Unity (6 page)

“How many are there?” Gwen hovers at the edge of the landing pad, while I wade through the tall grass, counting.

“Too many,” I mumble, still counting. “Way too many.”

In some places it’s hard to tell one skeleton from the next. These people were either dumped here, or they were killed in a very small area, landing atop each other as they fell. Both scenarios seem possible, as the cause of death is pretty clear.

Bullets.

And a lot of them.

Parts of bones have been chipped away. Holes in skulls. Ribs fractured. Someone held the trigger down on these people and didn’t let go until they were pulp. I half expect to find the ground still stained red, but nature’s cleanup crew has done an efficient job. There’s no way to know if these people died at the same time as the first man we found or not. Could have been weeks or months earlier, or later.

But the savagery of both attacks seems consistent. They could have been killed by the same person, or by a group of people.

The gun on my hip suddenly seems very inadequate. They should have sent me with a bazooka.

“Seven,” I say, but I’m not sure. “Give or take one or two.”

“Give or take?”

“Some of these skulls are in more than one piece.” With every new bone uncovered from the grass, my anxiety grows. But I’m not worried about me; I’m worried about Sig. If she’s alive on this hellish island, she might not be for long. I rip through the grass, looking for any signs of what happened here, aside from the obvious.

“Move slower,” Gwen says. “They’ll know something is wrong.”

By ‘they’, she means Daniel and Gizmo. “We can’t let them see,” was the first thing she said after we recognized the flecks of white for what they were. While I agree that panicking the boys won’t help us at all, my conscience is struggling with not giving them information that could make them more alert, and more likely to spot danger.

I glance back at Daniel and Gizmo, searching the far end of the landing site. Every few steps, one of them flinches and the other follows suit. Their imaginations must be running wild with visions of killers, monsters and the dead. To be honest, mine is, too.

Gwen is right. They don’t need to know.

I wish
I
didn’t know.

My eyes catch sight of something that isn’t brilliant green, dark, earthy brown or sun-bleached white. It’s a sliver of gleaming yellow.

“Found something.” Crouching in the grass, I brush away the dirt. With each sweep of my fingers, my stomach clenches. By the time the object is clear enough to see, I think I might puke.

“What is it?” Gwen asks.

When I look up to tell her, I see motion in the background. The boys are walking toward us, leaning to the side, trying to see me around Gwen.

Daniel sees me looking. “What did you find?” His shout echoes in the valley, making me cringe.

I shout back. “A little privacy! I’m peeing!”

Daniel frowns and turns around. Gizmo spins away so fast that his legs get tangled and he tumbles over. He recovers quickly, scrambling to his feet, embarrassment muting any pain he might be feeling from the fall.

When I’m positive the boys aren’t going to look again, I lift the triangular object from the ground and show Gwen. When she reels back as though electrocuted, she nearly drops Mandi, and I think it’s too much for her, too. But then she snaps her fingers at me and extends her open hand. “Let me see it.”

She holds the pendant close to her mouth and blows away the remaining grit. Then she polishes it and rubs it on her thigh. When she lifts it up again, the black and orange pendant looks almost new. It’s just like the one I found in my go-pack, except that it’s a Support symbol.

“Could you have known them?” I ask.

She shakes her head, in a daze. “I think they’re older than three months. I don’t remember any kids I knew leaving.”

While I hear all fifteen words she’s just spoken, only one of them sticks with me.

I return to the ground, furiously tearing away grass and brushing dirt. It’s sloppy, rushed work, but the image starts to emerge, and it’s exactly as I feared. The man we found was clearly a full grown specimen. At least eighteen, anyway. But these small-boned bodies, some no more than four feet tall...

These were kids.

Like us.

While I’ve found only one badge, I think it’s safe to assume that these kids were dropped off on this island, like we were supposed to be, and someone slaughtered them. The question is, who? And why? The where and how seem pretty obvious. The when is close enough to now to make me nervous.

Really nervous.

“They were Unity,” I tell Gwen. “Like us. A bunch of kids.”

She looks a little pale. “What do we do?”

“This might change our outlook, but our...mission is the same.” I stand up, looking at the boys. They’re still at the far end, backs turned to us and no longer searching. Probably waiting for permission to turn in any other direction but back at the peeing girl. “We need food, water and shelter. We just need to find those things more quietly than we might have done before. Keep our eyes open for signs of recent human activity. Find a way to contact home, or get off this island.”

“And if we can’t?” she asks. “If they find us?”

“Then our Point will protect us.” The voice is small and slightly muffled, coming from Gwen’s back.

Gwen shifts Mandi’s small frame up over her shoulder and into her arms. “You’re awake.” Her surprise gives way to suspicion. “How
long
have you been awake?”

