Sammy, I tell him.
Lights on the horizon. That’s Camp Haven, Parker tells me. It’s perfectly safe. No more running. No more hiding. I nod. Perfectly safe.
The light grows, seeps slowly through the windshield, then rushes in as we get closer, flooding the bus now, and we’re pulling up to the gate and a loud bell goes off and the gate rolls open. The silhouette of a soldier high in the watchtower.
We stop in front of a hangar. A fat man bounds onto the bus, light on the balls of his feet like a lot of fat guys. His name is Major Bob. We shouldn’t be afraid, he tells us. We are perfectly safe. There are only two rules to remember. Rule one is remember our colors. Rule two is listen and follow.
I fall into line with my group and follow Parker to the side door of the hangar. He pats Lizbeth on the shoulder and wishes her good luck.
I find a red circle and sit down. There are soldiers everywhere. But most of these soldiers are kids, some not much older than Sam. They all look very serious, especially the younger ones. The really young ones are the most serious of all.
You can manipulate a kid into believing almost anything, into doing almost anything, Evan explained in our mission briefing. With the right training, there are few things more savage than a ten-year-old.
I have a number: T-sixty-two. T for Terminator. Ha.
The numbers are called out over a loudspeaker.
“SIXTY-TWO! TEE-SIXTY-TWO! PROCEED TO THE RED DOOR, PLEASE! NUMBER TEE-SIXTY-TWO!”
The first station is the shower room.
On the other side of the red door is a thin woman wearing green scrubs. Everything comes off and into the hamper. Underwear, too. They love children here but not lice and ticks. There’s the shower. Here’s the soap. Put on the white robe when you’re finished and wait to be called.
I sit the bear against the wall and step na**d onto the cold tiles. The water is tepid. The soap has a pungent mediciny smell. I’m still damp when I slip on the paper robe. It clings to my skin. You can almost see through it. I pick up Bear and wait.
Prescreening is next. A lot of questions. Some are nearly identical. That’s to test your story. Stay calm. Stay focused.
Through the next door. Up onto the exam table. A new nurse, heavier, meaner. She barely looks at me. I must be, like, the thousandth person she’s seen since the Silencers took the base.
What’s my full name? Elizabeth Samantha Morgan.
How old am I? Twelve.
Where am I from? Do I have any brothers or sisters? Is anyone in my family still alive? What happened to them? Where did I go after I left home? What happened to my leg? How was I shot? Who shot me? Do I know where any other survivors are? What are my siblings’ names? My parents’? What did my father do for a living? What was the name of my best friend? Tell her again what happened to my family.
When it’s over, she pats me on the knee and tells me not to be scared. I’m perfectly safe.
I hug Bear to my chest and nod.
Perfectly safe.
The physical’s next. Then the implant. The incision is very small. She’ll probably seal it with glue.
The woman named Dr. Pam is so nice, I like her in spite of myself. The dream doctor: kind, gentle, patient. She doesn’t rush right in and start poking me; she talks first. Lets me know everything she’s going to do. Shows me the implant. Like a pet chip, only better! Now if something happens, they’ll know where to find me.
“What’s your teddy bear’s name?”
“Sammy.”
“Okay if I sit Sammy in this chair while we put in the tracker?”
I roll onto my stomach. I’m irrationally concerned she can see my butt through the paper robe. I tense, anticipating the bite of the needle.
The device can’t download you until it’s linked to Wonderland. But once it’s in you, it’s fully operational. They can use it to track you, and they can use it to kill you.
Dr. Pam asks what happened to my leg. Some bad people shot it. That won’t happen here, she assures me. There are no bad people at Camp Haven. I’m perfectly safe.
I’m tagged. I feel like she’s hung a twenty-pound rock around my neck. Time for the last test, she tells me. A program seized from the enemy.
They call it Wonderland.
I grab Bear from his seat and follow her into the next room. White walls. White floor. White ceiling. White dentist chair, straps hanging from the arms and the leg rests. A keyboard and monitor. She tells me to have a seat and steps over to the computer.
“What does Wonderland do?” I ask.
“Well, that’s kind of complicated, Lizbeth, but essentially Wonderland records a virtual map of your cognitive functions.”
“A brain map?”
