The Defiant (15 page)

Once the tour is over, we return to the main house through the back door. Miss Caroldean has explained that she expects me to work—to help out the farmhands and Mikal. She's also mentioned that she has two other children: twin eight-year-old girls, currently at a neighbor's farm for a birthday party. I will be expected to help watch them when she needs me to, but only after I've proven myself to be reliable and honest, and not some dangerous crazy person.

We stand in the kitchen. Miss Caroldean pours a glass of water
and squeezes half a fresh lemon into it, followed by a dash of sugar. I'm so hot and thirsty, I assume it's for me. But it's not.

“Take this to Mikal,” Miss Caroldean says. “He should be out front, chopping firewood. And remember, if you feel like running, think again.” She puts her hand in her pocket and brings up the black UNA emblem again, fingering the switch. “Some girls try running the very first chance they get, as soon as they arrive here and their strength comes back. They always regret it.”

I pick up the glass of lemonade and stare at her. “I won't run.”

She nods. “Then you're one of the smarter ones.”

I feel her eyes heating my back as I walk through the house, and step outside onto the porch. I see Mikal standing at a tree stump in the grass, about a hundred yards away from me, his shirt off. He's holding an ax, cursing. Around him are splintered chunks of firewood. He tosses the ax down and rummages for something else at his feet.

I walk across the grass toward him. The sun is hot, and my skin still feels tender. I can feel the sun warming the tubes in the back of my neck. Around me I hear insects buzzing. I try not to think about Miss Caroldean and her awful device.

Mikal doesn't hear me coming. By the time I reach him, he has traded the ax for a large metal saw. He's bent over an old window frame, sawing it into pieces of wood. He finally sees me and stops working, the saw still in his hand.

“That for me?” he asks, eyeing the lemonade.

I nod.

He wipes sweat out of his eyes. “Hot enough for you today?”

“I guess.”

“How old are you, anyway?” He squints at me.

“Sixteen.”

“That's young for an agitator. Usually they're seventeen. Guess you started early?”

“I guess so.”

“So you really made it off that island. You and your boyfriend, and those other rebels.” He stares at me. “I'm betting the men did the work. Not a pretty girl like you.”

“You're wrong,” I say.

“Oh yeah?” He takes a step closer. “Why don't you tell me more?”

I don't want to explain anything to Mikal. I feel like the less I interact with him, the better. I hold out the glass filled with lemonade, expecting him to grab it. “Here, just take it, Mikal.”

Suddenly he lashes out with the tip of the saw.

He catches my wrist and hand, instantly shattering the glass and splattering me with lemonade. I'm left holding the jagged, broken bottom of the glass.

On instinct, I lunge forward with a yell, using the broken glass bottom as a blade. Without thinking, I slice the air where his neck was a second earlier.

He only barely manages to stumble out of the way. I see a flash of fear cross his eyes. I know that I could cut his throat. I grip the broken glass, desperate to leap forward and slash his neck.

But if I attack Mikal now, Miss Caroldean will have her revenge on me. So I force myself to step back. I clutch my hand to my chest. It's stinging as drops of blood bead on it. I pretend that it hurts more than it does.

The look of fear is now gone from Mikal's face. He advances on me, clutching the saw like a weapon.

“Why the hell did you do that to me?” I yell at him, trying to sound hurt.

“ ‘Sir!' ” he barks. “That's what you will call me—‘sir.'  You don't get to say my name. You're not my equal. It's ‘sir' when my mom's not around. Got it?”

I stare back at him. I want to fling myself at him and cram the saw right down his throat. It wouldn't be hard. But I don't do anything. I can't risk it.

Mikal senses my anger. He pokes my shoulder with the tip of the saw. “Is there something you want to say to me?”

“No.”

He sighs. “You forgot to add ‘sir.' ”

“I didn't forget.”

His eyes narrow. “We'll keep working on it. There'll be plenty of time to practice. At the end of three months, you'll be licking my feet.”

He takes a step forward. I stand my ground.

