able to see in the dark.

“I don’t get why aliens would need us,” Ethan said, trying to start up the conversation again. “I mean, if they had the science to travel between stars, what do they want with mind-controlled human slaves? That’s like using horses to plow fields instead of tractors.”

“They use
everything,
” Felix told him. “We think they’re building another starship, maybe more than one. It’s like when a beehive gets too big, it splits into two … or an
amoeba that absorbs everything in its path, then divides in half. What’s that called? Fission, right?”

Felix was smarter than he looked. He was as crazy as Madison, but definitely not dumb.

Ethan wouldn’t underestimate his strength or brains.

Felix continued, “The Ch’zar use armies of humans and robots as laborers and researchers, and to add to their total brainpower. When you think about it, it’s pretty much as efficient as you can get.”

That did kind of make sense.

For a second, Ethan imagined the aliens going from star to star, taking over every world, multiplying, and spreading throughout the galaxy. He shuddered.

“Okay,” Ethan said, “if that’s true, then how can you two be here? Why aren’t you in a ‘neighborhood’ being raised until you’re old enough to get mind-controlled?”

“Not all the adults were taken when the Ch’zar invaded,” Felix said. “Some were far underground and were shielded from their mind powers.” Felix stood straighter and proudly declared, “My grandparents and parents were Resistance fighters. Madison and I are third-generation Resisters.”

Ethan admired the weird way they’d built their story. It was a self-supporting collection of lies. There was no way you could poke a hole in it. Totally insane … but airtight.

Madison halted. “Ridge is ahead,” she whispered.

The forest broke twenty paces in front of them. There
was more rocky slope, and then nothing but the horizon and stars beyond.

Madison and Felix stood still and listened, and then Felix whispered back, “I think it’ll be safe. We’ll show him and then make for the cave and the suits.”

“Roger that,” she replied.

Something had just changed between Madison and Felix. There was a crisp formality that hadn’t been there a second ago.

Ethan had a sinking feeling the time for talk was over. Whatever they had planned for him was about to happen.

He looked around: nothing but endless dark trees in a sea of shadows (and him in that stupid, easy-to-spot white parka).

Felix set a massive hand on Ethan’s shoulder. “We go up,” he said, and gently but firmly shoved Ethan ahead … and he didn’t take his hand off.

They marched out of the woods, up the slope, and to the top of the ridge.

The full moon crested the horizon. Silver light touched the mountaintops and flooded the plains below.

Icy wind whipped Ethan’s face, and he had to blink away tears.

Ethan had known there were roads and farmland and wind turbines out there. It was a clear night, so he should have been able to see Haven Heart, the next city, fifty miles away.

But the world didn’t look like the world he knew. There were no forests, grasslands, or fields of wheat.

The land was barren. Dust devils whipped around, and it looked like pictures he’d seen of Mars.

Giants walked this unfamiliar landscape.

Machines half a mile long with segmented bodies chewed through the foothills and carved deep channels, grinding and extracting acres of rock and soil with massive mechanical teeth. Dirt poured into these factories that looked like centipedes, where smelters glowed white-hot and spewed smoke and molten metal.

Ethan was stunned senseless and felt as if he was drowning (probably because he was so shocked, he forgot to breathe).

Clustered about these walking factories were hundreds of smaller robots, making repairs and carrying off redhot ingots with eight spiderlike forklift pincers. They deposited their cargo into six-wheeled trucks that looked like toys at this distance, but Ethan figured they were the size of a city block.

Those trucks moved in a constant stream to the horizon, where their headlights curved up into the sky … as if the road went all the way into orbit.

Ethan’s gaze drifted to what he had first assumed was a cloud, but he now saw it had a smooth, silver, curved surface dotted with hexagonal holes. It had ripples and ridges … like it’d been grown in a cocoon, or like it was a hive.

From this floating structure, tiny figures emerged. They dropped into the air and plummeted toward the earth.

Ethan took a step back … and stumbled.

Felix braced him.

The objects arced up before they hit the ground—following the contours of the earth—up the mountain slope—straight toward them.

“Drones …,” Madison whispered.

“They’ve spotted us,” Felix said. “Get to the cave. Fast!”

Madison grabbed Ethan’s hand. “Come on, dummy!” she shouted. “Run!”

ETHAN COULDN’T MOVE.

Fear solidified into a concrete chunk inside him. He could only stare, eyes wide with terror at the drones that rocketed up the mountainside toward him … growing larger every second.

They were like the model rockets he and Emma had built. Sleek and gray, fins on the tails, blooms of near-invisible heat from the back, and something else, a shimmering on their sides.

Six drones veered left—faster than any rocket Ethan had ever seen—and circled him.

He spun and caught a glimpse of membranes along their sides. Wings?

He also spotted slender insect legs drawn in close to their bodies.

“You idiot!” Madison screamed. “Move!”

She threw herself at Ethan and tackled him. They landed in the dirt—her on top of him.

A line of darts thunked into the ground next to Ethan’s head.

Each dart was two feet long and black, and on the exposed end a sack pumped venom like a bee’s stinger … only a hundred times bigger.

“Get up!” Madison whispered. “Or they’ll catch you.”

She jumped to her feet and ran.

Ethan, still dazed, watched Madison sprint off—then focused on the living darts that had nearly impaled him and on the drones overhead.

Felix stood ten paces away. He shouted and jumped, trying to get their attention.

He got it.

They spiraled over his head.

Felix tossed what looked like a baseball into the air.

It exploded with a brilliant flash and a bang.

The drones scattered, stunned and blind—one flew straight into the ground with a crunch and lay there twitching and gushing green goo.

Felix gestured for Ethan to follow, and then he turned and ran too.

Ethan didn’t know what those flying things were … but he
did
know he wanted to live.

Ethan got up and ran.

He raced past Felix, caught halfway up to Madison, and then hesitated when she ran
into
an outcropping of rock and vanished.

A shadow wavered where she’d disappeared.

Ethan ran up to the rock and found a camouflaging tarp. He brushed it aside and saw a narrow cave entrance.

He ducked inside.

Felix lumbered in after him, pushed Ethan back, and spun around to look out.

Satisfied with what he saw, Felix drew the curtain closed.