Titan Base (15 page)

ETHAN’S FIRST THOUGHT WAS THAT THE ENTIRE
Grizzlies soccer team had just played a championship bout on his chest wearing their half-ton cybernetic suits.

It hurt to even take a breath.

He breathed anyway, shuddering in lungfuls of air.

At least he was alive.

He thought.

If you were dead, could you feel this bad?

He flashed back to the ant lion lifting him up to its tooth-lined maw. Adrenaline jolted through his body. His eyes popped wide open and he tried to sit up.

Restraints on his wrists snapped taut. His waist, thighs, and ankles were strapped down, too.

His thoughts took a moment to readjust. He was no longer about to be devoured by a monster. That was good.

He was no longer electrocuting himself either. That was good, too.

But he didn’t know where he was.… He wasn’t even sure he was still in Santa Blanca.

He recognized what this place was, though: a hospital room.

Ethan lay on a gurney on a white pad, heated from underneath for comfort.

That was it in the coziness department, though. The restraints on his wrists were unpadded, a quarter inch of leather chained to the rails of his bed. An IV had been set up, and an orange fluid dripped through a needle puncturing his inner arm. Whatever it was, it burned inside and made him feel definitely weird, like his head was full of cotton candy.

The place smelled of rubbing alcohol. The overhead lights were dim, and the only real illumination came from the biomonitors that beeped in time with his heartbeat.

Ethan tugged once more on his restraints. His wrists had a half inch of play, and then nothing. There was no way he’d muscle his way out of this situation.

Someone was breathing next to him. He turned and saw a girl wearing a surgical mask step from the shadows.

She removed the mask. It was Emma.

She put her finger to her lips, indicating he must keep his mouth shut.

That was hard, considering he had a
zillion
questions—and considering that in Emma’s other hand was a syringe filled with some glowing silver liquid.

She stepped toward him, brandishing the needle.

Ethan squirmed in place.

It was like when Coach Norman had tried to drug him. He’d told Ethan they would put him in a coma, then chemically cause puberty so they could absorb his mind once and for all.

Emma was one of them now. She was the enemy.

“Oh please,” Emma whispered, and rolled her eyes. “Why don’t you just assume the
worst
possible thing in the entire world that can happen?” She plunged the needle into the plastic tubing of the IV drip.

The silver fluid from the syringe reacted with the orange stuff in the IV solution, spreading into the reservoir and down into his arm. It was freezing cold and felt like it was worming through his biceps, across his chest, and up the side of his neck.

Whatever it was, though, it cleared his head.

“What is that stuff?”

Emma examined the empty syringe and shook her head. “Don’t know its name.” She turned it and showed him an octagonal symbol on the side. Within the shape was a complicated series of dots and lines.

It looked like some of the indicators in his I.C.E. cockpit.

If Ethan had to guess, he’d say it was a Ch’zar symbol.

“I know what it does, though,” Emma said, squinting and swiping her thumb over the symbol. “It neutralizes the chemical cocktail they’ve pumped into you. One that would have accelerated the puberty process.”

She patted his arm and gave him a smug smile. “Don’t worry, little brother. You’re still a year behind me. Plenty of time to grow up.”

Ethan bristled at this—as if he hadn’t already grown up enough to lead an entire squadron into battle while she’d still been clueless about the real world.

Emma cocked an eyebrow. “Although from that kiss Madison planted on you … you might be further along than I thought.”

Ethan blushed. That kiss hadn’t been
his
idea. And it wasn’t what Emma thought it was.

Was it?

“Get me out of here,” he said.

He still wasn’t convinced this wasn’t some Ch’zar trick.

Of course, they didn’t
need
a trick. They could just force him to undergo puberty. Ethan would then be one of them, and they’d know everything he did.

Or would they?

Maybe, like Angel had said, he was different. Maybe there was a part of his brain the Ch’zar could never reach. Like his parents, living in a Santa Blanca neighborhood right under the collective noses of the Ch’zar.

“I’m keeping you tied up for a minute,” Emma said. Her expression sobered and she straightened her braid. “I need to explain a few things before you go off and do something ‘heroic’ and bring everyone in this place running after us.”

Ethan lay back. He let out a huge exhale. “Fine.”

This was
so
like his sister. Sometimes when she had a midterm, instead of studying all night like everyone else, Emma would take a big break and eat chocolate chip cookies, waiting until the very last moment to go through her stack of three-by-five cards to memorize facts and formulas.

She said her brain worked better under pressure.

Sounded crazy to Ethan, but it was hard to argue with her straight-A average.

“Just tell me one thing,” Ethan said. “If you’re
not
part of the Collective, why would they leave you here unrestrained with me? The Ch’zar are a lot of things, but they’re not dumb.”

“No …” Emma’s gaze drifted away. “They’re not. They’re actually smarter than any of us thought.”

This statement didn’t fill Ethan with confidence.

Her eyes snapped back to him. “That’s beside the point. Look, I need to tell this my own way. Stop being a lieutenant in the Resistance for a minute, drop the ‘rather die than give an inch’ attitude, and just be my brother.”

He made a pathetic gesture of surrender with his bound hands.

“I never stopped being your brother, Emma. Go ahead. I’m listening.”

She took a deep breath. “Okay. This started a while ago, when I was a little younger than you are now. I heard whispers at home. Voices in my head.” She snorted a laugh. “Well, I wasn’t crazy enough to tell anyone I thought I might be crazy. I thought it was just the strain of studying and getting ready for high school entrance examinations. Those voices, though, went away when I was near Mom or Dad.”

Emma pressed her lips together and stopped.

Ethan knew how she felt. He could
think
about his parents, but to
talk
about them … 
that
was tough.