“You're gonna have to go back inside now,” he says, “and explain to my mom how you broke that glass. Just say you dropped it 'cause you're clumsy. Don't mention that we had an interaction, or things will just get worse for you. What my mom doesn't know won't hurt her.”

He takes another step toward me. We're just two paces away from each other now. I don't back down.

“I've seen a lot of girls like you, Alenna. You think you're so smart. And so strong. But it's luck and a smart boyfriend that's kept you alive this long.”

“Liam is smart, but I don't feel lucky,” I murmur.

“Well, you are. And luck has a nasty habit of running out at the worst possible moment.” Mikal turns away from me, getting back to work. “Go fetch me another lemonade, girl. Be quick about it.” He starts whistling jauntily as he returns to sawing at the window frame.

Careful not to take my eyes away from him, I back up a few steps, and then walk back toward the house with the broken glass in my hand. When I glance behind me once, I see that he's watching me. His eyes are fixed on my body. He grins. I get inside the house and shut the door.

•  •  •

Later that day, alone in my room upstairs, I sit down on the mattress for a moment. I've been granted a brief rest from the heat, and a chance to have some water and use the bathroom.

Seventeen girls have been here before me.
There is no trace of any of them. I wish they had left notes, scrawled or scribbled on the walls. But of course Miss Caroldean would have found them and erased any traces.

I don't want any more girls to get sent here after I have left this place. I plan on being the last in the line. I gaze out the window at the endless fields. From here, there is no sign of a city. No sign of Liam. It's just me. I don't even see Mikal or Miss Caroldean anywhere. Just a few laborers hauling bales of hay into the barn.

I reach my hand up and feel the tubes in my neck again. I tug at them gently. Then harder. The more pressure I put on them, the more they hurt and make me feel nauseous. There's no way for me to pull them out.

I try to lie down on the bed, but the tubes push uncomfortably against the back of my skull. So I get up and walk over to the window. I don't know what to do with myself. I'm stuck here in the farmhouse with this family. And there's no way to get to Liam.

David promised me he'd tell me what to do once I got to the Hellgrounds. But so far, there's no indication of how to reach Liam, or what the next step in my plan is.

“David?” I murmur. “Can you hear me somehow?”

There's no answer. I feel foolish for even trying.

The only response is the chirping of cicadas outside in the fields, and the trilling of sparrows and longspurs in the trees.

I was hoping there was a hidden microphone somewhere, hidden by a rebel at David's behest. But obviously there isn't.

The only answer I get to my plea is Miss Caroldean's voice. She's calling for me to come downstairs and help her with some laundry. I force my tired limbs to obey her.

•  •  •

That night before supper, I finally meet her twin eight-year-old daughters—Loretta and Lorene. Both of them have long, straight blond hair, halfway down their backs in braids.

Oddly, they look nothing like Mikal. Their eyes are blue and guileless, but they have a familiar glazed look. One that I saw many times back in New Providence, the look of true believers in the UNA. These kinds of kids would never dream of questioning a single one of Minister Harka's laws.

They introduce themselves to me with overly formal gestures, like they're trying to mimic their mother.

“So, you're an agitator,” Loretta says matter-of-factly. Or at least I think it's Loretta. They look so similar, it's hard to tell them apart.

“Don't use that word,” snaps Miss Caroldean. “You're too young to know about all that. Her name is Alenna.”

“I'm sorry for calling you an agitator, Alenna,” Loretta tells me.

“Me too,” Lorene adds softly. “For thinking it.”

They both keep staring at me weirdly, their heads tilted slightly. I wonder if they're trying to catch a glimpse of the tubes in my neck.

Miss Caroldean seats her family around the table, but I get
seated back away from them, against the wall, watching. I am not allowed to share in any of their delicious-smelling food: a roasted ham, potatoes, carrots, spinach, and eggs. I have a small ceramic plate of corn bread in my lap, along with one hard-boiled egg. An elderly farmhand, silent and grizzled, helps tend to the food in the kitchen.

