UnSouled (40 page)

She finds them in the area of the mine designated as “girls only.” It’s where they go to avoid unwanted advances from the hormonal male population when they’ve tired of flirting. Bam hasn’t noticed them flirting lately. She doesn’t think anything of it at first.

“Starkey needs munitions moved deeper into the mine,” she tells them. “I’ve elected you three to do it. Try not to blow yourselves up.”

“Why are you telling us?” Kate-Lynn asks. “Get some of the boys to do it.”

“Nope. It’s your turn today.”

“But I’m not supposed to be lifting heavy things,” whines Emmalee.

“Right,” says Makayla. “None of us are.”

“According to who?”

They look at one another like none of them wants to say. Finally Emmalee becomes the spokeswoman of the clique. “Well . . . according to Starkey.”

That Starkey would give special privileges to the Prissies irritates Bam even further. Well, she’s his workhorse around this place—she can take away any privileges she chooses.

“Every stork contributes,” Bam tells them. “Get off your lazy butts and get to work.”

Makayla whispers something into Kate-Lynn’s ear, and
Kate-Lynn throws a telepathic sort of gaze at Emmalee, who shakes her head and turns back to Bam, offering an apologetic smile that’s not apologetic at all.

“We really do have special permission directly from Starkey,” she says.

“Permission to do nothing? I don’t think so.”

“Not to do nothing, but to take care of ourselves. And each other,” Kate-Lynn says.

“Right,” parrots Makayla. “Ourselves and each other.”

Every word out of their mouths makes Bam want to just slap them silly. “What on earth are you talking about?”

They share that three-way telepathic gaze again; then Emmalee says, “We’re really not supposed to talk about this with you.”

“Really. Did Starkey tell you that?”

“Not exactly.” Finally Emmalee rises to face Bam, holding her gaze and speaking slowly. “We have to take care of ourselves . . . because Starkey’s made us unwind proof.” Bam is not a stupid girl. She’s not much when it comes to school smarts, because her attitude always got in the way—but she’s always been a quick study in the school of life. This, however, is so far out of the realm of Bam’s concept of reality, she just doesn’t get it.

Now the other Prissies stand. Makayla puts a sympathetic hand on Bam’s shoulder. “Unwind proof for nine months,” she says. “Do you understand now?”

It hits her like a mortar blast. She actually stumbles back into the wall. “You’re lying! You have to be!”

But now that it’s out, their eyes take on a strange ecstatic look.
They’re telling the truth! My God, they’re telling the truth!

“He’s going to be a great man,” Kate-Lynn says. “He already is.”

“We might all be storks, but his children won’t be,” says another. Bam doesn’t even know which one it is. They’re all
the same to her now. Three talking heads on a single body, like some horrible, beautiful hydra.

“He promises he’ll take care of us.”

“All of us.”

“He swears he will.”

“And you don’t know what it’s like.”

“You
can’t
know what it’s like.”

“To be chosen by him.”

“To be touched by greatness.”

“So we can’t carry munitions today.”

“Or tomorrow.”

“Or ever.”

“So sorry, Bam.”

“Yes, so sorry.”

“We hope you can understand.”

•   •   •

Bam storms through the maze of the mine in search of Starkey, losing track of where she’s been, her thoughts and emotions in such a tailspin, it’s all she can do not to blow up like a clapper.

She finds him at the computer looking over Jeevan’s shoulder at their next target, but right now, there’s no room for that on Bam’s radar. She’s out of breath from running through the mine. She knows her emotions are on her sleeve, staining as brightly as blood. She knows she should have just run deeper into the mine and paced and stewed and broiled until her anger and disgust had faded. But she couldn’t do it.

“When were you going to tell me?”

Starkey regards her for a moment, takes a sip from his canteen, and sends Jeevan away. He knows from the look on her face exactly what she’s talking about. How could he not know?

“Why do you think it’s your business?”

“I am your second in command. You don’t keep secrets from me!”

“There a difference between a secret and discretion.”

“Discretion? Don’t you dare talk to me about discretion after scoring your little hat trick.”

“This is a dangerous thing I’m doing out there. I’m not entirely blind to that. I know it might be messed up, but I want to leave something behind if I don’t survive—and it’s not like I forced them.”

