Escaping Eden

Home , Go to Sleep, I Go to Sleep, I hope so, Jumpsuit, Mismatched, My Thoughts Exactly

Escaping Eden

Chapter 1 I wake up screaming.

Where am I? What’s going on? Why do I feel so cold?

It’s dark. I look around, blinking sleep from my eyes. I notice a window somewhere in the back of the room. It’s open and moonlight shines through, casting a square beam of light across the floor. A breeze drifts in, and white curtains float like pale ghosts in the darkness. In the narrow light of the moon, I see that the carpet is burgundy. I also see the outlines of furniture. My head vaguely aching, I look at the shadows scattered messily across the room. I feel like sweeping them up to make room for light. I shake off the urge. Stop being delusional. There’s a funny smell in the air, like a mixture of old home mustiness and laboratory sterilization.

I realize that I’m lying on the floor. Why am I not on the bed? The last thing I remember is pain. Maybe that’s why I woke up screaming. The pain was intense. The pain was… cold. I decide to swallow my fear. It tastes terrible. I stand up and my neck aches. As I rub my hand across it, my bones crack like I haven’t moved in a long time. I whisper to myself.

“As Grandpa always said…”

My train of thought rolls off into the distance.

Where was I going with this? Who is “Grandpa”? I put my hand on my sweaty forehead. I must be tired. I look for a light switch by approaching the walls and groping around. By the time I run into a couple of pieces of furniture, I find a knob on the wall. I

smile. Bingo! I turn it, and watch the darkness dissipate, hunted by the glow of the light fixture in the ceiling. Funny… the room is actually more scary without the shadows. I scan my surroundings. It seems as though I’m in a throwback hotel room, with old furniture and floral wallpaper. I don’t remember coming here. I walk to the window, and peer out into the night. All I see below the full moon are treetops. The forest spreads into the distance like a carpet, with no trace of civilization to break up the darkened green. The woods look infinite.

Why is this place in the middle of nowhere?

My curiosity fades and fear returns. I close the windows carefully, trying not to make any sounds, as if someone can hear me, and take a few hesitant breaths.

I should look around.

So I turn around and place myself in the room. It’s a rectangle. A bed is near the light switch to my right. To my left is a couch under a deteriorating brass mirror. I notice myself in the mirror, and my appearance surprises me. My mid-length hair is a mixture of dark brown and light pink, a combination that I’m not very fond of. I carry myself stiffly, probably because I’m hurting. Since I’ve been sleeping, my hair and my clothes are tousled, and I’m wearing a strange jumpsuit, of a slippery white material. I look at my feet. Black buckle-up boots shine as I cock them to the side. I glance back to the mirror. Behind my dark pupils, I see a sort of foreboding, like I know something terrible has happened. I scold myself. I should focus. Along the wall opposite me, there’s a wooden desk and a Victorian chair…

Maybe the desk has something in its drawers?

I scamper over to it, and throw myself onto my knees. I open each of the drawers fast, almost jolting them from their sockets. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. I surprise myself with disappointment. Was I expecting something to be in here? I open the last drawer. Yes! A white envelope. My heart skips a beat. I touch the paper and pick it up gingerly, as if it were important. Who knows, maybe it is. I hear something. What’s that? I turn my head to the sound, and find myself staring directly at a large wooden door. Someone’s outside. I drop the letter.

My curiosity drives me to the door. What do I think I’m doing, exploring a random place I woke up in? I sigh, pulling open the heavy old door by its brass handle, and step out. The first thing I see is the ground, with the same carpeting as in my room.

I look up, to the left. A long hallway stretches before me, lit by a fixture in the ceiling around which about a dozen moths hover, seeking light and warmth. I gaze down the hallway and see ten identical doors. Ten rooms, I realize. Eleven rooms, counting mine.

I look to my right to find an elegantly winding, white marble staircase.

Everything is eerily silent.

For a moment I think I see a flash of metal, low to the ground, by the stairs. I jump, and my right hand flies to my chest. Underneath my clothes and clammy skin, my heart rate is unusually high. Sweat trickles down my neck. I’m gonna have a heart attack.

I follow the movement, walking carefully and silently, occasionally glancing behind me to make sure of… anything. I tip-toe down the marble staircase, into a small

lobby. This place definitely looks like a hotel. It’s dark but I can still make out the marble floor and the grandiose chandelier with electric candles and curling tendrils. It’s beautiful. I stand there, paralyzed, for a solid couple of minutes. Suddenly, the lights turn on.

I trip off the last step of the stairwell, shocked. Who flipped the light switch?! As my eyes slowly adjust to the light, I hear footsteps. My heart starts pounding crazily and

I look around, expecting to see something creepy.

Something dashes out from behind the staircase, and I let out a pathetic yelp.

“Hi!” exclaims a boy in a friendly manner, as if we know each other already.

Taken aback, I don’t respond, and eye him warily. He’s just a kid, and he looks about my age, too. He could probably tell me where I am – he looks so sure of himself. He ambles toward me, and I start to relax, glad I’m not the only person in this strange, dark building. As the boy stands before me, I notice that his eyes are different colors.

One is blue, the other is reddish-brown, like a cat I think I once saw. He speaks, breaking the silence I feel bizarrely accustomed to.

“Looks pretty dark outside. Do you know what time it is?”

He doesn’t seem as frightened as me. In fact, he looks somewhat amused.

“Um… no…,” I answer.

The boy laughs. I cherish the laughter, like I haven’t heard it in a long time.

“What’s so funny?” I ask.

“It’s the look on your face. Priceless.”

I decide that I don’t like Cat-Boy very much, and roll my eyes. I notice that his subtle freckles and red-brown eye match. He really does remind me of a feline. Maybe one of those striped ones… What are they called again? “I like your hair, by the way,” he mentions, perhaps sarcastically.

I pause. Haven’t I seen that grin somewhere before? “Okay,” I reply.

Cat-Boy leaks a comforting optimism.

“You look like an… Ella?” he says. “No an… Eva? No… Hm. Do I know you? Never mind. What is your name?” I hesitate. Something about one of the names he suggested rings a bell in my mind. Ella? No… maybe Eva? I take a deep breath before telling him my name, then hesitate for what feels like forever. Hold on a sec… what’s my name again? I start to panic. What’s my name?! I realize I have no idea. I scramble through my thoughts. I know I had a name before… but I can’t remember a before.

“I don’t know,” I answer slowly, stretching each word to stall for time, hoping my name will come back to me.

“Me neither.” The boy’s smile disappears.

Silence.

“Where are we?” I wonder, looking around the hotel lobby.

The boy shrugs. “Outside there’s just forest.” He pauses. “I did see a fox, though.”

I raise an eyebrow. “’How come you don’t know where we are but you’ve been spending time outside?”

“I went on a walk around the building,” he explains. “Being in nature comforts me.” He chuckles. “I saw a fox, and I had the impression that it was talking to itself. It was weird, but it made me feel a little better.”

I stare at the boy. Is this kid crazy? Don’t tell me I’m stuck with a lunatic. I decide to ignore his last statement, hoping that this time it is sarcasm. “Did you wake up here like I did?” I wonder.

“Yes.” He nods reassuringly. “So you woke up here, too?”

It’s my turn to nod.

“Hello!” a high-pitched voice yells from the stairway. The boy and I jump in unison, startled. I swivel around.

A little girl hops down the marble staircase, stopping in the middle. Watching from where she can clearly see both me and Cat-Boy, she waves in the slightly awkward way that little kids do, while clutching a pillow – twice her size – to her chest. Tangled ringlets of curly red hair cling to her freckled face. Her impish smile shines against her chubby cheeks. If you took an elf and a leprechaun, then threw them into a pot and stirred, you would make her.

“Your hair is good,” she says to me in a baby voice, pointing with her tiny forefinger. I can’t help but smile. My hair is strangely popular. I think it looks stupid. “Thank you,” I answer. I try to sound collected, despite the fact that I’m freaking out.

The girl points some more. “You’re a princess!”

I laugh half-heartedly. Cat-Boy goes up the staircase and grabs the girl’s hand, helping her hop down the stairs without tripping on her pillow. He must be good with children. Does he know this girl already? I watch Cat-Boy deal with the kid. Something about the way he looks at her tells me he doesn’t.

“Do you know where Daddy is?” the little girl asks Cat-Boy.

He glances at me, unsure what to respond.

“Have you seen your dad recently?” I ask, avoiding her question.

“Um… I don’t remember,” the little girl says, with a crumpled expression like she just tasted something sour. Cat-Boy and I look at her sadly, realizing that she must be in the same situation as us. I pity her. I also pity myself. And my heart hurts from beating too hard.

“You know what?” the boy asks. “We’re going to visit all the rooms in this place and find your dad. I’m sure he’s around here somewhere.”

Somehow, I doubt that.

“Yay!” the little girl exclaims. She stands up, preparing to hop up the stairs, but then she wilts to the ground, clinging to her pillow as if it’s the last thing she owns.

Suddenly, I notice something: her clothes look exactly like mine. I glance at

Cat-Boy. His jumpsuit is identical to mine, too. How come we’re all wearing the same clothes? The only difference between our jumpsuits is the number printed on each of our front pockets. The girl has number seven, the boy has ten, and I have number eleven… I snap out of my thoughts when the redhead starts to whimper.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, approaching her, kneeling to her height.

Between chokes of sadness, the girl manages to speak. “I don’t remember what

Daddy looks like.”

Cat-Boy and I exchange a glance. “Just like how we forgot our names,” he mouths. Taking it a step further, I realize that this girl, just like the boy and me, doesn’t remember the past. At all.

“That’s alright,” I say. “We’re gonna find your Daddy.”

“Hey, little girl?” Cat-Boy asks softly. She stops crying, and looks up at him, red-faced. He continues. “Where’s your mom?”

“I don’t have a mommy,” she answers quickly. She remembers something! “How do you know?” I wonder, on the verge of a discovery. Maybe not everyone is totally amnesiac around here. The little girl looks off into the distance, pensive. “I don’t know,” she admits.

I stand there with the two other kids, twinning outfits, plunged in silence again.

My hope disappears. This is scary. I glance about, making sure no possessed dolls are lurking.

Interchapter 1 March 16, 2050

Washington, DC

By Parvati Sreenivasan and Florence Applegate

The War is stretching on for longer than President Aldridge’s analysts expected.

And as the War progresses, the Resources continue to disappear, even as so many people are dying. We are witnessing massive surges in environmental degradation and a dearth of food and water in many communities as fighting continues.

Last week, at the controversial United Nations meeting (see article “Tense UN

Meeting Causes Outrage”) – the first in roughly a year – ambassadors unanimously agreed that no country involved with the War is considering deploying nuclear weapons at this time. A nuclear attack would only further deplete the Resources, defeating the purpose of the War. However, nations have yet to renounce conventional bombings.

At the meeting, the ambassadors discussed how scientists everywhere are racing to find new ways to conserve the Resources, in order to end the suffering and the War.

Some scientists suggest birth restrictions to deplete the number of humans on Earth, letting the Earth heal itself. Others suggest engineering the Resources in laboratories, taking the initiative to produce what we need for ourselves, regardless of what the Earth does naturally.

But research is slow, and the War continues. People are dying.

Along with the UN meeting, another controversy has been brewing in our country: the US government has issued a massive multi-billion-dollar contract to an unknown start-up called SuperTex, to assist hospitals in saving critically injured

Americans after bombings. This sudden investment in an unknown entity has caused outrage among politicians and citizens alike. When asked about SuperTex at a press conference yesterday, President Aldridge said, “We are simply trying to do anything we can to save American citizens during this unprecedented time. Abnormal times call for abnormal solutions. We will do anything to save American lives.”

Yesterday, the SuperTex controversy blew up on social media when the president signed an executive order allowing SuperTex to remove dead bodies from hospitals for

“medical research purposes.” The executive order further stipulated in the fine-print that SuperTex could remove bodies without first securing consent from families of the deceased. An anonymous source who works closely with the President justified this flagrant violation of laws and ethics, by declaring that “in times of war, liberties can be waived in order to preserve our nation and protect our citizens.”

SuperTex acted on the executive order immediately. Pooling information, hospitals reported that in the past twenty-four hours alone, SuperTex removed over fifty bodies across the United States within minutes of the people being pronounced dead.

Furthermore, all of the cadavers belonged to children between the ages of five and fifteen. We contacted SuperTex to inquire what they are doing with the bodies, but company representatives declined to comment.

In a hospital hallway, a mourning mother sobbed: “I just can’t believe that the

Government allowed this company to take my daughter. We never consented to this. I want my daughter’s body back so that I can see her one last time...and so that we can give her a decent burial!” The mother asked to remain anonymous.

Please reach out to your representatives to protest what is happening.

Chapter 2

A few minutes later, Cat-Boy and the little girl are in the hallway with the eleven rooms. They’re taking the left side of the hallway, and I’m taking the right. We’re looking for grown-ups.

I knock on a door marked “1,” at the very back of the hallway.

Nobody answers. The only thing I can hear is the other kids tapping furiously at a door at the other side of the hall. I knock again. And again.

“Anyone home?!” I yell. Silence. I’m not sure whether to feel scared or relieved.

I go to the next room, marked “3.” I kick it. Hard. I yell at it.

I’m fed up. Who cares about being polite when we’re alone and scared? I turn the handle and push the door. It creaks open slowly, like it’s been closed for a very long time. It’s pitch dark inside, but some of the hallway light spills in, illuminating a path on the carpet.

I enter, and walk to the wall where the light switch had been in my room. My hand finds the switch easily, and I flip it on. The room lights up.

My gaze is drawn to the floor, where I find what seems to be a ten-year-old girl lying on the floor, fast asleep, in a clean white jumpsuit like mine. Somehow, I don’t feel very surprised to find her there. I notice she’s sleeping in an odd position: straight as a

ruler, her face to the ceiling, her arms parallel to her sides. She has a round, sweet face and long light brown hair, fanned out around her like a peacock tail.

I sit on the floor next to the girl, and glance at the number on her jumpsuit pocket. Three. And she’s in Room Number 3. Hm. I glance at the number on my pocket. It’s number eleven, just like the number on my room. I bring a hand under the girl’s nose to see if she’s alive. I can feel her breathing. But it’s an odd, slow sort of breathing.

Each breath is shallow and lasts about three seconds.

When I hear the sound of the little redhead across the hall, a jolt of panic slithers down my spine. I begin to shake the girl awake. I shake her until my arms wear down.

Suddenly, her eyes fly open, she bolts upright, and her breath cuts short. Her wide eyes lock on mine. She hops up and runs to the other side of the room, plastering herself to the wall.

“Who are you?!” she yells. “Where am I?”

“Hi. I’m not going to hurt you…”

The girl stiffens and her eyes well with tears. I trail off, not knowing how to continue.

“I’m just as scared as you,” I stammer in a rush. “My… friends… and I are trying to find grown-ups. We don’t know where we are. We can’t remember a thing. Will you help us? We can find answers together!” I pause.

The girl seems confused as she stares at me, her face filled with fear. “Why are we dressed the same?” she asks in a soft and trembling voice.

“No clue,” I respond. “As I said, I’m just as confused as you are.”

Noting that there are no grown-ups in Room Number 3, and tired of having to explain what I don’t know to a girl who seems just as strange as everyone else I’ve met tonight, I turn around and walk out of the room.

“When you’re ready to come out,” I say, “you can come find me.”

Chapter 3 By the time we’ve visited each of the identical guest rooms in the hotel, we find that there are no grown-ups in any of them. But each one is home to a child, sleeping on the ground in a rigid position, wearing a white, numbered jumpsuit. There are eleven children, in total, including me. Some barely more than toddlers, some teens. None of us remember where we are, or why we’re here.

Now we’re all standing in the lobby under the chandelier, shivering from fear and the cold of the night. Some of us are wrapped in the blankets from our beds, a couple of kids are huddled together, and two of the little ones are whimpering. It feels very odd to be alone – without grown-ups – in a large building, standing silently in a cold marble entryway. I feel so small and insignificant. I’m exhausted. It took everything in me to wake up all these frightened kids, and to explain our situation to them without actually knowing what’s going on, while panicking on the inside.

“How are we gonna get this organized?” asks a very tall boy with a powerful voice, which seems to echo around the room.

I step onto the stairwell so everyone can see me, taking the initiative. Someone’s gonna have to organize all this. Cat-Boy is taking care of the two crying little kids, making silly faces and whispering funny things. The tall and loud boy is glaring at

everybody as if we’re somehow in his way. Everyone else is paralyzed by confusion, staring directly at me.

Good thing I’m a persuasive speaker.

“Everyone listen to me and stop making noise!” I yell with a knot of tension forming in my stomach. “I’m just as scared as you guys are!”

What a wonderful start. A great move! You kids are lost and can’t remember a thing? How about I freak you out some more? I open my mouth to spout some other unplanned idiocy.

“I’m not scared,” interrupts the tall boy, who’s been glaring at everyone for a while. I look at him, top to bottom. His short blond hair sticks out every which way, and his lanky legs shake under his white blanket. What a liar. His traumatized voice contradicts him, too.

“Yeah right,” I retort, my head beginning to ache. Frustrated, I add, “please just listen, and stop being a nuisance.”

A girl with curly black hair and a button nose points at the boy and exclaims that he just got roasted. He makes a face and rolls his eyes.

“Attention!” I yell, to make sure that everyone’s listening. Once I can hear the crickets outside, I continue. “It seems that there are no grown-ups in this building.” My voice cracks. I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around it. Adults have abandoned eleven children in an isolated hotel. And none of us know where we are, or who we are.

None of us know anything. For the little kids, I make sure not to look scared, and continue. “Outside, it’s already been determined that there’s a huge forest surrounding

us. And there’s another problem. It’s clear that nobody remembers anything from before...” My throat is sore and abraded. I’m not in the mood for talking. “So we have to find a way to, you know… live without the grown-ups, until they return. There’s gotta be food somewhere in here.”

“What if there isn’t?” asks a boy with an oval birthmark under his left eye. What an optimistic kid.

“Then we’ll... find some in the forest,” I ad-lib, trying to sound confident.

A tiny girl who looks like she couldn’t be more than six years old walks to the front of the group, squints at me, and begins to speak in a high-pitched elementary school voice. “There are eleven children in this hotel. At least I assume it’s a hotel, judging by the identical rooms and this lobby.” I am taken aback by the girl’s vocabulary range. “We’re all wearing nearly identical white jumpsuits,” I stare at the girl silently.

When I was six, I probably didn’t talk the way she does. “The only difference is the number on the suits. Each has a unique number, matching the child’s room number.”

She seems really… smart.

“Alrighty!” I say optimistically. “That’s a good start. Let’s go around the room saying our ages, so we can start to introduce ourselves.”

We go around the room. The redhead and the smart little girl are five and six.

There are girls aged eight, nine, and ten. One eleven-year-old boy and two twelve-year-old boys (one of them being the birthmark kid). Cat-Boy and the loud kid are fourteen and thirteen, respectively. I’m fourteen, too. How come we remember our ages but not our own names?

“You know what else is weird?” the smart girl asks, obviously waiting for someone to respond. We all look at her as a sign to continue, because nobody feels like talking. “We don’t remember anything from before, but we remember our ages.”

She’s observant. The first girl I woke up in the hotel – the brunette – pipes up. “I don’t think I can remember my name, so can I just make up a new one? It’s creepy that I can’t… like... call myself anything.” “Great idea!” I add.

“Raise your hand if you remember your name!” the precocious six-year-old calls out. Nobody moves. “So that’s settled, then,” she adds. “You start,” she announces, pointing a tiny finger at the elfin redhead. “Pick a name.”

The redhead answers immediately with an excited squeal.

“Mable!”

We all look at each other. I give the birthmark kid a “Tell Me She Didn’t Just Say

That” look. She has the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to choose her own name and she goes with Mable? “Why’d you pick that name?” the girl with dark curly hair wonders, wrinkling her nose.

“Because it makes me sound like an old lady!” Mable exclaims. She and the smart six-year-old crack up. Their baby laughter resonates through the lobby. Tension lessens, and I can’t help but smile.

“Alright, Precocious,” I say to the intelligent little girl, “it’s your turn to pick a name now.”

She thinks for a heartbeat.

“I wanna be named… Unicorn!”

I groan, just like all the older kids. I didn’t realize how hard it would be to get small children to pick adequate names. Suddenly, I’m feeling satisfied with “Mable”.

“How about Pegasus?” the ten-year-old suggests.

Unicorn thinks about it, then shakes her head vigorously. “Pegasus is an ugly name.”

“Well,” I intervene, a clever plan coming to mind. “If you name yourself Pegasus, we can call you ‘Peggy’ for short!” I try to sound as enthusiastic as possible.

I hear a couple of exclamations of approbation. Unicorn thinks for a moment, then nods. Now she’s Peggy. Score. The next kid, a twelve-year-old (not the birthmark one), spits out his name immediately.

“I’m gonna be Thomas.”

We all thank him.

Ten minutes later, all the names have been chosen. The annoying blond boy found a miniature pad of paper and a pencil in his jumpsuit pocket. I told him to write down every kid’s name, along with their age and jumpsuit number. It’ll be an archive, and the first step in getting organized without grown-ups.

Cat-Boy is now called Cyan; the tall, annoying boy is Swift (a stupid name in my opinion); the elfin little girl is absolutely sure she wants to be Mable.

And my name is Amaranth.

Chapter 4

Age, jumpsuit, name: Archives

- Mable, 5 years, #7 - Peggy, 6 years, #4 - Alaska, 8 years, #5 - Brynne, 9 years, #3 - Goldy, 10 years, #2 - Blaze, 11 years, #6 - Glenn, 12 years, #9 - Thomas, 12 years, #1 - Swift, 13 years, #8 - Cyan, 14 years, #10 - Amaranth, 14 years, #11

After everyone has their name written down, we gather in a circle. Mable – the little redhead – falls right asleep, exhausted.

“So what are we going to do to find food?” Alaska wonders, biting her nails as her dark curly hair falls into her face.

“We could search the forest for fruit and animals when the sun comes up,”

Brynne suggests.

“You can go into that never-ending forest and get lost, but I’m gonna stay right here,” the birthmark kid retorts. What was his name again? Glenn or something?

“Stop being mean,” Alaska barks at the boy, abandoning her nails to pick up a twig she found on the floor. She snaps it immediately.

“I’m sorry, but I’m not gonna listen to a kid named Alaska.” “At least I’m not named Glenn.”

The two glare at each other. I try to intervene, but Glenn pipes up before I can figure out what to say.

“Why would anyone name themselves Alaska? I mean, if your parents did it, then I’d feel bad ‘cuz you weren’t alive when they named you. But to name yourself Alaska? That’s just plain stupid.”

“Nobody calls me stupid.”

“I do. Plus, you’ve gotta be stupid if you named yourself Alaska.”

“Alaska just happens to be my favorite state!”

Everything goes silent and we stare at Alaska. She looks at us, wondering who pressed the pause button.

I remember states. I remember that there were many states, and they all made up a country. Do I come from a state? Am I in a state now?

“How did you know that?” Cyan asks.

“I don’t remember my favorite state,” Goldy admits. Out of the blue, everyone turns to the stairs. I follow their eyes. On the staircase stands Peggy, triumphantly waving a letter at us.

“I figured out where to find the food!” she exclaims at the top of her lungs. My stomach produces a whale call.

“Where?!” Blaze asks excitedly, his dark eyes twinkling.

“There was this letter in the desk in my room that explains it!” Peggy squints at it.

“Well two letters, actually... that were put into one envelope.” Peggy takes two papers out of the opened envelope, and fixes her stare on the first one. “One of the letters is a blueprint of the entire building. There are eleven rooms, two bathrooms, the lobby, the kitchen, the library, the lounge, the basement… and… hm… there’s a place marked ‘The

Office’.” She pauses and looks down one of the hallways branching from the lobby. “It’s down there.”

Peggy turns her attention to the second letter. “This other paper is an inventory.

It lists all the stuff in the basement, and boy, there’s a lot of food.”

I shoot Cyan an impressed look, since he’s sitting opposite me. Funnily enough, he shot me a look at exactly the same time. In sync.

“At the bottom of the page there’s writing. In a bad handwriting.” Peggy’s brows furrow. “The writing says: ‘The food is in the basement. Ration it.’” The little girl looks up at the rest of us, wide-eyed. A short current of fear ripples through me. The message is slightly ominous, like a warning, or blackmail. Considering the absence of other people in this hotel, its brevity is also astonishing. “So…” Peggy starts. “It seems as though someone knows we’re in here. Like… they left us here on purpose.”

“You’re just making all that up!” Swift exclaims.

“No I’m not. Oh!” Peggy squints some more. “The inventory sheet... wait a second.” Peggy reaches into the pocket of her jumpsuit, and absentmindedly pulls out a pair of pink glasses, that she carefully places on her nose. How did she know those were

in there? “The stationery has an insignia at the bottom… ‘STMR, LLC.” A moment of silence passes, as I watch the wheels grind in Peggy’s head. “That must be an acronym of some sort. For a company. Because LLC stands for Limited Liability Company...”

This five-year-old is a genius.

“How can you even read, preschooler?” Swift snaps as he gets up. I watch him climb up the stairs and rip the packet of letters out of Peggy’s little hands. Brynne,

Goldy, and Blaze gasp. Glenn snickers. That’s unfair! I jump up and rush over to Swift with Cyan at my heels.

