The Resisters (20 page)

A HAMBURGER, FRIES, AND A QUART OF MILK
were waiting in Ethan’s tiny room. He wolfed it all down.

A fresh set of coveralls, socks, underwear, and black boots had been set out for Ethan too.

His old jeans and shirt were ripped, bloody, and covered in insect slime.

Ick.

He shucked them off and kicked them into the corner. He cleaned himself and got into the new clothes. They were warm and soft. The boots had thick gecko-grip soles and fit like a glove.

Ethan sat on the cot and drew his knees to his chest.

How long would it take for the colonel to decide what to do with him? Would she keep him a prisoner in this
room forever? Or maybe she’d make him a janitor—hard labor that’d keep him too busy to make trouble ever again.

Next to him on the cot where he’d left it was that leather wristband. It had been Madison’s brother’s.

Ethan picked it up. He turned it over and examined the electrical resistor bead.

Madison had said it was a symbol for the Resistance … a symbol of hope … of freedom.

What could a symbol possibly change? Nothing.

Why then did Ethan want more than anything to wear this stupid thing?

He started to slip it on to see how it would look, but he stopped.

Madison’s brother, Roger, was supposed to have this. He’d been the
real
pilot of the wasp suit and a leader among the Resisters.

What would the Ch’zar make of his intelligence and skills? Would they use them? Or had they been lost when he’d submerged into the Collective?

Ethan didn’t know. And he hoped he never found out, either.

He stared at the bands of color on the resistor and then set it aside.

It wasn’t his—even if Madison had given it to him. He didn’t deserve it.

He then remembered something that
was
his.

He got up and went through the pockets of his
discarded jeans. He pulled out the letter from his parents and read:

Right now, that seemed like the
most
unlikely thing in the world.

Maybe his mom and dad had had some plan for him and Emma. They had to know the day would come when they’d grow up and change. His parents had had that secret room, those vaults … apparently an escape route, too.

One day he’d find them and they could tell him everything.

If he wasn’t marched in front of a firing squad tonight!

And Emma? Where was she now? Vassar Prep High School? A Ch’zar work camp because she’d seen too much? Or someplace
worse
?

He felt a stab of guilt—but that quickly faded.

It wasn’t his fault … any more than the Earth getting invaded by aliens was his fault, or the neighborhoods set up to raise generations of slaves was his fault.

One thing that had been his fault, though, was running off on his own. He had a lot to learn about the Ch’zar before he fought them again … and he had a lot to learn about the Resisters, too.

There was a metallic tap on his door.

Ethan jumped to his feet—surprised—startled—then hopeful. He’d give anything for Felix, or even Madison, to come by to talk to him and give an update on his wasp.

Instead, Dr. Irving opened the door.

He had changed out of his lab coat and wore the same navy blue uniform as Colonel Winter. His long white hair was pulled back into a tight braid.

Ethan hoped he hadn’t changed clothes because there was going to be a military trial.

Dr. Irving smiled his crooked smile. “Relax, son,” he said. “I don’t know any more than you do about what’s going to happen. The colonel has called for you”—he brushed his uniform—“and I thought it best to break this out of mothballs and be prepared for anything.”

Ethan nodded. “That was kind of you, sir.”

“Come.” Dr. Irving gestured out to the catwalk. “I’ll escort you to the Command and Control Center, or what we here call C and C.”

Ethan started to leave, then paused and left his parents’ note behind on his cot.

For some reason he didn’t want anyone to look at it. It was something just between him and his parents.

For some even
stranger
reason, he grabbed the leather wristband that had belonged to Madison’s brother and stuffed it into his pocket.

This time Dr. Irving led Ethan to the right on the catwalk—away from the hangar.

Two guards, who had been standing outside Ethan’s
door, were part of the escort too. They had holstered pistols and followed three paces behind Dr. Irving and Ethan.

Ethan nodded at them, but he got nothing back but a cold stare.