“Something like that, yes. Have a seat in the chair, honey. It won’t take long, and I promise it doesn’t hurt.”
I sit down, hugging Bear to my chest.
“Oh no, honey, Sammy can’t be in the chair with you.”
“Why not?”
“Here, give him to me. I’ll put him right over here by my computer.”
I give her a suspicious look. But she’s smiling and she has been so kind. I should trust her. After all, she completely trusts me.
But I’m so nervous, Bear slips out of my hand when I hold him out for her. He falls beside the chair onto his fat, fluffy head. I twist around to scoop him up, but Dr. Pam says to sit still, she’ll get him, and then she bends over.
I grab her head with both hands and bring it straight down into the arm of the chair. The impact makes my forearms sing with pain. She falls, stunned by the blow, but doesn’t collapse completely. By the time her knees hit the white floor, I’m out of the chair and swinging around behind her. The plan was a karate punch to her throat, but her back is to me, so I improvise. I grab the strap hanging from the chair arm and wrap it twice around her neck. Her hands come up, too late. I yank the strap tight, putting my foot against the chair for leverage, and pull.
Those seconds waiting for her to pass out are the longest of my life.
She goes limp. I immediately let go of the strap, and she falls face-first onto the floor. I check her pulse.
I know it’ll be tempting, but you can’t kill her. She and everyone else running the base is linked to a monitoring system located in the command center. If she goes down, all hell breaks loose.
I roll Dr. Pam onto her back. Blood runs from both nostrils. Probably broken. I reach up behind my head. This is the squishy part. But I’m jacked up on adrenaline and euphoria. So far everything has gone perfectly. I can do this.
I rip off the bandage and pull hard on either side of the incision, and it feels like a hot match pressing down as the wound comes open. A pair of tweezers and a mirror would come in handy right about now, but I don’t have either one of those, so I use my fingernail to dig out the tracker. The technique works better than I expected: After three tries, the device jams beneath my nail and I bring it cleanly out.
It only takes ninety seconds to run the download. That give you three, maybe four minutes. No more than five.
How many minutes in? Two? Three? I kneel beside Dr. Pam and shove the tracker as far as I can up her nose. Ugh.
No, you can’t shove it down her throat. It has to be near her brain. Sorry about that.
You’re sorry, Evan?
Blood on my finger, my blood, her blood, mixed together.
I step over to the keyboard. Now the truly scary part.
You don’t have Sammy’s number, but it should be cross-referenced to his name. If one variation doesn’t work, try a different one. There should be a search function.
Blood is trickling down the back of my neck, trailing down between my shoulder blades. I’m shivering uncontrollably, which makes it hard to type. In the blinking blue box I tap out the word search. It take two tries to spell it correctly.
ENTER NUMBER.
I don’t have a number, damn it. I have a name. How do I get back to the blue box? I hit the enter button.
ENTER NUMBER.
Oh, I get it now. It wants a number!
I key in Sullivan.
DATA ENTRY ERROR.
I’m wavering between throwing the monitor across the room and kicking Dr. Pam until she’s dead. Neither will help me find Sam, but both would make me feel better. I hit the escape button and get the blue box and type search by name.
The words vanish. Vaporized by Wonderland. The blue box blinks, blank again.
I fight back a scream. I’m out of time.
If you can’t find him in the system, we’ll have to go to Plan B.
I’m not crazy about Plan B. I like Plan A, where his location pops up on a map and I run right to him. Plan A is simple and clean. Plan B is complicated and messy.
One more try. Five more seconds can’t make that big a difference.
I type Sullivan into the blue box.
The display goes haywire. Numbers begin to race across the gray background, filling the screen, like I just gave it a command to calculate the value of pi. I panic and start hitting random buttons, but the scroll doesn’t stop. I’m well past five minutes. Plan B sucks, but B it is.
I duck into the adjoining room, where I find the white jumpsuits. I grab one off the shelf and wisely attempt to dress without taking off the robe first. With a grunt of frustration, I shrug out of it, and for a second I’m totally naked, the second in which that door beside me will fly open and a battalion of Silencers will flood into the room. That’s the way things happen in all Plan Bs. The suit is way too big, but better too big than too small, I think, and I’m quickly zipped up and back in the Wonderland room.