“You can’t do that to a little kid,” I state. It’s one of the key rules of life: it’s immoral to push around small children. Like how it’s wrong to be mean to elderly people.

“You have to be nice to the younger ones,” Cyan insists. “Look around, we’re the oldest. As far as those little ones are concerned, we’re the adults.”

“Yeah!” squeaks Peggy. “You should stop acting like you’re my age!”

Swift groans, unfazed. Looking at the papers in his hands, I notice that Peggy was correct. She read the papers flawlessly and explained everything well. How is this tiny girl so smart? I snatch the papers back from Swift, giving him a scolding look of disapproval that seems to surprise him. I hand the sheets over to Peggy. I stay there, next to her, as Swift goes back to the circle of kids with Cyan. Good riddance. I look at the papers, over Peggy’s shoulder. The second letter – the inventory – is a confusing page of food names and numbers. I wonder how a little girl like Peggy could understand

what that is, and be able to identify it. Even I wouldn’t have known what it is. But she’s right, that’s what it looks like. Is Peggy a kid prodigy or something? “You’re smart,” the kid named Blaze says to Peggy, playing with the buckle on his right boot. Peggy doesn’t react. Instead, she adopts a faraway look in her eyes, and resumes speaking.

“If somebody left an inventory, a map, and a message with us, then someone must know we’re in this hotel. Someone left these maps here specifically for us to use.

But why would they leave us here alone?”

Everything goes completely silent and nobody breathes. I look up from Peggy’s papers to the children on the lobby floor. Everybody looks pensive and afraid.

“I had something in my desk, also,” I remark. “But I left it in my room…” Heads turn to me. I was relieved to see that white envelope when I found it in my drawer, but now I fear what it contains.

Cyan comes up with a good idea.

“How about we all check our rooms? Maybe more of us have clues in there.”

I watch Cyan speak, and I can’t help but think that there’s something familiar about him… something that I can’t identify. Something about the glint in his mismatched, cat eyes. Something about the widow’s peak hairline of his dark brown hair, and his round-square nose that flattens when he smiles. It’s as if I know him already.

I sprint to my room and grab my envelope from the drawer where I found it. I then search my entire room. I don’t waste time because the empty room freaks me out.

I find nothing new so I go back to the lobby. When I get there, nobody’s around, except for Cyan and Mable.

Cyan speaks to me, as he calmly holds Mable’s chubby hand. “You need to help

Mable check her room for envelopes.” Then he begins to whisper, probably so Mable doesn’t hear. “She’s too young to be trusted with that.”

“Fine.”

So I grab Mable’s soft little hand and walk her to her room: Number Seven.

“Do you like elves?” I ask Mable as we slowly walk up the stairs while Cyan rushes past us to search his own room. Mable’s small legs and her tiny feet are almost too small to bring her up the stairwell. The little girl nods. I take her down the hallway where my room is located, and go to the door marked “7”. I open it, and usher her in. She stands in the middle of the carpet sucking her thumb. Isn’t she a little old for that? I look around her room for her. It’s literally identical to mine: the bed, the mirror, the desk are all the same. It’s creepy. I go to Mable’s desk, and slide out her four drawers, as she hums some familiar tune behind me. My heart begins to pound. I desperately want there to be more letters. More of a connection to someone… I don’t care who. But as I open each drawer,

I’m met with disappointment. Nothing, nothing, nothing, and nothing. I search the rest of the room, top to bottom. Nothing at all. Great.

It turns out that nobody had anything in their rooms besides Peggy and me. In the lobby, the other children are excited to hear what my letter says.

I stand on the stairwell and read it to everybody, like Peggy did before. I open my envelope gingerly, and pull out a single sheet of folded paper – a note. It’s written in the scrawled cursive handwriting of someone whose job didn’t require them to write much.

Maybe a doctor. I begin to read what it says. “Dear Children, we only have a few requests:,” I pause as my heart skips a beat,

“have hope, learn, and don’t waste resources.”

What a warm and comforting note. Exactly what I want to hear after I wake up in a random hotel with no memories. I shiver as if a gust of cold wind had penetrated the room. I hear another whimper. In the audience of kids before me, I see Thomas roll into a ball like a roly poly, and worry lines appear on Alaska’s face. Everyone else is staring into space, with an expression of quiet terror. A silence spreads between us.

Eventually someone talks.

“That’s it. We’ve definitely been put here by someone,” Cyan states, starting off an avalanche of complaints.

“I feel like a puppet,” Goldy remarks.

“What if grown-ups never come back?” Blaze asks.

“Don’t worry, my Daddy’s gonna save us,” Mable answers confidently. “He always used to save me from bad things.”

Mable’s use of the past tense is important: she remembers something from before. Nobody else remembers anything, except for Alaska, with her memory of her favorite state.

“I have a feeling like we all remember something, but we don’t know what,”

Brynne says, and the other kids murmur their agreements.

Mable walks off, behind the crowd of children, to one of the lobby windows. She stares out earnestly. She can barely raise her head to peer out of the window on her tippy toes, but she doesn’t seem to mind, standing on her toes, on the pillow that doesn’t elevate her as much as she thinks it does.

I see Mable point with a tiny finger at the colors washing the sky at dawn, and I hear her say, “The sun’s saying hi to the world!”

A part of me longs for her innocence.

When the sun is fully up, Peggy decides that we should search the hotel, to figure out where we are. We decide to search as a group. It would feel odd to split up, knowing that there’s nobody in the hotel but us.

We go down one of the identical-looking hallways branching away from the lobby, and I enter the first room I come across. The door is heavy and wooden, and I struggle to push it open. Alaska helps me push, and it slides open much more quickly now. The door creaks a lot. I hold it open for the rest of the kids to come in. I step into the room after the others. My jaw drops. I stare at a fully-equipped, snow white, kitchen, with intricate flowers carved into long marble table-tops. Goldy begins to open drawers, and pulls things out. She holds up lots of official-looking cooking devices that I could never use, grinning from ear to ear. Blaze runs up next to her, and begins pulling stuff out of the next set of drawers. I watch them go, as they produce a large and

disorderly pile of kitchen stuff on the counter. It’s like every cooking tool imaginable is in this place. This must have been a pretty fancy hotel, once upon a time. I look around the kitchen, and realize how bizarre it is that the kitchen is so beautiful – so white, pure, and clean. It’s like one of those magical places in fairy tales, that looks beautiful to passerby, but is actually an enticing trap. I shiver.

Peggy stands up on her tippy toes to run her fingers over the counter, lost in thought and frowning. Swift grabs two cups, fills them with tap water from a copper sink, and hands one to Glenn. Brynne grabs a gigantic knife – way too big and sharp for a nine-year-old, I think – and examines its tip. I consider telling her to put it down or she’ll get cut, but I’m too exhausted, so I leave her alone. Thomas stands in a corner silently, and stares at the scene with no expression on his face.

I am distracted by a wooden door at the end of the room. I walk towards it and push. It opens easily. When I step over the threshold and release the door, it swings closed. Like the doors in fancy restaurants that waiters emerge from. I look around, and take in my surroundings. This is a dining room, with antique, fragile-looking chairs clustered around a long wooden table, under a beautiful stained-glass window. The girl named Goldy opens the door behind me, and steps next to me. The door snaps closed, and I jump. I’m so paranoid. I need to chill. Goldy sighs. “These are my dream rooms,” she says in an airy voice. I give her a weird look. A kitchen and a dining room are her “dream rooms?” Goldy notices my expression and elaborates. “I love to cook. And this is like… perfect. The kitchen, and

this room… All for me to use, well at least until the grown-ups arrive… it’s just… perfect.”

My jaw clenches –at this point I can only think of evil, enchanted places from fairy tales. I stare at the room before me. It’s pretty, but so… lifeless. So… artificial. If I weren’t so scared and anxious to leave this hotel, I might agree with Goldy, that this is a pretty cool place. I notice a door at one side of the dining room, and walk to it. It’s just like that heavy door that leads into the kitchen, and I struggle to push it open. When I step out into the hallway on the other side, it smells like chlorine. Maybe there’s a pool somewhere. I look around. Alaska and Blaze run down the hallway, passing me.

“There’s a gym here!” Alaska yells, when she opens a door about five meters from me. “There’s treadmills and barbells!”

Blaze bolts past her to the end of the hallway and squeals with excitement. He looks straight through what seems like a glass door.

“There’s a pool!” he yells. “And a jacuzzi!”

I chuckle. If only I had a swimsuit… I walk to the end of the hall opposite from the pool – into the lobby. Then I make my way towards the second hallway, on the opposite side of the lobby as the kitchen hallway.

I stride towards the first door I find there. Immediately, I realize that it smells like old stuff. I pull it open by its brass handle, and find that it’s just a closet. Boring. It’s chock-full of cleaning equipment, first aid supplies, and tools. I close it again.

“So… not following the group, huh?”

I find Peggy looking up at me.

“No,” I respond. I provide no explanation because I have none.

Silence. Peggy just blinks at me. Through her sparkly pink glasses. I should probably say something.

“Okay.” She shrugs. Then she walks away, into a room down the hallway.

I go towards the room, but Peggy backs out of it slowly, looking distressed and confused.

“What’s wrong?” I wonder.

“The spider plant.”

I walk past Peggy and into the room. It looks like a vintage lounge, with a long floral upholstered sofa, and two armchairs around a wooden table displaying a stack of playing cards. There’s a bookcase full of fat tomes behind the sofa, and still life paintings on the walls. Two large windows with lace curtains light up the room, on either side of the bookcase.

To my right is a thriving spider plant, with long striped green leaves that bend towards the floor.

“What’s wrong with the plant?” I wonder. “It’s doing fine.”

“That’s the problem,” Peggy mumbles.

I nod, puzzled.

Peggy looks up at me, and manages to do it in a vaguely condescending way. “If the plant is alive and healthy, then someone’s recently been watering it, right? Before we got to this place?”

Realization strikes me. A shiver slithers down my back. If someone’s been in this hotel recently to water the plant, then why would they leave eleven kids stranded here in matching clothes? Maybe they didn’t know we were here?

Looking at the lounge, and the two armchairs on opposite ends of the coffee table, and the still life paintings in identical frames evenly spaced along the walls, I’m struck by the thought of the eleven identical bedrooms. The hotel has a strange type of symmetry. As if someone designed it for the eleven children it contains. Because what kind of hotel has eleven rooms? That’s an odd number! “Wow!” I hear Alaska exclaim somewhere down the hall. “Look at this door! It’s huge!” I walk out into the hallway with Peggy, and approach Alaska, at the end of the hallway. I glance behind me. The rest of the group is floating towards us, Thomas trailing in the back.

“That’s The Office,” Peggy remarks. “I saw it on the blueprint of the building.”

“We should try to get it open,” I reply.

Thump! Alaska kicks the door. I jump. “What’re you doing that for?”

“It’s locked,” Alaska and Peggy say at the same time.

I turn to Peggy. “How’d you know it was locked?”

“Because why else would Alaska be kicking it? It’s locked.” Peggy states. “Moving on.”

“Why is the lock near the ceiling?” Swift mumbles.

I look up. Indeed, the door has a lock that is probably six inches down from the ceiling. Only Swift – a sweeping five foot eight and the tallest kid here – would notice a detail like that. Piggy nearly breaks her neck looking up so high.

“Someone put the door on backwards!” Mable squeals. Then she starts to giggle.

“That’s odd,” Brynne replies.

“I’m hungry,” Blaze complains.

Cyan rubs his neck. “Me too. Where’s the food?”

Goldy clears her throat dramatically. I snort.

“Well, while I was checking out the kitchen, I opened the pantries and there’s enough food in there to last us for a solid week. There’s really a lot of food.”

“Thank God!” Brynne exclaims.

Peggy continues staring at her map. I stare over her shoulder. There’s a red X in the lounge. In the key at the bottom of the map, the X is marked as “Basement.” That’s odd, we just came from the lounge. I didn’t see a basement entrance. Peggy stares at the X intently.

“I checked out the food in the kitchen, and sure, there’s some,” Peggy says. “But ninety five percent of the food in this building is the food in the basement. I calculated it. I know because the inventory listed only what’s in the basement, it didn’t include the kitchen. If we rely on the kitchen food we won’t last long.”

At the additional mention of food, I notice that my legs feel like jelly and my stomach feels like it’s been twisted into a knot.

“Okay,” I say. “I know we’re all starving, and we’re gonna need to eat in order to be productive and start figuring everything out. At least I am. So I suggest we postpone visiting the basement, and just eat what we find in the kitchen for now.”

“For practicality’s sake, I second that,” Peggy says.

“I third that,” Cyan adds, wiggling his eyebrows at me. I frown.

“But,” Blaze starts. “we have to be careful about not using the food up. You know, be careful with our resources and all. Let’s not eat too much, okay?” “Even if there is food,” Swift starts. “who’s gonna make the meals? I don’t know how.” He sighs. Goldy continues enthusiastically. “Well, I’ll make the meals if that’s okay with you guys.”

“Good idea,” I say. Nobody has anything else to add. I look around, surprised, as it seems as though my word has been taken as a seal of approval. The other children listen to me.

“I don’t need any help,” Goldy says. “I’m very good with food.” She pauses. “Bye!”

And she runs toward the kitchen.

Well that was quick. Honestly, I’m not expecting much from Goldy. I mean, I know she likes to cook, but I bet she’ll make something mildly nauseating, as one does at the age of ten. But honestly, I’ll eat anything right now. I’m hungry.

Peggy marches down the hall.

“Where are you going?” Swift asks in a mocking tone. “The library,” Peggy responds coolly.

I’m tempted not to go with the group because I'm exhausted. But I push on anyway.

By the end of our search, the group has found a lot of things.

On the second floor, there are eleven bedrooms in one hallway (as I already noticed), and two bathrooms in another hallway. The bathrooms, one boys’ and one girls’, are large and marbled like the lobby. They have five stalls each and five showers.

White towels are in a closet with a washing machine next to the girls’ bathroom. The towels are embroidered with the letters TRH. Across from that closet is a room stocked with loads of paper and hotel stationery. The stationery is branded, stamped with the name “Test-Run Hotel.”

All of the bedrooms are identical, in terms of room decor, as I had noticed when I went to wake up Brynne. They’re like a picture that’s been duplicated, a mirror reflecting another mirror. Each room has an old bed, a desk, a Victorian chair, a couch, and a mirror, all arranged in the same way.

The weirdest thing about the hotel, though, is what isn’t here. We didn’t find any maps to indicate our location. So we could be anywhere. Any city, any state, any country.

Any world, for all I know. There are no phones or radios or advanced tech here. So there’s no way to communicate with anyone outside. In short, we’re stranded. To be fair,

Cyan did find a TV, but one of the older, box-shaped ones, and it’s only able to play

movies from the seven cassettes that were provided. Most of the films look pretty good, except for a princess movie and a documentary about a sheep who was genetically modified to glow in the dark.

I'm tired. I stagger to my room, collapse on the bed, and fall asleep.

Interchapter 2 January 27, 2051

Washington, DC

By Madison Xu

“What’s SuperTex doing with our kids?” “How is this legal?” “Does the

Constitution matter anymore?” These are all slogans I spotted at an Anti-SuperTex protest this Friday in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I was standing at the side of a crowd of citizens marching in the streets. Thousands of people were there. A sea of angry faces, flaring emotions, and flags. Everyone was furious.

“SuperTex has been abducting our children from hospitals for nearly a year now!”

Robert Greene, a postal worker from Nebraska, told me. “My niece Emily, a nine year old, was in Portland during the bombing two months ago. A relief team rescued her and took her to a hospital. Five minutes into her stay in the emergency room, my sister got a call saying Emily was pronounced dead. When my sister showed up at Emily’s hospital room, she was gone.” Mr. Greene wiped tears from his eyes and swore. “The hospital manager said that SuperTex people took Emily’s body, but couldn’t tell Annabelle anything more than that.”

Not only has SuperTex been removing children from hospitals without familial consent, but in the past months, in certain hospitals, they have started planting workers,

who send dead children to SuperTex without even telling hospital staff. Hospitals are trying to figure out who these moles are in their own systems. It seems unlawful and more than that – immoral, yet the government has done nothing to stop SuperTex. In fact, President Aldridge’s administration seems sympathetic to the company, judging from comments he made in a press conference last Tuesday.

As the SuperTex Scandal drags on, so does the War (see articles “France Moves to

Occupy Greece”, and “Thailand Planning Attack on Tokyo”).

Since the beginning of the War, two large global movements have been gathering steam through social initiatives and social media, in response to the fight for Resources.

By this point, you have probably heard something about the movements: the Scientific movement, and the Conservationist. The former advocates ending the War by engineering the Resources, and attempting to use new technologies to reverse human impacts on the Earth. The latter advocates for humans to engage minimally with the planet, in order to give time for the Earth to replenish herself.

A source close to Hieronymus Wright, the leader of the Scientific America chapter, claims that Mr. Wright plans to start a secluded community, soon. The source further elaborated that “the community will serve as a realization of the Scientific dream. A safe haven where all of the Resources necessary are engineered by on-site scientists.”

The idea seems far-fetched. But could it actually succeed?

Chapter 5

When I wake up I wander back to the lobby.

“Guess what!?” Brynne exclaims, as she rushes in through the front door with

Blaze at her heels. I see Alaska marching down the marble stairway.

“First of all, we found a back door, but that’s not even the coolest thing!” she continues. I think about her statement. How is a back door cool at all? “The library is huge!” I don’t dislike books, but I still don’t entirely understand the source of Brynne’s excitement.

“I read this really great book called The Lord of the Flies!” Blaze says, speaking almost too quickly to be understood, without breathing or pausing. “It was sort of dark, though, and it had to do with a bunch of stranded kids like us! But they get violent, so… maybe they’re not that much like us. This book might help us figure out what not to do while the grown-ups are away.”

I stare at him as he begins to explain the plot of his book. The story sounds very familiar. I get the feeling that I once read his book, too, but I don’t remember when or where. I seriously hope the eleven of us in the hotel don’t turn out like the kids in that book.

“Wait a minute,” I interrupt, as he’s nearing the part where one boy goes crazy and paints his face with pigments and runs off to start a tribe. “You read a whole book?

In the hour or so that I’ve been sleeping?”

“Y-e-s,” answers Blaze, stretching out the word in a tone that suggests he doesn’t think I’ll believe him.

“That’s not possible,” I reply.

“I’m fast.”

“Nobody’s that fast.” Just then, a gust of wind blasts my face as Blaze disappears in a trace of color that darts up the stairs. Alaska, walking towards me, is unfazed. A split second later, Blaze is back with the book in his hands. He waves it around in my face.

“Do you believe me now?” Momentarily, I stare, mouth agape. Then I realize how stupid I must look, and shut my mouth with a snap.

“How’s that possible?!” I exclaim, looking at Blaze like he’s a mutant.

Brynne replies, “How’s it possible that Peggy’s so smart at six years old?”

I mull over the question, as Blaze gloats.

“Strange things are happening around here,” I finally say, baffled. “So… you’re really that fast, huh?” Blaze nods. “If you’re that fast, prove it. Blaze, go fetch a dictionary.” Blaze zips away, and a trace of brown goes up the stairs. Moments later, he’s back, holding a book in his hand, waving it around.

“I won’t ever fetch again, but do you believe me now?”

“Yeah,” I respond. I do a thumbs up. That was impressive, actually. I think a little. “So you're fast at running and at reading?” Blaze pauses and contemplates the question. “I think I’m just fast in general. Like

I do normal-people things, but faster.”

I nod.

Blaze changes the subject. “By the way, I found another book and I thought

Alaska might like it, assuming she can read,” he mentions, handing a very fat book to the girl.

Alaska seems delighted when she notices that it’s about the State of Alaska. Her little hands wrap around it and she clutches it to her chest, as she pushes back a black curl from her face.

“I love it! Thank you!”

“You can read, right?”

Alaska nods, opening the book happily.

“Good,” Blaze states in a low voice, nodding once, sharply. I smirk. He’s playing the wise elder. Just then, Goldy comes into the lobby from the kitchen. “I made food!” she calls out happily.

Ten kids enter the dining room and sit at the long wooden table under the beautiful stained-glass window. The light coming through it from outside makes the room look like the sunset, bathed in a satisfying shade of orange, as if the whole place has been dipped in tea or is tinted with a sepia filter. Sepia… the color of old photos.

There are exactly eleven old wooden chairs, and their seats are woven with colorful threads, in a vintage-looking floral pattern. Eleven seats... a suspicious coincidence. The room reminds me of somewhere beautiful, but I can’t remember where. Somewhere where many people once gathered. Somewhere that smells like burning candles.

I glance at the stained glass. The mosaic of colors depicts a broken human figure surrounded by people in white robes. Angels? The broken figure is shown rising into the air, complete, unbroken, with strange dark clouds protruding from its hands. Its hair is blue.

The stained glass seems like an ominous rendition of something that should be beautiful. An odd knot forms in my throat. My brain suddenly goes blank. There’s something wrong about this stained glass. It reminds me of –

“It’s like this place was made for us…,” Peggy remarks. I look away from the window and realize that I’m starving.

Cyan pours water from a blue plastic pitcher into metal cups while Goldy and

Brynne bring out white china plates. Each child gets an omelet and a side of salad. Some kids wait for everyone to be served before they eat, and others don’t. It feels as though something special is happening, like an occasion. It feels like this whole meal is a treat, to console us all after our traumatizing day. I look at my plate. The food looks… great, actually.

“Goldy, did you really make this?” I ask.

“Noooo,” Cyan mumbles, sitting next to me. “She conjured it out of thin air.”

I ignore him completely.

“Yes!” Goldy squeals, delighted. “I made this! I told you I like to cook!” I stare at her. Her ponytail is slipping out and she looks exhausted, but her eyes shine like diamonds. Where do people get talent? Is it something their parents did to them when they were little? Parents… That word shakes up my innards like my stomach is making a cocktail. Have I ever had any parents? “Wow, I have to admit, you’re good,” Glenn says to Goldy.

“Thanks,” she answers bashfully. “It’s not really that hard though.”

Brynne adds, “Goldy has a really good cooking sense. She does stuff really fast and really efficiently. Kinda like she was trained for it.”

“Well to each their own, I guess,” I respond. “But what do I know about cooking, anyway? I wouldn’t know how to do anything in a kitchen.”

Cyan huffs. “Okay, that’s pretty bad.”

“So what can you make?” I respond sarcastically. Cyan thinks. “Toast,” he answers confidently. I laugh. He laughs with me.

As I watch him my joy deflates, and a weight settles my stomach, getting heavier every second. I know something is familiar about him, but I can’t figure out what “Guys,” Brynne says. I look towards her. “Goldy’s as awesome as Peggy and Blaze.

Do you think they’re, like, gifted?”

I don’t have time to answer before someone screams. I turn around and see Swift staring in horror at Glenn.

“What’s happy-ning?” Mable asks.

Swift is trembling like a leaf on a windy day. “Look at… look at Glenn’s finger…,” he mumbles, as the color drains from his face.

Everyone glances at Glennn’s right hand. His pointer is no longer formed in the shape of a finger, but looks like a nauseatingly realistic fork, the same color as Glenn’s tan skin. Glenn’s using the fork to eat his salad.

“What?” he says, eyes wide and innocent. “I don’t have a fork.”

“THAT’S HORRIBLE!” Blaze screams, covering his eyes.

“What?! That’s awesome!” Alaska exclaims, laughing her head off.

“Wow! A fancy talent!” Mable exclaims.

“Well this is interesting,” Peggy says, standing up on her chair for a better view of

Glenn from across the table. “Glenn, make a knife,” she orders.

Glenn sighs and puts the lettuce on his fork-finger in his mouth. Then he stares at the finger intently, his eyebrows tight-knit. The fork begins to change shape. Slowly, it takes the form of a knife. I cringe.

A flash of brown streaks around the room, and the door to the hallway suddenly opens.

“Blaze out,” Cyan mumbles.

“Now,” Peggy says. “let’s see if Glenn can turn his whole hand into something.” She thinks. “Make scissors.”

Glenn’s hand slowly becomes a blob, and begins to take the shape of scissors.

Glenn gasps, and his hand goes back to normal.

“It’s too hard,” he says. “Sorry, I guess.”

“That’s perfectly alright,” Peggy responds, looking very pleased. “I think all you need is practice.”

“Wow!” Brynne exclaims. “So many people have special abilities around here!

Peggy has smartness, Blaze has speed, Goldy has cooking, and now Glenn has... finger morphing. I wonder if I can do anything special. The room becomes silent.

“What’s going on?” someone whispers. I think it might be me.

Nobody answers.

Interchapter 3 June 16, 2052.

Dear Dr. Cameron,

We are extremely excited to announce that, after fifty failures, we have finally had a successful result on our first project: Project Perfect Recall! The team is over the moon. A young male, aged twelve, sourced from the Albuquerque site two months ago, has been successfully mutated! A few days ago, we transferred him out of the Surgical

Ward, to begin testing his mutation. I hope you will forgive me for not letting you know immediately. I was saving the breakthrough as a surprise, in case more good news was to come. And indeed, the news is more than good: it is excellent. Tests on his enhancement were conducted: we played ten different movies at 3 x speed with no pauses. The subject remembered every line, character, event, demonstrating perfect recall.