The catwalk ended at an elevator door. Dr. Irving pressed his palm to a scanner, and after a moment a two-foot-thick steel door whisked open.

“How is the wasp, sir?” Ethan asked.

Dr. Irving didn’t answer. He ushered Ethan onto the elevator. The guards remained outside.

The doors closed and clicked several times.

They flew up so fast that Ethan’s stomach felt like it got stuffed into his new boots. There were no lights or indicators, so he had no idea how far up they were going.

“We’ve stabilized your wasp for now,” Dr. Irving finally told him. “We’ll know in the next twenty-four hours if it’ll live.”

“I see …,” Ethan whispered.

“What was it like fighting in the suit a third time?” Dr. Irving asked. “I’ve scanned your flight telemetry.” Both his eyebrows raised. “Our pilots train for years before they can achieve that level of control.”

Ethan shrugged. “It’s like working with anyone else you know … just more personal … like you’re with a friend or a brother.”

Dr. Irving nodded, seemingly deep in thought and concerned over this last comment.

“I don’t get why it’s such a big deal. You must’ve had
kids from neighborhoods before and trained them as pilots.”

“Yes,” Dr. Irving said, “we have rescued other neighborhood children. And yes, we’ve tested them in the fighting suits. But the I.C.E. systems
always
reject them. In some cases the insect mind actually dominated them.” He looked away, disturbed. “We’ve never found one who has made a suitable pilot … before you.”

The elevator slowed and stopped.

Ethan’s ears popped from the pressure difference.

Locks on the other side of the door clicked and clanked open.

“Then why did Madison pick me to fly the suit in the first place?”

“Our pilots were too far away … and they would have tried to fly the craft, exert their wills to control it … and with that
particular
unit, well, no one but Madison’s brother had ever managed the feat. I suspect she hoped you’d be able to activate the I.C.E. system enough for the wasp’s autopilot to kick in. In a few cases, we’ve had that level of response from neighborhood children.” He stared into Ethan’s eyes. “Or perhaps she saw something different about you.”

Different.

Like his parents had been different?

Ethan wondered.

The elevator doors finally opened.

The Command and Control Center was a room the
size of Northside Elementary’s gymnasium. Instead of bleachers, it had computer monitors and maps of different parts of the world on the walls that glowed with animated icons.

Dozens of uniformed adults worked at radar stations, terminals with medical readouts streaming across them, and holographic tables showing dotted Earth and lunar orbits. Spotlights illuminated stations here and there; otherwise, lights were dimmed and tinged red.

Everyone seemed busy and didn’t give Ethan and Dr. Irving a glance as they stepped off the elevator.

The two armed men by the elevator, though, did indeed notice them. They had a pair of icy, disapproving glares that must be a requirement for the guards here.

“This way,” Dr. Irving said.

He guided Ethan between banks of computers and humming generators to a center stage raised above everything else. Monitors flashed with incoming messages. Officers with radio headsets whispered urgent commands and listened to incoming reports.

In one corner Felix and Madison stood. They were wearing gray uniforms and had their hands clasped behind their backs at parade rest.

They brightened when they saw Ethan.

Madison started to speak—but Felix elbowed her. She settled for a tiny wave.

In the middle of this coordinated chaos sat a large table of black glass. On its dark surface was an etched map of the
world … changed here and there from what Ethan
thought
he knew of geography. North America was missing Florida. Africa had broken up into an archipelago of scattered islands.

Colonel Winter was here, too, pacing. She still had that computer tablet in hand, occasionally glanced at it, and then paced some more.

“Ah, Mr. Blackwood,” she said. “Very good.”

Everything and everyone else dimmed in Ethan’s vision. His heart raced. At this moment, his world contained just him and the colonel.

She was going to tell him what she’d decided. His fate was in her hands.

“Mr. Blackwood, you have run away from battle once—and then rushed headlong
into
a fight against direct orders not one time, but twice! I can only conclude that you’re mentally unbalanced … or have a death wish.”