“When the Ch’zar took me and you burned down the school,” she continued, “those voices were about the
only
thing I could hear. They
almost
talked me into joining them.”

She closed her eyes.

“And when they stuck me in Ward Zero at Sterling, I heard the other kids when they got absorbed into the Collective. I could still hear their voices, but then they got drowned out by a larger choir of voices around them. They lost their individuality, I guess.”

Emma opened her eyes, but they were unfocused, as if she were looking into the past.

“That’s when I learned
I
had a voice, too,” she whispered. “I could sing. I could join in the chorus … without actually getting
lost
in it.”

The blood music. That’s what she had to be talking about. Ethan held his breath. He’d heard it in the tunnels and when the ant lion had screamed directly into his mind. He shuddered.

“It was hard at first,” she said, “but after you rescued me, when I started interfacing with my ladybug I.C.E., she taught me new songs, and it got easier.”

Ethan frowned. He’d never heard “music” from his wasp. All he ever sensed was that pulse-pounding drum-roll of hunger and the urge to kill. Maybe that was a kind of primitive music; he wasn’t sure. Or maybe everyone heard the mental connection a little differently.

“I’m singing right now,” Emma said. “Just a little off-key. Just enough to disappear as an individual to the Collective’s mental ‘ear’—but not enough so I become one of them. To them, though, it sounds like I’m
guarding
you. They won’t come if they think you’re being watched by one of them.”

“Wait,” Ethan said. “You’re telling me that you’re blocking the
entire
Collective from your mind?”

“That would be impossible,” Emma said, and crinkled her nose. “There are too many. And they’re too strong. Sometimes I can give one person in the Collective a mental nudge, make them blink or look the other way for a second, but nothing major. What I do is more like camouflage. I think that’s what Mom and Dad did for years while they were living here.”

Ethan shook his head. “
I
can’t do that.”

“You can’t do it
yet
. You’re such a child sometimes, Ethan. You’re a lot stronger than you think.”

She unbuckled the restraints on his wrists.

“Which brings us back to your first question: Why
would the Ch’zar leave me with you? They didn’t. Mental camouflage is one thing. But I had to wait until they’d drugged you and left you alone,
and
I had to wear this.”

She pulled out the surgical mask she’d been wearing before and twirled it around her little finger.

“If anyone saw my face, it’d be a disaster. They’d be sure to recognize Emma Blackwood, on the Ch’zar’s most-wanted list after escaping from Ward Zero with her notorious brother.”

Emma cast a nervous glance at the door, and then once more covered her face with the surgical mask.

She leaned over to undo the restraints, and Ethan could’ve sworn he heard her singing, although her mouth wasn’t moving. She had to be humming.

“We’ve got to be supercareful,” she said. “I can pass as one of them with this mask on, but all it takes is for
one
of them to spot us and they’ll
all
know.”

“So,” Ethan said, sitting up and rubbing his wrists, “if you have all these new mind powers, does that mean you’ve gone through puberty already?”

“That’s
none
of your business, Mister Ethan Blackwood!”

She helped him get to his feet and slugged him in the shoulder.

“Ow!”

It wasn’t so much that the punch hurt him (it did), but his body turned from the force and his chest felt like his ribs had been pounded with a sledgehammer.

“Come on, Emma. Answer the question,” he told her, rubbing his side. “It’s a fair one. It’s nothing personal. It matters to everyone.”

Now it was Emma’s turn to fidget.

She grabbed her braid and twisted it, and then finally said, “No puberty. Not yet.”

Growing up in Santa Blanca, they’d been taught about puberty and the changes that happen to your body. Outside of biology class, though, it was considered in poor taste to talk about the subject. It could even land you in detention.

Ethan saw that this had been a smoke screen used by the Ch’zar to keep information about puberty—who was going through it and, more importantly, how everyone who hit puberty got “graduated” to high school—a huge secret.

At the Seed Bank, this was turned completely on its head.
Everyone
talked about it. You even had a doctor take blood samples every week to test hormone levels. Results were posted outside the mess hall. It was
all
out in the open.

None of that, though, made it any easier for Ethan or Emma. They had a lifetime of brainwashing to shake off.

If Emma hadn’t hit puberty yet, what would happen when she did if she was in close contact with the Ch’zar Collective
now
?

Ethan had to make sure his sister was isolated
before
puberty. It could be a total disaster.

A stab of panic then plunged into his heart. “What happened to Madison?”

Emma held up both hands to calm him down.

“She got away,” she said. “I’ve picked up whispers from the Collective—they’re looking for all the Resisters in town. So far, they haven’t found any of them.”

Ethan nodded. That was
one
piece of good luck … but it wouldn’t last forever.

He examined himself. Someone had dressed him in a hospital gown. There were bandages underneath—and no flight suit! He felt naked. He practically
was
naked! The only thing besides bandages covering him under the flimsy cotton were ugly black-and-yellow bruises.

“Still in one piece?” Emma asked.

“Yeah,” he said, and coughed. “More or less.”

“Good,” she said. “Because it’s time to do your hero thing, little brother … or should I say,
Lieutenant
Blackwood.”

Ethan took a good long look at Emma, trying to decide if he believed her or not. Was she still his sister? He
rubbed his shoulder. The Ch’zar probably wouldn’t have punched him like that.

“Okay,” he said. “Just tell me, where the heck are we?”

“In a Ch’zar facility, under Santa Blanca,” she said. “There are miles of corridors, laboratories, and machine shops, and a hundred people I never saw before.”

Ethan looked around the tiny hospital room for anything they could use.

One of his high-risk escape plans began to take shape in his mind … one he
really
didn’t like.

   
17
   
THEY KNOW!