The Resisters (17 page)

He struggled against the tape—but it was no use. His ankles, knees, elbows, and wrists were bound without any slack.

Ethan shouted and pulled against his bonds anyway. “Let me out of here!”

He couldn’t let it end like this.

All he was doing, though, was putting on a show for the adults gathered around him.

Coach Norman was there; the principal; the vice principal; all of Ethan’s teachers; Miss Jenkin, the milk lady; even Mary Vincent’s and Bobby’s parents. Some of them wore suits, but most were in their pajamas. Coach Norman was in his Grizzlies red-and-brown warm-up sweats.

Every one of them watched Ethan. Unblinking.

The two policemen who had taken him in the other day, Officers Grace and Hendrix, stood by the gym’s double doors—in robotic athletic suits!

Coach Norman knelt next to him. “Go ahead and struggle, Ethan, but you’re
not
getting away this time.”

Ethan glared at Coach, but Coach stared back without emotion.

Ethan felt his stomach sink.

Great. Even if he broke free—even if he managed to get past all these mind-controlled adults—he’d have to deal with those hydraulically powered exoskeletons that could swat him out of the way … like he was an insect.

“Okay,” Ethan said, panting. He bit back all his angry comments. “So what now, Coach?”

Coach ran a hand over his buzz-cut hair. “Now? We get you and the kids aboard the zeppelin and leave.” He motioned to Dr. Ray to come over.

Dr. Horatio Ray had given Ethan his inoculations, straightened his sprained finger, and always greeted him with smiling concern. Now, however, Dr. Ray had no expression at all on his face as he handed Coach a hypodermic needle.

“And,” Coach said as he took the syringe, “we’re going to sedate you. We underestimated you the first time, Ethan … 
greatly
underestimated you. We don’t make the same mistake twice.”

Ethan’s eyes bulged at the sight of that needle. He squirmed uselessly back into his chair.

“Wait. Wait!” Ethan said. “Just answer a few questions for me. What harm could that do?”

Coach considered. “I don’t think so.”

He moved the needle closer.

“No!” Ethan’s heart raced.

Coach swabbed an ice-cold alcohol patch on Ethan’s forearm.

“Wait! We can
trade
information.” Coach hesitated. He stared into the distance, and then he smiled.

“What would you tell us that we’re not going to know
after
you join us, Ethan? Are you going to say your Resister friends are on their way to rescue you? There’s nothing on our radar or satellite images. You’re alone … but only for a few more moments.”

He touched the needle to Ethan’s arm.

“You’re wrong,” Ethan said. “There’s one thing—about the fighting suits.”

Coach froze, the needle dimpling Ethan’s skin.

Ethan wasn’t sure why he’d blurted that out.…

Maybe it was because he knew the Ch’zar were interested in those suits. As far as they were concerned, the Ch’zar used humans. This was a case of humans using
their
technology. That had to freak them out.

Plus Felix had said the suits had science the Ch’zar had never developed, like the stealth mode.

There was one more thing.

“There’s this bond between the pilot and the suit,” Ethan whispered. “Telepathic … but not absolute control like you guys use. This is something different. Better.”

Coach blinked rapidly. “That’s impossible.”

The other adults in the auditorium blinked as well and looked back and forth among one another … confused.

So they didn’t know about it.

Yet they’d captured pilots like Madison’s brother. They
had to
know everything the pilots knew.

Ethan bet that whatever connection there was between pilot and suit vanished once a pilot’s mind got absorbed into the Ch’zar Collective.

Or maybe even the Resisters didn’t fully understand what was going on with the mental link between their pilots and the suits. Dr. Irving had been intrigued (and, it seemed to Ethan, a little scared) by the strength of his connection with his wasp.

“I can tell you more,” Ethan said, “but
I
want answers first.”

Ethan was playing a dangerous game. There were a few things he had to know, though.

Besides … he’d have done anything—
absolutely anything
—to stay awake and alive and Ethan Blackwood a few minutes longer instead of being absorbed.

But he might accidentally give the Ch’zar clues that could destroy the Resisters.

He’d have to be supercareful.

What his parents had written in their note echoed in his thoughts:
You’re more important to humanity than you can know. Be safe, darling. Keep your head
.

Coach handed the hypodermic back to Dr. Ray.

“Very well, Ethan,” Coach said. “Telling you a few things can’t possibly hurt us. And perhaps there is something to what you say.”

Coach whispered to the principal and vice principal, who quickly left the auditorium.

“What do you want to know?” Coach asked Ethan.

“My parents. What happened to them?”

“Melinda and Franklin Blackwood were with us … but they vanished from our thoughts,” Coach said. His gray eyebrows crinkled together. “We were hoping
you
would be able to tell us more. But I can see from your expression you’re as much in the dark as we are. Interesting.”

Ethan considered this. His mom and dad were “with” them and then “vanished”?

Did Coach mean they were part of the Collective … and then
not
part of the Collective?

That didn’t make sense. How could someone escape Ch’zar mental domination?

The important thing was the Ch’zar didn’t know where his parents were. They’d gotten away!

He wanted to blame his mom and dad for leaving him in this mess, but they’d done the right thing … the safe thing … the only thing.

There were so many questions. Like why his parents, if
they could escape Ch’zar influence, were raising their children in a neighborhood in the first place?

He set his anger and curiosity aside.

None of that stuff could help him or Emma escape. He needed information about what was happening here and now.

“Why use zeppelins?” Ethan asked. “You could have sent in helicopters to get the kids off to high school in no time.”

Coach held up a finger. “My turn to ask a question, son. Tell me about the fighting suit. You control them telepathically?”

