The Resisters (5 page)

It went pitch-dark.

Ethan heard Felix panting. Madison too. He felt his blood thundering through his body, got dizzy, and sank to his knees.

“Secure the back,” Felix whispered to Madison. “Set the perimeter charges.”

“You got it,” Madison replied. She scrambled into the darkness.

“Take a second, Ethan,” Felix said in his soft voice. “Catch your breath. We’ll have a few minutes to talk while the drones expand their search pattern. But then we’ll make a break for it. Do you understand?”

“No,” Ethan said. “I don’t understand anything.”

A tube glowing ghostly yellow flickered to life in Felix’s hand.

This light showed a jagged tunnel that went deeper into the mountain.

“Come,” Felix said, and moved farther in. “Ask your questions … and I’ll have a few of my own to ask you, too.”

Ethan looked at the curtain. Beyond, the buzzing of more drones grew fainter. There was no way he’d go back out there … so he followed Felix.

Ten paces winding through solid rock, and they emerged in a chamber so large that Felix’s light vanished in darkness.

Felix sat on a boulder next to three huge shapes covered by more of those camouflaging tarps.

Ethan’s legs turned rubbery. He sat suddenly in the dirt.

“I—I don’t get it,” Ethan said. “I’ve been to Haven Heart, Port Amber, and Junesville. I’ve gone on field trips to the National Museum of Art and the Grand Oceanarium. There’ve been out-of-town soccer matches. Next week I’m supposed to go to the state finals.… ”

He rubbed his face. He knew this was no dream, but he wasn’t sure it was all real, either.

Or maybe
he
was the one going crazy?

“If what you’ve told me is true,” Ethan said, “how come I never saw any of those factories or those bugs out there?”

“You were on buses for these field trips?” Felix said.

“Sure. School buses.”

“And after you went through the Geo-Transit Tunnel out of Santa Blanca?”

“I saw farms and wind turbines. There were cattle herds. Fruit stands.”

“All the windows on the bus were up? The air-conditioning on?”

“Yes, but what’s that got to do with anything?”

“The windows on your buses are transparent computer screens,” Felix explained. “They show you what they want you to see. The air conditioner is full of gas that puts you to sleep.”

Ethan remembered those bus rides. Superboring. And he always slept … waking only when they got to another city.

“But I’ve seen pictures of Paris and Rome and the Great Wall of China,” Ethan protested. “Those places aren’t neighborhoods like you’re talking about.”

“The pictures in your books and newspapers were taken fifty years ago,” Felix said.

“No way,” Ethan said.

“Haven’t you ever wondered,” Felix asked and leaned closer, “why the computers in your classes are linked through your school’s network, but not connected to other cities like Paris or Hong Kong?”

“Because it’d be expensive?” Ethan tried.

Felix shook his head. “Because
they
control the news, the textbooks, everything you see or hear … or know.”

Madison stepped from the shadows. The darkness seemed to cling to her.

“Is he ready?” she asked. “Did you show him?”

“No,” Felix told her, irritated with her impatience.

Ethan could only stare at Madison, his mouth open.

She wasn’t in her jeans and T-shirt. A skintight bodysuit hugged her form, covering everything but her arms and calves. Her suit was emerald green and had veins like a leaf.

She sat next to Felix and dug into a duffel bag. She got out a pair of black boots and pulled them on. She then found a pair of elbow-length black gloves and snugged them on too.

“Charges are set,” she told Felix. “We lost the drones … but that’s never a sure thing for long.”

“Understood,” Felix said.

Felix pulled off his shirt. Underneath, he wore a similar, navy blue bodysuit. Like Madison, he pulled on gloves and boots.

“Let’s cut to the chase, Blackwood.” Madison faced Ethan and put her hands on her hips. “We need your help. We can sneak out of this mess—but it’s going to take all three of us to move the suits.”

She stood and pulled a camouflaging cloth off the three large objects behind them.

They weren’t rocks.

Underneath were insects—three
big
insects!

Ethan got up and stumbled back. Watery terror flooded through his arms and legs. He fell on his butt.

One of the bugs had to be the largest rhinoceros beetle that ever existed. It stood upright, fifteen feet tall on its oversized, spike-encrusted hind legs. Its head curved up to form two barbed horns.

The monster bug’s exoskeleton shifted color from navy
blue to midnight black, depending on what angle Ethan stared at it from. It had a dozen tiny eyes … that stared back at him.

It
was
a real bug … but not entirely, because on its abdomen was a seam—segments of armor plate, and tiny letters that read:

The second bug was a gold ant smaller than the beetle, about the size of a car. It crouched and looked ready to pounce.

Black stripes covered its gold armor. It didn’t have giant jaws like a regular ant. Instead, the head tapered back into a sweeping helmet that covered most of its thorax (that was the word Ethan remembered from biology class for an insect’s chest). Also, an ant’s thorax and abdomen normally joined at a narrow point, but on this one the two fused smoothly together.

While the black-and-gold ant definitely looked alive, with sensor hairs that bristled and flicked along every part of its body, it also had machine parts. Tiny amber lights winked along the underside of its abdomen, and there were recessed forward-facing scoops that reminded Ethan of air intakes he’d seen in pictures of old fighter jets.

The hind and middle legs were small compared to the massive front limbs. Those had three large segments, each
with wicked rakes and barbs that looked like they’d been designed to tear flesh off bones.

But the thing that made Ethan involuntarily scoot back in fear was the stinger that extended from its rear. It was six feet long … smoldering with heat.

And pointed at Ethan.

He felt it looking at him,
into
him. It was thinking, too. Ethan swore it felt like the bug was trying to figure out what
he
was, just like he was trying to figure out what
it
was … and it was deciding if it should attack him. Ethan wasn’t sure how he knew what an insect was thinking—but he knew!

