“Who are you? Where did you come from?” the boy asked, shaking it at them.
“Dude, chill,” Anna said. “You’re going to threaten us with an oboe?”
“They speak English!” A blond girl with braids tied off with vine tendrils bounced in happiness.
“Wonderful,” Kira said in Japanese. “They speak English.”
The blond girl with braids looked over at her, then at Yoshi. “At least some of you. Are you … Americans?”
“Um, mostly,” Javi said, “And we’re super happy to see you. That pit of danger was pretty awesome, by the way.”
“We needed a warning system,” the boy with the hard gaze said. He glanced into the woods. “This place is full of creatures you don’t want to meet. Anyway, who are you? Why are you here?”
“Probably the same reason you’re here,” Molly said. “Our plane—”
“Crashed,” he interrupted impatiently. “Obviously. Where did you come from?”
“New York—”
“No,” he said scornfully, “not where are you from, where did you crash? Is it far? Can we salvage materials?”
“We took what we—”
“Do you have a shelter?”
“Why do you get to ask the questions?” Molly asked, her chin lifted in that way that meant she was about to go all alpha on him. “Who are you?”
The blond girl answered. “We’re the Cub-Tones, from Bear Claw, Oregon!” she said. “Boy oh boy are we glad to see you! Our plane crashed, too!”
That was too much enthusiasm for Yoshi. He gave Molly the device, took out his cloth, and began to wipe his katana. It wasn’t as though he wanted to scare them or anything. He always wiped down his sword before he sheathed it again. If they were intimidated in the process, that was just a bonus.
The girl leaned in to whisper to Molly. “Is he one of those Japanese soldiers from the war who doesn’t know it’s over?”
“What?” Anna asked. “What war?”
“Does he speak English?” the girl persisted. “Is he … friendly?”
“I’m friendly,” Yoshi said in a cool tone. “My sword, not so much. And I’m not a soldier; I’m a student. I live in Brooklyn Heights.”
“Like in The Patty Duke Show?” she squealed. “Identical cousins!”
Yoshi looked at her blankly. “Identical cousins? That’s idiotic.”
“Jeepers, I miss TV,” the girl said, sighing.
“What are they saying?” Kira asked Yoshi in Japanese. “I can’t understand.”
“I’m not sure I understand, either,” Yoshi answered. “And I speak English.”
“Hey, we’re off track here,” Molly said. “Are you the only survivors?”
“Yes.” Another girl spoke up. She was petite, with red hair. “And the weird part is, we don’t really know what happened. Everybody else just … got sucked out. We weren’t even hurt.”
Yoshi and Molly exchanged a quick glance. The same thing that had happened to them. A blinding pulse of light, and before they could even blink, people, passengers, strangers, the Killbots’ faculty adviser, Mr. Keating—they were all just gone.
“How long have you been here?” Anna asked.
A chorus of voices spoke at the same time. Each answer was a question.
“Six months?”
“Maybe eight months or something?”
Akiko gave a little gasp. Yoshi knew what she was thinking. Eight months sounded like forever. He couldn’t imagine being here that long.
“We lost track,” the boy with the oboe said. “I had a watch, but it broke. Time gets funny when every day is the same.” He gestured at the device in Molly’s hand. “Is that what made us float?”
“It was neato,” the blonde said.
“It’s something we found,” Molly said, putting it back in her pack.
“We found a weird device, too.” This was spoken by a girl who hovered behind the blond girl’s shoulder. Her voice was soft and trailed away at the end of the sentence, as if she was afraid someone would contradict her.
“Come on, we’ll show you the compound,” the tall boy said. “We’ve been here a long time, so we have shelter and food. You look like you could use it.”
“We call it Camp A-Go-Go,” a boy with tousled hair said, flashing a friendly grin. He was almost as tall as the wiry boy, but with a thick chest and muscled legs.
“No, you call it that,” the tall boy said.
“Sounds great, dude,” Javi said. “Whatever you call it. We just crossed the blood sand, and it was grim.”
