“Some of the children came to the barn this morning,” I told Will as I ate a slice of apple. We had no apple trees on the farm; I wondered if they traded for the fruit. “Why do they wear those uniforms?”
“We all wear uniforms,” he said, and reached for an apple slice as well.
“I know, but the colors ...”
“It’s just to identify what their powers are,” he said.
“Powers?”
“They’re special,” Will said, very softly. He kept his eyes focused on distant trees, but I thought there was a slight glitter there, a hardness that seemed very alien to what I knew of him. “They have gifts, not like normal kids. We have to protect them and train them for the end.”
“The end?”
“The end of civilization,” he said. “It’s coming, Laura. It’s why we’re here. We have to learn how to live without all those things so-called civilization has given us, all the toys and machines and pollution. These children are going to help us survive it, and in turn, we’re going to save them and protect them from those who want to hurt them.”
“Oh,” I said. It was what I’d expected to hear, but not from Will—not from someone I’d grown to like. “It seemed like they were a little frightened.”
He shrugged a little. “They have to learn,” he said. “Not all lessons are easy. It’s good for them to be a little frightened.”
I swallowed a piece of bread that seemed suddenly foul, and reached for the lemonade glass to wash the bad taste from my mouth. “I don’t like to scare kids,” I said. “Even if it’s for a good cause.”
“They have to be trained. Just leave it alone, Laura. Let the teachers handle them.”
“All right,” I said, and ate another apple slice. It didn’t taste as sweet as it had.
Will ate in silence as well, until the plates were empty and the glasses drained, and then he stood up and stretched. I watched him, aware of how the sun filtered through the clothes and outlined the strong lines of his body. Aware of the gentle intensity of the stare he turned toward me, as he offered me his hand.
I took it, and he pulled me up—against his body. I didn’t move away. There was an odd inevitability to this, a feeling of recognition, as if I’d dreamed this, or lived it in another life. I looked up into his face, into those lovely eyes, and felt myself falling into a great, gaping void from which there would be no return. It should have been frightening, but instead, it felt ... reassuring. Like coming home.
Will let go and stepped away. I stood there for a moment, watching him, and then turned and picked up our plates and glasses. “I’ll take them back,” I said.
He didn’t speak, not even to thank me. I felt his gaze on me, heavy and hot, all the way back to the food hall.
When I came back out, Will was nowhere in sight. I missed him, and hated myself for it; I had no business longing for any man here, including Will, whatever odd attraction had developed between us. I was here for a reason, and that reason had just crystallized for me in a single haunting image—the desperate tears in Zedala’s eyes.
I went back to the barn and picked up the hay rake. As I did so, a pair of arms came out of the shadows behind me, grabbed me from behind, and attempted to yank me backward into the dark.
I suppose that Laura Rose might have screamed, but in that moment I was not Laura Rose. I was Cassiel, and Cassiel didn’t cry for help.
Cassiel made others cry for help.
I drove my elbow backward with as much force as I could, and felt it connect solidly with flesh, muscle, bone. I heard an explosive exhalation of breath against my hair and neck. Before he—I was sure it was a he, from the feel of his musculature against me—could recover, I spun and slammed the heel of my hand in a strike for his nose, to break it or, in the best case, drive bone into his brain.
He caught my hand barely in time, and I belatedly realized that I knew him.
Merle. I had almost forgotten about my fellow implanted agent, since he’d been put into another work cycle altogether ... but here he was, hiding in the dark.
“What do you want?” I hissed. Around us, the horses stamped nervously, catching the rush of adrenaline from our bodies. Merle looked worried. Haunted.
No, he looked hunted.
“I think they suspect,” he said. “Get a message to Rostow. Tell him I need extraction.”
“What did you learn?”
“Not a goddamn thing except how to run a plow,” he said. “I can’t find a way in, and they don’t like questions. I think I asked one too many.”
“Did they threaten you?”
“They don’t threaten anybody,” he said. “But one day, you just wake up in the cornfield, I’m guessing. Contact Rostow. Get us an exit.”
“I’m not going,” I said. Merle let go of my arm, and I stepped back. “I can’t leave. Go if you wish, but I’ll stay.”
“You stay and you’ll end up one of them,” he said. “Or worse. Something’s wrong here. I’ve been in cults before, but this one’s a whole new rainbow of wrong. It’s like it changes you inside out—not like brainwashing. I can resist brainwashing. This is something else.”
What it was, I realized, was the low-level tingle of power in the camp. Pearl’s influence, breathing around us, infiltrating our every thought, breath, heartbeat. Merle could feel it, even if he had no idea what it could be, and it had frightened him. It was eroding his sense of self, corrupting him from within ... and it was doing the same to me, only for me it had created this false link with Will.
“I can’t go,” I said, as gently as I could. “But you should. As soon as possible.” Merle, in struggling to keep his sense of identity and purpose, was making himself a target. They would know he wasn’t one of them soon, if they didn’t know that already. As good an undercover agent as Merle might have been in other circumstances, here in this place he was in grave danger.
“I’ll let you know when it’s ready,” I told him. “Go back to work. Be careful.”
He nodded, wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his gray shirt, and took a deep breath. Even so, he didn’t look himself, I thought.
“Stay cool,” I said. “You’ll be out soon.”
He nodded again and walked out into the sun, head down. Even his body language seemed wrong, when compared to the alert, confident strides of the others in the camp. I could see it. So could others.
Merle was in very real trouble.
I went back to raking the straw as I sank into a light meditative state and reached out for Rostow to deliver my message—a minor enough effort, and a nearly imperceptible use of power, but it still felt more difficult now, as if the walls around the camp were psychic as well as physical blocks. Perhaps it was only that something inside me longed for this life now—the simplicity, the clean and straight lines of it. The honesty and trust.
But the trust itself was a lie, and underneath was a black lake of toxic betrayal. I knew that, I did, but even so, it was difficult to separate knowing from feeling.
I reached out for Rostow, but before I could deliver Merle’s plea, I heard shouts from outside. No one shouted here, not in that particular tone.
I looked out to see that it was the girl, Zedala. She was running across the field, stumbling on the carefully plowed rows. She looked terrified.
Mariah, her teacher, had stopped at the edge of the field, and stood watching her with a stiff, unforgiving expression. Next to her was another teacher in a green scarf, who extended her hand toward Zedala.
The next step the girl took tripped her, and she plunged flat onto the ground.
No.
Into the ground.
I dropped the rake and ran out of the barn. Around the edges of the field, the workers had all stopped what they were doing, but no one was moving to interfere.
Not even Merle, who was standing near the fertilizer cart, clenching his fists.
Zedala didn’t come up from beneath the ground.