“Now let us give thanks to Minister Harka,” Miss Caroldean says. Everyone around the table holds hands. But they don't hold hands with me. I notice that Mikal has already sneaked some bites of ham into his mouth, without anyone noticing. It's like they're about to pray to Minister Harka. Like he's become some sort of god in their mind.
Just like David said.

The twins glance over at me, their blue eyes sparkling in their pale faces. “Watch us and learn,” Loretta says somberly.

I nod, thinking about how creepy this family is.

Miss Caroldean shuts her eyes. “The glory of the UNA is founded on three things,” she declares. “Our military might, our technology, and us pioneers out here in the Hellgrounds.”

“Hear, hear!” Mikal adds at the mention of the Hellgrounds, but his mother shushes him.

“And those three things depend on the mercy and greatness of Minister Harka. Without him nothing would be possible. We owe him our lives, and our every waking breath. And we owe him for this meal we are about to partake of.” Her voice takes on a trancelike quality: “Minister Harka, you are the fields that sustain us. You are the sun that brings us light. You are the earth that we live on. You will set
everything
right.”

Mikal, Lorene, and Loretta recite the words along with her. At the end, they bow their heads for a moment. But not in silent contemplation. Their lips chatter wildly, like they're continuing
to pray, just much faster and more quietly. Or maybe they're speaking in tongues.

Of course, I know that none of them has met Minister Harka personally, let alone any of his body doubles.
What would the twins think of Minister Harka if they'd seen him as I have, dying on the shore of the frozen lake? Or if they'd seen his power-mad former body double, Minister Hiram, inside that vast chamber with his mutant?
They'd probably be terrified.

But of course they will never see him that way. They only know the smiling, powerful man as he is depicted in all the photographs and paintings hanging throughout their house, and through the entire UNA.

After dinner, I do some more chores—including cleaning the dishes—and then I am sent to my bedroom, to “think about what you've learned,” according to Miss Caroldean. It's an early bedtime on the farm. Everyone must rise at five a.m., before the sun, to get to work.

Having some time alone again is a welcome relief. I lie down on the bed thinking about my own mother. Being here on the farm with Miss Caroldean and her children brings back memories of my family.

I'm grateful that my mom is nothing like Miss Caroldean. In fact, I can't think of anyone more opposite. I wish I were with my mom right now. In fact, I wish I'd never been separated from her to begin with. Not when I was little, and not again when I left Island Alpha.

I wonder what's going to happen to me out here in the Hellgrounds. I feel like I could disappear and nobody would even notice or care. This place is nearly as desolate as the wheel.

Am I just supposed to wait here until I get some sign from David to
start moving again?
Not knowing what awaits me makes me nervous. I hope that the tubes in my neck are the only form of biological experimentation that is going to be performed on me in the Hellgrounds.

I turn over onto my side in the bed, trying to get the dark thoughts out of my mind. I need to focus on saving Liam and continuing my mission.

A
WEEK GOES BY
. I spend the days working hard, doing chores and running errands for Miss Caroldean, waiting for a clue from David about what to do next. But the more time passes, the more I worry that I'll never find one. I think about running away, but I know that I'd probably be caught—and my senses would be cut off by Miss Caroldean's awful switch.

I'm haunted by bad dreams each night at the farmhouse. I dream of my time on Island Alpha before we freed it, and of the drones with painted faces and pointed teeth. I dream that I'm facing down drones by myself. Stabbing and hacking at them with knives. But the stream of drones is endless. I often wake up gasping and sweaty, slightly sick and disoriented. I don't know what these dreams mean. Maybe it's an indication that I'm cracking under the stress.

I also worry about Mikal, and I struggle to keep my distance from him. But he continues to bait me into a fight, no matter what I do or say.

“I know you're making plans to run,” he hisses into my ear, on my seventh day at the farm. I've been ordered to help him gather some firewood. “I've been watching you. You're too good to be
true, Alenna. You're putting on an act for my mom. You think I can't tell? I can read girls like nobody else can.”

I just ignore him. The alternative would be to fight him. I know that I would probably win, but in the process I would give away my strength and get punished. Besides, he's not worth my time.