Long enough to have heard what we’re up against
, I think, but my guess turns out to be an under-estimation.

“An hour,” Mandi says.

Gwen moves to put her down, but the young girl winces, and she’s not acting.

“Are your legs hurt?” Gwen asks, frozen in place.

“I don’t think so,” Mandi says. “But my head—”

Gwen puts the girl on her feet. She looks unsteady for a moment, but that’s not surprising. She spent a good portion of the day hanging upside down over Gwen’s shoulder. And for an hour of that time, she was conscious. And listening. Observing.

What kind of kid does that?
I wonder, and then I decide,
a sneaky one.
More than that, she remained still and silent even when Gizmo screamed, even when we uncovered the skeletal man, and the mass grave of murdered Unity kids.

“Can you stand?” Gwen asks.

“I’m okay,” Mandi says.

Gwen’s voice shifts from concerned to irate. “Don’t do that again. Honesty is key to all successful unification pairings.” She speaks the line like she’s reciting it from a manual I never got.

“None of us have been paired,” Mandi says.

Sneaky and snippy.

Gwen leans over the shorter girl, hands on her hips. “The five of us were paired the moment we crashed on this island.”

“We crashed?” Mandi says, looking confused, rubbing her head like she can smooth out the wrinkles, find her lost memory. But it’s not there. “I remember losing power. We survived, so it couldn’t have been too bad.”

Someone got too many gold stars on their charts growing up.

“Listen, Mandi,” I say, standing up and moving away from the field of dead, “the first time I laid eyes on you, she—” I point to Gwen, “—was carrying your butt out of a crashed transport, and then up a hillside away from a tsunami. And then up a tree. She saved your life more than once, and she’s been carrying you ever since, so I think you should drop the attitude and show her a little respect and thanks.”

She reacts like I’ve just whipped out a butcher knife and stabbed her Teddy bear to death. And I nearly apologize, but then I remember she’s already seen and heard horrible things without reacting at all. My little scolding isn’t going to breach her defenses so easily.

“Nice try, kid,” I say. “Not buying it.”

She smiles at me and shrugs.

I put a hand on my holstered gun and say, “There’s room in this field for one more.”

It’s clear that she doesn’t take the threat seriously, but she groans, looks up at Gwen and says, “Thanks.” Before I can urge her to be a little more detailed, she looks at me and says, “And I don’t do apologies, so don’t bother.”

“Mandi!” Daniel’s voice echoes again, and it makes me cringe. “You’re awake!” The boys are heading in our direction again.

Mandi takes a step toward them, but I catch her arm. It’s tiny in my hand. Big attitude for such a small kid. “Not a word,” I say.

She nods. “I won’t tell them. The boys are fragile. I’ll keep this a secret as long as you do your job.” She looks from my eyes, to the holstered gun and back again. Then she taps the Point symbol on my chest and yanks her arm away. She heads toward the boys again, on course to meet them half way, rubbing her head as she goes.

“You know her well?” I ask.

Gwen leans to the side, stretching the shoulder that has been bearing the brunt of the girl’s weight and boney hips. “Well enough. She says she never apologizes because she’s never wrong. She might even be right about that, but she’s got a pretty severe chip on her shoulder. Like you. But she’s okay—when she’s not on defense.”

I grin at Gwen’s dig. “And what about me? Am I okay?”

She gives me a half-smirk. “Still trying to figure that out.” She reaches out a hand to help me back up onto the concrete. It’s not a big step, but my fatigue must be showing. “C’mon, I got you.”

I take her hand and am once again surprised by her resilient strength. But as she pulls me back up onto the landing pad, I slip into the past.

“I got you,”
he said.

I’d never been a fan of obstacle courses. Life had enough hurdles. I didn’t want to jump, duck and dodge them for fun. Or exercise. And I certainly didn’t want to maneuver my way through one while being watched by adults with clipboards.
Get it over with
, I told myself, and I threw myself into it, trying to show the observers how inadequate their gauntlet was. When I reached the end, I was spent. I had wasted too much energy on the first 90% of the course, and I didn’t have much left to get me up the knotted rope hanging down from a twenty-foot-high, wooden wall.

But I wasn’t about to show weakness now. Not ever. Adults can spot it. Take advantage of it. Feeling weak is normal. Showing it is a problem. So I heaved myself up the dry, oil-scented cable and grunted with each muscle pop. It would hurt for a week, but I didn’t care.

The problem was, when I reached the end, I had nothing left. Absolutely nothing. Like a spaceship trying to fly through the center of a black hole, I was lost. I was nothing. And everyone watching was about to see it.

