He thought it must be the night wind stirring it. But then he saw a pale blur, and his heart leaped in his chest with a start of fear.
There was someone in the hut.
When the compound was secure, everyone drew closer to the fire. Gradually, the sound of the animals diminished as the fire burned high.
“Dinnertime in the forest,” Anna said. “That’s quite a food chain out there.”
“And we could have been the main course,” Hank said.
Kimberly shot him a warning look. “Hey, Mister Grump, mind your p’s and q’s. We have new friends around the campfire. We’re safe. Let’s all get happy, here!”
“As long as you don’t make us sing, we’re cool,” Javi joked.
“And if you don’t mind my saying so, you all look as worn out as my old socks,” Kimberly added. “You have to stay with us for a few days at least.”
“You have a point,” Molly admitted. “Traveling across the blood sand took a lot out of us. We need rest.”
“You might,” Yoshi said. “I don’t.”
“Yeah,” Hank said. “You’re Superman. We get it.”
“Time to get dinner on the table!” Kimberly sang out.
Javi moved closer to Molly. “I need to talk to you.”
“Later,” she said in a low tone.
The Cub-Tones moved in what was clearly a familiar rhythm. Drew and Stu served tubers that had been roasting whole in the fire. No slide-whistle birds had been caught, so there was no meat. The tubers, however, were delicious, flaky and hot and just a little bit sweet. Along with them they ate greens that tasted a little too marshy but also a little bit like heaven to the Killbots, who’d been living on very small rations. They all had second helpings. For the first time in a long while, there was plenty to eat and drink.
Dana had also made some kind of tea that filled Javi’s belly with warmth.
“My grandmother used to make nettle tea,” Dana said. “This is pretty close. Take some more, Javi.” She poured more tea into his cup.
Javi leaned back against the log, the china cup warm in his hands. The group’s tension had melted away in the relief of firelight and food. It felt so good to have a full belly. Maybe he’d been wrong about something moving in the storage hut. It was easy to mistake a fluttering vine-curtain for something else.
“This is nice,” he said, indicating the cup. “You were smarter than we were about salvaging stuff from the plane. China and silver … You must have raided the first-class cabin. Our plane blew up, so we weren’t able to get much. Okay, we blew it up. But it was an accident! We found the tech-boosting setting on our device.”
Hank looked up. “Tech boosting. You mentioned that before.”
Molly pulled the device out of her pack. “You have to be careful with it. It powered up the plane, but the wiring started to spark, and … well, boom.”
“It’s lucky we salvaged everything,” Kimberly said. “The woods swallowed up the plane in just a couple of weeks. Most things grow really quickly here. Except for the tubers.”
“The tubers were a problem when we first got here,” Dana explained. “We found them growing wild, but it was a small patch. They turned out to have a super-long growing season, and we almost starved until Hank figured out how to crop-engineer them.” Dana dug into her pocket and slid a small notebook across the table. “He still keeps track of what’s planted and when, and crop yields. We always know how much we have and how much is stored.”
Anna and Javi both peeked over Molly’s shoulder as she paged through the book. Hank had tracked the tuber field from day one and made notations of what was planted and then harvested, counting the tubers by eights and crossing them out with a flourish.
“He sprouted them and then replanted them in a new spot where other vegetation was growing fast,” Dana went on. “We think there are spots in the soil that accelerate growth.”
“I thought I saw a flower grow and then wither and die in about ten seconds,” Molly said, forking in another bite of tuber.
Dana nodded. “That’s the hour-flower. They grow and wither superfast.”
“It’s erratic, but not unheard of,” Anna said. “There are insects, like the mayfly, that often live out their whole adult lives in less than a day. Some for just a few minutes.”
Dana sighed. “Many of the plants here are like that. The woods are always changing, sometimes overnight.”
“Early morning our first chore is to locate the stream,” Hank said. “We learned that the hard way.”
“Lately it’s been getting hard to find,” Kimberly told them.
“We stick to that path and don’t go deep in the forest at all. You saw what happens when we do,” Hank added pointedly.
Yoshi stood. “Bed,” he said curtly.
“We’re going to double up,” Dana said. “You guys can have the two lean-tos close to the fire.”
“I don’t sleep inside,” Yoshi said. He snatched a blanket from a pile and crossed to the other side of the fire.
Akiko, Kira, and Anna squeezed into one lean-to and Molly and Javi took the other. Javi lay down on a pallet of fragrant leaves. The temperature was dropping, and the mist was dense and thick. He was glad of the blanket. It was heavier than the flimsy blankets he remembered on the plane, just like the forks they’d used to eat dinner with were like the ones he used at home. He figured that back in the sixties airlines must have actually spent money on making passengers feel comfortable.
Molly frowned down at the battery device, warm in her hand. She slid under her blanket. “So what did you want to tell me?”
“I’m not sure,” Javi said. “I mean, I could be wrong. But I thought I saw movement in that storage shed. There’s a window on the other side.”
“Movement? Like, an animal? Or a person?”
“I couldn’t tell. And it was pretty dark, so … I’m not sure.” Javi yawned. He could barely keep his eyes open. “Is Hank right?” he asked, trying to suppress another yawn. “Is it too dangerous to keep going?”
