“Let’s go in,” Crow said, his voice as bitter as the rest of him. I hoisted him up with me, our teeth chattering.
We huddled inside the cargo hold with the rest of the prisoners, and it wasn’t long before the boat let out a thud and slammed to a stop. People stumbled and fell, but I stayed on my feet, grabbing Alpha, and clutching Crow so he was held tight between us.
One by one the lights blinked out, until everything was black. Then the agents cranked open the doors to the deck and we began squeezing outside, all shoved together, one big wriggling mob.
I gripped Alpha’s hand and I had Crow on my back. But we couldn’t move all tied together like that — the crowd surged past and tore us apart. I lost Alpha between the bodies, and an agent swooped behind me, prying Crow’s arms from my shoulders and dragging him away.
I tried to keep my head up, to suck in some air. And I peered around for Alpha but the shaved heads bobbing just all looked the same.
The agents had run a ramp off the deck and down onto the frozen shoreline, and I waited and pushed until it was my turn to skid down, my feet numb and slippery in the snow.
I landed in a pile on the plastic beach, amid crusty old bottles and boxes. Up on the hillside, the agents were staring down at us, wrapped in their purple fuzz, their faces buried inside huge hoods. They watched as we shivered and splashed in the puddles.
A rough path led up the hill, and it wasn’t long before we were forced to climb it, spiked clubs prodding us forward, voices shouting for us to move. I remember staring up at the sky as the snow whirled, and I wanted to try not walking and see what happened. But my bare feet kept shuffling, staggering onward until I was at the top of the hill and staring down at a massive bio vat on the other side, steel walls rumbling as the innards worked corn into juice, sooty fumes greasing the sky.
“Banyan.”
It was Alpha, calling from down the path behind me. I turned, tried to wait for her. But then another voice was calling my name.
I stared at the agents on the ridgeline, and one of them was running toward me — the same agent who was shouting for me, telling me to wait. And then the agent was pulling down her hood, and her face burst into the cold air like it might melt everything around her. Her breath steamed and her brown skin was flushed red.
I just stood there. Froze to the snow as the bodies rushed past. And as Alpha reached me, she took my hand, and stared like I stared as Zee ran across the hill toward us.
Chaos thawed out the whole freezing lot of us. Prisoners stumbled and fell as the agents tried to keep everything moving. But things weren’t going to keep moving. The crowd ground to a standstill, just a pile of half-naked bodies stacked in the snow. The agents waved their rifles and swung their clubs, but woven through their commands, I could still hear Zee’s voice, shouting and straining.
“Stop,” she was calling. “Bring him to me. Bring him to me.”
“Who is she?” Alpha whispered as she pushed in close, our plastic sheets clacking, sticky in the cold. But before I could answer, an agent had his hands on me and another was swiping the path clear with a club.
“Wait,” I tried to tell them as they yanked me off the trail. “Stop.”
I thrashed around, trying to find Alpha. I saw her come for me, but the agent swung his club and Alpha’s blood burst bright and sprayed at the snow. I screamed for her, stretched my fingers out toward where she’d been. Then I saw her, still on her feet, trudging away with her head down and her arm bleeding. She was keeping on. Giving up. And I lost sight of her through the trampling mob.
“No,” I kept whispering. But then I was off the trail, surrounded by agents, and Zee was kneeling above me as I curled up and shook.
I threw up then. Like something had popped. But it made things no clearer. It just made me more cold.
Zee took my head in her lap, and her hands were wrapped in the same fuzzy stuff as the rest of her. I seemed to sink inside her clothes.
I tried to speak, but I couldn’t.
I wanted to tell her about Alpha. And Crow.
“Bring him inside,” Zee said. She took her coat off and wrapped it around me. Then the agents lifted me up and they began carrying me, Zee telling them what to do, and them doing just as they were told.
I slept long and deep, but woke with a start. My plastic sheet was gone, replaced by a set of soft purple robes and even softer blankets that I’d twisted all around me. I unwound myself from the bed and pried my head off the pillow. Then I sat up and stared around the room.
No windows. Nothing to see. Just my bed with a chair beside it. A pair of fuzzy boots on the floor. I slid off the bed and slipped my feet inside the boots. I ran my fingers at my face and scratched at the stubble on my head. Then I stepped to the door and shoved it open.
The next room was a whole lot bigger and a whole lot brighter. Whole lot more busy, too. Desks and tables and gizmos and gadgets. Neon lamps. Cables in bunches. There were consoles flashing numbers, and tiny glass tubes hung like decorations across the walls. I blinked at the confusion, the mess. GenTech’s logo was everywhere, but this hardly looked like their usual neatness. There was none of the cold precision that seemed to work for them so well.
“You look more like him,” a voice said. “Now that you’re awake.”
It was a woman that spoke. And at first I thought it was Zee’s voice. But it wasn’t.
It was Hina’s.
I steadied myself against a desk, knocking a rack of plastic vials to the floor, where they burst and splintered. Then it was silent again but for the soft hum of electricity that filled the room.
“I saw you die,” I whispered.
She was hunched in a plastic chair, her face caught in the glow of a monitor screen. Her hair was long and silver, and her brown skin was creased and saggy.
But it was her, all right.
“So,” she said, her gray eyes fixed on me. “How did I die?”
“You were eaten.”
“Eaten?”
“Locusts.”
“Sounds horrible.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It was.”
“Well, we mustn’t dwell on such things, Banyan.” It caught me off guard, her using my name. And her voice was different. Strong sounding. More smart with her words.
“Come closer,” she said.
“No,” I said, just staring at her. “No. You go to hell.”
“Be nice.”
“Where’s Zee?”
“She’s where she always is.”
I just shook my head like it might make her vanish. I glanced around the room for an exit.
“Come sit with me,” the woman said. “Please.”
“What is this place?”
“It’s my laboratory.”
“So which one was real? You or the other?”
“Real?”
“You’re older, so I guess you were the first, right? The other was just a copy. That it? Like the Harvesters.”
“You mustn’t try to simplify things just to make it easier.”
“Then why don’t you tell me what the hell’s going on?”
I started across the room but she was up out of her chair and bearing down on me. I was slow and she wrapped her arms around my waist, wrestling me against her. I was still weak. Too weak to fight.
“Where’s Zee? I whispered, my face pressed in the woman’s purple shirt.
“She’ll be back.”
“My head hurts.”
“I’m sorry.”
I turned to look at her. She was squeezing the daylights out of me.