“You never force anyone, do you, Mason? You just hypnotize them. You dazzle them. And before you know it, people are willing to do anything for you.”

Then Starkey slices through to the one thing hanging in the air between them—the one thing that shouldn’t be said.

“You’re just pissed off because you’re not one of them.”

Bam slaps him so hard he stumbles, nearly knocking over the computer. And when he comes back at her, anger in his eyes, she’s ready. She grabs his ruined hand and squeezes it. Hard. The reaction is immediate. His legs buckle beneath him, and he falls to his knees. She squeezes harder.

“Let . . . go . . . ,” he squeaks. “Please . . . let . . . go . . . .”

She grips his hand a moment longer, then releases it, prepared for whatever he does to her next. Let him throw her to the ground. Let him spit in her face. Let him hit her and hit her again. At least that would be something. At least there’d be some passion from him launched in her direction.

Instead of retaliating, he just grabs his ruined hand, rises, and closes his eyes until the pain passes.

“After all I’ve done for you,” she says. “After all I’ve been for you, you go off with
them
?”

“Bambi, please—”

“Don’t call me that!
Never
call me that!”

“If it were you instead of them, you couldn’t be out there with me changing the world, could you? It would be too dangerous!”

“You could have given me the choice!”

“And then what? How could you be my second if
that’s
between us?”

Bam finds she has no answer to that, and Starkey must know he’s having an effect on her, because he takes a step closer. His voice becomes kinder. “Don’t you know how much you mean to me, Bam? What we have is something I’ll never have with those girls.”

“And what they have, I’ll never have.”

He regards her. Gauging. Assessing. “Is that what you really want, Bam? Is that what would make you happy? Really?” Then he steps deep into her airspace. She’s so tall that standing this close, he seems even shorter than he really is.

He cranes his neck to kiss her, but their lips are still an inch away, and instead of suffering the indignation of rising on his tiptoes, he reaches behind her head, pulling her down into the kiss. That kiss is like a conjurer’s act. It’s artful, it’s worthy of applause, it is everything Bam ever dreamed it might be . . . but nothing will change the fact that it’s only a trick, and today there is no audience to applaud it.

“I’m sorry I hurt you, Bam. And you’re right; you deserve something real from me.”

“That wasn’t real, Mason.”

He offers her something between a grin and a grimace. “It’s as real as I get.”

•   •   •

Bam wanders the mine, feeling spent in every possible way. Her fury at Starkey no longer knows where to go. Neither do any of her emotions. She feels the longing for something unnamable that’s been lost. If she were more naive, she’d call it her innocence, but Bambi Ann Covalt has not been innocent for a very long time.

She bumps her head hard on a rock jutting from the low-slung
ceiling. She doesn’t even realize where she was going until her head smacks that rock.

“You again?” Hayden says when he sees her. This time, he’s actually loading a cart with food for the evening meal.

Bam turns to his guard. “Go get me something to drink.”

He looks confused. “But all the water and stuff is in here.”

“Fine. Then go get me some sushi!”

“Huh?”

“Could you really be that stupid? Just get the hell out of here!”

“Yes, Miss Bam.” He hurries out, practically tripping over his weapon.

Hayden is amused. “ ‘Miss Bam.’ Sounds like a good name for a kindergarten teacher. Have you ever considered the profession?”

“I don’t like children.”

“You don’t like adults much either. Or, for that matter, anything in between.”

For some reason, that makes tears rise like bile in her, but she bears down and holds them in, refusing to let Hayden see them.

“You’re bleeding,” Hayden says. Concerned, he takes a step toward her, but she waves him off.

“I’m fine.” She touches her head. There’s a small cut where she bumped it on the ceiling. The least of her problems. She’ll make an appointment with the kid with the dental floss. “We need to talk.”

“About?”

She checks to make sure the guard hasn’t come back and they are truly alone. “I promised you’d have my ear. So bend it. Now.”

54 • Force

The raid comes without warning, like a team of Juvie-rounders in the night. A
real
special-ops team—nothing like the playacting kids Starkey calls special ops. The invaders tranq the storks guarding the entrance to the mine before they can even raise their weapons and flood into the tunnels, tranq’ing anyone who comes into view. Their directive is simple: Get to Mason Starkey.