Thank you for your support, Doctor. When you return from the capital you can see the progress yourself! I will be pleased to show you personally.

With this technology, an end to the War seems ever closer. This will pave the way for so much more. I hope that soon, the Resources can truly be saved “by elevating the human being,” as you put it in your last message!

Madeleine Vérité, M.D, PhD

Head of Medical Engineering

Medical Research & Testing

SuperTex, New York, USA

Chapter 6

“We need a chief!” Brynne says, out of the blue. Everybody turns to her, and she continues. “If we vote for someone, or a couple of people, they could be the leaders, and that way, they could help us choose what to do without the grown-ups around.”

“That’s a bad idea,” Blaze says. “I read a book about these boys stuck on an island with no adults and they accidentally choose this really bad kid as leader and he winds up becoming savage and hurting this kid who’s super important, and then this other kid gets hurt too, and then…”

“I choose Peggy and Amaranth!” Brynne suggests enthusiastically. “They can be leaders together!”

Everyone seems to agree with that idea.

“Let’s do a vote,” I suggest. “Whoever wants Peggy and me to make the choices for the entire group, raise your hand now.”

Everyone raises their hand, except for Thomas, who seems to be staring off into oblivion and not paying any attention.

So it’s settled.

Democracy.

Later, we all go to the library. We want to relax a little. Blaze doesn’t want to, though. Instead, he decides to run around the building.

The library is huge. It looks a lot like the one in a movie I can’t quite recall, about a smart girl and a very hairy boy, involved in a slightly cheesy plot that includes a talking cup. The room is circular and the shelves are huge, stretching from the floor to the ceiling, with labels under each row of books, indicating genres: mystery, fairytale, science fiction, and so on. It smells like paper in here. A window in the ceiling casts light on everything, in a way that produces very few shadows. Four couches are nestled cozily in the middle of the room. One long table and a couple of chairs sit near the classics. A few bean bags are strewn across the floor in front of the poetry section. The littlest kids start to show each other the books they found, comparing illustrations.

I feel like I need to organize the kids. Plus, everybody voted, and I’m a leader now. And I need someone to talk to about an idea that’s been bugging me. Something that involves the survival of the group. I approach Cyan. There’s something about him that seems friendly. I find him intently reading a very fat book.

“What if we run out of food?” I ask him abruptly. “Do you think we could actually find stuff to live off of, in the forest?”

Cyan glances up at me, then looks back down at his book. “Maybe,” he mumbles.

I slump, disappointed. That’s unhelpful. I run my hands through my hair and sigh. I should probably just leave Cyan to his reading. And so I walk to the dystopian category, near the library entrance. I notice two words on the spine of a book: The Giver.

That looks familiar. I pull the novel off of its shelf, and the adjacent books fall over onto each other, puffing out dust, which collides with my face. I cough and then peer at the novel. It seems unused, like it came straight from the book store. I open the front cover, and find a word stamped on the inside in green, kind of like the markings in books in real libraries. The stamp says… Property of SuperTex Library. I think about the words briefly then close the book.

Whatever.

When night falls, I call a meeting because I’m anxious, and I need to sort things out, like a survival plan. I gather us all at a long and narrow wooden table in the center of the library. The other kids sit down at wooden chairs, and I stand at the head of the table.

“We need to talk about food rations,” I say. They stare back at me, silently.

For five minutes I do most of the talking, and they do most of the yawning. These kids don’t have any good ideas. We’re not going to survive if they refuse to be useful.

“You know what? Let’s just discuss what functions the younger children will serve in the hotel, to keep the group thriving until the grown-ups come. Peggy, have any ideas?”

“Um…” She scratches her ear. “No. I wanna sleep.”

“Well, do any of you have any theories about why we’re in this hotel?” Cyan and Alaska stare into space, Swift stares at his hands, Goldy looks confused, and Glenn yawns. Defeated, I give up trying to talk. It’s gonna be really hard to keep

eleven kids surviving here. This all feels like one big group project, and I’m the only one doing anything useful.

“Go to bed,” I order, dismissing the others in annoyance.

All ten of the other kids get up sluggishly, and walk out of the library, presumably to their rooms. I watch them leave individually. I look around the library. I’m the only person here now. I stroll over to a bookshelf and casually pick up books. I flip through them and put them back on their shelves, pretending to be calm, trying to trick myself into feeling confident or something. Isn’t that how positive psychology’s supposed to work? Fake it till you make it.

I try to be calm but something is nagging at my thought process. I have a strange premonition that something is wrong. A sense is lurking near my heart. A feeling of tension, and knowing something that I can’t remember. My emotions churn in my chest.

I find a green beanbag near the horticulture section. I fall into it, and bury myself in it, rolling up like one of those bugs that are on the sidewalk when it rains. I cradle myself and place my cold hands on my head.

I’m so tired. But how can I sleep at a time like this?

Ten minutes later, I’m snoring.

My dream is vibrantly colored but blurry, like I’m looking through fuzzy glass, or peering through a window during a rainstorm. I hear sounds, but they’re muffled, as if a person placed their hands over a speaker. Noises of distant speaking echo in my head.

I see colors dart about, left and right.

I feel happy. I push through a wall of colors. I’m looking for something.

I get to the object I was looking for, a mass of peach, red, and blue. I say something. Gibberish.

Abruptly, the noise disappears and the colors shift, spinning around me. They stop. Something intrigues me.

Suddenly, the colors disappear in a smear of yellow and white.

I feel pain.

Blaze whooshes in like a bolt of lightning with a smile on his face, waking me up.

The Lord of the Flies is sticking out of his jumpsuit pocket. He stands above me, peering down.

“I found the door!” he yells, breathless. “I’ve been running,” pant, “all morning,” pant, “and I figured I could look for it to be helpful.” I look up, disoriented. What’s he talking about? He reads my blank face. “I found the basement door in the lounge!” he exclaims excitedly, hopping up and down with a huge grin on his face. It’s like he just discovered a new species of human. “But there’s an enormous bookcase on it that’s screwed into the wall, so only a small bit of the door pokes out! It’s a trapdoor! It’s on the floor!”

I’m tired. Too much information. I groan. “How do you even know that’s the right door?” I spit, grumpy.

“It says ‘Basement’ on it.”

I blink. Well that should do it. “What time is it?” I growl, looking through the ceiling window, squinting at the sunlight pressing down on me.

“Like morning or something.” Blaze pauses. “So are you coming to see what I found?!”

“Alright,” I wheeze.

I get up to follow Blaze, who can’t help but run. In the hallway, I ask him to go slow for me. I struggle to maintain a nice tone. I’m grumpy when I wake up.

When I get to the lounge, all the other kids are already there, crowded around the bookcase behind the couch. Seems like Blaze really spread the word. I push to the front of the crowd. Sure enough, the bookcase is conveniently placed over a trapdoor in the floor, labeled “Basement” with a yellowing piece of paper taped next to the keyhole. The bookcase over the door stretches from the floor to just below the ceiling, and it’s jam-packed with books. It looks heavy. Blaze shows me the brackets that attach the thing to the wall.

“It’s gonna be a pain to move that thing,” Swift says.

“No duh,” Brynne responds.

Silence.

“Hey, Glenn!” I yell into the crowd behind me. “I need you!”

The boy pushes through the crowd, to stand near me. I mumble directions to him, feeling the eyes of all the other kids on me. Glenn nods. He walks to where the hinges

attach the bookshelf to the wall. His pointer finger morphs into a screwdriver. The more he does that the less cringy it is.

Glenn places his screwdriver finger into the divot of one of the bracket screws, and slowly turns his arm. Periodically, he removes his finger from the screw, un-twists his arm, inserts his finger back in, and re-twists his arm. Five minutes later, all the screw from the bookshelf brackets are in a heap on the coffee table in the middle of the lounge.

“We’re nowhere close to moving the bookcase,” Peggy states.

“Alright,” Cyan says. “Can we pick it up and move it?”

“Unlikely,” Peggy responds.

“Maybe it’s lighter than it looks,” Cyan responds. I doubt it. He looks at me. “Come on… let’s give it a try.”

I sigh. “Fine.”

“We should take the books out first though,” Brynne points out.

She’s right. The bookcase is jam packed with fat yellow encyclopedia volumes.

Couldn’t have stocked this shelf with heavier stuff. Swift pulls on the spine of one of the books. His arm doesn’t move. He pulls again and again, his muscles obviously straining.

“The books are stuck!” he figures out.

“Obviously,” Peggy says. “Look at the glue between the volumes.”

Peggy is once again correct. A thin sheet of glue coats all of the books, probably to keep them stuck to the shelves. And the glue must be old because it’s discolored. Glenn pipes up. “Someone really doesn’t want us to open the trap door, huh?

“Whoever put us here told us about the food but blocked the entrance,” Peggy hypothesizes.

That makes my heart squeeze. “Whoever put us here” is a maniac. “Glenn, can you turn your finger into a knife, please?” Cyan asks. “Try to scratch off the glue.” Glenn obeys and starts scratching. It takes several tries for him to even flake the glue. It seems to have petrified.

“This is never gonna work,” Swift remarks. For once, I agree with him.

“Hey Peggy,” Goldy says. “Isn’t there something you can put on glue to make it un-stick?”

“A magical glue remover?” Peggy asks sarcastically. “No.”

“Let’s try to move the bookcase with the books in it,” Cyan suggests, hiking up the sleeves of his jumpsuit.

“Highly improbable,” Peggy mutters.

“Let’s just see,” Cyan continues. “Only a few of us can grab hold of the bookcase at a time. So Amaranth, Swift, and Glenn, how about you help me?”

“I wanna help!” Alaska squeals, raising her hand into the air like we’re in school.

“That’s alright,” Cyan responds. “I think we’re good on people.”

“I could really help though,” Alaska responds, mildly offended.

“No you couldn’t,” Glenn sneers. “You're a puny little weak eight year old.”

“At least my name isn’t Glenn.”

“Thank God I’m not called Alaska.”

“I’m not here to argue,” I state. “So shut up Glenn.”

“What!? Aren’t you gonna say anything to Alaska!?”

I look the kid up and down and chuckle. I leave him with that as a response.

I grab a side of the bookcase, Cyan grabs a side, and Swift and Glenn grab the front. We pull with all our might. I pull until my elbows feel like they’re about to crack.

The bookcase practically re-defines the word “heavy.”

“Well that didn’t work,” Cyan concludes.

“As predicted,” Peggy responds, smirking. She adjusts her pink glasses.

Glenn steps back from the bookcase.

A thought comes to me out of the blue. Where’s Thomas? I feel like I haven’t seen him since this morning. I realize that he hasn’t spoken a word since the time we picked our names, in the lobby. That’s strange. I glance around the room for him, and I notice him sitting in one of the armchairs, staring down at his hands with a depressed expression. Weird kid. Suddenly, Alaska comes forward and pushes Glenn. He falls to the ground.

“If you boys won’t let me help you lift the bookcase,” Alaska exclaims with dignity, “at least I can try myself!”

Alaska grabs a side of the bookcase, and lifts it like a sheet of paper.

Everybody goes silent and I do a double-take.

“Well,” Alaska says snarkily. “I sure made Glenn look like a moron, didn’t I?” She sticks out a tongue at the boy on the ground, who looks as awe-stricken as the rest of us.

“So Alaska has a talent, too!” Brynne exclaims as Alaska moves the bookcase to the opposite side of the room. When Alaska drops it, the object hits the floor with a loud thud that seems to resonate throughout the entire hotel. “Alaska’s a strong-woman!” Cyan claps slowly, impressed.

“I prefer strong-person,” Alaska interjects. “Because I am a girl but I’m also stronger than Glenn, who’s a boy so...” Alaska smirks at Glenn, who looks as red as a tomato.

“How about just ‘strong’?” Goldy suggests.

“Wow,” I blurt, still mulling over the fact that Alaska picked up an entire bookcase on her own.

Peggy begins to inspect the trapdoor.

“Did you know you’re that strong?” Swift wonders. “Is that why you wanted to help us lift the bookcase?”

“No…” Alaska responds, mildly confused. “I didn’t know I was strong but I had an urge to lift the bookcase all of a sudden. And then I lifted it, and it felt right. Like, it wasn’t a surprise but I wasn’t expecting it, at the same time. You know?”

Not really, but that’s fascinating. Will something like that happen to me soon?

“Uh-oh,” Peggy mumbles.

“What!?” I ask. Every time something goes mildly wrong I begin to panic. Both because I’m supposed to be the leader, and because this whole situation is too crazy and confusing for me to handle.

“Looks like we won’t be visiting the basement today,” Peggy says.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s locked, and we don’t have the key.” Peggy pulls at the trapdoor handle. The thing doesn’t budge. I try pulling it. It’s stuck.

Alaska comes over. “If you want I can break the door open. It’s only made of wood.”

Peggy looks at me for a verdict.

“It’s your call,” I say to her. “Should we break it open or not? I mean, the food’s down there, so it’s kinda important.”

Peggy smiles faintly to herself. “No,” she decides. “Let’s leave the door locked until the kitchen food runs out. When it runs out, we can break this open. But I want to see if we can find the key for the door first. I want to see if we can figure out this puzzle.”

It’s funny that Peggy refers to the trapdoor as a “puzzle.” Is this whole experience a puzzle? Is being stuck in this hotel some game that we’re supposed to reason through? Suddenly I’m feeling nauseated.

Interchapter 4

September 29, 2059.

Dear Dr. Cameron,

For so long, I questioned whether this day would come.

We completed our ten original mutations. And the eleventh mutation – the one that seemed truly impossible – is a success. A success after over three hundred unsuccessful attempts. I’m shocked, and thrilled.

The official report is being sent to you separately.

We moved Subject Eleven to the testing ward. She carries the most complex enhancement that we have created. I thought the concept for the enhancement was impossible when Dr. Hassan came to me with the research behind it, three years ago. He had been perfecting the theory for over a decade, and frankly, I was skeptical. But we pulled it off. This is extraordinary. This is groundbreaking. I cannot stress that enough. The subject is a fourteen-year-old female from the site in Denver, Colorado. (The same site as Subject Ten from Project Animalia, as I’m sure you will recall.) The girl’s enhancement is being tested. She is a dangerous subject, so we are taking extra care with her. If the mutation went correctly, she’s a walking weapon. Potentially, she could end the War – with the help of the other subjects, of course. But to put it poetically, she’s the nuclear bomb of their group.

Have you received any messages from the Donor? Hieronymus expressed that he was especially excited about Subject Eleven. What are his plans for transferring the subjects to the Community?

We have a lot to discuss when you return from the capital.

Madeleine Vérité, M.D, PhD

Head of Medical Engineering

Medical Research & Testing

SuperTex, New York, USA

Chapter 7

The sounds of slurping echo in the dining room, which is otherwise completely quiet. Nobody feels like speaking. When I finish eating, I look up from my bowl and realize just how worn out everybody looks.

“Attention!” Cyan suddenly yells from the front of the dining room. I jump. Tired heads turn towards him, and then somebody yawns, which becomes contagious. Once the yawning passes, Cyan continues.

“We’re gonna discuss, and make a plan for tomorrow.”

“Wait–” Goldy interjects. “What about the dishes? Who’s gonna help me wash them? Shouldn’t we deal with that first?”

“Don’t worry about washing the dishes, Goldy,” I say. “You’ve done enough for today. I’ll do it. You can just chill for awhile.” Goldy smiles at me gratefully.

“Yeah, I’ll help too,” Cyan offers. We both look at Swift blankly. He’s the only one of the oldest kids who isn’t agreeing to help. He pretends to be eating his soup to avoid making eye contact, picking at some vegetable residue that he probably didn’t want to eat.

“I’ll help!” Blaze suggests. We recruit him immediately.

By the time we begin to clean up the dishes in the kitchen, Swift seems to have disappeared. He never helps out. Standing in the kitchen, we all roll up the sleeves of our identical jumpsuits, and begin to clean up. Blaze runs the dirty dishes in from the dining room and places them on the counters. There are eleven bowls, spoons, forks, and cups to wash. Cyan and I start to wash the dishes by hand. There is no dish-washer.

“You know that guy Thomas?” Cyan mumbles as we start to tackle the bowls.

“I barely notice him,” I confess. “He hasn’t spoken a word since last night, when we were choosing names.”

Something occurs to me suddenly. I think back to yesterday, when I was shivering in the lobby, in the crowd of scared kids, under the glowing light of the beautiful golden chandelier. When we stood around, trying to pick names for ourselves, because we couldn’t remember our past. I think of when Thomas blurted out his name, the moment it was his turn to speak. He didn’t even hesitate. “Don’t you think it’s weird,” I ask, “how fast Thomas picked what he wanted to be named the other day? It’s like he didn’t even have to think about it.” I pause. “It’s like he knew his name already.” “Yeah,” Cyan adds. “When I met him, you know, when me and Mable were looking for grown-ups, he acted really strange. When I knocked on his door, he opened it immediately, and stared at me like he was expecting me. I didn’t find him on the ground like all the others. And then I told him about our situation – you know, being stranded by ourselves in a hotel – he was just like ‘oh okay’. He wasn’t even surprised.”

“It’s like he knows something…” I mumble. Maybe he’s a mole. Maybe he knows why we’re here.

Cyan shrugs. “He might just be quiet, though.”

A gust of air whooshes my hair out of my face, and I find Blaze standing beside me.

“Need me to do the washing?” he asks.

“Be my guest,” I respond.

Once we’ve finished washing the dishes, and we call everyone back to the dining room, Cyan and I are exhausted. Five minutes into our conversation, Swift bursts into the room, through the kitchen door.

“I-was-in-the-bathroom,” he stammers.

“Right,” I reply. “And I’m sure you were also in the bathroom when we were cleaning up earlier.”

“Didn’t you have Blaze to help you though?” Swift wonders.

“Yeah, but you’re one of the oldest kids here,” Cyan responds, “and you never do anything to take the lead and help out.”

I notice a broom in the corner of the room, and look down at the messy floor, covered in the food that the younger kids dropped while eating. I smirk.

“It’s a good thing you’re back, Swift!” I exclaim sarcastically. “Because I didn’t get a chance to sweep the floor!”

“And since we already did all that work cleaning the dishes ,” Cyan adds, backing me up, “it’s up to you.” He nods to the corner of the room. “The broom’s right there.”

“Can’t Blaze do it?” Swift demands.

“No. I’m tired.”

Swift sighs and gets the broom.

Peggy starts up a conversation. “Tomorrow, I suggest we wake up early and scout out the forest. Who knows? We may find something interesting. For instance, the plant life could give a good idea of our general location.”

Swift grudgingly begins sweeping.

“Well, that might be a good idea,” Brynne responds, “but how would we wake up early? I mean, I have an awful sense of time, and I couldn’t wake up by myself. But there’s no way to keep track of time here. Like, there aren’t clocks in this hotel, so...”

Brynne’s right. There’s no way to keep track of time here. It’s as if whoever left us in this hotel doesn’t want us to know how long we’re here for.

“I can solve that problem,” Swift answers, pausing mid-sweep. “You see, I don’t sleep.”

Everyone stares at Swift, unconvinced.

“What do you mean?” I finally ask, unamused.

“I don’t sleep. At all.”

“That’s impossible,” I state. Peggy agrees.

“Yeah well you all believe that Peggy’s a genius, Blaze is crazy fast, Goldy’s a super-chef, Thomas is a shapeshifter, and Alaska’s the strongest kid alive, so why don’t you believe me?”

Peggy gives me a “he’s right, I didn’t think of that” look. I’m still not convinced, though. I don’t believe Swift, because all of the other prodigy kids have a cool talent and his is just… well... nondescript. All he does is… not sleep. Also, Swift strikes me as the least credible source of information I know.

“Sorry,” I mumble unapologetically.

“So… not sleeping is your talent?” Cyan asks, with an eyebrow raised. He’s as skeptical as I am.

“No. I think the sleep thing is just a syndrome or something,” Swift explains. He thinks a little. “Narcolepsy!” he explains. “Yeah, that’s what the doctors used to call it.

They said it was a side-effect.”

“What did you say about doctors?” Peggy intervenes.

Swift’s mouth clamps closed and his angular jaw clenches. Then, he loosens his stance and speaks again. “Huh. That’s funny, I can’t remember…” And in his face I can see that he’s telling the truth.

I feel like slapping Swift. He’s finally being somewhat useful, and suddenly he can’t recall his only memory? “But, Swift,” Cyan starts, “you say that you can’t sleep and all, but didn’t you wake up in this hotel like all of us? Didn’t you wake up from sleeping?”

“I did, but…” Swift looks confused. “Well, even though I did wake up here, I haven’t slept since I woke up. And I just know that I don’t usually sleep. I guess it’s like how Alaska knows her favorite state and Mable remembers a dad.” He hesitates.

“Anyway, I can keep track of time for all of you, by waking you up a little after daylight.”

Swift goes back to sweeping, looking amused.

When I walk back to my room for the night, I feel calmer than I’ve ever been since getting to the hotel, because we have a plan to scout the forest tomorrow. Organization calms me. One thing that worries me, though, is that the plan for tomorrow starts with

Swift waking us up in the morning. I think that’s a bad idea. Swift seemed a little too happy about the job.

Interchapter 5

January 4, 2061

Washington, DC

3:00

By Sebastian Gonzalez

Breaking News: At 2:30 today, President Greenawalt sat down to sign an executive order to end the Government endorsement of SuperTex and shut down the company, as she had promised during her presidential campaign. It is only her first week in office, and her supporters are delighted by how quickly she has acted on her promises.

SuperTex must end its projects by Sunday, pay an indemnity to several hospitals from which it sourced its test subjects, along with undisclosed sums in damages to the relatives of the children whose bodies it took.

We will post updates as more information on this story becomes available.

Chapter 8

I wake up when Swift runs down the hallway screaming in a voice as loud as thunder, kicking at every door.

“Get up, slow pokes! It’s morning! Hut! Hut! Hut!”

I feel like slapping him for the umpteenth time since I met him. I jump out of bed, drop to my knees, and grab my black boots from my bedside. I buckle them up as fast as I can, then rush out.

When I get to the lobby, everyone else is there, yelling at Swift.

“Why are you so annoying all the time?!” Alaska screams. “‘Cuz.”

“Did you have to wake us up like that?!” Brynne yells. “Yes! You guys slept for so long! How were you not even awake already? Like a hundred years passed before you got up!”

“You are very mean!” Mable scolds.

“Okay, little girl.”

“Goodness gracious!” Brynne exclaims.

“I thought that was hilarious!” Glenn exclaims.

“Shut up!” I yell, at the top of my lungs. Everyone does. “Stop whining, everyone. Just ignore Swift. He’s obviously immature.”

“Hey!” Swift exclaims, grinning like he enjoys being a pest.

“How about,” Cyan turns to me, “let’s listen to Amaranth.” He grins at me. “She’s gonna tell us about the plan for today.”

Why did Cyan do that? He knows that I try to avoid public speaking! I pause briefly. Wait, why would he know that? What was I thinking again? I look into the eyes of the ten children staring at me, and realize that I’m supposed to be the leader.

“First of all,” I start, “sorry to all of you, but we’re not gonna have breakfast.” I continue talking as a couple of the kids start to complain. “We’re rationing our food, in case we don’t open the basement trapdoor anytime soon.”

At this Alaska raises her hand. I point at her, signaling that it’s her turn to speak.

“Can I just break it open and then we can have breakfast?” she asks, crushing a stick in her small hands.

“No!” Peggy blurts, “I wanna figure out the puzzle! Plus, even if we did get to the basement, we don’t know how accurate the inventory is, and we should try to ration our food consistently just to be safe.”

Alaska looks dissatisfied. “Fine.” She says. She looks around the room, hungry for another object to crush.

I nearly laugh. But as I am about to, a strange feeling suddenly ambushes me. I furrow my brows and look down at the floor. I feel conflicted inside. I feel like it’s wrong to be happy.

Why do I feel this way?

“Uh… anyway,” I continue, clearing my throat, “so… right now, according to the plan that we put together last night, it’s time to scout around the forest!” Nobody replies. “Once it’s about lunchtime, Goldy will make lunch for us. Then we’ll discuss ideas for opening The Office. After that, we can chill. Is that clear?”

Everyone nods. I feel like a competent leader, and this makes me happy. I scratch a spot near my ear and suddenly remember how, when I woke up this morning and glanced at myself in the mirror, I could have sworn the roots of my hair looked pink.

Aren’t my roots supposed to be brown? But then again, I was rushing after Swift woke me up by screaming. So I probably didn’t look very closely.

The eleven kids slip out the front door and into the garden outside. I’m the last person to leave the building. I catch the brass doors of the hotel that begin to swing closed behind Swift, and step onto the soft grass outside. Anxiety grips my chest. I’m scared to leave the hotel. The outdoors seem even more unknown – more dangerous – than inside.

I go to where the other kids are standing, in a circle in the middle of the small unruly lawn that serves as the hotel garden. I gaze at the thick pine forest beyond as I absent-mindedly swat at a mosquito near my ear. The thick warm air is making it hard to breathe.

We’ve decided to split into three search groups – each group will scout a different part of the forest. But we’re going to have to stay sharp, and keep track of where we’re

going. Peggy gives a brief pep talk about how important it is to stay vigilant, in order to avoid getting lost among the thick evergreens. Once she’s done, Cyan speaks.