“Blood sand?” the muscular boy echoed.
“The red desert.”
He nodded. “We tried going that way, but we had to turn back.”
“Smart move,” Javi said.
“Have you ever seen any sign of rescue planes?” Anna asked as they started down the path.
The wiry boy shook his head. “Not one. Although the sky is almost always hazy with mist and clouds.”
“We’re in some kind of hidden valley, we think,” the blond girl said.
“Really hidden,” the red-haired girl said.
Yoshi quickly summarized the conversation for Akiko and Kira.
“Just like us,” Kira said.
Akiko looked stricken.
“What’s the matter, sister?” Kira asked. “There’s food ahead. Shelter.”
“Don’t you see?” Akiko said. “They’ve been here for … months. So many months, they’ve lost track. And they’re still waiting for rescue. Rescue that isn’t coming.”
They knew the search had been called off, but Yoshi could tell they all still hoped. They still looked overhead for jet trails. Froze when they thought they might have heard the noise of a jet engine. They had run like fools when they’d heard that music. Stupid fools who still had hope that someone out there would rescue them.
But these kids had been here for months … and seen nothing.
The wiry boy with the oboe was named Hank. He was clearly the leader. Bobby, the burly guy with the cheerful grin, was bigger and stronger, and the kids called him Crash. Molly saw how he deferred to Hank. Dana, the redhead, seemed smart and welcoming. The happy blonde, Kimberly, made a huge mistake when she asked Yoshi to repeat his name three times and then asked if he was “going steady” with Akiko. When Yoshi only glowered, she’d gushed, “Oh, you guys would be so cute together!” Yoshi just snorted and stalked away while Kira giggled.
Stu and Drew were two guys who hung together, and Molly could already tell that she’d have trouble telling them apart. And Pammy, the one with the soft voice, was too shy to say much at all.
The music? They were part of a marching band, the Cub-Tones. State champions!
Standing in the middle of the small compound, Molly had to admire how they’d made a home. It looked as though they’d swept the dirt with branches, for the ground was hard-packed and free of stones and debris. A crudely fenced vegetable plot of some kind was just outside the compound. Sturdy lean-tos surrounded the central fire pit. They were built next to each other except for a larger one at the very edge of the clearing. Unlike the others, which had woven vines arrayed as a kind of curtain, the far shelter had an actual door, made out of sticks. Storage, Hank said.
A fire burned briskly in a pit, with a pile of stacked wood a few yards away. The fire was surrounded by cubes that were oddly translucent and glowed with a blue light.
Hank picked up one of the blue cubes. “This is what saved us,” he said. “It’s water.”
“No way,” Javi said in disbelief.
Hank fished in his pocket and brought out a doughnut-shaped metal ring, similar to their device. “See? It’s like yours, I think.”
Molly took the ring out of her pocket and put it on the table next to Hank’s. “Not like ours. They’re identical.”
“So, wait … these can mess with gravity?”
She nodded. “Turns it down and turns it up, basically. It also has a setting that messes with technology, bu
t it’s less predictable.”
“Where did you find yours?” Anna asked.
“Deep in the woods when we were trying to get to the ridge,” Hank answered. “We discovered a different setting completely by accident.”
He poured water from a pitcher marked Trans World Airlines into a rectangular container. Then, holding the ring close to the water, he twisted it so that a set of symbols on the outer and inner rings lined up.
Yoshi recognized those symbols. It was a combination they had yet to try on their own ring.
A blue light began to pulse on the device, and the water in the container slowly thickened. Soon the water was a translucent cube.
Hank upended the container and handed the cube to Javi. “We call it the water-changer.”
“It’s so light,” Javi said, hefting it. “Wow. We really could have used this in the desert.” He handed it to Molly, and the Killbots passed it along from one to the other.
“It’s how we carry water back here from the stream,” Dana informed them.
“But the ones by the fire look like they’re glowing,” Molly pointed out.
