The Indigo Thief (4 page)

It might be Charlie. I kicked hard and grabbed the shadow’s foot. The shadow turned, startled, and the lantern’s green glow caught the waves of curls that danced around her head.

The girl from the screen. The one I’d seen on the subway. The one responsible for all this.

The Lost Boy.

Mila Vachowski.

She slammed her heel against my nose. I fought back tears and held on.

Lanterns filled the water around us with blinding bursts of green and white light. Guards sped in our direction. Mila slapped a button on her body suit. Fins dropped from the fabric, covering her feet in silicon flippers.

I tightened my grip on her ankle. I couldn’t let her get away. Not after what she’d done. I glanced around me. The megalodons were gone, disappearing as quickly as they’d come; Charlie and Sandra were nowhere to be seen. The sea around me was empty now, save for the guards and the corpses.

Mila kicked hard and swam through the water. I struggled to hold her ankle. Despite her fins, the guards gained on her, rising with the help of jets. They circled us, and the water bubbled as they fired projectiles at her. At both of us.

They must have thought I was a Lost Boy—a terrorist. That I was partially responsible for killing all these people. And there was no one to tell them differently. No one to explain what I was doing. That I was trying to be a hero, not a villain.

Mila dodged the guards’ shots left and right. Bullets couldn’t be used underwater, I realized, so they were firing darts instead. Something pricked my left leg. A burning sensation rose up my calf.

I’d been shot. My leg was going numb. The lack of sensation rose as Mila swam. Soon I couldn’t feel my left leg at all. Then neither of my legs. Eventually, nothing below the waist.

But I couldn’t let go. If I let go, the guards would swarm me.

The lanterns continued to rise with us. One of them lit up two shadows hanging motionlessly in the water. Another revealed blond hair and chopsticks shoved into a messy bun.

Charlie. Blood floated around her head.

At last I released Mila’s ankle, and she swam away. The numbness ran faster up my spine. I paddled toward Charlie, willing my arms to move, to compensate for my numb, worthless legs.

I knew Charlie couldn’t hold her breath like I could—she wasn’t a free diver—and by now, even my lungs were burning. Best-case scenario, she was unconscious. I didn’t want to think about the other scenarios.

The lanterns’ light and the guards followed me. They’d already hit me once. They knew I was the weaker of the two. And now they swiveled their darts toward their single target—me. Bubbles burst by my ears as darts sailed past.

Charlie was an arm’s length away. I tried to stretch out a hand, but my shoulders locked up, numb. My lungs screamed for air.

I threw my head to the side and swung a hand forward with the momentum. The tips of my fingers were inches from Charlie’s.

A dart plunged into the hand stretched toward Charlie. Euphoria filled me. Intense warmth radiated from where the new dart struck. Uncle Lou had told me this happened when a Dummy Dart’s serum recalibrated your brain. He said amnesia followed.

And then there was darkness.

My eyes burned as they snapped open. The world was blurry. Dark. Cold. Wet?

I fought to remember where I was, and how I’d gotten here, but knew nothing.

Nothing.

Panic crept into the corners of my heart. I gasped involuntarily as my lungs demanded oxygen. Water rushed in instead. White spots floated in my vision.

I was drowning. A green light glowed overhead. I tried to kick, but my legs were numb. My lungs sucked in another breath. Consciousness danced around my head, like the faint memory of black curls and blood.

I stared ahead and saw blond locks floating in the water.

Charlie.

Then blackness again, followed by the slow creep of death.

I woke in a dark room, with concrete walls and no doors or windows. Prison?

A bouquet of red hibiscuses sat in the corner. Not prison. I shut my eyes, and saw a subway’s flashing red lights.

“
This is only a drill
.”

The Tube had cracked in half. Megalodons had swarmed. Federal guards had tried to kill me. Charlie had floated motionless in the water.

Where was she now?

I glanced down. I was wearing a white cotton shirt that stretched to my knees. My cargo shorts from the Tube were missing. Dad’s cheeseburger socks were gone, too.

I slid from the cot I’d been lying in and felt the tingle of cold concrete floor on the balls of my feet. My legs had gone numb, I remembered that, but now I felt them. The dart’s paralysis had only been temporary. I did a little dance in the room’s corner.

A red dot stained my forearm. I remembered the Dummy Dart, and the euphoria that had ensued. It had been a small dose, but I still remembered water flooding my lungs. Even small doses could prove deadly underwater.