The commotion wakes kids deeper in the mine in time for them to scramble for weapons, which they’ve learned to use without hesitation and without fear. They bring several of the intruders down, but there are more behind them—and this force is armed with weapons the storks have never seen: squad machine guns that spray tiny tranq-tipped darts at such an alarming rate, they create an inescapable wall of unconsciousness before them. The layers of protection surrounding Starkey peel away until he’s exposed and vulnerable before the invading force.

Starkey swings his own weapon up, but fumbles with it just long enough for his attackers to grab it and grab him.

The entire operation is over in less than five minutes.

55 • Starkey

It was madness to believe he was untouchable. He knows that now. The storks’ hiding place was well concealed, but the Juvies are skilled at ferreting out the most resistant of AWOLs. Starkey struggles, but it’s no use—and his ruined hand is in such
pain from the iron grip of his assailants that the rest of his body drains of strength, just as it had when Bam had grabbed him.

All around him in the tunnels are the unconscious bodies of his precious storks with tiny spots of blood dotting their clothes where the tranq darts embedded in their skin. No one’s fighting anymore. Anyone still conscious is on the run. The storks know they are outarmed and outclassed.

“Go deeper into the mine!” Starkey yells to them. “Deep as you can go. Don’t let them take you alive.”

Although he’s terrified, he holds in his heart the anger that he’s wielded so well and the knowledge that as a martyr he will live forever.

Wind whips the entrance of the mine, but it’s not a natural wind. A helicopter darker than the night descends from above, tumbleweeds exploding out from its landing spot, as if racing to escape its crushing weight. This time Starkey has no trick up his sleeve to escape capture, so he embraces it.
I am important enough to be taken by helicopter
, he thinks.

The door is opened, and he’s thrown inside, landing on all fours. His left hand feels like it will shatter all over again.
Why don’t they tranq me? I can’t bear this. I want it over.

He feels the vertical acceleration of the helicopter lifting off, and when he looks up, he sees within this large industrial helicopter a sight he was not expecting. The space, rather than being filled with steel restraining chairs, is richly appointed. It’s a lavish sanctuary of leather, brass, and polished wood, more like the cabin of a yacht than the inside of a helicopter.

A man in dress slacks and a comfortable sweater sits in one of several plush chairs facing a television screen. He pauses the TV with a remote, swivels to face Starkey—and Starkey wonders, as nausea and disorientation fill him, if maybe he was tranq’d after all, and this is a momentary hallucination before he passes out entirely. But his vision holds; the scene before
him is real, and his dizziness is nothing more than the motion of the helicopter.

“Mason Michael Starkey,” says the man. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”

He has dark hair, graying at the temples. He speaks crisp English with no hint of any regional accent and diction so perfect, it’s unsettling.

“What’s going on?” Starkey asks, knowing he must, even if he doesn’t want to know the answer.

“Not what you think,” the man tells him. “Come sit. We have things to discuss.” He points a remote at the TV, starting a paused recording. It’s a collection of news bytes, all featuring Starkey. “You’re an overnight sensation,” the man says.

Starkey rallies his fortitude and struggles to stand. The helicopter lists slightly starboard, and he has to hold the wall for balance. He moves no closer.

“Who are you?”

“A friend. That’s all you really need to know, isn’t it? As for my name, well, a name is a curious thing. Names can define us, and I do not wish to be defined. At least not in the current context.”

Starkey, however, overheard a name mentioned while he was being captured. In the turmoil, he hadn’t grasped it, but he does remember the first letter. “Your last name,” says Starkey in defiance of the man, “starts with a ‘D.’ ”

The man bristles, but only slightly. He pats the chair beside him. “Please sit, Mason. You never know when we’ll hit some unexpected turbulence.”

Reluctantly Starkey takes a seat. He figures this guy is going to try to offer him a deal—but what kind of deal could it possibly be? They’ve already captured him and the Stork Brigade. Perhaps they think he knows the whereabouts of Connor Lassiter—but even if he did, Starkey’s now a bigger prize for
the Juvenile Authority. Why would they even negotiate?