“Exactamundo,” Crash said. “That’s what makes this device such a gas.”
“It’s a gas?” Anna asked. “Fascinating.”
“Not literally,” Hank said. “Watch.”
Hank took back the cube and held the device close to it. He twisted the ring and touched a different symbol. A red light began to blink. They all jumped when a jagged line suddenly moved like a bolt of lightning through the gel. Now it glowed with blue light. Hank handed it to Molly.
“It’s warm,” she said.
He nodded. “We leave them by the fire at night, and they throw off heat.”
“These rings are capable of so much more than we realized,” she said. “Amazing.”
“How do you change it back into water?” Yoshi asked.
Hank pressed the symbol down again. The gel cube was soon a puddle of water on the table.
“Crazy, right?” Crash grinned.
“We wouldn’t have made it without the device,” Dana said. “The fire pit stays warm longer at night—we think the gel cubes keep it at a constant temperature. Plus, the light keeps the animals away. Saved our lives. That and the tubers.”
“Tubers?” Molly asked.
“Tubers are like potatoes?“
“I know,” Molly said patiently. “You found them growing here?”
Dana nodded. “We discovered them growing wild. All the plane food ran out pretty quickly, so we were lucky to find something edible.”
Yoshi squatted to examine the gel cubes. “This material is like the map we saw in the cavern,” he told Molly. “It’s like an aerogel.”
“Aerogel,” Hank repeated. “That’s a good name for it. Wait, did you just say you saw a map of where we are?”
Yoshi nodded. “It was in a cliffside cavern. The map showed that we’re in a really narrow valley—a rift. At the far end is something that looks like a tower, or a building.”
“But who made the map?” Kimberly asked.
“We don’t know.”
“We guess whoever brought us here,” Molly said.
The Cub-Tones gathered closer. “A building?” Dana asked, her green eyes wide. “You mean, with people in it?”
“We don’t know that, either,” Molly said. “We just figure that there are answers there. Maybe help. That’s where we’re headed.” Yoshi had described the map in detail to her. It had hung suspended in the air, a soft, moving display of shimmering data that revealed they were in a series of manufactured biomes. The building was ten times as big as a plane. It had a pulsing red core. That meant activity, maybe life.
“Have you tried hiking out of the forest?” Javi asked the Cubs. “Not into the desert, but in the other direction?”
“Many times,” Hank said. “We can’t get to the top of that ridge.” He gestured beyond the compound. Through the dense trees, they could barely glimpse the line of the same ridge they’d seen earlier.
“Why not?” Molly asked.
“First of all, the woods are full of predators,” Hank answered. “Big jungle cats. A giant bird strong enough to lift a full-grown man.”
“I’ve met both of them,” Yoshi said, remembering his encounter with a cougar-like creature. “I think we can handle them.”
Hank gave him a look of disbelief. “Yeah,” he said. “Easy as pie.”
“Plus the jawbugs,” Stu said. “They attack every—”
“—night,” Drew finished. “But we build up the fire and—”
“—play music,” Stu interrupted. “They really hate Mozart.”
“But the worst is this huge, terrible beast that looks like an enormous duck,” Kimberly said. “I know that sounds funny, but it’s not. Its beak is long and sharp, and it’s really aggressive.”
“We call it—” Stu said.
“—big beak,” Drew finished.
“Like Big Bird?” Javi asked. “But if he wanted to kill you instead of teach you the alphabet?”
“Um, what?” Drew asked.
“How would a big bird teach you the alphabet?” Stu added.
“We call it the dreadful duck of doom,” Javi said.
“A triple D,” Crash said. “Just like my report card!”
“It seems highly intelligent,” Hank said. “It knows where we are and even our routines. We think it sleeps in the mornings, so that’s when we go for water. It hunts mostly at dusk. There may be more than one, but it’s hard to be sure. There’s also an animal that looks like a giant hog, but it has a tail like a boa constrictor. We call it the snakehog. If you see it, get out of the open. It’s fast. It uses the tail to squeeze the air out of you, and then bites your head off.”
