Masterminds (24 page)

“Hector!” I call. “Tori! Amber! Malik!”

The names echo in the stillness.

My blood turns cold. Am I the only one alive?

By the time my body hits the shoulder, the speeding truck is already thirty feet past. The impact is bone-splitting. I try to see what's happening with the others, but I'm already rolling, and the whole world is a blur. I hear someone screaming and I'm pretty sure it's me.

Through the whirling kaleidoscope of dark land and sky, I catch a glimpse of the yawning valley growing closer. If I go over the side, I'm dead for sure. Desperately, I reach out to grab something—anything—to stop my momentum. My fingers dig into dirt and dry grass, but it all comes away in my hands.

Try harder!
I exhort myself.
It's a long way down!

My arms clamp around a prickly bush. Thorns pierce into my skin, but I hang on through the barrage of pain.
Who knew that life is so precious? Who knew?

When I finally stop moving, I have only a split second to celebrate my narrow escape. A half mile ahead, the cone truck smashes through the white fence posts and hurtles over the edge. My breath catches in my throat as I hear it tumbling all the way down. I see the fireball slightly before I hear the noise of the explosion, and I can't help but think of Amber's mom, who taught us how light travels faster than sound.

The others,
I think with a gasp of horror. I jumped; did anybody else? If they didn't, there's no way they could have survived.

The pain and nausea of the barrier are gone now. We were right—it was the dish on the truck. It's small comfort in my present situation.

I struggle up, which is no small thing when you're broken to pieces. There might be a couple of tiny hair follicles that don't hurt; everything else is killing me. Tears are running down my face, not only for the fate of my poor friends, but also for myself, because what if I'm all alone out here?

“Amber!” I call. “Eli! Malik! Hector!” My voice is raw, and thin as tracing paper. No one can hear me. The sound probably doesn't carry more than a few feet.

I limp along the road, enduring a symphony of pain. I was the first to jump. If anybody else made it, too, that's where they'll be. It isn't far, but my ankle is on fire. I must have sprained it when I hit the ground. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a hint of movement, and my heart leaps.

“Amber?”

But it isn't Amber. It isn't anybody. Distant lights from the direction of Serenity. Cars coming to investigate the big explosion.

Purple People Eaters! Or worse, our parents!

Parents!
Suddenly, I feel the need to wrap my bruised body in Dad's embrace. He'll forgive me and tell me everything's fine. That picture is so achingly tempting it nearly tears me in two. This nightmare can be over soon. He'll be here in just a few minutes. All I have to do is wait. For sure he's in the first car . . .

No!
I shake my head as hard as I can. It sets off a firestorm of pain, but it's worth it to clear my mind. Dad's comfort is a lie.
Dad
is a lie! Our parents are on the other side and I can't let them catch me.

The thought urges me into action. I scramble for the woods. I'm abandoning my search for the others. But it stands to reason that any survivors will see those same headlights and run for cover too.

I pound through the forest, sidestepping tree trunks and tripping over exposed roots. As the overhead foliage thickens into a canopy, the light of the moon and stars is lost, and I'm stumbling blind. As I flee, the logical part of my brain is screaming:
Turn around before you knock yourself unconscious and never wake up again because some rattlesnake or coyote eats you!

Then I think about my life as a prisoner and a clone, and the rattlesnakes and coyotes don't seem that bad.

My eyes are just beginning to adjust to the low light when the collision comes. I bounce off, the wind knocked out of me. It's so devastating that I'm positive I've run full tilt into a tree.

But trees don't curse, and this one does.

“Malik!” I rasp, grabbing on to him. “Don't leave! It's me! Tori!”

“Tori!” Amber's voice.

We all start babbling at the same time until Malik suddenly interrupts. “Where's Hector?”

“I don't know.” I'm brought up short. “I thought I was the only one who made it until I found you guys. What about Eli?”

“When we jumped, he was still standing on the running board, steering,” Amber supplies breathlessly.