Then a hand locked onto my wrist and a voice said, “I got you.”

I didn’t look up. Couldn’t. I put all of my energy into locking my hand around my rescuer’s wrist and held on while the last few feet were completed by someone else. In my eyes, I had failed. So when I saw that it was Hutch who had pulled me up, this boy who followed me everywhere and whose apparent affection felt like a foreign invader, I reacted like Mandi. I didn’t thank him. Instead, I shouted, “Just stay away from me!” and stormed off. I never did apologize.

“You all right?”

The question pulls me back to the present. Mandi is leaning in front of me, looking concerned.

“Not really,” I say. “There’s nothing right about this.”

“Guys!” It’s Daniel again. I start toward him, fully intent on chewing him out for swallowing a megaphone. But then he says, grinning, “We found something!” and I find myself jogging toward him, foolish enough to get my hopes up.

My hopes aren’t exactly dashed when I see what has Daniel worked up, but it kind of feels like an elephant took a big steaming dump on them.

“It’s a path,” he says, like we can’t see that for ourselves.

The winding line of hard-packed earth leads through the grass, where it’s partially concealed by shifting reeds. It leads into the jungle at the valley’s end. It’s not a call box, homing beacon or other modern device portending rescue, but it
is
a sign of civilization.

The question is, who made it? Unity? Or the people who killed Unity kids? It might lead us right to them. Pigs in a slaughter house, walking naively to the bolt gun, putting it against our own foreheads. Suicidal lemming pigs.

Gwen’s sour expression means she’s thinking the same thing. Or something similar. Some other non-swine analogy. Of course, she’s the farm girl, so her vision of slaughtered pigs is probably more graphic and better informed.

Daniel is surprised by our lack of excitement, or maybe he expects us to be clucking proud. That’s how I picture his mother, gasping at all his accomplishments, pinching his cheeks. That’s what good mothers do, isn’t it?

Daniel hops down from the landing pad and crouches beside the path. He scratches at its surface, which flakes but remains mostly intact. “It’s been packed down hard. The rain didn’t turn it to mush. Not all of it, anyway. And look...” He digs a blade of still-green grass out of the surface. “This grass is still alive. The path is new. It was made by a machine. Probably within the last few days.”

“We don’t know who made it, or where it goes,” I point out.

“It’s a newly made path leading away from a Unity landing pad, where we were most likely meant to land.” Daniel stands, looking frustrated with me. He’s not used to having his opinions questioned, and he’s clinging to hope.

Like me.

Like all of us.

“So we follow the path,” I say. “And then what?”

He shrugs. “Beats me.”

“That’s
your
job,” Mandi says. There’s a snippy attitude in her voice I’d like to slap out of her, but when no one comes to my defense, I realize that’s how they all feel. It doesn’t matter that I’ve been with the Unity program for just three weeks, or that I’m uninitiated and uncomfortable with the roles of Base, Support and Point. When they look at me, all they see is a black triangle with a red tip.

A Point.

The tip of a spear.

A weapon.

A leader.

All I see is a tattoo I never asked for, and had I known the implications, I would have turned them down.

But I’m not sure that’s entirely true, either. The alternative to this would have been Brook Meadow. Without Sig to keep me grounded, I would have most likely been kicked out of school by now. And that would have been it for me. No high school diploma. No college degree. I would have been on course for a life of mediocrity and hardship. It was a course I’d been on since the day my mother popped me out of her womb and decided, ‘I don’t love this child, take her away.’

Had I known about all this, about the crash, the tsunami, the death, the island, the murders and the responsibility thrust upon me by four total strangers who think I’m something I’m not, would I still be here?

Yes,
I decide, considering the alternative.

Better to die young, fighting for something. Better than going to the grave an old woman with nothing to show for eighty years of sucking oxygen from the atmosphere. That’s what animals do. Biologists say that people are just animals, too, whose primary functions are to eat, sleep and procreate, but it just sounds like an excuse to not live fully. To not dream of something bigger and better. I know what that feels like—to be dreamless. To lack hope from something beyond existing.

And right now, for the first time in my life, I feel like I exist. Like I’m more than alive. Like I’m living.

Before I decide I’m actually enjoying myself here and start worrying about my psyche, I say, “Okay.”

“Okay what?” Daniel asks.

“We’ll follow the path. See where it leads. Whatever happens after that will depend on what we find at the end. But our priority is still food, water and shelter. If we find any of those things, the mystery of this path’s terminus will have to wait a few days.”

“A few
days?
” Gizmo exclaims. He lacks Mandi’s edge, but still sounds surprisingly aghast.