Ethan opened his mouth to defend himself, but on second thought that was pretty much what had happened (commentary on his mental state aside).

The colonel looked at her tablet computer.

On-screen was the moment when Ethan and the wasp had wrestled away from the white-and-orange beetle and blasted its missiles with a laser at point-blank range.

“On the other hand,” she said, tapping her lower lip, “you show more tactical and strategic promise than any other pilot I’ve ever seen.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

She looked him over
—really
looked at him, as if he was another person, not a “problem,” for the first time since he’d come back from the fight in Santa Blanca. Her dark gray eyes seemed to drill into him.

“I concede that you came to us under unusual circumstances,” she said. “And considering the sudden transition from your neighborhood to this environment … I’m going to drop the charges against you.” She took in a deep breath. “The decision to join our fight, however, is yours. You’ll have to relearn everything you
think
you know from scratch. And most of all, you’ll have to learn to take orders.”

She tapped the black glass table.

Tiny holographic mountain ranges—the Rockies, the Alps, the Himalayas—sprang up. Blue oceans filled in the spaces between continents. At chest height a swarm of satellites made constellations over the model holographic world.

“Before you say yes or no,” the colonel said, “look.”

Ethan took a step nearer to the map, and it zoomed in.

There were hundreds of neighborhoods and high school campuses on islands and in isolated mountain valleys. Surrounding them were polluted oceans and wastelands. City-sized Ch’zar factories spread out like cancers and spewed smoke. Huge spiral strip mines made a maze of half the Earth. Spinelike orbital-altitude elevators stood from the equator and reached out past the atmosphere. Spaceships moved from the elevators and farther into the blackness.

“It’s not just your sister or neighborhood or even hundreds
like them that we fight for, Ethan,” she whispered. “It’s everyone. Everywhere. The enemy systematically strips our planet of every mineral and resource—every sentient mind. They will consume this world and spread to other star systems … and do the same to
every
planet with intelligent life in our galaxy.”

It was almost too much for Ethan to take in.

Everything
was at stake. The freedom of every human who was alive now—or ever would be—hung in the balance.

Ethan
had
known. Felix and Madison had told him much of this already.

He’d just refused to put together all the pieces …

 … because when he did, he realized the odds weren’t even bad … they were
impossible
.

There were too many Ch’zar.

How do you fight when you’re outnumbered a thousand to one? Let alone win?

The answer came from the Ch’zar themselves … what Coach had told him:
Superior long-range strategy always wins over superior immediate tactics
.

To make that winning strategy, though, Ethan had to be smarter than the Ch’zar and their collective intelligence. He had to learn everything he could about them and the Resisters.

Most of all, Ethan had to fight and win … because he was no quitter.

“I’m in,” he told Colonel Winter. “Teach me how to fight. I’ll follow your orders.”

“Good.” The colonel turned to Felix. “Take Private Blackwood and process him through boot. We’ll see how he does and then decide what to do with him.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Felix said, and a slight smile flickered across the big guy’s face.

“Boot?” Ethan whispered.

“Boot camp,” Dr. Irving explained, and set a reassuring hand on Ethan’s shoulder. “Where you’ll receive elementary military and physical-fitness training. I’m sure it will be easy for you.”

Something about the way he said “easy” made Ethan think he meant the exact opposite.

Felix and Madison came to escort Ethan. Madison slugged him in the arm, a friendly gesture.

Ethan lingered by the large map, though.

It was all out there—the neighborhoods that had to be saved—the high schools where kids like him and Emma would be absorbed and turned into the enemy—all the Ch’zar factories and military bases—and his mysterious, “different” parents.

Ethan realized that as he stood and thought about it all, he was getting older—more adult every second—and his time to fight aboveground and win this war was growing shorter.

He turned to Felix and Madison.

“We’ve got to hurry,” he told his friends. “We don’t have a minute to waste.”