“Of course not,” Molly snapped. Then she sighed. “We’ll rest for a day, but then we move on. We have to find that building. They’ve been here for over fifty years, Javi. They’re waiting for rescue instead of finding it themselves.”
“How do you think it happened?” Javi asked. “They’re the same age as us. Some kind of time warp, right?”
“We messed with gravity,” she said. “I guess anything is up for grabs, even time.”
“Shouldn’t we tell them?”
“I don’t know,” Molly admitted, flipping over on her side and resting her head on her hand. “I don’t know what’s right. Think about it. We’d basically be telling them that their parents are dead, or at least really old. I’m not in a rush to do that.”
Javi could see why. Molly’s father’s death had broken her heart.
“They seem comfortable just staying put,” he said. What he didn’t say was, It’s not bad here. They’d figured out how to keep a constant supply of water and food, they had pretty much figured out predators, and the lean-to was the most comfortable place he’d been in days. It was warm, the blanket was soft, the firelight played on the walls.
The world that the Cub-Tones knew was gone. No one danced the twist anymore. The Beatles broke up. Who was president in 1965 anyway? Javi felt his eyelids droop.
“Moll? What if we’re in a time warp right now, and we don’t know it?” he asked sleepily.
“Then we’d be in big trouble,” Molly said, but Javi was already sliding into a dream and couldn’t answer.
Molly woke feeling disoriented.
She sat up, hugging her knees. Was it close to dawn? This unrelenting sky never told them anything. It was either dark or gray. No sunrise, no sunset. She was sick of it.
She hadn’t meant to sleep. It had simply dropped over her.
She had nightmares now every night. She dreamed of a dull metal tower with a red pulsing eye.
She had confusing drea
ms about the plane crash. Except this time, there was one survivor. He seemed to float vertically in something made of water, or like the aerogel bricks.
Sometimes the nightmare changed, and she was the one in the aerogel. She was something soft turning to hard. Flexible shafts with barbs and hooks that nestled underneath her skin.
She felt her shoulder. There was a long, flexible line under her skin. Even in the darkness she could see the green rash spreading along it. Was it … cartilage?
Javi breathed softly next to her, deeply asleep.
What is happening to me?
Molly sat up and stared at her hands. They were the same hands. Strong and brown, with a broken fingernail and a cut on her thumb. She was still herself.
There had been a basic unsaid pact between the Killbots ever since they’d realized that no rescue was coming.
Nobody talked about home.
Never, ever mention parents, or family. Never mention new sneakers and thick hoodies to pull on when you’re cold. Never mention movies or soccer. And never, ever mention food. Never mention Javi’s mother’s delicious arepas sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, never mention clean sheets or water from the tap or YouTube on your phone or your mom’s special Saturday breakfast.
Never think about a mound of fluffy eggs with strips of toast your mom would place around the plate like the rays of a sun.
Never think about a kiss on top of a head. Never think about a hug.
Never think about an I love you in all its casual uses—Good-bye, love you! on the way to school; Sweet dreams, I love you before bed; even Sweetie, I love you but you really have to stop crunching on those pretzels right by my ear.
None. Of. That.
She’d been okay; she’d been as close to fine as she could get, considering getting bitten by a creature with green blood while you marched toward some fate you couldn’t see, but recently, just since they’d reached the woods … she was remembering too much. And too clearly.
A memory would be so sharp and sweet and clear that it would almost knock her over. It would be like she was in the memory and could feel her mother’s kiss or how a Honeycrisp apple sprays when you bite into it. She couldn’t stop the memories from coming. They were like a fast punch.
If you remembered too well what you left behind—what you’d maybe never get back to—it could just about kill you.
Or make you so afraid that you couldn’t go on.
She was wide awake now, hearing Javi’s soft, snuffling breathing. When he was asleep and dreaming he sounded like a puppy.
She wanted to wake him up. Sometimes he saw things in such a kind, logical way that took her longer to figure out.
He had asked the right question. What if we’re in a time warp right now, and we don’t know it?
Maybe instead of a day passing, they’d just gone forward a month. A year. Or five. Maybe time was elastic here; maybe it zoomed ahead and snapped back. Maybe it took giant leaps. Maybe the clock just ticked faster.
It was a terrifying thought. The one thing they had never questioned in this crazy place was time. That continued to move in the usual way, or at least they thought so, without batteries for the phones that had survived the crash. Nobody had a watch. They told time by the sky. It still darkened and lightened. Now that she thought about it, though, she wasn’t quite sure how many days they’d been here.
She still had a tiny amount of battery left in the phone she’d found in the luggage, and she knew if she turned it on she’d have maybe a few minutes, but she was saving it for … she didn’t know what. A last-minute distress call?
Molly pushed aside the blanket. The compound was quiet, everyone in that deep sleep before morning. It was a perfect time to investigate what Javi might have seen.
Molly slipped into her shoes. She eased over to the opening and pushed aside the braided reeds. The fire still burned, an eerie but beautiful blue glow around it. She could see the unmoving lump that was Yoshi rolled in a blanket, asleep.