This path is providing our Base members with hope, but far too much of it. Even if we find a way to contact the outside world, if Daniel was right about the size and force of the wave, it might be a very long time before rescue comes. I don’t want to be the one to crush their hope, though, so I redirect it.

“Transport 37 went down not far from us. If the five of us survived the crash, it’s possible some of them did, too. First thing in the morning, we’re going to find them.”

“If they landed in the water,” Daniel says. “Like 38...”

Mandi sits on the side of the concrete landing pad, head lowered into her hands, elbows on knees. “All three transports crashed?”

She’s only been awake for an hour, I remember. She doesn’t know everything.

“38 landed in the ocean?” she asks. “
Before
the tsunami?”

Gizmo sits next to her, hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry.” His small voice carries weight, and I’m surprised when a sob hiccups from the tough little girl.

“Damn,” Daniel says. “Mand, I didn’t think before I—”

Mandi sniffs, wipes her nose and sits up straight. “Not your fault.”

I give Gwen a confused look. She leans in close, whispering, “Hutch is her brother.”

The news is like a sucker punch. A short gasp escapes my lips, but long enough to be heard. Mandi’s red-rimmed, wet eyes snap toward me. “That’s right.” She stands and steps toward me. “He was my brother. And
you
... You humiliated him. Made him useless. He was one of the best Supports. Top scores. And they paired him with
you.
You!
The girl whose pity party never ends. The girl whose only friend was the girl who couldn’t talk.”

“Hey,” Daniel says, placing a calm hand on Mandi’s shoulder. But she shrugs away and steps closer to me, well inside my comfort zone. “We all know who you are, Eff. And we all know that Sig’s potential was the only reason they brought you along.”

“That’s not true,” I say, but it sounds true, even to me.

“But she
didn’t
need you. Just people who understood her.” Mandi puts her hand on my chest, between my breasts, breaching all kinds of personal boundaries, and shoves. I stumble back a step, but hold my ground, my face turning hot.

“So what to do with you?” she says, closing the fresh gap between us. She raises a finger in the air, like she’s just had a great idea. She performs the most sarcastic impression of an adult I’ve ever witnessed, all intercut with her own cutting remarks. “Oh, I know, let’s put the worst of them—
that’s you
—with the best of them—
Hutch
—and see if he can’t elevate her. She’s not good at much besides unrestrained violence…
Yeah, we hacked your records, boo hoo for you
. So let’s make her a Point.” The impression ends there. “But the problem with that is that as a Point, your actions and decisions affect everyone else who is trained to follow your lead. They might as well have put that insignia on a gorilla’s hand, since that’s clearly who raised you.”

My fists clench, tightening with each beat of my heart. My arms churn with energy looking for a release. I’ve done it before. Let the power explode from my chest, flow down my arm, to my fist. Step into it. Put my soul into it. I see her on the ground, knocked out cold. It would take just one punch to knock her mouth shut, probably for months if her small jaw broke.

I resist for the simple fact that she’s recently woken up after being unconscious for a day. A punch like the one I can deliver could kill her. That and the fact that she’s berating me out of grief for a lost brother, who I did, in fact, treat like garbage. Had I understood Supports then, the way I do now...

Then I see something else in the ferocity of her glare.

Intent.

Her emotions are real, but she’s pushing me on purpose. Challenging me to do what? Strike her? Kill her?

No
, I decide, those are the things she’s hoping I won’t do. But not because getting knocked out would hurt. She’s hoping I’ll rise above the action. Show them that Hutch wasn’t assigned to the dregs of the program, that his death could be redeemed—by me.

Fighting my nature, which she has succinctly pointed out is violent, I rise to the challenge.

She continues to vent. And push. But I calm myself. Lower my heart rate. My fingers open up and my hands rise to my hips. Classic Wonder Woman pose. Boosting confidence.

She pauses her verbal and physical assault.

“Are you done?” I ask her.

She blinks. It’s not exactly an expression of shock, but I’ve caught her off guard.

“Because if you really want to honor your brother’s death, you will
shut your loud mouth
, and fall in line.” Geez, I sound like an adult. But it works. Her lips clamp shut, though I’m not sure if it’s because I told her to or that she’s just remembered we have a very good reason to be stealthy. “I didn’t know your brother well, and that
is
my fault, but from what little I did know of him, he’d want us to work together, to survive, and to find your friends, his and mine.”

True to form, she doesn’t apologize for what she’s said or for endangering us by yelling. In her mind, it was all justified, and maybe it was. At the very least, I can’t blame her for it. She did just lose her brother, and through her words and actions, she’s forced me to step headlong into the role assigned to me by Unity. She steps back, motions to the path, and says, “After you, Point.”