The Establishment’s random collaterals.
My own locator feels like it’s cutting off the circulation in my hand.
If you come across one that’s a match, a green signal will confirm it and you must transport that beacon to the safety zone on the other side.
In unison, our five wrists blink green.
If you come across a beacon that’s not a match, you will receive a red signal and must continue your search.
Our wrists flash bright red before going dark again.
You are free to utilize any tools or equipment you find along the way to accomplish this goal, but we caution that you may encounter certain variables in your mission, such as taser mines, nerve scramblers, stun rifles, pain inducers …
Variables. Slade’s sterile word for booby traps and who knows what else …
The object of this Search and Retrieve Trial is to collect your one matching beacon and transport it to the safety zone. You will commence the next Trial in the order you finish this one. The last Recruit to collect his or her beacon must partake in the Culling and choose between his or her Incentives.
Incentives. Cole-and now Digory. I glance at him. He’s as pale as stone. Even the tide in his sea-blue eyes has ebbed. His eyes meet mine and I look away. There’s no question who I’d choose first. But despite everything that’s happened between us, I can’t even think of letting it get to that point. And I have to make sure Digory doesn’t falter either, or Cole’s as good as gone. Cassius has really linked our fates with his chains.
Good Luck, Recruits. Until we reconvene at the next launch point.
Slade’s voice fades and the lights grow dim …
The starting siren blasts away.
twenty-three
Air rushes around me. Someone slams into my shoulder, knocking me across the starting line. My eyes saucer as I brace myself for the blast of the energy barrier. But the only impact is my face thudding against the hard earth. I look up in time to see Ophelia smirk before sprinting off into the fray.
I spit blood and spring to my feet, ignoring the spasms in my wobbly legs.
A hand grabs my shoulder.
I whirl into Digory’s gaze. “You okay?” he asks.
I tear away from his grasp. “I’m fine.”
Then I’m off, wading through a sea of bodies. I gag at the stench. The entire place reeks of blood, festering wounds, and death.
Clenching a palm over my nose and mouth, I squat over the first body I come across, a teenaged guy not more than a year or two younger than I am. His scraggly dark hair is matted to his ashen face. The whites of his eyes are visible through half-opened lids. The beacon’s draped over the wrist of a bony hand, which is pressed against a gurgling wound in his abdomen as if trying to keep something from spilling out.
Shooing away the buzzing flies swarming over his lesion, I press my locator next to his beacon.
There’s a harsh buzz and the locator’s light turns the same color as his soaked shirt.
Not a match. What a horrible way to die, out here, alone in such filth.
His icy hand locks around my wrist. Bloodshot eyes spring open the rest of the way.
My heart nearly erupts through my gullet.
“Please … ” The word flows from his lips through a gout of blood. “Help … me … ”
I pull my arm from his wrist and clasp his hand. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.
Then we’re torn apart. Cypress shoves me out of the way so hard that a bolt of pain jolts through my arm. Her dark hair’s pasted wildly across her dirt-streaked face like poisoned veins.
One look at her eyes snuffs out my anger. Stark naked desperation, the kind bordering on crazy. She eyes the boy’s tracker and grabs it with muddy hands that smell of rot. This isn’t the first body she’s come across.
The moment her locator connects with his bracelet, there’s another harsh buzz and red flash.
She flings his hand down as if it’s shocked her. Her engorged eyes turn on me. “Not him either.”
Then she’s bounding off, crouching over another victim.
The boy coughs up another mouthful of blood. “Please … don’t leave me. I don’t want to die … alone … ”
The weight of what’s at stake crushes the air from my lungs.
I can’t help him.
Fog shrouds my brain, as if I’m in the throes of some terrible nightmare my mind’s trying to filter so I won’t break. This can’t be real. I back away …
My eyes sweep the field. Everything looks fragmented. Digory hunches over a clump of tangled limbs about ten yards to my right. Lifting wrist after wrist. Holding his locator to them. Hands reach out to touch him back. He bows his head. Pity-soaked eyes. Mutters unintelligible words …
To my left, Ophelia digs through heaps. Flings aside body after body as if she can’t figure out what to wear …
Only Gideon appears to be taking his time, strolling through the battle zone and occasionally stooping to check a beacon as if he were in a field searching for a particular flower to pick.
All around them, fireflies flit about, filling the air with their incessant buzzing even as they dot the landscape with bloody pinpricks of light …
Not fireflies-beacons. The thought burns through the mist clouding my head.
Then it’s like my brain’s launched into overdrive, careening forward until it synchs into real time. My breath comes in short, shallow bursts through my dry mouth. I squeeze slower breaths through my nostrils until the landscape stops spinning and the dizziness passes.
I sprint over the unnamed boy without even a glance back.
Beyond him lies a pale middle-aged woman, crumpled like a wad of paper.
The faces.
Don’t look at their faces.
I grip the beacon, trying not to touch skin. But the hair on my body prickles when my little finger grazes icy flesh.
Buzz. Red light.
Letting go of her, I scurry through the human wreckage, dodging past Digory, skirting Gideon, leaping over a crouched Cypress, knocking into Ophelia, scavenging through body after body, groping through torn rib cages and steaming piles of entrails until I’m covered in gore and reek of the living dead myself.
But still I push on and on, gulping down the bile and vomit. A part of me dies with every body I desecrate. And through it all, the moans and wails sear into my brain.
I’ll never stop hearing them until I fester in my own grave.
Soon, I’ve lost count of the running tab of bodies I’m keeping in my head. Why haven’t I found anything yet? I risk a fleeting glance around at the others. They’re all still searching, too. Could the Establishment be cruel enough to not have fitted any of the bodies with matching beacons?
Then a worse thought hits my brain, with the same ferocity as the inner fist trying to beat its way out my chest. What if Cassius deliberately disabled just my locator? It wouldn’t be the first time he’s tampered with the Trials. After all, didn’t he have Digory recruited and Desiree Morningside murdered just so I could take her place and provide him with two pawns to play his sick little game with?
I grab another wrist lying in the rubble. It’s so small the beacon nearly slides off the bony hand.
A child’s hand.
“It hurts,” a tiny voice moans over and over again.
My eyes squeeze shut against the molten river about to burst free. I clamp my free hand against my ear, trying to muffle as much of the agony as I can. If I can’t see them, they’re not real.
Bleep.
The sound startles me.
I finally found one.
Scooping the child in my arms, I hug its head against me.