“Repeat after me,” Cyan says. “We won’t go far from the hotel, and we won’t get lost.”

We repeat his words together.

Interchapter 6

January 4, 2061.

Hieronymus,

We’ve all heard the news. The government is shutting SuperTex down, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I reached out to all of our company lawyers and my lawyer friends, and they say that we can do nothing to stop these orders. I’ll have to drop my projects by the end of the week – the culmination of years and years of work. So much scientific progress. I’m outraged and in despair.

We barely had the time to add the CO2-breathing enhancement to them: we had to rush the mutation procedure. And we have only just finished adding the Neuro-Radio enhancement to one subject: the one from Project Creator. I can’t believe they’re forcing us to stop with so much unfinished work!

I cry as I write these words. We were so close to ending this War.

You and I understand the ignorance of the Government. You and I understand why these kids are key to taking down those who control the War, and creating the Eden that will save us all.

We can’t let the subjects fall into the hands of the Government.

How are we going to hide them? Who will carry on our mission towards Eden?

Madeleine Vérité, M.D, PhD

Head of Medical Engineering

Medical Research & Testing

SuperTex, New York, USA

Chapter 9

I’m in a forest search group with Thomas and Swift. We set off quickly, stepping through the pine trees into the gloomy light of the forest. With each of my steps, the twigs and pine needles crack beneath my feet like bones. The trees loom like giants; looking up, I realize, they block the sky. It seems as though they’re glaring. They don’t want me to enter their kingdom. I am a refugee, but they don’t want me on their land. I am unwelcome.

The air is crisp in this forest, a sharp change from the stuffy air at the hotel.

Maybe the trees want to scare us off. There are smaller trees in the forest, too, and most of them have no leaves. They look like spears, or like pine soldiers.

We don’t have a conversation. We just walk and look around. I become nervous quickly, and speed up the pace. I feel like something should be happening, but I don’t know what. As if something might dart out of the bushes, fall from the sky, or jump up before me. I feel like I’m being hunted. But I see nothing, other than trees. I take the lead, and walk in front of Thomas and Swift, guiding them forward. I try to walk straight, so that when we want to leave the forest, we can just turn around and walk straight back. Maybe by then we’ll find civilization? Hopefully. At this point, anything would satisfy me – any trace of human existence. An article of clothing, a littered plastic bottle, a trail leading anywhere.

I keep my eyes peeled. Twice, I think I spot a trail. Then I go to investigate, and realize that I only found a parting among the dead pine needles. Swift thinks he sees a person. No, I point out. It’s only a deer. I gasp. Is that a shed in the distance? We go there. It’s a pile of fallen tree trunks.

I begin to see patterns in the leaves above. I see a human face, a moon, a wolf. I begin to see wolves everywhere. They belong to the pine soldiers, too. They’re hunting animals.

The silence makes it easy to think. The strange fire of anxiety burns inside my chest, near my heart. But each of the breaths I take brings pure and cool air into my lungs, keeping the fire from spreading. Beneath my jumpsuit, I can feel goosebumps. I don’t know if they’re from the cold or my restlessness. Am I nervous about the forest, or afraid of what I might find here? I have a feeling that it might be the latter. “We should turn back,” Swift says suddenly. I jump.

“How long have we been searching?” I ask.

“A while,” he replies. “For a couple of hours, I think.”

“You’re probably right,” I say. “It’s really hard to keep track of time, though.”

We turn around and walk back the way we came. Suddenly it strikes me that the trees look unfamiliar. Am I going in the wrong direction? Or is this the way we came? I realize that we’re lost – that we got lost in our thoughts, and let the trees lure us into their trap. The trees look like they’re closing in on us now. Maybe wolves are approaching.

“Are we going in the right direction?” I ask, on the verge of hyperventilation.

“Yeah,” Swift responds. He gives me a funny look. “You forgot our trajectory, didn’t you?” I nod. He starts walking ahead. “Follow me.”

I obey, and so does Thomas. When he walks up beside me, I realize that I forgot that he was in my group. He’s that quiet.

We walk for a long time, until Thomas stops abruptly, in a dark spot of the woods, packed with looming trees and spiky bushes. I hear an animal rustle to my left, and hear a bird fly between the branches of the trees to my right. I don’t remember this place. Before us is a fork in our path, between the tall and menacing trees. “Did we come from the left or the right?” I wonder.

“You guys are so disorganized,” Thomas gripes. So he talks. His voice is pretty normal, and it isn’t soft, unlike what I would have expected from a shy person. His voice is loud. And obnoxious. “Just follow me,” he spits.

Thomas goes to the left, and Swift and I follow him, shooting each other a look of surprise. We walk for a very long time. The surroundings are starting to seem familiar. I notice the crescent-shaped rock near that dead bush, and to the left is that flowering tree that contrasted with the spindly trees in the woods. My group walks past it. Then I lose myself again. Good thing Thomas knows the path back to the hotel. An inkling tickles my brain.

“How do you know where you’re going so well?” I ask Thomas, still vaguely lost.

“I have, as the scientists always said” he scoffs, “Perfect Recall. They called it P.R. for short.”

“So you remember everything?”

“Sort of.”

“Is that your talent?”

“Yes.”

“Wait, did you just say something about scientists?”

Groan.

“Never mind,” I say in a hurry, afraid of irritating Thomas more. If he has Perfect Recall, then does he also remember the past?

We walk in silence again, and eventually appear back at the hotel garden. When we step out of the forest, blinding sunlight and warmth greet us. I’m glad that I’m no longer in the land of the trees, stuck with Swift and someone as odd and irritable as

Thomas.

We’re the first group to get back from scouting, which doesn’t surprise me.

Maybe we should have scouted longer. I feel somewhat disappointed. We found nothing. No traces of humanity. The other groups will probably show up hours from now, with lots of interesting stuff to report.

Swift and Thomas lay down on the grass, in front of the hotel. Feeling dissatisfied, I throw myself beside them, and cross my arms over my chest. I stare at the sky for a moment, then let my eyes float down to look at the hotel. It’s the first time that

I’ve looked at the building from the outside. I sit up. It’s huge. The hotel looks old. It’s made of white bricks, with grandiose, arch-like windows, with brass frames that twinkle like stars in the daylight. Through the window panes, I can see the red curtains of the hotel rooms. My gaze slides to the top of the hotel, and the navy blue, tiled roof. There

are bouquet-shaped statues along the sides, like botanical gargoyles. There’s a chimney at the top of the hotel, yet I don’t know where it leads. I haven’t seen a fireplace anywhere. The building is two stories high, and very long. It looks like a place crafted by angels. I momentarily think of the dining room. Then I gaze at the golden front doors, framed with carved flowers. The hotel looks inviting. Like the gingerbread house in a story…

“Thomas?” Swift asks. “How come you don’t talk that much?”

I wince. That’s exactly what not to say to a quiet person. I glance over at Thomas.

He remains silent, ignoring the question. Swift sighs. He shouldn’t try to force Thomas to talk. That never wor–

“Because the things I remember haunt me.”

I stare at Thomas. He’s glaring at the sky, his dark eyebrows furrowed. And in his dark eyes, I can see a sort of fire. It’s a different kind of fire than the one I have in my chest. This one is a fire of the heart. It’s a fire of anger.

“What do you remember?” Swift asks casually. I wince again.

“You won’t believe me,” Thomas answers. He looks away, so I can only see the back of his head, covered in a mass of black hair that shines almost blue under the sun.

Like the feathers of a black bird.

“Try me,” Swift replies.

Thomas sighs dramatically. “Well, I don’t remember as many things as I should normally,” he starts, “but the few memories I have are vivid.” He hesitates. “I remember that I was locked in a room. Like a cell. It was padded as if I was going to try to break

out. The padding was white, like a hospital. And there were scientists, or something.

Their lab coats were all marked with an orange-red logo. For a company. And the scientists operated on me. It hurt.” I stop breathing and stare at Thomas. The fire in his eyes expands until it engulfs his whole face. “I also remember, every day, they told me to be grateful. They said I was being resurrected. But I don’t remember much else. I think that the reason why I don’t remember everything is because someone stole my memories from me.” He looks me straight in the eyes. “They took yours, too.”

The fire inside my chest – the different type of fire – begins to gnaw at my heart.

Thomas’s claims are so wild, but the strange thing is… I believe him. What he said somehow didn’t shock me. Shouldn’t his words have shocked me? Shouldn’t I be surprised?

“Wait,” Swift mumbles. “I don’t get it. So someone stole our memories?” he asks.

“I think,” Thomas responds, emotionless.

“Did the same people put us in the hotel?” I ask.

“Probably.” Thomas pauses. “I can’t be sure, though. But I do know that the scientists were mean. They weren’t cruel, though. They weren’t trying to hurt me. But they did, after their operations succeeded. They said that things would improve for me.

And for… the world? Ugh!” Thomas slaps his forehead. “I can’t remember!” He sighs.

“Well, I know for certain that my name is Thomas Chen. That’s good, I guess.”

That would explain how Thomas picked his name so decisively, on our first night in the hotel.

With that, Thomas stands up abruptly, and walks into the hotel, through the front doors, staring at the ground in despair. Swift and I remain on the grass, baffled. We stare at each other in shock. Swift’s green eyes are just as wide as mine, and our breathing stops.

Just then, a group of kids emerges from the forest, to our right. Goldy, Mable, and Glenn. Swift stands up and runs over to them. He starts rambling away about something. I know he’s spilling Thomas’s confessions. I’m not sure that’s a great idea.

Word spreads fast, like a contagious disease.

We were put here by the scientists. Probably.

Everyone from the three search groups emerges safely from the forest, which is good. But no one found anything interesting, which is bad. We found no trace of human life in the forest, no indication of where we are, and nothing to use as food. We did come out of the experience with one piece of information, though: Thomas’s theory. The idea that some “scientists” might have left us in the hotel, intentionally. For what purpose, we don’t know. And we have no clue who the scientists might be. This makes me anxious, but nobody else seems as bothered as I am. Even Peggy seems not to care as much as me. When I ask her about what she thinks, she only replies dispassionately,

“We don’t have enough information about this topic to reach any conclusions. Until we know more I will reserve judgement.”

I go to my room after that. I lie in bed fretting for so long that I somehow doze off.

When I wake up, I go to the library. As I approach, shrieks of laughter spill out of the doors. When I walk in, there’s a pillow fight in full swing. Pillows over here, pillows over there, and kids in between, hooting. At the center of the pillow fight stands Mable, who seems to be battling her opponents effectively, despite her small size. Leaning against a wall nearby is Cyan, happily watching the younger ones play.

I smile too, and join him.

Alaska’s pillow explodes on top of Brynne, and white feathers fly like snow.

Shrieks of laughter ensue. Alaska hits Blaze and another pillow pops. At this point,

Mable runs off with her pillow, screaming something about not wanting to hurt it. By this stage, the carpet is so covered in feathers that little of the burgundy shows through the white.

“Attention!” I yell. Everyone ignores me. “Stop!” I holler, and the whole room petrifies and turns towards me. Oh... Well that was effective! I’m impressed with myself. “You guys shouldn’t be making those pillows explode,” I say. “There’s a limited number of them in the hotel.”

The little kids look to the ground sheepishly.

“Sorry to be a wet blanket,” I say. And I truly am sorry. Because I have a feeling that this type of pure joy isn’t going to last very long.

A gut feeling. Like a premonition.

After lunch, since everyone is gathered in the dining room, I call a group meeting.

I announce that we need to discuss how to open the trapdoor to the basement – where the food stores are supposedly located, and also the door to The Office – with the lock near the ceiling.

“Well,” Alaska starts, “for The Office door, someone tall could go up on some chairs and stick the key in the door, and open it.”

“We don’t have a key, idiot,” Glenn retorts.

Alaska gives him a look. “I’m the bigger person –” she smirks, “and the stronger person so I have nothing to say to you.”

Glenn blinks.

Suddenly, Peggy comes up with an idea. Thank God. “Glenn could probably make a key for both of the doors we need to unlock, out of his fingers.”

Swift seems impressed. “That’s a smart idea,” he mumbles. The first nice thing I’ve heard him say.

“Well, let’s get Glenn to open the trapdoor before The Office one,” Goldy suggests, taking three strands of her hair and twisting them together, “because if the basement actually does have food in it, then it’s the most important room to open right now.”

We all go to the lounge. There, Glenn inspects the trapdoor keyhole, lowering his eye to the ground so he can see through it. Then he places his pinky finger over the tiny

lock, and removes it. He seems confused, and I watch his pinky contort and twist into a long and spindly shape. Glenn pokes his finger into the keyhole, but seems to be straining. Beads of sweat gather on his forehead.

“I can’t,” Glenn finally mumbles. “The keyhole seems to have a weird, twisted shape.”

“Well,” I say, disappointed, “there’s only one thing left to try.”

“Open The Office,” Cyan finishes for me.

We all race to the gigantic door of The Office. Blaze gets there first, and I get there next. I stare up at the keyhole, that’s placed as far to the ceiling as possible. Glenn runs up behind me. I swivel around.

“Alaska’s gonna pick you up now,” I tell him strictly, like an order. I have a feeling he won’t coopera–

“I’m not letting Freakface pick me up,” Glenn replies, crossing his arms.

Alaska laughs. “I love your new name for me,” she says. “But sweetie, we have no other option than for me to pick you up.”

Glenn looks at Alaska like she’s a moldy sock. Alaska smiles at him cheerfully, because she knows she’s going to win this fight.

“Hey Glenn,” Cyan starts. “If you don’t willingly let Alaska pick you up, Amaranth will get angry. And you don’t wanna see her bad side.” How would Cyan know what my bad side is like? Even I don’t remember that.

“And if you refuse,” Alaska adds, “I’ll pick you up anyway.”

“Well, I’ll run away,” Glenn replies.

“I’ll catch you,” Blaze replies.

Everybody bursts out laughing. Except for Glenn. Oddly, the laughter only fuels the fire in my chest, which has only been growing stronger since Thomas mentioned the

“scientists.” I stare at my shoes. Suddenly, without warning, Alaska bends down, grabs Glenn’s ankles, and lifts him straight up into the air like I would lift a chair.

Glenn squeals. “You’re all lunatics!” he yells.

“You’re the kid with Play-Doh fingers,” Alaska reminds him. Glenn slaps his forehead as Alaska walks him as close to the door as possible.

Glenn reaches into the air, but even then, his arm ends a couple feet down from the keyhole near the ceiling. Glenn closes his eyes, relaxes his face, and breathes very hard.

I can’t believe my eyes. I watch Glenn stretch until he is eye-level to the keyhole.

His legs slowly grow like beanstalks. He peers down at us, baffled, even somewhat disgusted by himself. Everybody stares back, horrified. Glenn’s mouth is wide open in surprise. Just like mine.

“You guys look so small down there,” Glenn mumbles.

Then he turns back to the keyhole and sticks his pinky into it. Glenn’s eyebrows furrow as he thinks about how to shape his pinky. Suddenly – Click! The door opens. We all cheer.

Chapter 10

Glenn returns his body to its usual physical shape, and Alaska puts him down on the floor. Silence sweeps over us.

“I didn’t know I could morph my whole body,” Glenn whispers.

Alaska looks at him like he’s the Freakface. But I don’t blame her. And nobody replies, because we’re all slightly scared. Scared of what will be behind the door, yes, but scared of ourselves, too. Nobody says it, but we’re all sensing impending new abilities hanging over us. Is this why we’re all here… Because of these abilities? Do I have an ability, too? The huge door of The Office looms over us like a bad omen. It’s intimidating. It’s just a room, I tell myself. I have nothing to be afraid of. I look around. Nobody’s moving.

“I’ll go in first,” I state, mustering a feeble courage.

“I’ll go with you,” Cyan offers. I give him a weak smile of gratitude.

“Yeah,” Thomas adds. “Me too.”

Once again, I forgot Thomas was there. He speaks so rarely.

I push the door, and it’s really heavy. It opens only a crack. So I lean all my weight against it. I can’t move it. So I give up. Alaska walks over, and kicks the door with her right foot. It swings open, slamming into the interior wall of The Office with a thud.

When I step in, the smell of old things engulfs me and reminds me of someone whom I can’t quite remember. Someone wrinkled and kind. Someone old. A person I

loved a lot, with blue eyes and reading glasses. Someone who reminds me of bowls of candy and crossword puzzles.

I dismiss the thought when I notice the couch in the middle of the room. It’s vast, fit for a king. It’s red velvet, almost matching the carpet outside, woven with intricate patterns of golden flowers. It sits on a Turkish carpet that looks like a tapestry: the patterns of royal blue and cream thread almost look like a galaxy. I tear my eyes away and look down to my feet. The floor of the room is waxed and shiny. I look up. A chandelier hangs above me, with golden tendrils holding real candles – not the lightbulb ones like in the lobby. The candles are, to my confusion, lit.

The candles are lit.

Okay. This is weird.

I look at Cyan and Thomas, who stand beside me. They’re staring at the candles too. They look just as creeped out as I am. I stare at the flickering fire. Who could have lit these?

Peggy, Swift, and Goldy enter the room behind me, and immediately notice the candles as well.

That familiar anxiety rushes into my chest. The candles feel like they’re taunting me. They know something I don’t. I want to get out of this room as soon as possible. I almost turn around and leave when I notice it.

By the side of the room, on a regal wooden table decorated with a golden runner,

I spot a cigar box. It calls out to me.

Drawn to the box, I walk towards it slowly. I read its inscription.

C. R. Cameron, M. D.

The name seems ominously familiar. I despise it immediately. What is it with that name? Thomas glances at the box, and makes a choking sound. I glance at him. For a split second, he seems utterly terrified, but his expression clears when he notices me looking.

I’m about to ask him what’s up when Cyan hands me a tiny key, which he picked up next to the box. I grab it and turn it around in my palms. Peggy examines it with me as Mable climbs onto the red couch, behind.

“The key is made of the same brass as the padlock on the cigar box,” Peggy mumbles.

The fire in my chest briefly moves to my heart. Angrily, I jab the key into the padlock. I want to hurt the lock. I want to break it. The padlock clicks open, and I yank out the key, rip the lock off the box, and throw it across the room with a strength I didn’t know I had. The lock hurtles towards the wall. Bang! It falls to the ground with a clunk. Why did I just do that?!

Everyone in the room turns to me as I fume silently. I can feel the blood rushing to my face, and my heartbeat pounds in my head. I can feel the eyes of the others on me.

My fury dissipates as I stare at the dent in the wall that I just created. I look at the chandelier, and its candles that continue to burn. I realize that my brows are furrowed and I relax them. I realize that my breathing is choppy, so I steady it. My heart is pounding, but that I can’t control.

What’s going on?

Cyan pushes me aside and grabs the key from my hand, giving me a concerned pat on the back.

“You should… take a deep breath,” he says.

“That’s for sure!” Glenn scoffs.

“What’s up with her?” Swift mumbles. Cyan opens the cigar box. Inside, lounging in a bed of red velvet is another key, this one grotesquely shaped, twisted, and miniature.

“You found it!” Thomas exclaims. A thin smile of relief pulls on his face. He looks so normal when he smiles.

Cyan turns towards Glenn and Swift, triumphant, his mismatched eyes sparkling.

“We found the key for the basement door!” he yells. Everybody claps.

Cyan shows Glenn and Swift the preposterous shape of the key in his hands, and they all laugh.

Cyan looks strangely familiar when he smiles.

Next we go to the basement.

In the lounge, Peggy deduces the angle at which the misshapen key should be put into the funny lock on the trapdoor. It takes her a couple of minutes of contemplation, and a couple rounds of trial and error, but eventually she unlocks the door. Once it’s unlocked, I try to open it, using a small handle near the lock. The door is much heavier than I had expected. Once again, Alaska comes over and flings it open. Bang! It slams into the wall behind it.

“Did you have to open it that fast?!” Glenn exclaims. “I have trouble regulating the force,” Alaska responds. “Sorry!”

“You’re gonna have to practice that,” Brynne informs her.

“Yeah I should.” Alaska thinks aloud. “Well, at least this place has a weight room!”

Odd: the hotel has a weight room but no telephones, clocks, or maps.

My gaze lands on the opening at my feet: a huge, black chasm of darkness. A flight of stairs heads downwards. I can only see the top steps, before they disappear into the void.

“Someone go down there,” Swift orders. “I’m tired of waiting here.”

“Okay,” Cyan counters. “If you think you’re so great, why don’t you just go down there yourself?”

Swift hesitates and looks into the dark void. “Actually, I changed my mind. I’m good.”

We sit quietly on the floor near the chasm, waiting for somebody to take action.

Goldy breaks the ice.

“I remember a basement from before,” she mumbles. I look at her pensive face, curious. “It smelled like dust. And… there was a TV, I think. It was bright. And someone

I know went down there a lot… someone I loved.”

“I remember love,” Peggy states. “It was nice… I had a pet, I think. It was fuzzy and big. And it smelled terrible. They’re funny, the little things we’re all starting to remember.”

Peggy’s remark saddens me. I remember love, too. I remember someone old and wrinkled, whom I loved very much.

“I remember a basement!” Cyan exclaims, popping my thought bubble. “It was full of stuff, and there was a box of wooden swords. The place was painted orange, I think. And there was a poster on a wall, with roses on it.”

My brow furrows. Now that Cyan mentions it, I remember a basement that was exactly like that. It was painted orange. It was somewhere comfortable, a place with a poster that… depicted roses. I hesitate. The strange déjà-vu feeling comes back to me.

The fire in my chest flickers. The smell of humidity drifts up from the void of the trapdoor hole. It smells soothing and familiar. Sharply, I take in a breath. And I flash back to a place with orange walls, a box of wooden swords, and dust that danced in the light poured in from a thin window. I remember something. But am I remembering the same place as Cyan? It sure seems like it.

“Did the basement you’re talking about smell like… What is it called again?

Sand… Sandalwood?” I ask Cyan. He nods, and his eyes open wide. “There was a pile of paintings in the back, wasn’t there?” He nods. “And a bean bag that looked like an eyeball, right?”

Cyan stares and nods slowly. I’m sitting next to him, and from this angle, he looks more familiar than ever. Peggy eyes Cyan and me suspiciously. I pretend not to notice.

“I don’t wanna go down there,” Thomas mumbles almost inaudibly, nodding at the void. “I hate the dark.”

“Well someone’s gotta go,” Swift replies.

“Go ahead,” Peggy says to Swift, pointing at the void. Swift pretends not to hear her and brushes his hands on his pants.

“You can go first,” Cyan says to Glenn.

“Actually, Goldy wants to,” Glenn replies.

“I do not!”

All these morons are getting on my nerves.

I place my foot on the first step and keep walking. Five steps down, and the darkness envelops me completely. I count the steps as I descend. One... two… seven… twelve… twenty.

I hop onto the floor and look up to a square of light, where five silhouettes are watching me. Someone begins to walk down the stairs.

Cyan. I can tell from his hair.

Someone else follows. It looks like Swift. To my surprise, he helps Peggy get down the stairs. I didn’t know he’s capable of being so helpful. Eventually, all of us are in the darkness (except for Thomas, of course). Here, it’s as if all the lights in the world are snuffed out in here, and the only thing left is black. I’ll admit it, I feel slightly jumpy. The underbelly of the hotel isn’t very welcoming.

“Where’s the light switch?” Mable asks. Her words echo off the walls. All of a sudden, Blaze shrieks.

Everyone jumps.

“What’s wrong?!” Blaze yells.

What happened? Did Glenn run into something? Is he hurt?!

“There’s a bug on my neck!” he screams from somewhere to my right.

My fear instantly disappears. Glenn backs up into the small beam of light pouring in from the lounge, and I can see his frightened expression. I stifle a laugh. So does

Peggy.

“This isn’t funny!” Glenn insists.

“Lemme deal with this,” Cyan says casually, strolling over to Glenn. “Where’s the bug?”

“On my neck! I just told you!” I can hear him wriggle.

“‘Kay.” Cyan reaches to Glenn’s neck, and in the light cast from the trapdoor, I can see him pick up the insect carefully, with two of his fingers. How did he see the insect in the darkness?

“It’s an itty bitty silver fish!” Cyan says, holding the creature in the light. “Aww, he’s adorable!”

I stare at Cyan in horror. There’s nothing cute about an insect with an uncountable number of legs. Cyan, usually so calm and collected, becomes inexplicably agitated.

“Do you hear that?” he whispers harshly.

“Hear what?” Brynne asks.

“That talking.” Cyan’s voice trembles. “I hear a voice.”

Everyone goes silent, and, for a second, I can hear no breathing. Then Mable exhales and whispers: “Is Cyan crazy?”

My thoughts exactly.

“I’m not crazy!” Cyan yells, freaking out. He repeats himself multiple times, his voice growing louder and louder. In between his yelling is a thick and intimidating silence. “Do you hear it now?” he asks, looking at me, his eyes wide and scared. “The bug’s telling us to let it go. It’s saying its best friend will be devastated if we crush it.”

“Wait, what?” someone says.

“The little bug. He needs to get back to his friend.” Cyan seems to realize that he’s lost us, because he starts talking directly to the insect, holding it up to his face where its million legs writhe in the air. “It’s okay. I’m not gonna hurt you. Don’t worry.”