“It’s
not
control,” Ethan said. For some reason Coach’s suggesting he “controlled” the wasp like a machine made him mad. “We work
with
them.”

This, at least, had been Ethan’s experience with the wasp.

Coach shook his head as if he couldn’t believe this.

“So about the zeppelins?” Ethan prompted.

Coach nodded. “Those were for
your
benefit, Ethan. And the Resisters’. We knew they’d be watching and planning … just like the first time they tried to stop us from taking our children.”

Our
children.

The way Coach said that … like those kids were a snack … Ethan shuddered.

“After you surprised us and returned to save your sister,” Coach said, “we knew you’d come back again. We
had to bait the trap. A jet or helicopter would have removed your sister too quickly—before you got here.” He shrugged. “Too bad no Resisters came with you.”

The police in the exoskeleton athletic suits opened the gym’s double doors.

Two large fleas—each the size of a golf cart and covered in wiry copper hairs and jagged red armor—dragged in Ethan’s inert wasp.

The I.C.E. fighting suit had curled into a fetal position. It felt sick to Ethan.

The fleas pulled it toward him, scratching and scraping the wasp’s barbed limbs across the hardwood gymnasium floor.

They left it at his feet.

“
Show
us this telepathic connection,” Coach Norman demanded. “Wake it up. Just a single twitch to prove what you’re saying is true.”

The fleas took positions on either side of Ethan, swaying on their long, hinged legs—ready to strike.

Ethan remembered from biology class that fleas were bloodsuckers and able to jump two hundred times their body length. They were strong enough to rip him to pieces.

The gym doors burst open, and one of the supersized ant lions pushed its way into the gym—demolishing part of the walls to get inside.

It lumbered toward Ethan and stopped a foot away. The artillery gun mounted on its back pointed at the wasp.

Its huge jaws snapped once—twice—inches away from Ethan’s face!

If Ethan hadn’t been taped to that chair, he would’ve jumped out of his skin.

“Okay … okay!” Ethan screamed. His heart pounded so hard, it felt like it was in his throat. “Whatever you want—just tell these things to back off. I can’t concentrate.”

Coach Norman nodded.

The ant lion and the fleas scuttled three steps back.

Ethan licked his lips.

He was terrified, but the feeling of panic faded as Ethan stared at the wasp.

He seemed to fall into it … or at least his mind fell toward the wasp’s … until he connected with the insect brain.

It was in a deep sleep, but not like the hibernation mode it’d been in before.

This was different. Wrong.

Ethan concentrated and sensed a hole in the wasp’s mind. Something big and important was missing. The self-destruct mechanism?

That made sense. The wasp was supposed to blow itself up if it got into the Ch’zar’s control.

They must have gotten it into hibernation mode before it could self-destruct and then somehow erased that part of its programming.

The Ch’zar were already learning some important things about the fighting suit … and that was very bad.

He felt the wasp’s mind circling around and around that deleted part of its brain, unsure what to do next.

And what was he supposed to do now? Wake the wasp like Coach wanted? Ethan was confident he could, just like the first time he’d roused it from deep hibernation. But would the Ch’zar then use the wasp? Raise hundreds of them to fight the Resisters?

Ethan’s thoughts skidded to a halt.

What an idiot!
He
could use it.

Wake the wasp up and let it do what it had been bred to do: Fight!

Yeah, it’d be suicidally risky, reckless, and insane … but his choice was getting absorbed by the Collective—or go down swinging.

Ethan was no quitter. He’d fight.

Shhh
, Ethan thought at his wasp.
Don’t worry about that hole in your mind or programming or whatever it is. Just wake up. Don’t move … don’t attack. Trust me
.

The wasp’s mind woke. It struggled against its instinct to attack the ant lion poised over it. Red primal rage tinged its mind—hot and pulsing and uncontrollable … almost.

But the wasp trusted Ethan more than it trusted its own instincts.

It didn’t twitch, but its weapons systems activated, the
hydraulics in its limbs silently pressurized … and it waited.

Ethan glanced at the fleas, the ant lion, the police in the robotic athletic suits, and the adults.

He and his wasp were surrounded and outgunned.

They’d only have one advantage:
complete
surprise. Because only a moron—or someone beyond totally desperate—would even attempt this.

First, he’d have to get them to drop their guard. Right now, he really wished he’d signed up for drama class when he’d had the chance last semester.

Ethan threw back his head and screamed. “My mind! It’s splitting!”

He arched his body against the binding duct tape and straightened his legs, ripping the tape on his knees and ankles.

He toppled backward onto the floor.

Coach Norman and the adults stepped closer. “He’s having a seizure! Give him some air!” Coach ordered everyone. He waved off the monster fleas and ant lion.

The insects backed up a few paces.

Ethan looked at his wasp lying on the floor with him … into its golden eyes … and at himself staring back.

Fight!
Ethan thought.
This is our one chance! Fight for your life!

THE WASP JUMPED LIKE AN UNCOILING SPRING
, lashed out with its powerful barbed forelimbs, and swept out all six of the ant lion’s legs.

The creature tumbled into the air and onto its back.

The impact of the massive insect shattered the gymnasium’s hardwood floor and rattled the entire building.

The ant lion’s mounted artillery fired with a blast of deafening thunder.

The sound and pressure roiled through Ethan and turned his stomach to jelly and left his head ringing.

The artillery shell hit the wall and exploded, sending steel and plaster and glass showering onto the front yard of the school … and leaving more hole than wall in the gym.

The roof creaked and sagged and half fell.

Ethan had expected sudden action, but he was stunned
at how fast the wasp moved and how much destruction occurred in that brief time.

The adults were stunned too … but they recovered a lot faster than Ethan had hoped they would.