“Eli can take care of himself,” Malik snaps. “We've got to look for the shrimp!”

I shake my head. “We can't. There's a parade of cars coming up from Serenity.”

“We'll find him quick and then get out of here,” Malik says stubbornly.

We form a search line, fanning out about ten feet apart. We don't dare go any farther than that for fear of losing each other.

We haven't made much progress when a faint voice echoes through the woods. We practically have to tackle Malik to keep him from running off on his own.

I call, “Over here!” but I'm still incapable of much sound.

Not Malik, though. He has no problem mustering top volume while struggling to break free of our grip.
“Hector!!”

There's rustling in the underbrush, and a figure joins us in the gloom. “It's me,” says Eli.

Eli! I thought I'd never see him again. “We're all here except Hector,” I quaver.

There's a tremor in his voice. “I don't know about Hector. I begged him to jump, but I think he was too scared. I don't know if he got off the truck in time.”

His words are quiet, but their impact is greater than the shock wave that came with the fireball. We've obviously always understood that our plan was dangerous, and that not all of us might survive it. Now we have to deal with the fact that it might have already happened—that Hector went over the side with the truck.

We knew there'd be a price for our freedom. But we never expected Hector to pay it for the rest of us.

“Stupid Hector!” Malik's chest begins to heave. “Leave it to him to screw up so bad! He couldn't manage one little thing to save his worthless life! How hard is it to fall off a truck you can barely hang on to in the first place?”

“He did his best, Malik,” I offer gently. “He just froze up. He must have been really terrified.”

“He's useless!” Malik raves. “Who did they clone him from—a baboon? And when he really needed me”—his voice catches in his throat—“
I wasn't there!
”

We stand in mute astonishment. Malik, who doesn't care about anything or anybody, is
crying
! He covers his scratched face with his hands, but still the tears drip through his fingers, mingling with dirt and blood. Amber reaches down to place a comforting hand on his shoulder, but he shakes her off.

A loud, rhythmic clatter swells out of the background.
I've been hearing it for a while, but in the chaos of the moment, it doesn't really penetrate my thoughts until this minute.

“A helicopter,” I breathe. Then, “Purples!”

Our break for freedom has come to disaster. One of us is probably dead, and now the Surety is swooping down to pick us up.

“Run!” rasps Eli.

We take off like a herd of wild horses, deeper into the woods. We haven't gone very far when the engine roar swells directly overhead. The searchlight beam sweeps over the trees not fifty feet away from us, so close that we're sure we must be discovered. But the chopper continues on, coming to hover just beyond the ridge where the road curves. Slowly, it begins to descend into the valley.

“They didn't see us,” I whisper.

Eli clues in. “The truck's at the bottom of the slope, on fire. That's what's drawing their attention. They probably think they're going to find five bodies in there.”

Malik is still emotional. “They
are
going to find
one
body in there.”

“Listen, Malik,” Eli says earnestly. “Whatever happened to Hector, hanging around here is only going to get us caught.”

“And
I'm
supposed to be the toxic element?” Malik spits. “At least I'm not stone cold like you! I'll bet they had to go pretty deep into the psycho ward to find
your
DNA! No wonder the ringleader of Osiris picked you to raise.”

Eli recoils as if he's been slapped, but he doesn't give up on his argument. “This is a
gift
,” he persists. “That truck is going to burn for a while before they can get close enough to see that we're not all in it. By the time it cools off enough for them to investigate, we have to be a long way from here.”

“I guess I was wrong about you, Hector,” Malik rasps aloud. “You're not useless after all. You're useful as one thing—a distraction. That's what your whole life was about.”

“Come on, Malik. It won't help Hector if we get dragged back to Serenity.” Amber touches his arm.

Malik takes a shaky breath. “Nothing can help Hector now.”