I start to seriously question Cyan’s sanity by the time Peggy brings up a very good point.

“Well,” she says hesitantly, “considering everyone around here turns out to have a special talent, maybe Cyan can hear... bug voices?”

I sort of believe her.

“Cyan?” I ask gently.

“Yes?” he answers. He looks demented as he stares at the silver fish. Like he’s distracted, listening to someone else. He’s out of sorts.

“Have you heard bug voices before?”

Cyan thinks for a moment. “Well, when we went on that scouting mission in the forest, I could swear I heard two squirrels bickering over an acorn. But, then I thought that it might’ve just been Alaska and Blaze.” He hesitates. “But I could’ve sworn the ant on my leg said hi to me, this morning. And on my first night here, when I went outside, I really felt like that fox was talking to itself.”

I let out a short laugh. “Well,” I finally reply with a sigh, “after all the strange things that happen around here, I actually sort of believe you.”

“Wow!” Brynne exclaims. “That’s so cool! He can hear animals!”

“Can you speak to the animals?” Peggy asks. “Do they understand you?”

“Little bug? Can you understand me?” Cyan asks the silver fish nicely, like he’s talking to a baby. He listens to an inaudible response, then nods. “Nice to meet you too.

Now, go back to your friend. We won’t bother you anymore.” He places the bug on the floor.

The basement lights turn on. Having just adjusted to the darkness, my eyes are stunned. I blink ferociously. I notice Blaze standing near the stairway, with his hand on a light switch.

I look around the basement. Squinting, I can only make out the contour of canned goods and bagged foods. In the back of the room, I see a big box.

Cyan swallows hesitantly and says, “Yeah, I think I can talk to animals.” “Even insects,” Peggy adds.

By this point, I’m not surprised.

The basement is a labyrinth, almost a town made of food. The stacked cans stretch to the ceiling like skyscrapers, and the piles of bagged foods are like mountains.

In the back of the room, a large machine vibrates and shakes, hard at work. It’s a huge refrigerator, obviously, with its white plastic exterior and big metal handle.

I walk down the streets of the food town, and read labels as I go. Canned soup, more soup, fruit, peas… Goldy is delighted. I admire the scene.

Eleven pairs of feet shuffle around, exploring the place. I’ve never seen so much food in my life. Wait… how do I know that? What if I’ve seen more food? What if… Never mind. I groan quietly. Memories are starting to give me a headache. Because I don’t know if I remember correctly. What if I’m just making stuff up?

I approach the refrigerator, impressed by its size and the noise it produces. The fridge is peculiar. I feel compelled to open it. I reach for its metal handle, which is bigger than my head. I pull. Nothing happens. I pull harder. Still nothing. I put both of my hands on the handle and pull as hard as I can. Suddenly, the fridge opens. It sends me hurtling straight into a stack of food. Metal cans rain down on me, smashing my head, surely giving me bruises. The metal cylinders pile on top of me, and I can’t see through them. I try to move my limbs but I can’t move. My whole body hurts. Why did I pull on that handle so hard?! With a start, I realize that I can no longer breathe, with the cans pressing down on my stomach and face. I shout. I wriggle. Nothing. Just as I feel myself suffocating, the pressure begins to lift. My friends are yanking off the cans that weigh me down. Soon I can move again. Alaska pulls me out of the pile.

Ouch.

I make a whining noise. Cyan smirks, and Glenn laughs. I’m about to yell at them when I realize that a thick mist is pouring out of the fridge, turning the dry basement into a cold and mysterious cloud. It’s like an alien planet in a sci-fi movie. It’s freezing in here. I put my hand out in front of me. I can still see it, but it’s blurry.

Goldy walks into the fridge like it’s a hallway. I follow her. The others come in behind me.

It’s like a walk-in closet that’s been caught in a snowstorm. There are tubs, boxes, cans of food stacked on eleven big shelves that reach to the ceiling. A ladder is stored on one of the shelves. Probably to get to the higher shelves. I’m in awe.

“There’s not much stuff in this basement,” Peggy remarks, dissatisfied.

“What?!” everyone else exclaims.

“Based on my calculations – which are rough, I admit, but reliable – and considering we’ll be here for a while… we only have enough food for four months. I mean, the inventory in my letter had suggested that, but I was still hoping for better, for safety’s sake and all. Just in case… well, just in case it takes the adults a while to find us here. We’re going to be careful about how much we use.”

We all fidget, worried by the news.

Silence falls, and with it fear. We don’t know if the grown-ups will come back by the time four months pass. It’s terrifying when you have to fend for yourself, and you don’t know what’s coming.

I begin to think more deeply.

If the grown-ups don’t come back soon… what will become of us? With no food, maybe we’ll have to leave the hotel, and go searching in the forest. But does the forest have any food? Does the forest end, and if it does, what’s beyond it?

Sometimes I hate thinking.

Interchapter 7

January 8, 2061

Washington, DC

2:45 AM

By Sebastian Gonzalez

Breaking news: a massive explosion occurred over Libyan territory in North

Africa as a plane from Morocco attempted to send a new, unspecified nuclear defense weapon to its ally Egypt. The load exploded as the aircraft – the Sakkr 77-B – flew over the Sahara desert. Five aviators died, and although no towns were struck, the explosion has left a peculiar basin in the Sahara that international drones are monitoring for radiation levels and levels of undisclosed chemicals. Social media has dubbed the area the “WasteZone”. An advisor to President Greenawalt confirmed that the United

Nations will be issuing an order for all travelers to fly around the “WasteZone”, and plans are underway to evacuate populations within a 500-kilometer radius.

More information to come.

Chapter 11

At dinnertime, I go to the dining room, and sit down at the long table. Cyan sits to my right. Mable sits in front of me. Blaze darts into the room, leaving the kitchen doors flapping behind him. Barely a second passes before a bowl and a spoon appear before me. Blaze stops, checks that everyone got dishes, then zips into a seat next to Brynne. By now, every kid is seated, except for Goldy and Alaska who prepared the meal, and who walk into the room from the kitchen.

Alaska holds a huge pot full of green liquid, and Goldy holds a black ladle. Goldy doles out a small portion to each kid. My stomach grumbles when she gives me my soup.

I stare at it. That’s not enough to fill me up. But I don’t say anything. It’s okay. We need to ration, to survive for who knows how long. The thought scares me and makes my appetite vanish anyway. Cyan, on the other hand, seems unfazed and I hear him slurping away.

I pick up my spoon. I’ve got to eat a little. My eyebrows furrow. My spoon feels heavy. Am I really this weak? I try to pull the spoon up to the edge of my bowl, but it gets heavier as the fire inside my chest gets stronger. Cyan looks me in the eyes with a strange expression on his face.

“Remember how we were talking about that basement that we remembered?”

“Yeah,” I respond. How could I forget? “I think we were both remembering…” he doesn’t finish his sentence and instead looks utterly perplexed.

“The same place?”

He nods. “We know each other, don’t we?”

I stare into his eyes. “Yeah. But it’s weird, because I feel like everyone else here is a complete stranger to me.”

Cyan nods in agreement.

“Lemme hold your hands!” Mable squeals from across the table.

Cyan and I look at her.

“Our hands?” he asks, motioning at me and him. “Yeah!” Mable squeals again.

Cyan reaches out and grabs Mable’s chubby, tiny outstretched hand. I look at the hand she’s reaching to me with and raise an eyebrow.

“Why?” I ask skeptically.

“I have feelings!” Mable exclaims happily, as if that explained everything.

I give Cyan a look.

“Just do it,” he says to me. I hesitate. “She’s five,” he adds. “Humor her.”

I give Mable my hand. She squeezes my palm and closes her eyes shut, hard. She wrinkles her nose and purses her lips until they disappear into her freckled face. Then she opens her eyes suddenly.

“Hurray!” she exclaims. “You’re best friends! Always!” Then she picks up her spoon, dips it in her bowl of soup, and seems to forget us.

I look at Cyan in confusion. He seems just as confused as I am.

“OW!” someone screams. Glenn stands up from the dining table abruptly, clutching his arm. “IT’S BLISTERING!”

“What happened?!” I yell back, panicking.

Peggy looks at me, humorless, from where she sits across from Glenn. “He accidentally touched the soup pot, didn’t realize it’s scalding, and now he’s gone and injured himself.”

“IT HURTS!” Glenn screams some more.

Goldy pops up from the table like a daisy.

“Get that under cold water now,” she says. “Swift, take him to the kitchen and make sure he follows directions. Then we’re gonna give him an ice pack. Mmmm… but we don’t have one…” She pauses to think. “We do have the bag of frozen peas, though.

Blaze, get Glenn that. It’s in the kitchen fridge. He’ll use it after the rinse. Next we need to apply lotion and find bandages.”

“How do you know all that?” Peggy wonders earnestly, used to being the informed one.

“I don’t know…” Goldy responds. “I just had a feeling. Like an instinct.”

People are having a lot of feelings today, huh? “It’s ironic she said that,” Cyan whispers to me. “After Mable just talked about her feelings, too.” He chuckles.

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“I was thinking the same thing,” I reply. But I don’t laugh like he does. I just think of the lit candles in The Office, and the burning fire in my chest.

When I go to sleep that night, I feel apprehensive. Considering that no adults are around, everything is going relatively well. Surprisingly well, in fact. But it feels like our relative safety won’t last long, even though nothing has gone particularly wrong, and with everyone’s talents, living in the hotel is actually much easier to manage. Nobody’s died, right? I start to chuckle. Then I stop, abruptly. I should count my lucky stars. In bed, I stare at the ceiling, and think of the talents that some of my friends have. I realize that I’ve never thought of the other kids as my friends before. At least not consciously. When will I have powers? Do I have powers? I drift off to sleep unaware.

I wake up with a jolt. Screaming pierces the calmness of midnight, like a knife jabbing ripping through the nighttime peace. I jump out of bed, frightened and shaking.

The screaming continues. Many people are yelling at once, and some of them are saying things. I hear someone sprint down the hallway.

“Wake up Amaranth!” a voice yells in the hallway, muffled by the sound of the screams. It’s Blaze, I can tell. He pounds on my door.

I rush out to him, flinging my door open so it slams into the wall with a bang.

Tears are running down Blaze’s face. His dark hair is flecked with pieces of soot.

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“There’s a fire!” Blaze yells over the sounds of the screams. He points to the lobby and zips off. I race behind him, my feet pounding on the floorboards and my heart pounding in my chest. When I get to the marble entryway, the heat hits my face immediately. I look to my left, behind the winding staircase. Down the hallway – the one with the kitchen and dining room – is a huge, red, raging fire, spitting soot onto the walls. I sprint down the staircase three steps at a time to where the others have gathered.

Most of the other kids, shouting and crying at the same time, are throwing bucket-fulls of water at the red beast, to little effect. The fire is too strong. Even Cyan, usually so calm, looks desperate. I glance at Brynne, who’s sobbing as she throws water into the flame.

I notice a large empty cooking bowl spinning on the ground. Someone must have recently dropped it. I sprint to it, pick it up, and run to the nearest source of water: the pool. When I get there, Peggy is lowering a bucket into the blue. She’s trying her hardest to help, though her little hands struggle to hold up the bucket as it fills with water. She jogs out of the room slowly once the bucket is full to the middle, trying to keep all the water inside.

I fill up my cooking bowl and run back to the red monster, trying not to panic.

I thrust the water into the flames, but it’s futile: the liquid evaporates immediately. Just then, looking into the center flames, I can make out a small patch of white, very far away.

Before I can react, Swift yells out above the crackling roar of the fire monster.

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“Someone’s in there! Someone’s trapped in the fire!”

All the screaming stops as if a mute button has been pressed. In the thickness of the flames, a figure staggers, then drops to the ground.

The monster has eaten a child.

“Who’s that?” Goldy wails.

“Who’s not out here?” Peggy demands, barely loud enough to surmount the raging sound of the flames.

I glance around. My eyes widen when it strikes me.

Thomas.

“What should we do?!” Peggy cries, desperate, her small face sweating and her glasses smeared with soot, her voice abraded and her hands clutching the bucket that’s larger than her torso.

I don’t know what to do. But I’m the oldest. And I’m the leader… A realization strikes me. It’s on me if someone gets hurt. I need to think fast.

I take a deep breath.

I throw myself into the fire.

The world slows as I sprint.

What happens after death?

Shut up. Days pass. Or maybe seconds.

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After what seems like an eternity, I finally step into a little clearing in the fire. It’s at the very end of the hallway, where the carpet ends and the floor becomes marble – the same marble as in the lobby. Thomas lies on the floor at my feet, blacking out. What did I think I would do now that I’m here?! Momentarily, I panic. Then I get a hold of myself. With every shred of strength I have, I pick up Thomas and turn to run back to the lobby. He’s surprisingly light. I don’t hesitate. I sprint back through the fire, out the way I came. It’s more like a run than a sprint, really. Thomas is slowing me down.

I can feel the fire burning off the hairs on my arms as I go. I start to struggle for air. The heat is suffocating. I think I have a headache. Or a migraine. Or a – I can’t tell where I am in the hallway anymore. I could be at the beginning, the middle, or the end. The side, the other side. Left, right, up, down… My running pace begins to slow as I tire. By this point, I’m basically jogging.

Suddenly, someone grabs me: a hand clasps onto my arm. I don’t compute.

I lurch forward as the person drags me along the hallway. I open my mouth to yell but no sound comes out. I realize that my eyes have been closed for a while, so I open them into a squint. All I see is fire. I close them again. My legs are moving as fast as they can to keep pace with the person who pulls me. I try to figure out what’s happening, but pain begins to wash over me. Up down left right. I’m delirious. My thoughts wander strangely. One side the other side the middle. I forget what I’m doing. I’m in the process of dropping Thomas when –

Gasp!

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A gust of fresh air greets me and I fall to my knees. I sense someone dragging

Thomas away from me.

I fade out, pain and panic melting into darkness.

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Interchapter 8

January 11, 2061

Washington, DC

2:45 AM

By Claire DeLeau

Following an executive order by President Greenawalt, the private company

SuperTex shut down yesterday after a decade of removing dead children from hospitals for unclear purposes. By shutting the company and sending Washington investigators to inspect the SuperTex campus, President Greenawalt fulfilled one of her key campaign promises, which won her bipartisan votes during the 2060 Presidential Race.

But the story is not over yet.

The President’s investigators never got to SuperTex, because today at 3:00 pm sharp, the laboratories – located in a remote undisclosed location in New York State – blew up. Every building on the SuperTex campus exploded at once, leaving only rubble.

It seems that nobody was inside the buildings when the explosions occurred. Nor was it a typical wartime bombing like the others this month (in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and

Tampa, Florida): no enemy aircraft were spotted anywhere near the location. Police are investigating.

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Meanwhile, many Americans are voicing relief that the mysterious company

SuperTex is shuttered for good.

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Chapter 12

I wake up slowly to the pleasant smell of honey.

Blurry lines make up my surroundings and I’m confused. I can hear calm voices chatting around me. Someone laughs.

“I swear! Juggling knives hasn’t even hurt once!”

“Are you sure it’s not dangerous?” “Yeah.”

“Okay well try not to do it anyway, just in case –”

“Ugh! You’re boooooring!”

My vision starts to return, and now I can almost see straight. I must have been in this flat position for a while, because my limbs are stiff and my neck aches. I’m on a fluffy, narrow bed with a barrier on the side. Scratch that. I’m on a couch. What’s happening? Some sort of crust covers my skin. I don’t move. I feel too strange to move. So I begin listening to the voices.

“Goldy, when do you think lunch will be ready?”

“The soup’s been on the stove for a while now. So maybe in like twenty minutes.”

“Good ‘cuz I’m starving.”

“Me too.”

“Me three.”

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Cyan? The voices give me a headache. I groan. The voices stop talking. Cyan’s head appears above mine. I get an unpleasant view up his nostrils.

“Hi Amaranth! Had a nice nap?”

I sit up, and my skin tugs on itself, stinging. I groan some more.

“What happened?” I moan.

“You saved Thomas! That’s what happened!” exclaims a high-pitched voice.

I turn my head to the direction of the voice, making my neck ache. I’m in terrible shape. I feel sick. It’s Brynne, and she looks elated. “Huh?” I muster.

“You saved Thomas! You’re a hero!”

“Mh?” I respond. I start to smile, but the corners of my mouth pull on my raw face.

“Amaranth,” Cyan says, looking somewhat puzzled. “Do you remember what happened?”

I sit up stiffly and gaze at my feet, thinking.

It comes back to me in a flood of emotion. Memories of the fire rush back. I jump to my feet, making the skin on my knees crack.

“FIRE!” I yell.

“It’s okay!” Goldy interjects, taking my aching hand softly. “The fire’s been put out! And you saved Thomas!”

“Let’s be friends!” Brynne squeals.

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“Wait, what?” I ask, confused.

“That was almost a week ago,” Cyan answers. “You’ve been sleeping for six days.

Aren’t you hungry?”

I notice that my stomach is making whale calls again.

“Yes,” I answer. I’ve been sleeping for six days? “I’ll get you some food,” Goldy says, stepping away. Cyan follows her.

I saved someone’s life? What? But…

“Stop!” I yell. I raise my arm to point at Cyan, but my skin cracks near my shoulder and I lower my limb, grimacing. Cyan turns around.

“How did the fire get put out? And how…” I stare at Brynne. She looks better than ever, except for her hair, which looks frizzled on the ends, like she curled her hair with an iron one two many times.

Cyan takes a deep breath and launches into an explanation.

“You ran into the fire to save Thomas because everyone else was too chicken. By that point, Thomas was passing out from the fumes in the fire but he was okay. Then you got to the end of the hallway and picked Thomas up and ran back like half the length of the hallway and then Brynne ran in as you were also gonna pass out, grabbed you, and ran you out of there.”

Brynne beams.

My brain does a backflip. I feel like my life is a DIY cabinet, and I’m reading the manual to figure out how to set it up.

“Can we be sisters?” Brynne asks.

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I laugh, ignoring my stinging face as a smile pulls on my skin.

“Yes, Brynne, we can be sisters.”

“Yes!”

I look down at myself. My jumpsuit has been rolled up at the legs and the sleeves to reveal bright pink arms and legs. Burns. They look like they’re healing, and they’re coated with honey.

“Goldy says your burns are really bad,” Brynne says, pulling up a chair in front of me as I sit down on the couch, pulling the skin on my knees again. I look around. We’re in my room, I think. Or someone else’s room. Brynne continues.

“After the fire, we thought you would die, and Thomas too, but Peggy and Goldy figured out how to make you and Thomas better. Peggy did the thinking and Goldy did the doing. Now you’ll both be fine. Thomas is doing great, by the way. Better than you.

And also, your hair grows really fast. It got mostly burned off but grew back. Now it’s pink. I think pink’s your natural color.”

I get up and walk to the mirror. I’m staring at a girl with short pink hair. It’s unsettling. My hair is choppy and ends right under my chin. If it got burned off, then how did it grow so fast? I notice that my face isn’t as deformed as I had expected, although it is yellowish and oozes slightly near my temple. In the mirror, I see Brynne behind me, smiling. Her eyes are as sparkly as ever.

“How come you’re not burned?” I ask, turning towards her.

“Turns out my talent is that I’m basically immune to everything. Like, I just don’t get hurt. Like ever.”

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I blink.

“I admit, it’s pretty cool,” she continues.

I think for a moment, and glance back at myself in the mirror. “Are my burns permanent?” I ask.

“Goldy says they aren’t.”

“How would Goldy know that?”

“She has really good instincts about healing. And food. And basically just surviving and life and all that. Peggy says it’s like she studied all these things. But she didn’t. She just… knows. In her heart.”

I nod, not entirely convinced.

“Also, Goldy and Peggy realized that we all heal pretty quickly around here. Like mega-humans.”

Something about the word “mega-humans” shakes up my inside. I can feel the fire in my chest combust for the first time since I woke up. Shoot, I almost forgot that existed.

Speaking of fire… “Hey Brynne?” I ask. She looks up from the floor. “How did the fire start?”

The sparkle in Brynne’s eyes disappears like someone turned off the lights.

“We don’t know,” she responds.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean we don’t know. We don’t know who, or what could have started it.”

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I think of the lit candles from the grandiose office room, then another thought comes to mind.

“Do you think it was one of us kids who started the fire?”

“No… why would we do that?”

I can’t answer her question, so I respond with another one. “But… how did

Thomas get into the fire?” “I’ll go get Thomas, and he can tell you.”

Thomas hesitates, and sits down beside me on the couch in my room. He stares down at his hands, which are pink and raw-looking, but not as badly burned as mine.

“So,” he mumbles. “I heard something in my room at night, on my door. Like a tapping sound. Like nothing I’d ever heard before. So I opened my door, and walked into the hallway. I knew it wasn’t Swift walking around as usual at night. It didn’t sound like him. Plus, Swift says he was in the library.” Thomas pauses. “Anyway, I heard… metal. Like clicking.” He sighs, exasperated. “I don’t know what I heard. All I know is I followed the sounds to the lobby, and went to that long hallway next to the kitchen, then realized the carpet was soaked. It was completely drenched. And when I got to the end of the hallway, I heard a click. So I turned around, and there was a fire in the front of the hallway. I tried to run to the kitchen door, but the fire moved towards me super fast.

And suddenly I was boxed in.”

Brynne interjects. “Peggy thinks the liquid was some sort of fuel for the fire.”

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I stare at Brynne. I have a million questions. How did the liquid get on the carpet? What were the metallic sounds?

“Where did you say Swift was, again?” I wonder.

“The library.”

I raise an eyebrow.

Just then, Cyan comes into the room with a plate of food. Following him are all the other kids in the hotel. They probably heard I’m awake and wanted to see me. Here they are now, crowded in my room.

“Hi Amaranth!” Mable yells.

“You okay!?” Glenn wonders.

“Oh. My. Gosh,” Alaska squeals. “You saved Thomas!”

I look at Thomas, beside me. His skin is very dry, and he’s missing a few patches of hair, but his burns are almost healed. Wow.

Later, moving stiffly, I go to the lobby to investigate the fire. I enter the kitchen.

Looks pretty normal. I snicker. Pleasant surprise. A tiny area on the side of a wall looks charred – the wall next to the door to the hallway. But the darkness ends abruptly, as if the fire put in an effort to contain itself in the hallway. Weird. I count my lucky stars. I go out into the hallway again. It looks like a blackened tunnel, with remnant ash in a couple of corners, and sooty, peeling wallpaper.

I leave to inspect the lobby. All the other kids are here. I watch them. Everyone seems to be happy. Our talents are making things interesting. Glenn is doing stretches

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with Blaze, preparing his friend for a timed run, supervised by Peggy. Brynne is juggling a couple of knives, despite the fact that she was told not to by Cyan, and only tried it once before. The juggling seems to interest Swift, who’s staring in awe at the weapons in the air. Thomas and Goldy are playing cards with Alaska, who accidentally crushes two queens in her hands. Cyan is talking to a squirrel through the window.

Things are okay for once.

I hope things will stay like this. But something tells me they won’t.

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Interchapter 9

February 18, 2061.

Hieronymus,

Last month, our envoys exploded the facilities exactly as we planned. Nothing was left of our work for the Government to find. That was a weight lifted from my chest.

You must be wondering what is happening with our projects now.

All eleven subjects have been moved into the Mega-Freeze 2000. As you recall, their biochemistry was altered to enable them to enter cryopreservation. The Subjects will remain in storage until it is safe to remove them and begin their training. The

Mega-Freeze is currently at the Scientific ally site in Kyoto. Doctors Cameron and

Tanaka will be keeping the subjects safe. Information about their existence is held only by the doctors, me, and you. Dr. Tanaka suggested the title for the project: Project

Revival.

I will send the documents from the Neuro-Radio Project to the doctors separately. I am still finalizing them.

Today, I will be heading to my home in Oregon. When the Government and the media divert their attention from SuperTex I will catch a plane to Japan.

Best wishes for the Community,

Madeleine Vérité

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Chapter 13

Not long before dinner, Swift comes running down the stairs yelling something about a snake. In the commotion we all wind up in the lobby. It feels as though whenever something happens, we all head to this room.

“I was drawing a picture of a snake! I swear that’s all I was doing!” he screams, hyperventilating.

“Calm down!” Peggy exclaims. “Explain clearly.”

Swift takes a deep breath. “I was drawing. I was trying to draw a garden snake, right? Realistically? Then I touched my drawing with my left hand to smudge in a couple shadows, and…” He shudders. “A real snake, like, came out of my hand. Like, sprouted from my palm. A snake!” He bites his lip. “And I saw it slither into the library! Fast!”

“You’re kidding, right?” Glenn asks.

“A snake just... popped out of your hand?” I wonder, searching for clarification.

Swift nods ferociously, his breathing speeding up.

“So your hand’s a 3-D printer?” Cyan asks. I chuckle.

“3-D printer hands could be Swift’s talent,” Brynne suggests.

“I thought his talent was being awake all the time,” I say.

“Apparently not,” Peggy replies.

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“Please help me!” Swift pleads desperately. He looks like he might be shaking a little.

I’ve never seen him this frightened before.

“I need to catch the anaconda,” he stammers, “but I can’t by myself! It’s a rattlesnake!” Swift’s audience stops breathing.