The Dummy Dart’s serum could stun, drown, and kill a person by making them forget they were underwater and causing them to breathe. Apparently the dose they gave me wasn’t enough to make me forget much else. The Feds had thought I was a Lost Boy, so they probably wanted me to remember everything. I guess I was lucky.

A latch in the ceiling creaked open, and a ladder was lowered into the room, followed by a plump woman in her late twenties. Her hair was short, brown, and curly, and her red cheeks were chubby like a chipmunk’s. She wore a sundress covered in painted hibiscuses. It matched the vase of flowers.

“Ooh! You’re awake!” She clapped her hands excitedly. “So lovely to finally make your acquaintance. We’ve been waiting nearly a week.” She offered me her hand. “I’m Kindred,” she said, “Kindred Deer. Like the animals that used to live in the forests.”

I hesitantly shook only the tips of her fingers. She didn’t seem to mind my reluctance.

I wanted to ask her a hundred questions. Where was I? Where was Charlie? Was Kindred an enemy or a friend? Was she with the Feds? I’d heard the Federation had odd ways of dealing with criminals. People who’d effectively wasted Indigo vaccines by squandering their lives. I couldn’t imagine what they did to terrorists.

I patted my head and felt my black hair tangled in knots. I settled for the first question on my mind. “Where am I?” I asked.

Kindred raised a hand to her face like a caricature and giggled. “Silly me,” she said. “Silly Kindred. Let me be the first to welcome you to Texas.” She skipped around the room and wiggled her hands above her head like a cheerleader.

I glanced around at the room. Still just concrete walls and a crappy bouquet of hibiscuses. Three flowers fell from their stems as Kindred spun. She raced to stick them back on, inadvertently crushing the rest of the flowers in the process.

“Well, not Texas,” she said, “but New Texas. The ‘Republic of New Texas,’ if we’re being politically correct. Though, Lord knows I haven’t the head for politics. Don’t tell the others,” she whispered, “but usually I just call it Texas. The others, however, are particular about that sort of thing. Your safest bet is to refer to it as New Texas or—and perhaps this would be best for everyone—not refer to it at all. Yes, that would be best. Don’t refer to it at all. We don’t want the,” she mouthed ‘
Feds
,’ “to find out it, do we, dear?”

I smiled and nodded. Kindred returned her attention to adjusting the flowers.

If she wasn’t a Fed, then who was she? If New Texas wasn’t part of the Federation, then where was it? But, most of all, who were “the others”?

Maybe I
had
drowned.

I remembered grabbing Mila’s—the Lost Boy’s—ankle. I’d been holding it when I’d seen Charlie floating in the water. Maybe Kindred knew where she was.

“Excuse me, ma’am?” I asked.

Kindred glanced over her shoulder. Four more hibiscuses fell from their stems. She hastily threw them in her pocket. “Yes, dear?”

“Was anyone else brought to, uh, New Texas? Like a girl, maybe? About my age? One with chopsticks kinda stuck in her hair?”

Kindred rubbed her chin. “Well, now that you mention it, I think I did hear something about a girl.”

“Oh?”

Kindred nodded. “Dead.”

My stomach dropped, and my heart screamed. I’d been too late.

“Actually,” said Kindred, “now hang on a minute. I suppose I was thinking about one of my radio soaps—
Waves of Our Lives
. But I did hear something about you reaching for a girl in the water. But don’t worry, dear. That one’s alive.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. A weight lifted from my chest. “She’s here, then?” I asked.

Kindred shook her head. “I’m afraid not. The baddies got her. Keeping her hostage, if I remember correctly.”

My heart sank again. The Lost Boys had gotten Charlie and were holding her hostage.

Kindred patted my shoulder. “How about we go up and I get us some blueberries? That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “I think I’d like some blueberries.”

“Of course you would, dear.” Kindred walked back to the ladder and climbed. “What’d you say your name was again?”

I followed her up. “Kai.” I said. “Kai Bradbury.”

The name fell from my mouth before I had time to think. I should’ve given her a fake name. Found out who she was, what her allies wanted from me, before telling the truth. But she just nodded.

We reached the top of the ladder, and I saw that the room above was made from a concrete of sorts, like the basement. I tapped a wall and it echoed—hollow. On one wall was a steel door; across from it, a barred window. Outside, there was a clear view: sunlight sparkling off the ocean waves.