“Where are we going to go?” I wonder, my entire body trembling. “I mean, with the car we could head for Taos or some other town, but now we're on foot. We can't walk eighty miles—not with the Purples looking for us. No truck burns
that
long.”

Eli's ready with an answer. “The train line. That was
our plan when we tried to get away on our bikes. There's no reason why we can't put that into action now. If we keep heading south, we know we'll hit the tracks eventually.”

“Yeah, but
how
eventually?” Amber asks. “It has to be miles, probably a lot of them.”

We turn to Malik, who is still mourning. He looks like he couldn't put one foot in front of the other, much less take on a marathon backcountry hike in the dark.

His grief-stricken features twist into a slight smile. “You've got someplace else you need to be?”

I always thought Serenity was the lamest backwater on the face of the earth. Now I know that compared with what's
around
Serenity, the town itself is New York or Paris or Tokyo or one of those huge cities you read about.

What's around Serenity is basically nothing. I know this because we walk through every lousy inch of it. It's dirt and trees and sagebrush that grabs at your feet and ankles. It's boulders and buttes and crags that have to be scrambled over or squeezed between. It's so quiet that the only sound besides your own groaning and cursing is the scampering of lizards or the clicking of scorpions. Poor Hector would have probably wet himself, but come to think of it, he'd be too dehydrated, like the rest of us.

It would be hard enough to keep going under any
circumstances, but after what we've just been through, it's torture in the extreme. We walk all night, blundering through darkness, until the pain of our exhaustion equals the pain of the cuts and bruises that cover 99 percent of our bodies. I'd probably be carrying Hector by now. Under the circumstances, I'd be happy to do it. He doesn't weigh very much.

Correction: He
didn't . . .

Here's what haunts me: If we didn't have to rush our plan in order to get
me
out of Happy Valley before Weeding Day, could we have come up with a better way to do it that didn't get Hector killed? If I didn't cheat on tests and gorge myself on cookies and cupcakes and get myself classified “toxic”; if I wasn't such a big
jerk
, would Hector still be alive?

That's a lot more weight to carry than one skinny kid.

The girls are tougher than I thought. I figured they'd be flat on their faces at this point, but they're hanging in there. I guess when it's your only chance to have a real life, you keep putting one foot in front of the other, regardless of how much it hurts. That goes double when you're the one on full weeding alert. I don't feel very lucky, but I understand I am. If we didn't get out when we did, who knows what would have happened to me.

I don't know how far we've come, but we can't see or hear the helicopter anymore. Maybe it landed in the valley, or maybe the Purples took it back to base to wait for first light. I'm hoping that we've walked clear out of its range. I've got the blisters on my feet to prove it.

Our navigation can be summed up in one word: south. We think we're heading in the right direction, but it's easy to get turned around when you're traveling over rough terrain. It feels like we've been on the move for about six months when, at last, the disk of the sun eases its way over the horizon and we're heading straight for it.

“We're going
east
!” wails Tori.

That's the only word of complaint. We make our course correction, but we're too tired for much more grumbling. We're thirsty and we're hungry. When the sun climbs, it begins to pound down on us unmercifully.

“You know, when they picked a place for their secret clone farm, they really scored,” I pant. “We've been walking for, like, fifteen hours and we haven't seen a single person. Not even a house or a road or a power line.”

“Be grateful,” Eli grunts. “We could be seeing lots of people—in purple suits.”

I'm sweating like crazy, but that's a sign that, so far, I'm still okay. I heard once that it's when you stop sweating
that you know the dehydration is getting really bad.

“It's so hot!” Tori exclaims.

“No hotter than Happy Valley,” I point out.

“Yeah, but there, you're never far from air-conditioning or a pool,” Amber complains.

I wish I had my pool right now. I'd drink it, chlorine and all.

“I give our parents credit for one thing,” I offer. “They kept us pampered while we were under their microscope.”

“I'll take this over all their toys and comforts,” Eli says through gritted teeth. “At least I'm nobody's lab rat.”