“Anacondas and rattlesnakes are completely different things,” Cyan remarks.

Swift pauses to think. “Oh. It’s a rattlesnake, then. But it’s the size of an anaconda. Whatever it is, it came straight out of my imagination. It’s not a normal snake.”

Now we start to panic.

We’re gathered on the stairs when we notice a maraca-like tail slither off down a hallway on the second floor. It’s the rattlesnake. And it’s bigger than an anaconda – the rattle alone is the size of Mable. And it seems to be an almost luminescent shade of yellow. I do a double-take. Did I just see all that correctly? Someone’s scream penetrates the room immediately. I cover my ears with my hands. My armpit burns crack and my elbows sting.

“How the heck did you make something like that?!” Glenn exclaims, pointing at

Swift. Glenn’s voice echoes throughout the room.

“Okay. Let me put it like this.” Swift then proceeds to ramble without breathing.

“I think I can make objects appear out of thin air, well, out of pictures. Or maybe even

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just from my imagination. And things come out of my hands. Oh, by the way, the snake I made is neon because I colored it with a highlighter when I drew it, because I couldn’t find anything else. So when it appeared, it appeared neon. And I wasn’t trying to produce it from my hands, it came out before I could stop it!”

So I’ve got an oversized, neon rattlesnake on my hands. Great. Just great. The moment I wake up from a week of sleep, I have to deal with something like this.

“What do we do?” Cyan whispers at me, once an eerie silence washes over the room.

“Why are you asking me?” I respond, irritated.

“‘Cuz you’re the boss.”

“Well you be the boss for once.” “Okay.”

Cyan thinks for a moment.

“Run!” People start to move.

“Bad idea!” I interject. Everyone freezes. I guess it’s up to me to be smart. “Peggy, give me info on snakes.”

“Well it’s not a normal snake,” Peggy answers, “so info-wise I’ve got nothing. I suppose it could eat anything in any way. Or maybe it doesn’t even eat at all. Swift said it came out of his imagination.”

Gotcha.

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“There are two things we could do!” I announce. The snake rattles its neon tail, making a loud maraca-shake sound that I can hear coming from the second floor. I resume. “First course of action: we give the snake something huge and awful to eat, hoping that it’ll digest it badly and… die.”

“Why do we have to kill it?” Swift wonders. I stare at the guy. “It’s done nothing wrong,” Swift continues.

“I don’t wanna get eaten,” I respond. I glance at Glenn, who seems preoccupied.

“If you want, we could feed Glenn to the snake,” I suggest, kidding. Glenn stares at me, offended and mildly confused.

“There’s a killer snake on the loose and you’re joking?!” Blaze exclaims. I shrug.

“We don’t know if it’s a killer snake,” Peggy interjects. “For all we know, it could be a pacifist!”

“Get Cyan to talk to the snake,” Glenn suggests.

“That’s actually a great idea,” Cyan replies confidently. He pats Glenn on the back and starts to walk up the stairs.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

Cyan looks at me as if I said something stupid. “I’m gonna go talk to the snake!”

He then mumbles to himself. “Obviously.”

I follow Cyan. He needs someone to look after him. I glance behind us. Nobody follows me. That’s okay, I guess… I walk with Cyan up to the second floor. The snake’s body is stretched out along the length of the hallway and its head is at the other end.

It’s at least forty feet long, an intimidating beast with a body thicker than a kids’ bicycle

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wheel, and blindingly yellow scales. Every now and then it wriggles. The snake lies in the smack center of the hallway, so Cyan and I stick to the wall to make sure we don’t get too close to it. Did Swift really create this thing? Well, he must have. It’s not like it slithered in from the forest. I don’t notice when we get to the monster’s head, because Cyan is standing in front of me, and, being taller, he blocks my view.

I gasp when I see the face. The snake’s long white fangs stick out of its mouth. Its blue eyes shine like maleficent stars. Its nostrils look like caves. I bet Mable’s hand could fit in them. Actually, I bet my hand could fit in them. The snake’s drool, pooling on the floor, smells putrid.

“Hi,” Cyan says confidently. He pauses and listens to the snake’s response.

“Profanity isn’t appropriate. By the way, could you please redirect yourself into the forest? Or, you know, not stay here. Like–”

Did the snake just interrupt Cyan?

“No, we don’t have any–”

What’s it saying?

Cyan’s face contorts. His eyes widen to make large, mismatched circles, and his eyebrows raise to reveal worry lines. His mouth opens, turning down slightly at the corners. Something bad must be happening. He turns to me. “Run!” he urges. “Get outta here, Amaranth!”

What?!

Cyan pushes me. I start to sprint down the hallway. My burned body aches from the strain of moving so fast.

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Next to me, the snake body is moving rapidly. The maraca-like tail is approaching quickly from the far end of the hallway, and it's loud rattling noise resonates inside my head. I glance behind me as I run. The snake’s head is approaching from behind, its mouth wide open to reveal a long forked tongue and a very, very deep throat. I thought that type of snake waits for its prey?! My heart starts beating hard. “Please don’t eat us!” Cyan wails. Just then, the maraca tail passes me, whips to the side, and knocks me to the ground. My head hits the floor when I fall. Cyan trips over me. Ouch. I get up as quickly as possible and start to run again. Cyan is now in front.

“EW!”

The snake’s forked tongue licks my jumpsuit. That means the snake is close! I try to run faster, but it’s hard, while my skin is still healing, and Cyan – the slower one – is in front. Eventually, I get to the stairs, and Cyan and I throw ourselves down them. I notice the look of stricken terror on the faces of the children in the lobby when they see the face of the snake behind me. I leap off the last steps of the staircase.

“Everyone get far away from that snake!” Cyan screams. I look behind me. The huge head of the monster dashes over the steps. My black boots almost slip on the marble floor as I run out the front door. I throw myself into the sunshine. The other kids follow. The front door slams and reopens many times, as scared children pour out of the building. My heart rate plateaus as I begin to calm down.

Once every kid is outside, I take a deep breath. I can still hear the yellow monster, as it rams its face into the door of the lobby, trying to get out. But it’s too big to leave the

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building. It’s trapped. Eventually, the snake stops it’s knocking and sounds like it’s calmed down.

I shiver and look around me. Everyone’s here… good. I begin a head-count. One, two… I pause. I count again. And again. Wait… where’s the eleventh kid?! My face must reflect my emotion, because Cyan gasps when he looks at me. Swift mumbles something about an apocalypse. I see it now. Mable’s missing. I have a very bad feeling about this. What do I do? Wait a second…

“Peggy!” I yell. She rushes to me.

“Who’s missing?!” Peggy asks, her chest rising and falling fast.

“Mable’s gone. I think she’s still inside the hotel.”

“What?!” Peggy hesitates, and thinks. “Blaze! Goldy!” she shouts, “We need you!” Both kids snap to attention.

“I want Blaze to run into the hotel and look for Mable. Grab her and bring her out here. Then Goldy can heal her if she’s hurt.”

Blaze disappears behind the hotel. He’s going in through the back door. Moments later he whooshes back, white as a sheet.

“I don’t think I should move Mable,” he whispers.

“Why not?!” Peggy spits, stressed.

“Because her arm has two big punctures, and I don’t know if I should mess with that.”

Peggy and I exchange looks of horror.

“There’s a hole in Mable’s arm?” Swift asks, incredulous.

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Blaze’s voice quiets some more. “There are two holes. I think the snake bit her.” Peggy clasps her hands together. “Blaze, Swift, Amaranth – let’s go into the hotel through the back door,” she orders.

I nod.

I’ve never been to the back door before. Swift opens the door as quietly as possible. We tiptoe silently through the hotel and into the lobby. Blaze whispers that

Mable lies near the snake. So we go looking for the monster. Stupidest idea ever. When we arrive behind the staircase in the lobby, I stifle a scream. A little redheaded body is on the ground near the monster, and a sparkling red puddle. Oh no. I look at the snake, which is motionless. It’s waiting at the front door. It did something to Mable. I look at Swift. He’s traumatized. Just like me.

“What are we going to do?” I whisper. “We need a plan to kill that thing.” I nod at the beast then turn to Swift. “You made the snake. Un-make it.”

“I don’t know how! I swear!” Swift looks utterly depressed.

“Here’s the plan,” Peggy interjects. “Blaze, I know you were afraid of picking up

Mable, but you’re gonna have to do it. Do it carefully. Bring her outside. Then come back with Alaska and Glenn.”

Blaze nods. He disappears with Mable, then walks back into the lobby with

Alaska and Glenn behind him.

Peggy proceeds with the plan. “Blaze, I want you to get the snake’s attention. Run around, do whatever, I don’t care. Just wear out its energy. Then, I want Glenn to wrap himself around the snake’s neck, right behind the head. When I say go, squeeze as hard

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and fast as you can to suffocate it to death. Meanwhile, Alaska, when the snake opens its mouth to gasp for air, pull out its fangs. That way, no matter what happens, the snake won’t be able to hurt anybody again.”

“Your idea sounds way easier said than done,” Glenn replies.

Peggy points at the pool of blood where Mable lay earlier. “Does that motivate you to help?”

Glenn swallows. “Yeah.”

Peggy nods at Blaze, and the boy runs up in front of the snake.

“Hi, snakey!” he taunts “Havin’ fun?”

The snake opens its mouth and slithers towards Blaze. Just when it lunges, Blaze disappears in a flash. He repeats the process until the snake tires and slumps down, watching him warily. Blaze sits on the floor, cross-legged, in front of the animal, whistling.

Peggy gives Glenn a push, and the boy walks towards the snake as quietly as he possibly can. It’s easy to do on the marble floor. It’s a good thing our boots don’t squeak. When Glenn gets within a meter of the snake, he stretches. His entire body flattens and elongates until he looks like a rubber band. His body loses its human form.

He seems to have really mastered his talent. Maybe he practiced, like Peggy suggested.

Glenn becomes paper-thin and wraps over the snake like a bridge. Suddenly, he contracts, and pushes down on the snake’s throat, squeezing. The snake hisses and thrashes. Glenn wraps around the neck gradually, squeezing more and more. The snake drops to the ground, its mouth wide open and hissing.

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Alaska runs out in front of the snake, leans into its cavernous mouth, grabs its left fang with both hands, and pulls. In one yank, she pops out the fang. Just as quickly, she grabs the second fang and pulls it out too. Great! Now the snake can’t hurt anyone. The snake screeches in agony. Then as Glenn squeezes some more, it shudders, drops to the ground, and goes completely still. Dead.

Glenn uncurls from the snake body and returns to his usual form.

Wow. Three kids really just killed a gigantic neon snake. This is really my life now, huh?

Blaze zips out the front door, then back inside again, then outside. I wonder what he’s doing.

Alaska and Glenn run up to each other with a whoop and give each other a high-five. Alaska and Glenn are working as a team. I never thought that would happen, either.

Peggy breaks up their celebration. “Stop celebrating. Mable still needs help.”

With that Peggy runs off into the garden, around the snake and through the front doors of the hotel. I go outside too.

We rush over to Mable, who is flat on the ground, whimpering in pain.

“Are you okay?” I ask the little girl.

“Help,” her tiny voice whispers.

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Interchapter 10

August 9, 2172.

Dear President Ganymeed,

I have some highly confidential and exciting news to share with you.

Government Historian Brassica was going through the Eden Archives yesterday in the Miscellaneous section when she stumbled upon a rather peculiar file from the year 2061. The file contained a set of documents signed by the famous Doctors Tanaka,

Cameron, and Vérité. Labeled “Project Revival”, the documents discuss what seems to have been a sort of pre-Eden effort by the Humans to administer Enhancements. In

Eden, of course, The Chronicle of the Human’s Revival, which we read to all our children, tells the story of the powerful First Edenites, who received the Enhancements that became the cornerstone of our Edenite society today. The source that Historian

Brassica found seems to suggest that this is not a mere legend: that such a group of people actually existed. Specifically, the file seems to document the first batch of

Edenites ever – eleven of them.

The descriptions of these First Edenites sound rather odd, even outlandish. They breathe carbon dioxide, heal quickly, and can subsist on limited nutrients just like we

Edenites can – but they also have mystical powers. The file describes one of them who could pick up brainwaves from others simply by the touch of the skin, another who

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could communicate with animals including insects, and yet another who could supposedly “play with shadows”.

Most intriguingly, one of the documents in the file suggests that the First

Edenites still exist somewhere. It mentions that they are in cryopreservation – which is, admittedly, suspicious, because that was an extremely advanced technological resource in the 2060s. The file gives the precise location of the First Edenites in cryopreservation: buried underneath Moonlight Mountain, not far from the edge of the WasteZone. We have reason to believe that the First Edenites may still be there, and may be revivable.

As you know, Edenites can last up to five hundred years in cryopreservation, so if the

First Edenites are like the Edenites today, they may still be alive.

The same document suggests that the First Edenites were intended to be weapons of war. Apparently, they were in the process of being trained as fighters when the shut-down of the SuperTex organization – which worked with the Founder, Hieronymus

Wright – led doctors to rush the First Edenites into cryopreservation. The file also mentions the existence of a remote training location for the fighters inside the

WasteZone, which simulates the state of the world as it was before the War.

The last important finding in the file was contained in a letter written by Dr.

Vérité herself, suggesting that future Scientifics could use the First Edenites to end the

War. If we can find them, they may be of use to us.

Please communicate with the Archives and the Ministry of Defense regarding what to do with this new information.

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Hyacinth Coy

Head of the Eden Archives

246 Capitol Street, Eden

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Chapter 14

The blood on the grass around Mable’s arm is nauseating. At least her wound is bleeding less now than it was in the lobby. Hopefully that’s not because Mable’s running out of blood. Mable’s face is twisted in pain. Her chest rises irregularly, and she twitches compulsively. My mouth is wide open, and I stare in horror.

Goldy is ripping pieces of fabric from a bedsheet. So that’s what Blaze fetched. “Blaze!” Goldy yells. She rolls up her sleeves. “Get me a pair of scissors and the first aid kit.” She sighs in relief. “On the bright side, Mable isn’t having any symptoms of venom poisoning, like muscles freezing or scary heart rates. So all we have to do is stop the blood loss and prevent infection.”

“Look in the storage closet!” Peggy yells at Blaze as he hesitates. “This instant!” Blaze runs off. Moments later, a gust of wind slaps me in the face, and Blaze stands beside me. He’s back with both requested items. He hands them to Goldy, and she passes them to Peggy.

“Cut off Mable’s sleeve, and don’t touch her wound,” Goldy instructs.

Peggy carefully touches Mable, scared that she’ll do something wrong. As gingerly as possible, she maneuvers the scissors and cuts off Mable’s sleeve, while the little girl whimpers softly with each snip. At the forearm, Peggy just barely touches the first hole.

Mable screams in agony. I edge away and look somewhere else, toward the woods.

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Mable’s wound looks way worse without her sleeve. Well, what did I expect? Goldy extracts a bottle of disinfectant from the first aid kit, and pours some of the liquid onto the bedsheet. Then, she starts dabbing it around the two holes in Mable’s arm. She needs to prevent infection. Goldy works quickly, and with concentration.

Goldy looks like an expert… It’s as if she’s done this before. But how could she?

She’s ten for goodness sake. And she couldn’t have been taught this stuff, right? The cooking and the healing? We both woke up here without memories. Wow. I guess she has one heck of a survival instinct. I gasp quietly as a thought dawns on me. This must be Goldy’s talent: survival.

“There’s been so much blood loss,” Goldy murmurs. “I’m not sure how long

Mable’s gonna... last.” The final word was a whisper. Did she just suggest that… Mable might… die?

I look around at the other kids beside me. They stare at Mable in silence, their faces pale and gaunt.

“I’m so sorry!” Swift wails, breaking the silence abruptly. “This is all my fault!”

Silence.

“We need to stitch Mable up as much as we can,” Goldy states. “And then bind her arm in really tight bandages.

“Do you know how to do medical stitches?” Peggy wonders. “I mean, I could figure it out, but I wouldn’t do it perfectly on my first try.”

“I have an idea,” Goldy responds. “I have an instinct.”

“A survival instinct,” I sigh.

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Goldy looks up at me with a funny expression of self-awareness.

Seconds pass. Minutes pass. An eternity. Mable passes out at some point. I stare at her as Goldy and Peggy perform the surgical procedure. They apply some sort of anesthetic from the first aid kit, then they start stitching.

“I hope this works,” Peggy mumbles.

When the surgery is over, I stand next to Goldy and Peggy, gawking at Mable. The other kids, who have been standing away, approach too. My heart beats harder and harder, the more I watch the still little girl. Her face looks as white as the lobby floor.

Brynne wants to go get a sheet to cover Mable, but I won’t let her. That would suggest that Mable is dead. And she isn’t. She can’t be. Mable can’t be dead.

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Interchapter 11

[Sometime in 2173.]

Dear Chief Elder of Laeto,

Tell the General to act on this information quickly.

We have intercepted messages suggesting that Eden has re-discovered the First

Edenites from Scientific folklore. They were hidden in cryopreservation under

Moonlight Mountain, near the edge of the WasteZone. The excavation process has begun. Energy signatures suggest that the eleven First Edenites survive. They have been hidden under Moonlight Mountain for a century, and they are rumored to possess

Enhancements far more advanced than those of their Edenite successors.

You must wonder why this all happened so suddenly: you see, a document from the 2060s was found, written by the creators of the First Edenites. The documents gave the location of the First Edenites under Moonlight Mountain. In addition, they suggested the existence of an enormous structure in the WasteZone called the

“Simulation” intended as a training ground for the Enhanced individuals. The Edenites were skeptical that the Simulation really existed, but they sent out a search force to look anyway. Lo and behold, they found it.

You must wonder how the Simulation ended up in the WasteZone. Apparently, it was originally built by the Scientifics of a long dead nation called Libya (wherein

Moonlight Mountain is located), whose president had strong ties with Hieronymus

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Wright, the main Founder of Eden. Evidence suggests that the Simulation was guarded by the Libyans for many years. But as the people of Libya died off and the War continued, no one was left to remember the Simulation. And even now, no sane person would get anywhere near the WasteZone. It was brilliant of the original Scientifics to place the Simulation there – no one else was ever going to find it.

The Simulation is a vast warehouse with Resources: a full, self-sustaining ecosystem populated by plants, animals, objects, and whatnot from pre-War times.

Eden hopes that the Simulation will help the First Edenites transition into the modern

Earth, because waking them up here, 100 years removed from their past lives, will no doubt cause the First Edenites perturbation once they realize how much has changed.

Inside the Simulation is a hotel for the First Edenites. The eleven have already been moved there. And inside that hotel, as the Edenite search force discovered when they first arrived, there is a fleet of tiny insect-shaped machines, which were designed to watch over the First Edenites during their training, and to collect data. They have gone ahead and activated these machines. I suggest that the Engineers of Laeto should tap into the signals sent between the insect machines and Eden. The insect machines are older technology, and the Edenites are naive enough to use them anyway. It should not be too hard to intercept their signals.

But the Simulation is meant for more than just helping the First Edenites transition into our times: the creators of the Simulation originally designed it as a remote test rink for the First Edenites, to train them as a powerful unit of soldiers. The arrangement works out well for the Edenites, too. They intend their eleven soldiers,

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once awakened, to train in the Simulation, so far away from Eden that even if they were to go rogue, there would not be anyone around for the First Edenites to hurt. And if they tried to escape the Simulation, they would die in the WasteZone.

Here is the scariest part of the news: if the First Edenites successfully train as soldiers – loyal to Eden – the Scientifics plan on sending them to eradicate Laeto and the Middle Ground, leaving Eden as the last community on Earth.

Tell the General that I suggest Laeto should extract the First Edenites from the

Simulation, and convert them to Conservationism. That way, we will rescue the poor

First Edenites, and enlighten them. Not to mention that we would also save the Middle

Ground! Perhaps, we could even end the War. Anyway, I am optimistic that Laeto will stop the Scientifics.

--- Cerulean

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Chapter 15 The rest of the week things are quiet. Nobody laughs, nobody cries. We feel numb and confused. Mable’s face comes back to me repeatedly: how pale and lifeless she looked when she lost so much blood. But, thank goodness, she’s doing okay now. She can’t move her left arm easily and needs constant care, but she’s hanging in there. For the first five days, she was incapacitated in bed. She passed out regularly, and had few moments of clarity. Peggy and Goldy thought she was going to die. But Mable pulled through. I knew she would.

Goldy says that a normal person wouldn’t have pulled through like that. A normal kid would have died with that much blood loss. And an impaled arm would normally be crippled for life. But Mable’s wound is healing. Peggy even thinks her muscle and bone are growing back.

That’s not normal for a human. Humans don’t do that.

Thomas swears it has something to do with the scientists, and the operations that he partly remembers.

The snake’s body is no longer in the lobby. Alaska somehow got it out of the hotel.

She brought it into the forest, where she left it to rot. Swift still doesn’t know how to make it disappear. But I can’t wrap my mind around the idea that Swift made that thing. It came out of his hands, his mind. Speaking of Swift, I haven’t seen him in a while. He disappeared into his room after what happened to Mable, and I only see him at meals now. He’s just as quiet as Thomas.

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I keep reliving Mable’s near-death in my mind. And every time I do, I yearn for the grown-ups to come back. We need them. Right now, I’m in the library. I’m “reading”, holding a book in my hands and flipping through pages, but without soaking in any words, not understanding the story in front of me. Anxiety consumes me. Cyan is sitting beside me, “reading” as well. We haven’t spoken much since the snake. Well, nobody has spoken much. We’re all too scared.

Nobody else comes into the library much anymore. It’s empty, with books and feathers still strewn across the floor from the pillow-fight that seems like it happened so long ago.

Just then, Swift trudges into the room, and Cyan swivels around abruptly to look at him. My spirits, along with my reflexes, have been dampened, so I don’t react.. Swift’s face is long and bags are developing under his eyes. His face is paler than usual, and his hands are shaking. His blond hair looks grey and his grey-blue eyes look empty. He’s only thirteen, but he looks much older now. He stands in the middle of the library, shivering and staring at me for what seems like a very long time. I stare back at him, emotionless.

Swift looks scary. It seems as though his shadow is stretched out far behind him. I have an urge to reach out to the shadow and take it away from Swift.

The boy’s eyelids close into a glare and his chest rises and falls like he’s having trouble breathing. He looks like he’s about to attack me. Suddenly, he speaks, in a scratchy and hesitant voice.

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“I’m going to hurt more people by accident,” he says. “You have to hide the others from me.”

I turn to Cyan for help. I don’t know what to say. My friend looks at me, then responds.

“No, we don’t need to hide from you. What happened wasn’t your fault.”

“I created the monster.”

“Your talent backfired.”

I wait for something to happen, for someone to break the thick ice that surrounds us. I count the seconds that pass and watch the dust that floats in the air. Swift finally talks.

“It shouldn’t be called a talent if it nearly kills a little girl.”

He sinks to the floor.

I stand up and rush to him. I give him a hug, and try to say something kind, but my voice is gone. And so I sit in the middle of the library, cradling Swift like a baby.

“It isn’t your fault because you didn’t choose to have your power.”

I’m taken aback by my own words. Power? Choosing? What the heck am I talking about? Cyan looks at me oddly, and an expression of subtle awareness takes hold of his face, as if he remembers something but can’t figure out what. Déjà-vu. I’ve seen that face before, on every kid in the hotel. Especially during our first day here.

Swift pushes me away and stands up shakily. He concentrates for a moment. He then walks over to a shelf with botanical books, and pulls out a volume about flowers.

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He touches a page with his left hand, and a bouquet emerges from his palm. Dropping the book to the ground, he hands the flowers to me, and walks out of the room.

I hear his footfalls on the floor.

Once Swift leaves, Cyan looks at me.

“Amaranth, do you remember something?”

“I don’t know,” I answer, staring at the flowers in my hand.

Daisy, zinnia, anemone.

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Interchapter 12

[Sometime in 2173.]

The eyes of Amelie the Overseer widen like saucers when she sees the message on her computer screen. Sure, she always expects crazy news about the Edenites when she filters through the Chief Elder’s messages. But this is crazier than usual. This news is unhinged.

Amelie is not often afraid. She has seen a lot of things in her thirty years of living: heartbreak, violence, an environmental catastrophe… But now, she is afraid. Because this news…these supposed “First Edenites”, sound like a recipe for trouble. A one-way ticket to escalating the War, causing ever more destruction, and further depleting the

Resources.

Amelie looks around, making sure no one else is there. But why would anyone be there? It’s her private office, anyway. Nobody ever comes into the Overseer’s office unannounced. The Overseer is trusted. The Overseer is an exemplary Citizen of Laeto.

Amelie prints the message, and tensely watches it roll out of her printer. She picks a black pen from her pen-holder and uncaps it. Then she scrawls on the paper, in a practiced nearly-illegible handwriting that could never be hers, “We need to save the eleven First Edenites.”

Amelie folds the message, ties it with a string she found lying on her desk, and stuffs it in her boot. Then she leaves her office, to make her way to the basement of the

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Laeto Administration Building. She will go to the hidden trapdoor, and drop the message in for the liaison of the Middle Ground to find.

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Chapter 16

At night, I take a long shower. I scrub my hair and my body extra hard, as if washing myself will rid me of the pain I feel.