The Cub-Tones went silent.
“There used to be a lot more of us,” Hank said.
“Poor Dave,” Kimberly murmured.
“And Cal,” Pammy said.
“That’s enough,” Hank said. “We don’t need to go over it.”
Dana put her hand on his shoulder. “You’re not still blaming yourself for what happened to Cal—?”
“Not just Cal,” Hank said, a hint of sharpness in his tone. “Dave, and Peggy, and Nancy, and Gil.”
“We lost people, too,” Molly said quietly.
“Well, you may as well get comfortable here,” Hank said. “Because going back out there? You’ll never get out alive.”
Following Hank’s warning about the many dangers of the woods, Yoshi gave a great, contemptuous snort and moved away, prowling around the campground.
“Gosh, he’s not exactly a people person,” Kimberly said.
“He is when you get to know him,” Javi said. “Well. When maybe you get to know him really well. He’d give you the shirt off his back. He actually did give me this shirt.” He could tell he was babbling, so he shut up.
And hadn’t they mentioned food? When people mentioned food, shouldn’t they produce it? Javi was relieved when Dana got up and began to set out plates and bowls on a makeshift table. It was just large branches wrapped over and over with vines, braced by what appeared to be airline seats without the upholstery.
Javi’s mouth watered and he could barely keep still as Dana put fruit and some sort of cakes on the table, along with jugs of water. Then she waved them over.
“Eat slowly; you folks look kind of starved,” she said.
Javi gulped down the water. It was clear and cool, a far cry from the gritty water they’d been forced to boil in the desert. He could almost feel his body drinking it in.
“Slowly, I said!” Dana repeated. “That goes double for the water.”
“Dana’s father is a doctor,” Kimberly explained. “She takes care of us.”
“Sorry,” Javi said, wiping his mouth. He took a bun and a piece of fruit, and managed to refrain from shoving both in his mouth at once.
“Where do you get bread?” Molly asked.
“The tubers,” Dana e
xplained. “We can grind them into a paste and make buns. A little starchy, but we think they must be full of nutrients, because we stay pretty healthy.”
“As long as an animal doesn’t get us,” Hank growled, reaching for a bun.
“So what’s your theory about this place?” Molly asked crisply. “Conjectures?”
Javi bit his lip to hide his smile. Molly was treating the marching band like they were in the robotics club.
“We think maybe there was a Commie spy on the plane,” Kimberly said.
Yoshi shifted to face her. He snorted. “Commie?”
“A Russki,” Kimberly said, nodding. “And all this”—she spread her arms—“this weird place is like a giant experiment. And it got out of control, and they abandoned it.”
“Because where else are you going to build a secret pinko fake world but Nowheresville?” Crash asked.
“So you think the Soviets made all this?” Molly asked, skepticism in her voice.
“Of course,” Kimberly answered. “It’s the only explanation, really.”
“Not the only one,” Anna said.
“There are always multiple answers,” Molly chimed in. “The trick is to approach each hypothesis and test it.”
“So what’s your explanation?” Hank asked.
“We haven’t been able to test our hypotheses,” Molly said, avoiding the question. Javi knew what she was trying not to say. She didn’t want to tell them about the metal pod they’d found in a pond. How they were certain that some kind of creature was inside. Maybe the same creature he’d seen in skeletal form out in the desert—angular and hideous but more like a human than an animal.
A creature alien and horrible. Akumu. Japanese for “nightmare.”
They didn’t have to tell the Cub-Tones everything at once. There was enough bad news to go around.
“We haven’t been here very long,” Javi said. “We know we’re on Earth because we saw the stars, and that’s about it.”
“You mean you thought we might be on Mars?” Crash shook his head, laughing. “I haven’t seen any little green men around.”
“Well, we agree that this place seems to be manufactured,” Molly went on. “We just don’t know by who. Whoever created it made it deadly. So why were we saved in the first place?”