Was New Texas a part of one of the islands? It had to be—Kindred must be using a code name. From the window, I could see that there were no other buildings on the beach. Limited infrastructure. Maybe we were on Kauai? The other islands’ beaches were too built up…

Kindred led me to the kitchen. “You can meet the others once you’ve had something to eat, dear.”

I nodded and muttered thanks, wondering if we were in a mental institution. Maybe one of the Ministry of Research & Development’s experimental departments. That would explain the barred windows.

Rows of glass cupboards lined the kitchen’s walls. Kindred skipped to the fridge. “Don’t be nervous about meeting the others,” she assured me. “They’re all such dears.”

I wondered how many more times Kindred would say “dear” in the next ten minutes.

She tossed me a bowl of blueberries and powdered sugar. My stomach growled. I was starving. By the time I’d finished, Kindred’s “dear” count was at ninety-seven.

“Nets are down and it’s only nine a.m.,” called a deep voice from the other room. “Gonna be another long day, Kindred.”

She scrubbed another bowl of fruit in the sink. “But I’ve got blueberries, dear. Freshly picked from my garden. That’s got to count for something.”

“I thought we finished those at Bugsy’s—uh…” the voice sniffed as though its owner were crying, “…goodbye thing a couple nights ago. There’s still some left?”

A tall boy, about eighteen, poked his head into the kitchen. His eyes were two spaces too far from his nose, and his top row of teeth jutted from his lips even when his mouth was closed. Stray hairs were scattered across his chin. He looked vaguely like a squirrel.

The boy wiped his eyes and wandered over to Kindred at the sink. I tried not to stare at his sweat-stained shirt and flamingo boxers as I wondered again where I was. I hoped Charlie was somewhere safe.

The boy turned to face me. “Wait a second.” He stared at me with his wide-set eyes. “Who’s this?”

Kindred clapped her hands and pushed him toward me. I panicked and stuck out my hand for a handshake. He gave me a blank look, staring at my hand briefly before giving me a sort of a sideways high five.

Kindred smiled. “You must’ve heard us talking about him, Dove. His name’s Kai Bradbury. He’s the one from the Tube.”

“The clinger? The one who grabbed Mila by the ankle?”

Kindred nodded. “The very same.”

“Well, balls,” said the boy.

“Balls?” I scratched my head.

Kindred patted my arm. “It’s just something he says, dear. You know, like ‘shoot’ or ‘wow’ or ‘crap.’ He wasn’t talking about anyone’s balls in particular.”

“That’s reassuring,” I said. New Texas got stranger by the minute. I shuddered to think what they’d done to me when I’d been unconscious.

The boy’s eyes were blue like Kindred’s, like everyone’s in the Federation over fifteen. Unlike Kindred, however, his were especially blank. Clear like a community pool after what Uncle Lou called a “code brown.”

He scratched his head. “Where are you from?”

“Moku Lani,” I said. I bit my tongue the second the words left my lips. I’d already given them my name. Now my home. This was too much. It could still be a trap. Something set up by the Feds to convict me as criminal. Maybe some scheme of the Lost Boys.

He tossed a handful of blueberries into his mouth. “Moku Lani?” he asked. “Mostly just the nuclear plant there, right? And the home for the kids?”

“H.E.AL.,” I corrected him.

“That’s the one,” he said. “You an orphan?” Kindred shot him a panicked look.

I shook my head. “I’ve still got my mom.”

Kindred shoved a bowl of berries into his hands. “More berries, Dove?”

He nodded and stuffed his cheeks full of them. He looked even more like a squirrel now.

“So, uh, your name is Dove?” I asked.

“Yep, yep,” he chuckled. “Dove’s my name—just like the bird. My mom saw one sitting outside the hospital window the day I was born. That’s how she picked it.”

Kindred smiled. “Isn’t that lovely?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s lovely, all right.”

He stared out the kitchen window with a smile. “Sometimes I pretend she saw a falcon instead. And my name’s not Dove, but Falcon.”

“Falcon would have been pretty sweet,” I said.

He shrugged. “Yeah, but I guess I was better off than my brother. Mom didn’t see a bird outside her window with him.”

“What’d she see?” I asked. “A squirrel?”

“A tree.”