Afterwards, I walk towards my room, down the hallway, wishing that I could stop the memories of the fire and the snake – the memories of Thomas and Mable injured – from haunting me.

The hallway feels dark and ominous now. I look up to the light fixture in the ceiling, and watch the eleven moths that circle round it. I sigh.

By now, I’m becoming accustomed to that familiar unsettling feeling of déjà-vu, premonition, and anxiety wrapped together, which has been shadowing me since I got to the hotel. And I’m tired of it. I’m so, so tired. Anger rises inside me. Why am I stuck in this horrible hotel? With kids who have abilities so scary that they accidentally almost kill each other? I’m only fourteen! What have I done to deserve this?! I stop walking, clench my fists in anger, and reach for my shadow, which has been following me incessantly. It’s been watching me. Tormenting me.

Just then the temperature drops as my hair starts to frizz with static electricity.

My anger turns into rage. I concentrate all of my thoughts on the shadow. I want to snuff it out. I want to hurt it. I want to kill it. I want it to finally go away. The black silhouette flickers.

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The creak of an opening door snaps me back to reality. Someone steps out of their room. Thomas. His dark, unruly hair casts shadows over his pale skin. He looks like a ghost.

“What are you doing?” he asks, giving me a look. The temperature goes back to normal and the static electricity in my hair sizzles out. My rage disappears, replaced by exhaustion.

“Nothing,” I answer, hesitant. Thomas walks away with a funny expression on his face.

I continue forward.

What just happened?

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Interchapter 13

[Sometime in 2173.]

The same day that Mayor Lotus Cranesbill receives Amelie Mizzle’s message, she sends out a Community Worker to search the CityVille Archives for the Neuro-Radio

Project file. Cranesbill remembers seeing it classified in the Miscellaneous section. She was always fascinated with that file. And with the discovery of the First Edenites,

Cranesbill alerts the Peace Committee to the true significance of the file, and motions to move it into the Scientifics Section of the Archives.

The Neuro-Radio Project file describes an experiment conducted by the famous

Scientific Dr. Madeleine Vérité, one of the Founding Edenites, in the 2060s. It discusses some sort of technology to communicate through the mind. But the file is incomplete. It contains records explaining how to contact a person who was given the Radio Enhancement, but not how to administer the Enhancement. Of course, administering Enhancements is against Middle Ground policy. Enhancements are Edenite business.

When Cranesbill received notice about the resurfacing of the eleven First

Edenites that morning, she remembered a specific text in the Neuro-Radio file that had always particularly interested her: a memo explaining how only one subject out of eleven during some project conducted by Dr. Vérité had received a Radio Enhancement.

Now, with the discovery of exactly eleven First Edenites, Cranesbill has reason to believe that one of them might be the bearer of the Enhancement. When she shares her theory with the Peace Committee, CityVille decides to put that information to use.

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Two days later, the Head Community Scientist, Ronald Lungwort, walks into

Cranesbill’s office holding a sheaf of papers.

“I’ve investigated the file,” Ron says to Cranesbill as he closes the door of her office.

“So can we put the technology to use?”

“The Enhancement is high-tech, especially for the time when it was created…”

“But can we use it?” she repeats.

Ron hesitates. “Yes, we could.”

Cranesbill claps her hands together once, delighted.

“But Mayor Cranesbill, I don’t understand why we should deal with this business.

CityVille is neutral – neutrality, as you well know, is our core principle. We renounce the

War! Involving ourselves with the Edenites and Laeto will bring us trouble.”

“Ron, I’ve already discussed the matter with the Peace Committee, and we believe it’s the right thing to do to intervene here. To start, we have reason to believe that the

First Edenites are merely children. From the 2060s. They may not even want to work for the Edenites! It would be unethical for us to stand by and let others manipulate them for War.”

“But –”

“And also, the Edenites are planning on using the children to eradicate both

Laeto and the Middle Ground.” Ron gasps. “How do you know?”

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“Amelie’s message said so. Based on her reaction to the news, Laeto is as frightened as we are. Eden is ruthless, as we all know.”

Ron sways from shock and dismay.

Cranesbill continues. “This is classified information, Ron. Don’t spread it around, please.”

Ron, his jaw clenched, shakes his head.

“Alrighty then, I’ll let you get working on the Radio Project!”

His jaw clenched, Ron Lungwort nods, thanks Cranesbill, and walks out of the room grimly.

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Chapter 17

The next day, Mable comes up to me after lunch, when I’m walking to the library, where I want to be alone. I look down at her and attempt to smile. Mable takes my hand with her right arm and I stare down at the bandage over her left arm.

“I know you’re sad about my arm,” Mable says, grinning up at me. “But you don’t have to. I’m bettering.”

“I hope so,” I say, forcing a smile.

“You don’t need to pretend-smile,” she informs me. My smile disappears. “But don’t worry, Amaranth. I’m okay. I’m superhuman! That’s why.”

“Yeah, that must be it,” I respond. Superhuman. What an interesting choice of words.

“Superhuman isn’t only a word,” Mable informs me.

I furrow my brows. She’s extra sharp today. “I’m a supergirl because I can heal my arm when normal people can’t.”

“You’re very strong, Mable,” I say to her. And I mean it.

Mable grins up at me, flattered. “That’s very nice.” Then she pauses. “I wanna tell you someping secret Amaranth,” she says to me. I can see determination in her little leprechaun face.

I walk her to the lounge, where we sit in solitude, together.

“Thomas doesn’t know everything,” Mable states, as if it’s a fact.

“What do you mean?”

“He remembers something but he isn’t remembering correctly.”

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“Of course,” I respond, humoring the little girl.

“Thomas remembers the scientists in his heart,” Mable says, touching her chest with a tiny hand. “But somehow, he can’t take the memories out of there.” She looks at me earnestly, wide-eyed.

Something about the way Mable’s looking at me makes me think she isn’t just spewing childhood fluff thoughts. She’s being serious. She’s thinking deeply. She’s just having trouble communicating.

So I ask her a question, to bring to light what she really intends to say. “So you mean you think Thomas knows a lot about the scientists, but he can’t extract his memories?”

Mable claps happily. “Yes yes yes!”

“But,” I wonder, “how would you know what he does and doesn’t remember?”

“Because when I touch people I know things,” Mable responds confidently in her baby accent. “I touched Thomas yesterday.”

“What...”

“The scientists made me like this.” Suddenly, a realization strikes me. What if the scientists made all of us kids… different. They could have engineered our talents, which can’t be magic so they’d have to be... science.

“Amaranth?” Mable whispers. I didn’t realize I was staring at the floor, so I look up. She continues. “Thomas knows in his heart why the scientists put us here.”

Silence.

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I notice the worry lines that appear on Mable’s forehead. Is it usual for a five-year-old to have wrinkles?

“What does Thomas know?” I ask the little redhead.

“The scientists always said they would give us experiments. And here we are!

Maybe they wanna see if we can be friends, and work together, like friends work together. Or if our powers go bad when we’re together and we become enemies. They wanna see us figure out talents. And practice talents. And also how many kids… well… you know, Amaranth…” I shake my head, I don’t know. Mable looks down at her arm and starts to talk again. “They wanna see how many of us hurt us. If we’re safe or not.”

Silence returns as I let her words sink in.

The hotel is an experiment…

I gasp. It makes sense. It all comes back to me in a debilitating rush and I nearly pass out.

I know Mable is telling the truth because I remember. I remember now. I can’t remember any details, but I remember being genetically changed, by people in a lab.

And they told me I would be tested. They said I would meet other kids, and we would all be tested. I know it, as a fact.

And here we are… This must be the test.

And I remember a memory from long ago. An excited woman in a white coat told me that my strengths would be tested, and that my talents would be watched over because they’re dangerous. She said I needed to practice my talent, to tame it. So I

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wouldn’t hurt the other kids. The other kids who were supposed to be my teammates.

My friends. She said I was special. She said I was a new type of bomb.

I remember a morsel of another memory. I see doctors in white coats, and padded, bright rooms where I was locked in. I see medical equipment. And…

I gasp. I remember Cyan.

I remember.

And now I’m sure. The hotel is the experiment.

Mable opened my heart and mind, and the memories flood back.

I know that I have more memories but I can’t remember them in detail yet. But the ache in my heart tells me that they’re fighting to break free.

I know that I was put in this freak hotel to be tested. But now that I know this simple fact, I’m not sure if I should tell anybody. Would I really want to know the truth, if I had the choice of knowing? And if I tell my friends what I know, will life become a nightmare for them? Will it be difficult to go on living knowing that we’re all just guinea pigs?

The weight of the secret presses on my shoulders, and I scramble to figure out what to do with it.

I end up telling Peggy. I bring her into the lounge, where Mable is already.

I tell Peggy about the scientists. I don’t remember details, or faces, or names, but

I remember one fact, and it’s the important one: the scientists mutated children to give us amazing talents. I tell her that Mable and I believe that we were placed in the hotel,

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alone and stranded, as an exercise to perfect our powers, rule out the unstable among us, and ultimately make one powerful unit out of the unfortunate kids who are left.

Peggy believes it too. Silently, she stares in terror at the horizon, lost in thought.

“We have to tell the others,” Peggy decides.

“What if that makes stuff worse?” I wonder.

“We have to, Amaranth,” Peggy mumbles. “Because it would be unfair not to.”

She pauses. “And might as well break it to them sweetly before they figure out the hard way.” She looks up at me. “We have to tell them.”

I still don’t think this is a good idea.

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Interchapter 14

[Sometime in 2173.]

Swift is reading alone in the library, as he always does. When he opens to where he left off in The Encyclopaedia of Dinosaurs, Swift passes out. He immediately begins to dream.

“Welcome to the Dreamscape!”

The friendly voice of a woman resonates throughout Swift’s mind.

Suddenly, Swift realizes his eyes are closed. He opens them to find himself in a different world.

Swift stands on top of a warehouse that stretches on for miles and miles. He runs to the side of the warehouse. It takes hours. It takes days. Swift looks over the side of the warehouse to find a land so barren, it must be an alien planet. It’s flat and grey and lifeless. Swift turns to see the emptiness stretching into the horizon in every direction.

He looks up. The sky is cloudless and grey.

“This is the WasteZone,” the voice tells him. The words echo through Swift’s mind. “The weather fluctuates here.” Suddenly, a gust of wind knocks Swift off his feet and he shudders. Then a scalding heat slithers up his back like fire, and he screams. “If you were actually out here right now, you would die in a few minutes. Not only because of the weather change, but because of the high radiation levels, which make the

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WasteZone unfit for life.” The voice sighs. “This place was once called the Sahara, and it hosted thriving desert ecosystems. But that time is long gone.” The voice pauses, then resumes. “Yes, my friend. This the WasteZone.”

She pauses again.

“And underneath is the Simulation.”

Swift is pulled to the center of the warehouse, and a hole opens up beneath him.

He falls through the hole, through a blue sky full of clouds, and through the roof of a beautiful building. It takes him a moment to realize it looks like the hotel. His hotel. Swift finds himself hovering over his own passed-out body on the floor. For Swift, it feels strange to watch himself sleep. Especially because he can’t recall ever sleeping before.

“My friend, this may be hard to understand. But I will say it directly. You and your friends live in a simulation of the Earth from before it fell into ruin. You live inside the Simulation in the WasteZone.”

Swift doesn’t panic. He’s in a nightmare, after all. He’s sure of it.

“But enough of this. It’s not all about you today. Today, we’re discussing the world.”

The last word of the woman’s speech echoes in Swift’s mind as he feels himself being propelled into space.

Looking down upon the Earth, Swift sees only flat, grey expanses. No green, and little blue where the oceans should be. There are some lights in Asia, though –maybe a city?

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“We no longer have much of a world to live in,” the voice explains, her tone sad and resentful. “Our world is ruined. And do you know why, my friend?”

Swift waits for an answer. Eventually, the voice speaks.

“Because we ruined the world. We, the humans.” Silence.

“The Earth is dead. There are no more Resources. Water is scarce, oxygen is running out, crops, animals, and ecosystems are nearly all gone. But the humans continue to live on the land that they destroyed. We are humans, you and I.”

The voice stops. Then she starts again.

“Well, the Earth is nearly dead, my friend. But humans have the intelligence to revive it. We are remarkable, that way. If we consciously work with the Earth, instead of fighting against it, it will grow back. If we live like we once did, in primal times, it will all be okay again. And we can see that effect happening now. Can you see it?”

The Earth blows out of proportion like a map until Swift is staring at the middle of South America.

“Do you see the green?”

Swift nods, staring at dots of trees in the middle of the grey.

“Thank you for responding this time, my friend.” The voice continues. “That green right there is an emerging ecosystem... hope for our planet and our humanity.”

The world disappears and Swift finds himself in the WasteZone once again.

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“We will now put you back where you came from, my friend. But do not forget our interaction. Do not forget the dying world, and the emerging green. Remember: if we, the humans, work with the Earth, not against it, life will return.” The woman’s voice melts away as Swift begins to wake up.

Then he abruptly falls back asleep again.

“One last thing,” the voice adds. “Do not speak of our interaction until your ten friends are ready. And avoid the little one, Mable. A friend told me that Mable spells trouble. Don’t let her touch your skin. You’ll come to see why.”

The voices pauses.

“See you next time, in the next installment of the Dreamscape.”

Swift wakes up with a start.

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Chapter 18

We call an assembly in the dining room. Peggy explains the new information in a matter-of-fact tone that she intends to convey comfort. But this time, the mood in the room feels like the calm before a storm, the quiet before thunder. I watch as the faces of the others turn blank, then confused, then terrified. It’s all beginning to make sense to them too, in a horrifying way. Out of everyone there, Swift looks especially haggard. “To recapitulate,” I state. “I remember that the scientists gave us our talents, and they said they would test us all, together. This hotel must be the test. What else could it be? We’ve been put here to learn to perfect our abilities. Which explains why we woke up here with no memory, and isolated. The scientists realized that without memories, we’re likely to learn to use our talents organically, and practice them. And when nobody is around except us… we’re less likely to hurt people with our abilities. And when we learn to use our talents together, we learn to work as a team. The scientists wanted us to be a unit.” My voice breaks. “I’m sorry, guys…”

Alaska drops her head into her palms, and Blaze remains still for the first time in forever, no fidgeting or squirming. Thomas faints. The thud of his fall breaks the stillness in the air. Swift’s eyes tear up.

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“Are we supposed to continue living like we did before?” Glenn asks. I just form a sad smile, which pulls on my recovering skin. Nobody moves.

I sigh. “I guess so,” I respond.

Glenn leaves the dining room silently. Others follow one by one.

By this point, we all know why we’re here in the hotel – at least the basics of why – because we remember. But how much we remember, and how much we forget, and what we’re supposed to do next… all of that seems as confusing as ever.

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Interchapter 15

[Sometime in 2173.]

The instant Swift passes out, he begins to dream.

“Welcome to the Dreamscape!”

The friendly and familiar voice of a woman echoes in Swift’s mind.

“Oh no,” Swift moans, slapping his forehead.

“Oh yes, my friend!” the voice replies, enthusiastically. “Today you’ll be learning about Eden, the Edenites, and the Scientifics!”

Swift thinks to himself, I really don’t wanna be in the Dreamscape right now. Then he realizes his eyes are closed. He opens them to find himself in a glorious city of the future.

Swift lies on a yellow, green, and red marbled plastic ground. Nobody’s around.

Swift looks up, blinking out the sunlight. He places a hand above his eyes to get a clearer view. He finds glittering buildings stretching into the sky above him. All of them are smooth and white, with carved floral patterns along the edges. It looks a bit like a picture he saw in a book in the library, about a place called Paris. If Paris was a garden of porcelain. And it also…

“You might have noticed the architecture here resembles that of your hotel,” the voice mentions. “You’ll understand why soon enough. Right now, I want you to look at the building in front of you.”

Swift tries to squint through the sunlight, but can't.

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The female voice lowers to a mumble. “Rob, lower the sunlight. You’re blinding our friend.” The sun suddenly disappears from the sky and the woman groans. “Rob!

You didn’t have to remove the sun completely!”

The woman sighs and clears her throat.

“Where were we? Ah yes. Please look at the letters carved into the building in front of you, above the grecian pillars.”

Swift reads: Eden City Hall.

“This is the Eden City Hall. From here, President Ganymeed keeps the City of

Eden – the capital of the Scientific Colonies – running.” The voice pauses. “The community of Eden was created by a group of multinational Founders starting in the

2070s. The Founders were activists, doctors, engineers, and intellectuals. The main founder was a man named Hieronymus Wright, who created Eden as a safe-haven from the War. The city was built in what you may have known as the islands of Japan, because Japan, which was neutral in the War, funded Wright’s projects. And yes, my friend. We’re talking about the War you knew when you were growing up.”

Silence.

“The City of Eden was built on the Scientific Principle: the belief or ideology, that as the Earth was withering as a result of climate change and dwindling Resources, the best course of action for saving the human race would be by following science. In other words, humans could stop depending on the Earth by elevating themselves through science. In Eden and its Colonies, every citizen has received bodily Enhancements: genetic mutations to breathe in CO2 and breathe out O2, and to run on food that

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consists of simple concoctions of synthesized molecules. Gradually the people in Eden received so many Enhancements, and became so highly engineered, that they stopped being humans. They’re aliens on their own planet. We call them – and they call themselves – the Edenites.”

Suddenly, the streets of Eden fill up with people, and Swift scrambles to his feet to avoid getting run over by an electric bus. He rushes to the sidewalk. A food stand next to him displays slabs of grey rectangles swirling on spears. A sign above it reads “Fresh

Nutrient Blocks.” The worker, dressed in a red-and-white uniform that matches his stand, opens his mouth. Fire comes shooting out of his throat, roasting the blocks. Swift takes a step back. He bumps into a little girl, and swivels around. The girl falls onto the ground and begins to cry. Swift bends down and puts a hand on her back. He’s about to apologize when she looks up at Swift, and he notices her tears pouring out. They’re green. The girl hisses up at Swift feistily. It might have been cute if she didn’t start spitting fire immediately afterwards.

The girl – and the rest of the Edenites – suddenly disappear.

Thunder crashes, and Swift covers his head with his arms protectively. But no rain comes down on him. So he looks up. He sees swirling black clouds of the biggest monsoon he’s ever seen hanging miles above him. The rain pouring out of it in truckloads seems to fall diagonally, around Eden.

The female voice pops back into Swift’s brain.

“Climate change has given the Earth unpredictable, drastic, dangerous weather.

If not for our modern technology, humans – and Edenites – wouldn’t survive the

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weather. Every community on this dying Earth has a Forcefield that protects us from it.

But that’s beside the point.” The voice pauses. “Now. You must wonder why I’m telling you about Eden, right?”

Swift doesn’t respond.

“You’re a quiet one, aren’t you?”

Swift furrows his brows in his sleep, and thinks, Is my dream trying to have a conversation with me?

The voice sighs. “Alright, I’ll tell you. No need to beg me for answers.” She resumes. “I’m talking to you about the Edenites because they’re the reason you’re here, now.”

Swift only blinks.

“You are a First Edenite: you come from the first batch of humans who were ever

Enhanced. Of course, you still breathe and cry and act like a normal human. Just like me. But you have a gift, my friend. You have one of the first Enhancements ever engineered – remarkably one that Eden lost the knowledge to administer, because the team of scientists who made it didn’t record the formula. Or maybe they did, and the

Edenites lost it. So that’s one reason you’re important to Eden. The second reason is more complex.” The voice hesitates. “How should I explain this?” She makes a sound like she’s figured it out and continues. “The Simulation that Eden has you in right now, and the hotel… it’s all there to train you. The Edenites want you and your friends to perfect your Enhancements, so the Edenites don’t have to force you to do so, in which

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case you would probably fight back. And also, the Edenites don’t want to be there to see your Enhancements backfire. Like if you were to accidentally kill someone.”

The voice laughs uncertainly.

“Anyway, the Edenites are after you and your friends. You are the eleven First

Edenites, after all. But don’t be fooled. The Edenites are nothing like you and I. They’re inhuman. And so are their beliefs. And although they may tell you they come in peace, they do not.”

The voice pauses again.

“The Edenites have been plunged in a Cold War with another community still existing on Earth: a city called Laeto. Laeto has Conservationist ideals, and the Edenites are Scientifics. Moral opposites. We’ll discuss that more next time. It sounds complicated, but I promise, it’s not – and you will need to understand.

Sigh.

“Let me cut to the chase. Eden wants you and your friends to fight for them. The

Edenites want to use you to obliterate Laeto. Then, the Edenites will obliterate the

Middle Ground – my community. And we’ve been neutral in the War since the beginning.” The woman clicks her tongue. “The Edenites are ruthless.”

She pauses. When she starts speaking, she sounds chipper again.

“Alrighty! That concludes our conversation today! I will remind you not to speak of our interaction, because every one of your actions is being monitored by the Edenites.

Also, please avoid your little friend Mable. See you next time on the Dreamscape!”

Swift wakes up abruptly, confused.

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Chapter 19

Mable comes up to me that night, in the lobby. She holds out her hand for me to take, like she always does when she sees me. By now, my palms have healed from my burns, and I grab her hand willingly. But the moment my skin touches hers, she gasps. I jump.

“I didn’t know you have a scary secret,” Mable whispers, looking up at me, frightened.

“I don’t.”

“Yes you do. Your hand told me.”

“If I have a secret then I don’t know it.”

“You forgot,” Mable deduces, sad. “It’s hiding in your heart.”

Mable motions for me to bend down, so I do. She whispers in my ear.

“You killed someone by mistake. Your talent is strong.”

The truth in her words shatters something in my mind as I begin to remember.

How did I forget? When did I forget? A memory rushes back like a floodgate opening.

I was in my cell. The padded, sterilized white walls were boxing me in. I was restless. I wanted to escape. I wanted to disappear. I wanted to die.

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I was hungry. They would never feed me to my fill. Except on training days. They explained it was a “safety precaution.” So that I wouldn’t be strong enough to accidentally decapitate a nurse, or something stupid like that. As if a girl would try to hurt someone if they didn’t hurt her first.

I was so tired of being hungry. The pain constantly biting at the walls of my stomach.... The pain of knowing how powerful yet powerless I was. The pain of knowing that my parents might be somewhere out there, not knowing that I survived. Or that they were dead, and I didn’t get to say goodbye. Or even that the President was letting the company do this to me.

They treated me like a rat. Like a specimen. I was sick and tired of it. I was only an experiment to the nurses. They told me I was blessed to be alive, a gift to humankind, a patriot giving her life for a better future. They told me I would be the key to ending the

War. But I didn’t want to be a key – an object. I wanted to be a girl. And I told them that, too. I told the scientists every day. But they would only smile patiently and tell me my efforts were all worthwhile. That better days were to come.

There are many ways to be tired. And I felt them all. I was tired of hunger, tired of mistreatment. Tired of waiting, hoping, wishing for better things to come.

And I was tired of having no sleep, too.

They always kept my cell as bright as possible. I spent many nights counting and re-counting the lights in the room after I gave up on trying to sleep. I would point as I counted. I would point at the lights on the ceiling, the ones on the walls, and the ones on

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the floors. Then I would lament how I always needed total darkness to sleep. But in a room with eighty lights, I couldn’t possibly get darkness. So I couldn’t possibly sleep.

And they thought they needed to limit my food to wear me out.

The more the days passed, the more I hated the scientists.

Suddenly, the padded door to my cell swung open. There was never a warning when that happened. Because even if someone were to knock, even if someone were to shout, I couldn’t hear them through the cell walls.

A tall, slender woman dressed in a long hospital-white lab coat stepped into my cell.

“Hello, Ev.”

Dr. Vérité always called me Ev. It’s like she thought an endearing nickname would prevent me from resenting her for what she did to me. For what she did to all the kids.

“What do you want?”

Dr. Vérité’s face fell. She always expected me to treat her like a friend since, as she put it, she “resurrected” me. But I never signed up to be a zombie – or an experiment. I began to wonder whether her visible Disappointment Face was only to get me to feel bad about myself. To get me to overlook the fact that I was the one being abused.

“We’ve scheduled a testing for you today, Ev,” Dr. Vérité informed me calmly, with her thin smile.

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“But you didn’t feed me,” I responded.

“Ev, you had two meals today already.”

“But you didn’t feed me enough,” I added. “You didn’t feed me like you usually do on training days.”

Dr. Vérité chuckled. “I didn’t say this was a training day,” she pointed out. “I said it was a testing day.” A nurse came in to put the shackles on my wrist. The scientists always did that when they took me out of my cell. They told me the shackles were programmed to shock me unconscious if I tried to use my powers. It was a way of preventing me from escaping. Or hurting someone. They called it a “precaution.” But it frightened me every time.

Dr. Vérité walked me out of my cell and into the hallway.

My hospital-white slippers scurried on the cold concrete floor. I held my breath as I passed Oliver’s cell, right next to mine. I knew he was in there because Dr. Vérité told me once. Cell Number Eleven. I missed Oliver. I hadn’t seen him since the day of the bombing. But I was infinitely grateful that he was there with me. That he didn’t die like the others.

We walked down the hallway of cells together. I passed each of the eleven, and thought about the kids inside. I had only ever seen one of the other kids. The one from

Cell Number Seven. The tiny girl who looks like a baby. I feel so bad for her. I had more of a childhood than she did.

