The Wanted

I gave Judith four pills. She took two to give to Gwen and I watched her flush the other two down the toilet. Initially, when she rushed to Grant’s aid, I thought she had somehow kept the pills I’d given her. I was wrong. All she’d done was give Grant fake pills. The only possible reason—to get Denis out of the picture so that she would be named Grant’s successor.

Grant was incapable of doubting her in his last minutes. She held his head and stroked his hair as his fingers swelled and turned blue. I watched in sickening horror as it eventually tracked up his veins and across his face.

The last thing he said was, “See it through.”

His head fell to his chest, the whites of his eyes bright blue. I recoiled and shuddered, my fingers finding the bumps in the carpet and counting them one by one. Judith threw her head up and wailed. The whitecoats crowded around Grant, suddenly pushed to action by her siren-like voice. Camille shed silent tears as they grabbed his body and dumped it on the table, attempting to resuscitate him. But when blue liquid started pouring from his mouth, eyes, and ears as they pumped his chest, they jumped away, pulling a kicking and screaming Judith with them.

Camille let out a dry, withered moan and shriveled like a blade of grass scorched by the sun.

The whitecoats exited the room screaming, “Biohazard!” One of the techs hit a red button, and the alarm drowned out Judith’s howling.

The guards left me and ushered the guests out of the viewing room. I stared down at Grant’s lifeless body. He cried tears of blue. He had one moment of pure joy and then he was gone. Maybe that’s all you can hope for.

Maybe I shouldn’t care.

One arm hung limply off the table, his nails and finger bulbous like frogs’ feet from the pressure of the blue trying to escape anyway it could. A guard grabbed my shoulders and pulled me away from the glass, lifting my trembling body and carrying me to the lift. Grant was abandoned, broken and bleeding like he had left so many of his citizens. A picture he would have flipped like the page of a book without a second thought.

Superior Grant was dead.

And in his place was an evil, unhinged teenager who had fooled us all.

ROSA

Maybe I can’t learn. Maybe my brain is set in concrete now and there’s no undoing it. But then, maybe I was never going to get out of this.

At least I tried.

The rain whipped up by spi

A small man clutching a metal suitcase to his chest scuttled past me and hopped into the waiting chopper.

Before I could comprehend what was happening, we were forced into the chopper, our harnesses were secured, and we lifted off the ground.

I passed a look to Gwen, who shrugged, but had a slight squish to her expression. It was too loud to speak with the chopper blades, the wind and rain slapping the sides and streaming in the open door. Denis appeared completely baffled. Everything he’d carefully pla

A guard strapped to a thick, nylon line stumbled towards the door and closed it, shutting out some of the noise.

The little man rested his chin on his case and gazed out of the window at the lightening dark and the glow of floodlights getting smaller and smaller. “Well, this is exciting isn’t it?”

No one answered.

It was close to dawn when we lifted off and now a sunrise lathered in blood reds and failing purples spread before us like a flapping, silk scarf over the land. I counted eight soldiers plus the pilot strapped to the sides of the craft. All inwardly focused, sunrise washing their cheeks in color as they avoided our eyes.

“So where are we headed?” Gwen asked, her legs pumping up and down on the hard, black floor.

Nothing.

The small man laid the case flat on his lap and opened it, a small chime sounding from within. A computer sat in one side and sixteen flat, plastic rectangles the size and shape of handhelds nested in the other.

“What’s in the case?” Gwen asked, hoping she could get some response out of someone.

The man scratched his nose and pursed his lips, squinting at the screen. I didn’t think he even heard her. I’d had enough. I stomped my foot and everyone looked up, their eyes fiery red from the sun’s rays.

“Where are we going?”

Denis spoke, his mouth struggling to form words through his bruised lips. “I assume we are headed for Pau Brazil, right? My father has always been very creative with his punishments.” He spat blood on the ground in front of him and wiped his mouth on his already crimson-spattered shirt.

All Grant’s cryptic statements rolled out of a sack with a clunk, and I pieced them together. There were no hard parts to this puzzle; it fit together easily with sharp edges and straight lines.

“So your psychopath sister is having us dropped in Ring Two with my mother and sister,” I said resignedly. My punishment was to watch them die and know I couldn’t save them. Judith was honoring his sick wish.

Denis nodded.

“Do you know what the plan…?” A sharp punch to my stomach blew the words from my mouth.

“No talking!” an older soldier snapped.

I co

Joseph would be there. The thought drove me into the sky and pulled me through the dirt. They knew he would be there because of Olga. I wanted to crack her open, peel her shell off, and show everyone what she’d done. He was in danger—the whole group was. But the only thing my heart would hold onto was the idea of seeing him again, despite the million obstacles between us.

It was all part of Grant’s twisted sense of justice. He wanted me to have hope. He wanted me to fight. And I would. I would find my mother and sister, and I would try to save them. Even from death, I heard his cruel laugh and pictured his calculating eyes.

The rain eased and the sun rose chillingly over the vast forest beneath us. Gwen put her hand over mine, and I was pulled back to the last time I was in a chopper, Joseph’s warm hand over mine, his reassurance. We were scared and didn’t know what was ahead, but in that moment, the future was immense and could have been anything—there was promise in the sky. Things had changed. I shook my head and laughed, causing some of the soldiers to glance in my direction in surprise.

There wasn’t much I could do, little I had control over, but I promised I wouldn’t give up. Never. I would always fight. It was the only certain thing. A solid, glowing part of me that had endured every single atrocity they’d thrown at me.

I didn’t know any other way.

I couldn’t be any other way.

I curled my fingers around Gwen’s hand and she squeezed them tightly. She was with me.

I was ready for my lungs to burn, to scream with the force of the turning blades above me. To survive.

I wish I could have slept. Most of the soldiers closed their eyes at different times, resting for their mission. Their hunt-down-my-friends-and-kill-them mission. It made me smile a dark smile to know this would not be easy for them. They were in for the fight of their lives.

My eyelids were peeled back with pure adrenaline as they took in the lush green beneath. The river. The places I’d stepped in and over. I could hear the water over the rocks, the patches of ice shifting and cracking on the surface. It brought me home, gave me strength.