The last nightmare creature was a dragonfly twice as long as the ant.

It was sleek and smooth and black. There were camouflaging patches of emerald green on its exoskeleton that shifted as Ethan watched.

Its wings shimmered with rainbow patterns. The thing’s eyes were huge—two soccer-ball-sized orbs that enveloped its head … and Ethan found himself unable to
not
stare into them.

Ethan wanted to scream—or run—or hide … but all he managed was to stammer, “Wh-wh-what are they?”

Felix approached the beetle. “The Ch’zar mutated insects when they first arrived here,” he said. “They use exoskeleton fighting suits like these in combat.”

The beetle waggled its antennae at Felix.

“They enhance your strength and speed,” Felix said,
“and have sensors and weapons systems.” He stepped between the ant and the dragonfly. “Each has a different specialization. Together they’re an unstoppable team.”

Ethan shook his head, not
quite
terrified anymore … but not understanding a word Felix said.

“We’ve learned to tame them,” Madison told Ethan, “adapted their fit, and turned them against the Ch’zar.”

“You … use them?” Ethan looked at the bugs, then at Felix and Madison, and an uneasy feeling twisted in his stomach. “So if there are three of them, shouldn’t there be three of you?”

“We
were
three,” Madison whispered, and she looked away.

“We lost one of our team,” Felix said. He tried to say more … then glanced at Madison and couldn’t seem to get the words out.

Ethan didn’t know what to say. “I’m very sorry,” he said. “He died?”

“None of that matters, Blackwood,” Madison snapped. “Our mission priority is getting out of here in one piece.”

She pointed at the titanic ant. “You’re taking that one. It’s a good unit. It can be a little temperamental, but it should be easy for
you
, since you’re used to wearing one of those idiotic athletic suits.”

Ethan got to his feet and brushed the dirt off his back. He was feeling less terrified and more annoyed at these two—or maybe annoyed at himself, because he
still
wasn’t getting what they were asking him to do.

“How am I supposed to take that … that
thing
?” He tried to conceal his revulsion (and failed).

Felix went to the beetle and set his hands on its belly.

To Ethan’s utter amazement, the seam on the exoskeleton hinged, automatically pulling apart, and sections slid aside to reveal its insides.

Only it wasn’t guts and ichor like he expected in a living creature.

Inside was a contoured surface that matched Felix’s back. There were a dozen hexagonal monitors and a thousand blinking lights and colored indicators. Every surface pulsed as if it was breathing.

Felix stepped into the first joints of the insect’s oversized middle legs and slipped his hands into the upper pair of limbs.

The beetle’s exoskeleton closed around Felix with a series of clicks.

He stood before Ethan looking like part medieval knight in black-blue armor and part gigantic insect.

It was fascinating
and
completely gross at the same time.

“There is no way …,” Ethan said, turning to Madison.

Madison wasn’t paying attention to him. Her head cocked to one side, listening.

There were distant bumps—then a tremor.

“The perimeter charges!” Madison shouted.

Felix’s amplified voice boomed from the beetle. “We didn’t lose the drones. Mount up, Blackwood. Get into your suit!”

“What—!”

“You can be drafted into this fight,” Felix told him, “or you can be a
casualty.
”

Madison ran to the dragonfly. She set both hands on its sleek body, and it opened like the beetle’s. Only instead of standing, she had to lie flat inside.

It quickly sealed around her.

The dragonfly took to the air, hovering with a barely audible whisper from blurred wings.

The tarp over the cave entrance ripped away. Moonlight flooded in.

Thirty-foot-long metal prongs pierced the tunnel, sparking and wrenching and sending cracks through the surrounding rock.

Ethan got a glimpse of a mechanical face outside—a dozen cameras and spotlights that peered into the crevice and focused on him.

It was one of those spider robots that tended the moving factories.

Only here, up close, Ethan saw this robot was the size of a three-story house.

And it tore through the mountainside to get to him!

The rhinoceros beetle crouched. Guns and missile pods popped out from recesses in its exoskeleton. Lasertargeting sights tracked through the dusty air and settled on the mechanical intruder.

“Move it!” Felix roared at Ethan.

Ethan hesitated for a heartbeat, then ran to the gigantic ant.

It went against every instinct to crawl inside this thing … instincts that screamed at Ethan to run away.

Those same instincts, though, when he saw tons of rock crumbling around him, and the robot about to smash him flat, decided that the ant was the better of the two options.

“Okay,” he told himself. “Get your head in the game, Blackwood.”

Ethan touched the surface of the armor.

It was smooth and golden and had a static-charged, sticky feel to it.

But unlike when Felix and Madison had touched their suits, the ant’s exoskeleton (maybe the only thing that could save Ethan’s life now) sat unmoving.

ETHAN POUNDED ON THE ANT. ALL THAT DID
was bruise his hand.

A chunk of rock big enough to squash a truck fell next to Ethan and showered him with stinging gravel.

He hammered furiously on the armor—then did so with
both
hands.

That did something, because the creature twitched, and its antennae flicked at him.

Its eyes tracked him with a golden stare as if it had just now made up its mind to accept Ethan’s puny presence.

The ant’s limbs moved slightly. Ethan stepped back from their flesh-ripping barbs.

There was a click. Armor sections in the abdomen popped open and rotated away. Other pieces of the ant’s armor parted with a hiss and pulled back.

Inside was a contoured couch with minimal padding. There were a dozen hexagonal computer view screens set at odd angles. There were blinking lights with foreign letters jumbled about them. Tiny holes set in the sides seemed to exhale.

Behind him, the spider robot tore through the wall, wrenching away a chunk of rock that must have weighed fifty tons and tossing it aside like it was a beach ball.