She looked across at the lean-to with the door. “Storage,” Hank had said, dismissing it. But Molly hadn’t seen any of the Cubs enter it, not when they got medical supplies to treat their wounds or anything they needed for dinner.
Molly crossed the compound by skirting around the edge and keeping close to the trees that ringed the circle. The mist dampened her hair and made everything look blurry and unreal.
It wasn’t until she was almost at the lean-to that she realized someone was sitting outside it.
It was Hank. He sat quietly. The firelight glittered on a knife. It was dipped in something red. Something that looked like blood.
Idiot.
Stupid.
Silly.
Yoshi turned over on the hard-packed ground. He couldn’t get the words out of his head.
Names his father used to call him.
They needed to pack up supplies and get out of here. If the Cubs wanted to stay, fine. Let Hank play his oboe and let another century go by.
But Molly wanted to wait another day.
Cowards! his father’s voice said, and for once, Yoshi agreed. He felt time pressing on him, urging him forward. There was something about this place he didn’t trust. If it were up to him, he’d be gone by first light.
What if he could go it alone?
Maybe that was the secret to success. Slipping from shadow to shadow, silent, part of the forest. Yoshi thought back to the map. How long would it take him to reach the building? Maybe three days? Four? He could get to the building at the end of the valley on his own, he could find out what all this was about, and then he could … solve it, somehow.
He pictured himself striding back into the compound, triumphant. He’d say to Hank, You were afraid of the forest? It wasn’t anything at all, dude. Are you ready to be rescued?
Hank had never made it to the top of the ridge. But Hank wasn’t Yoshi. And Hank didn’t have a katana.
Would they miss him? He doubted it. Anna hadn’t even cared that he’d come looking for her, how he’d rushed off without thinking (okay, now he could admit it, it was stupid). Molly wasn’t interested in his opinion, not when it got in the way of her leadership.
He’d been the one to act first, always. He’d been the one to go for water after the crash, to realize how crucial it was. He’d been the one to figure out they had to climb to the top of the cliff, and that’s how they’d discovered that the valley was basically a machine. He’d found the place they had to get to, provided them with a plan and a reason to keep going.
Let the others rest.
He needed to move.
Tomorrow.
Molly froze. Across the compound, Javi had just pushed out of the lean-to and was looking around.
Go back in, Javi!
He caught sight of her and ambled forward. Molly frantically waved at him to stay away before Hank spotted them, but he kept on coming. Hank’s head was bent over his lap. He hadn’t seen them. Yet.
When Javi reached her, she pulled at his arm, drawing him farther into the shadows. “What are you doing?” she whispered.
“You were gone. I was worried.”
“Hank has a knife! I think there’s blood on it!”
Javi squinted in the gloom. “What’s he doing?”
“Guarding the shed, of course!”
“That’s not blood on the knife. It’s just the light. Look.”
Molly squinted. The firelight cast a reddish tinge to the fog that blanketed the compound. She felt foolish. “Oh.”
“I’m going to talk to him,” Javi said.
“No, he could be dangerous!”
Javi turned. His warm brown eyes were puzzled. “Why do you think so?”
She wasn’t sure. Molly pressed her fingers against her shoulder. She could feel the beating of something there, but it wasn’t the pulse of blood moving through her veins. For a moment she’d looked at Hank and seen something … other.
“Okay,” she said. “You distract him, and I’ll sneak around to t
he back.”
She darted behind a tree as Javi ambled toward Hank.
“Dude!” he called softly. “Don’t you ever sleep?”
Molly slid from shadow to shadow. She saw Hank gesture and Javi lean in. As soon as she was out of their sight line, she crept to the back of the lean-to. A lattice of dark leaves hung over the window.
Molly crept closer. She gently lifted the leaf curtain.
She almost leaped back and screamed when she saw a face looking out at her.
A pulsing green line ran like a toxic river down one side of his face. It split into capillaries and disappeared under his T-shirt.
The … creature pressed his face close against the opening.
“I felt you coming,” he said to Molly. “You’re just like me.”
Breathe.
Breathe.
“Molly?” Javi’s voice. “Are you okay?”
Molly came back to herself and found she was on her knees. She saw the clumps of dirt between her fingers. She’d fallen, and she didn’t remember falling.
She saw Javi’s sneakers.
“Moll? You okay? Did you trip?”
Javi’s hand.
“Fine.” She let him help her up. “I just stumbled, that’s all.”
What had happened? The boy had spoken to her, and she had stepped into her nightmare. Just as easily as walking from one room to another.
A rush of compressed air in her ears, a dull metal shine of walls around her, a translucent wall and a pulsing red heart, and then a hand reaching out, poking through the wall as it bent and shuddered, and the hand grasped her shoulder and stroked her … feathers.
“Come on,” Javi said. “Everything’s cool. I’ll show you why Hank has a knife.”
“There’s someone in the hut.”
“I know.”
Molly followed Javi around to the front of the hut. The gray sky was lightening. A few birds were twittering.
Hank was bent over something in his lap, a long, stiff dried plant. He was carving it.