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Anyway, the Doctor led me to a door I had never seen before in the Training

Wing. She opened it with some strokes of her fingers on a screen built into the wall.

Then she gently pushed me into the room. I sat down on the cold floor. She then closed the door shut behind me, and locked it.

I looked up. I was in a room with glass walls. I had never been there before.

Scientists were surrounding me, staring through the walls. I was in a fishbowl. I really felt like a specimen.

My shackles fell to the floor. They were de-activated from afar.

One of the scientists behind the glass began speaking into a microphone. It was the kind doctor. The one who would always tell me stories about how the world would improve once my abilities helped to save the world. He treated me nicely. He treated me like a real hero. He made me feel worthwhile. He also made me wonder why he was working at SuperTex.

“Hello Ever. Would you mind showing us your powers? Do whatever you want.

Try to do the most impressive thing you can muster! We believe in you!”

I heard scuffling, and looked up. The kind doctor was being pushed away from the microphone, and replaced by Dr. Vérité’s right-hand man. The guy I always called

Cutter. Because every word he said felt like a cut in my skin.

“Get up, Ever. Stop pretending to be a weakling, and show us your power. The longer you wait, the less we’re going to feed you.”

I could hear the kind doctor protest behind him.

“This isn’t how we want to treat the children, George.”

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“Studies show that animals respond to incentives.”

“They’re heroes. Are you really going to treat them in this way?”

“She didn’t save anyone yet. We saved her.”

I hauled myself to my feet, struggling to get my brown-pink hair off of my eyes. At that time, my hair was so long that it ended at my waist. The scientists always forgot to get me groomed. It took me a few seconds to get it out of my face. When I eventually succeeded, I stood glaring at Cutter, concentrating on his horrible twinkling eyes.

“Get up, Ever,” Cutter repeated. “We didn’t go through nearly two hundred kids to produce a girl without the courage to use her gifts.”

Fury bubbled inside of me. How dare Cutter bring up the children who didn’t survive the mutation experiments? I didn’t care if they were supposedly “already dead” like Dr. Vérité always preached. If I was alive by the end of the mutations, that means there was something alive in me to begin with. So there was something alive in all of the children who were mutated. Which means that hundreds of children died in the hands of Cutter and the other scientists, in the hands of the company...only for eleven unlucky winners to survive.

Cutter let those children die. It was his fault. Rage boiled within me as I decided that Cutter would pay.

The shadows in the dark room started to churn, and Cutter chuckled. The air became still. The temperature plummeted to a biting cold. I felt my hair beginning to levitate, as if gravity was slowly being turned off, as if I was rising into space. I focused on one of Cutter’s cruel little eyes.

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“Go,” I whispered.

All of the shadows in the room lurched together like dough, turning into a mass of pure darkness. They crept around the room, trying to push through the glass walls of the fishbowl. They prowled like a lion. They lurked like a monster. Cutter laughed again.

He was mocking me.

“Thanks for showing us your enhancement, Ever. Too bad you can’t make the shadows get out of this cell. That would be impressive. You know, this room was specifically designed to contain your power.”

The nice doctor looked very sorry and stepped up to say something to Cutter. But

Cutter dismissed the other man curtly.

Cutter sighed. “Well… you haven’t given us the data we were hoping to get out of you today. Time for you to go back to your cell. Have fun!”

Ha! Fun.

I hated Cutter.

My soul exploded in my chest, and I breathed the fire into the atmosphere. It fueled my rage.

The shadows inside me started to twist and contort. Channeling my rage, inside, I pushed the shadows to where the glass met the floor. I could see the scientists on the other side of the glass beginning to look more and more concerned. One of them screamed and ran out.

I whispered to the shadows. I told them to taunt Cutter like he taunted me. They moved towards him. They hovered near him. I laughed. I told the shadows to surround

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Cutter. So they pushed under the glass walls and did my bidding. They crept over

Cutter’s skin, toiled in his hair. He screamed. He writhed.

I laughed as the shadows fed on Cutter’s energy. They engulfed him like the fire inside me engulfed my heart. Cutter began to shake, choke, gasp for air. The shadows entered his eyes, his nose, his mouth, and his ears as he screamed for forgiveness. I watched as Cutter writhed.

Only when he fell to the ground did I register what I had done. The shadows vanished and light returned. Looking down, I noticed that locks of my hair were turning pink in front of my eyes, like an old, bleached piece of clothing. I stared at Cutter in horror.

None of the scientists spoke. No one moved.

Cutter was dead.

Drained and in shock, I fell to the ground.

As these memories flood back, another realization strikes me: the hotel is paradise. I haven’t lived this well since... since before the scientists mutated me. I haven’t been hungry in a long time… I’ve been full. In more ways that one.

Is that why we’re here, in this hotel? Did the scientists realize that to really test my powers – and presumably the powers of my friends – they had to make us happy enough to comply with testing? Did they realize our loss and deprivation were weighing us down?

But there was something more. It has to do with the tests.

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What tests have we faced?

Light floods into my mind.

After what happened to Cutter, the scientists realized that the best way for us to perfect our powers was for us to practice…but in a way where none of the doctors could get hurt. In a way where nobody had to be around to make sure we wouldn’t fly off the handle. So the best idea was for us to be alone….

But the fact that we need to practice in a “safe environment” means that some of the talents are imperfect. Ready to backfire. I gasp. The scientists must expect us to start hurting each other accidentally. Only the safest, strongest talents – the most fail-proof and efficient ones – will prevail.

And the scientists know that some of us might not make the cut.

I mull over my thoughts. Some of us won’t make the cut. But what if the scientists are wrong? What if their theories won’t work, and our powers don’t grow? What if we run out of food, and can’t, or don’t want to, use our talents to help us? So then the scientists would have to let us go, and nobody would get hurt.

But some of us already got hurt.

So the scientists might be right after all.

“You remember now,” Mable says, staring at me. She hesitates, then gives me a hug. I stare at her as we sit on the floor, cradling each other.

Someone walks by and stops.

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“What’s wrong?” the person asks. I look up. It’s Cyan. He smiles at me, but his friendly expression disappears quickly.

I look at Mable’s face and find her looking at me in horror. I release her from my grasp. Her facial expression melts into sadness. Every time I touch her I transfer my memories. A little girl like Mable shouldn’t have to bear the burden of so many secrets. I’m remembering now.

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Interchapter 16

[Sometime in 2173.]

Swift blacks out and begins to dream.

“Welcome to the Dreamscape!” the woman exclaims, per usual.

“Ugh! Not again!” Swift complains.

“Yes again, my friend!”

“My name is Swift,” the boy spits. “Alright, Swift! I see you have come to learn how to communicate within the

Dreamscape.”

Swift groans. “You brought me here again, so what am I supposed to learn this time? Let’s get this over with. I wanna get out of here.”

The woman takes in a breath like she’s about to speak when Swift interrupts.

“What’s your name?” “I am Mayor Lotus Cranesbill of CityVille! I would be pleased to make your acquaintance, but we already know each other, don’t we?”

“What’s CityVille?”

“It’s the capital of the Middle Ground! A wonderful community that fosters humanity and progress. We’ll talk more about that next session. This session of the

Dreamscape is dedicated to Laeto.”

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Swift realizes his eyes are closed and opens them to see white domes, like bubbles, dotting the flat grey horizon, clustered around two black skyscrapers, which seem to truly scrape the sky.

“That, my friend – Swift – is Laeto.”

Suddenly, Swift is standing on the outskirts of the city.

The domes of Laeto are all different sizes. Some are the size of trailers, others are like stadiums. The skyscrapers are square cylinders in the dead center of Laeto. The edges of the town are marked by a white line that goes around the whole place in what seems like a perfect circle. And everything in Laeto sparkles metallically. The domes, the skyscrapers, the dirt. Every twenty feet or so is a tree-like object. They’re all identical and fake. Their leaves are plastic and their bark is a round pole. As Swift walks through

Laeto he realizes that everything feels wrong. Every inch of the town looks identical.

The dearth of color in Laeto is shocking. Everything ranges from white to black.

The city is mostly grey. Even the dirt is grey. Swift gets lost in the maze of domes, so he looks to the sky. The sun is setting on a canvas of oranges and reds. The only colors around.

Suddenly, Swift stands between the skyscrapers in a round plaza with white benches and circular grey bush-like things. Everything is immaculately clean. A huge white fountain sits in the middle of the plaza, its water burbling and glistening. Laeto looks perfect. And clean. Too perfect and too clean. Scary.

Suddenly, Swift notices people milling about. They all have black hair and black eyes. They’re all wearing white T-shirts, grey pants, and black sneakers. They look empty

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of emotion, thoughts, and life, as they mill around, seemingly aimlessly. They all look… drugged. Yet, every now and then a person with brightly colored hair, eyes, or clothes darts by, looking lively. One woman with silver hair begins to strut towards the skyscraper on the left, wearing a beautiful green ball gown.

“That, Swift, is the Chief Elder. She’s the head of Laeto, and she governs the place with an iron first. She wears colors because that’s the mark of an Elder. The Elders are the intellectuals of Laeto. The status has nothing to do with age. The Elders are picked from the smartest Citizens of Laeto at a young age, to embrace humanity and learn to govern successfully.”

“What do you mean ‘embrace humanity’?” Swift wonders.

“Good question,” Cranesbill responds. “The non-Elders in Laeto are all drugged with harmless medications, to suppress the human instinct.”

“What!” Swift exclaims. “Why would the Elders do that?! Don’t the people here know they’re being oppressed?!”

“Firstly,” Cranesbill replies, “the people here aren’t oppressed. They barely even exist, by the time they’re brainwashed by Laeto’s drugs: the citizens have no more feelings, desires, anything. They are barely sentient. Do you call that existing? I don’t.

And if the citizens of Laeto cannot think anything, they cannot have an understanding of oppression. And as for why Laeto would drug its own citizens…” Cranesbill pauses to formulate her ideas, then continues. “The City of Laeto is built upon the Conservationist

Principle: the idea that for humans to continue living on Earth they must erase their human natures, which led people to exploit our planet across history. The leaders of

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Laeto believe in suppressing human impulses so that the Earth has time to heal. And when the Earth heals – in many hundreds of years – the humans can emerge once again. Leaving aside, of course, the Elders, who are fully aware of what is going on, and who serve as shepherds of the citizens of Laeto during this transitional time.”

“That seems like the opposite of the Scientifics.”

“Acute observation!” Cranesbill exclaims. “You are indeed correct. The

Conservationists believe in suppressing humanity until the Earth can heal, and the

Scientifics believe in enhancing humanity so that people can persist without the Earth.

And by going so far in supposedly ‘enhancing humanity’, the Edenites are no longer really human….” Cranesbill trails off.

“I suppose,” Swift starts, “these conflicting ideas explain why Eden and Laeto are still fighting the War.”

“You have excellent reasoning skills, my friend. You are once again correct.”

Cranesbill pauses. “I would like to ask you a question now, Swift. And answer honestly, please.” Pause. “Do you want to ally with the Scientifics against Laeto?” Swift thinks about the alien girl with the green tears in Eden, and looks at a Laeto zombie person beside him, who barely seems to exist. Neither is appealing.

“Not really. I wish there were…an in-between.”

Cranesbill laughs. “You will like the Middle Ground, my friend. We’ll discuss it next time. Right now, I just want you to know that you and your ten buddies will always be welcome in CityVille. And although the Elders in Laeto may drug you the way they drug most of their people, in order to keep everyone subdued, you would in principle be

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safe in Laeto too. The Elders would not try to use your powers as war weapons – they would not exploit you children. They simply want to take you out of the hands of the

Edenites, to avoid the destruction of their people. The bottom line is that you must avoid

Eden and the Scientifics at all costs – Laeto is the better option in the short-term. Don’t be scared if the Elders end up being the ones who remove you from the Simulation, and take you to their city. There are plenty of ways to escape Laeto. But there are few ways to escape Eden.”

“Wait,” Swift interrupts. “Are you implying that the Elders – in addition to the

Scientifics – are after me and my friends?”

“Yes and no,” Cranesbill responds. “According to my communications with my friend, the Elders may try to remove you all from the Simulation to bring you to Laeto.

But they will not hurt you. Physically, I mean. And anyway, once you get to Laeto, you’ll have a one-way ticket to the Middle Ground.”

“What?”

“We’ll talk about it next time. This concludes our session for today. I want to remind you not to speak of our interaction, because you're being watched by the

Edenites. In addition, avoid your friend Mable. See you next time in the Dreamscape!”

“Wait, I –”

Swift wakes up, his mind reeling.

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Chapter 20

I tell Cyan everything. I tell him about the doctors, the scientists, the cells. I remind him. I don’t even have to finish my story, because by the time I’m halfway through, Cyan remembers. Together, we’re remembering more and more. All thanks to

Mable.

We agree not to share our memories with the rest of our group. Life is going relatively well for us, for the first time since… for as long as we can remember, since... the scientists. We decide to give the others at least a couple more weeks to live in ignorant bliss. Then we’ll tell them. Providing that they don’t remember on their own.

And that Mable doesn’t go around touching people and spilling the beans.

After dinner, I stay in the dining room until everyone else leaves, and I’m alone.

The first time I came into this room, I thought it looked like a room for celebration. But now… I stare at the stained-glass window, depicting a figure with blue hair, and black spilling out of its hand. The body in the air has an ability. An almost supernatural ability. An inhuman ability. And the people in white cloaks beside her are helping her get where she is. It’s funny how much they look like angels. Good guys. I laugh sadly at the irony of it all.

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Someone comes in. Listening to the footsteps, I know who it is even before I turn around. It’s Cyan. He always knows when I’m alone, and he always shows up for company.

“Are you looking at the window?” he asks. I nod. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

I pause and nod again, hesitantly.

“I remember your ability now,” he says kindly. “You’re the shadow girl.”

“Wish I wasn’t.”

“But how come the stained glass shows you using your enhancement? Like, why you and not… Blaze or something?” “No clue,” I respond. What a lie that was. Usually, Cyan always knows when I’m lying. But he just lets this slide.

I remember how the scientists told me I was their atom bomb. I was their crown jewel. I was the powerful one. But now, in the hotel, I’m weak compared to Alaska,

Blaze, and the others. I wonder if the scientists were wrong about me.

“I remember you from before,” Cyan blurts out.

“You were my best friend,” I reply wistfully.

Cyan laughs, the sound of my past life. “You got me into a lot of trouble, you know.” He pauses. “Actually, I think I know why they have you on the stained glass. The scientists always said you were the strongest of us.” Cyan often radically changes the subject. I know from experience.

And he changes the topic again. “The scientists had to go through a lot of kids to produce a successful one. I remember them talking about it. And I think you remember,

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too.” He sees in my face that he’s right. “We’re really lucky, you know, to be here together.” He smiles sadly.

“I know.” I poke him as a sign of appreciation. He pokes me back.

He repeats what he said before. “You were always the most powerful.”

The most powerful… I always hated it when the scientists said that, and I hate it even more coming from Cyan.

“Your power might be one the most useful one, though…” In a very Cyan-esque manner, I change the subject abruptly. “Do you remember your real name yet?”

Cyan shakes his head, no.

“I remember mine now.”

Cyan looks up at me excitedly.

“My name is Ever.”

Cyan gasps a sound of joy, and raises his hand over his mouth. His mismatched eyes twinkle like kaleidoscopes.

“You’re right, Amaranth,” he whispers. “Your name is Ever.” He stares into space.

“How could I have forgotten?”

“Well we still haven’t remembered your name, so I don’t blame you.”

“We definitely haven’t remembered everything,” Cyan replies, “but every time I remember things I think I’m remembering my whole life, when I’m not.”

“Same,” I respond. “I never know how much I do and don’t know. It’s like I’m learning how to walk all over again, only with… memories.”

We remain in silence until I break the ice.

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“I bet it’s all going to come back to us sooner or later,” I say. “Do you remember our first night in the hotel?”

Cyan chuckles. “Yeah, that was a pretty weird night.”

“Do you remember how Peggy found that letter, and it was an inventory, and at the bottom there was a stamped acronym?”

“Oh yeah, I kinda forgot about that. What was the acronym again?”

“STMR.” I pause. “Cyan…” I hesitate again. “I think I know what it stands for.” I look into his eyes, and watch terror momentarily flicker through them. I lean to him, and whisper in a voice that’s barely audible. “SuperTex Medical Research.”

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Interchapter 17

[Sometime in 2173.]

That night, after everyone is asleep, Swift is in the library again. And just when he flips open a book to begin reading, he passes out and starts to dream.

“Welcome back to the Dreamscape!” Cranesbill exclaims.

“So we’re talking about the Middle Ground today, huh?” Swift responds unenthusiastically.

“Yes, my friend. We’re talking about the Middle Ground.”

Swift opens his eyes to find himself in farmland. To his left, a field of green stretches into the distance, edged with a plastic fence made to look like wood, with a small building in front. People in work clothes walk to the building, where they swipe cards at a small machine in the wall. The machine then spits out a tool for each worker, and a gate in the fence swings open for the worker to pass into the field. To Swift’s left, a field of ripe corn stretches into the distance. People flock to the building in front of it, and the same process happens again.

Swift turns to the left to find a woman standing next to him. She is shorter than

Swift by a few inches, but she exudes confidence and authority. She wears a pantsuit printed with a vintage floral pattern. Her dark brown hair is pinned up in a bun and the corners of her eyes crinkle in amusement. She looks like she must be in her thirties, max. But something in her gaze makes her seem wise. Something about her declares: important.

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“You’re Lotus Cranesbill, aren’t you?” Swift asks her.

She nods, one small jerk of the head. “Yes. And I am the Mayor of CityVille.”

Swift looks around. “This doesn’t look like much of a city.”

“That’s because we’re on the outskirts.” She pauses. “I wanted to show you how the Middle Ground is growing back the Earth, little by little.” Cranesbill points to the horizon on the field of corn. “You see how the field stretches on until we can’t see the end?”

Swift nods.

“In my lifetime, we’ve expanded the HorizonLine by 5 kilometers in every direction every year.” She looks Swift straight in the eye. “It took a huge, constant effort.” A faraway look comes into her eyes. “The Middle Ground dream is to one day expand that line across the whole Earth – even across Eden and Laeto.” She looks at

Swift. “We’re building back our planet, one kilometer at a time.”

Then the faraway look disappears and Cranesbill claps once, enthusiastically.

“Now for the City!” she exclaims.

Swift blinks. When he opens his eyes, he’s standing in the middle of what looks a lot like a small European town, with cobblestone streets and a market square. People hustle and bustle around. A sweet smell wafts out of a bakery from a window filled with small cakes displayed on white doilies. A group of schoolchildren in uniforms laugh as they run down the sidewalk, nearly tripping over each other. A lady steps out of her hair salon to get some fresh air. A newspaper vendor begins re-stocking his stand with the day’s papers. A man runs after his escaping toddler, who chases a bird. Horses pull

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carriages in the street. Swift is mesmerized. How long has it been since he last saw horses?

Swift smiles as he watches a young woman walk her old dog, who’s wearing a knitted sweater.

“I thought you said the animals on Earth died off?” Swift says to Cranesbill.

“I also told you that the Middle Ground is trying to bring back ecosystems. And I know I said we don’t genetically Enhance people here, but we do genetically produce animals, only to kick-start natural ecological rebirth.”

Cranesbill admires her city.

“What do you think of it?” Cranesbill asks Swift.

“It seems…normal,” Swift replies.

Cranesbill laughed. “Coming from one who witnessed the Earth before the upheaval, that is the highest compliment we could receive.” She grins. “Thank you.”

Before Swift can respond, he finds himself standing across the street from a quaint building with coral walls and exposed beams, bearing a sign saying “CityVille

High School.” Teenagers walk into the building in clusters. Some of them are laughing with friends, others are mocking each other, some look nervous, and some carry coffee and books. It reminds Swift of when he went to school. When life was relatively normal.

Cranesbill smiles at Swift. “When you and your friends come to the Middle

Ground, this is where you will go to school.”

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Swift laughs. “I’ve never wanted to go to school this much in my life.” Then his laugh disappears as a thought occurs to him. “How am I supposed to get here from the

Sahara Desert?”

Cranesbill frowns. “You mean how are you going to get from the WasteZone to the Middle Ground?”

Swift nods emphatically.

“It’s a complicated process, my friend.”

Swift sulks.

“But it’s doable.”

He perks up a bit.

“We’re going to discuss this more next time we meet, but here’s the bottom line: we have received word that the Elders from Laeto are planning to show up at the

Simulation without the knowledge of the Edenites. They intend to grab you and your friends and bring you to Laeto. That’s a given. From there, you will escape to the Middle

Ground. There’s a way of getting from Laeto to here, but it’s hidden. Our ally in Laeto, a

Middle Ground sympathizer, is a powerful official. And she has rallied some of her fellow Elders to our cause. They’ll help you get here.”

Swift looks utterly confused. “Why would Elders want to help the Middle

Ground?”

Cranesbill grins. “Because several of the Elders have started to realize that the best lives are those that are lived, not put on a long-term to permanent hold. And so they approve of the Middle Ground.”

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Cranesbill then does her characteristic single clap.

“Well, that’s all for today, friend!”

“But,” Swift protests, “I don’t want to leave. Can I stay here a little longer? Just to see the town?”

“No can do,” Cranesbill responds. “You have a life to go back to, and this is only a dream. I want to remind you not to speak of our interaction, because you're being watched by the Edenites –”

“I still don’t understand what you’re talking about when you say that.”

“The Edenites have machines placed around the hotel that watch you.”

Swift only blinks, stunned by the information. Cranesbill continues.

“Again, I also want to remind you to avoid your friend Mable.”

“Woah, woah, woah. Hold up.” Swift puts up a hand in front of him, as a “stop” sign. Cranesbill seems amused by the gesture, so Swift lowers his hand. “How do you know Mable’s name and why do I have to avoid her?”

“Remember those machines I just mentioned?”

Swift nods.

“They send information regarding every event, action, and word spoken at the hotel to Eden. Laeto has been intercepting that information, and the Overseer has been sending the information to us.” Cranesbill pauses. “And as for the girl named Mable, I’m sure she’s a great person, it’s just that her Enhancement enables her to pick up other’s thoughts and memories by the touch of their skin. If she picks up the information you

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know, she could tell your friends prematurely and out of context, when they aren’t ready to hear it. And we don’t want that, do we?”

Swift looks nauseated.

“Can Edenites do what Mable can do?”

Cranesbill laughs. “Hell no.”

She claps. “See you next time in the Dreamscape!”

Swift jolts awake.

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Chapter 21

At night, I have a dream.

I was sitting in a cozy living room, and it was dark outside. The windows were open and a warm summer breeze floated in, along with the sound of crickets that added to the sounds of voices coming from the TV. I took a pillow and threw it at my older brother Nicholas, who was brandishing another pillow playfully. He hit me with it. He had the advantage – he was tall. I hit him back. We had the pillow fight in our living room. I hit him in the head, he hit me in the stomach, so on and so forth. When he whacked me in the face a bit too hard, I stumbled over to the couch, and just then, looked up at the TV. What I saw mesmerized me: a scene of gruesome destruction on the news, showing a battle that was raging near Paris. I had been seeing scenes like that on TV for months, but the sight of dead bodies never stopped shocking me. The words

“discretion advised” paraded around the bottom of the screen in fat red letters.

Click! My brother turned off the TV. Nicholas led me away. “Don’t think about that,” he said kindly. “It’s your birthday.”

Someone knocked on the door. I went to open it.

It was Oliver. His mismatched eyes sparkled, and he wore a mischievous smile on his face. He was holding a present, wrapped in blue paper. His favorite hue, as he always reminded me: the primary color called cyan.

I wake up with a start to the sound of something clicking. I don’t move. The clicking thing is in my room. I barely open my eyes and notice a blue spot on the wall. I

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squint at it, and realize that it’s a little machine, and it’s climbing over my walls. It emits a soft blue light, that I probably wouldn’t notice if I wasn’t looking for it. Then I realize what the clicking noise must be: it’s snapping pictures of me. I wait for the machine to stop on the wall in front of my bed, and I spring out of the covers, causing my bedframe to rattle and the mattress to shake.

I clamp both of my hands over the machine as it tries to scurry away. Its blue light seeps between my fingers. I can hear the thing whir and click beneath my hands. I crack open a space between my palms, and its light blinds me for a second. But then I register what I’m seeing: a small mechanical spider, whose head looks like a camera, and whose six legs are jointed needles, for scurrying. It looks up at me.

I clamp my fingers closed.

Why is there a robot-bug here? I bet it’s been sent by the scientists. And if it has a camera… is it watching me?

The machine is on the wall, and I need to take it off. So I grab its body, sticking my fingers between its needle legs, and pull. It doesn’t move. I pull again. Then I realize that the needle legs seem to have sunk into the wall a little. So I pull hard. I yank the spider out of the wall, and the force sends me hurtling across the room. As I grip the spider with my hands, it sinks its legs into my palms, sending a sharp jolt of pain through my arms and up my spine. Agh! I throw open my door and run down the hallway to Cyan’s room.

I rip one of my hands out of the machine’s needle legs, and barely register the dots of blood when I start pounding on Cyan’s door.

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Cyan comes out of his room with a bedhead and pillow marks on his face.

“What?! I’m sleeping!”

“Look what I found!”

I show him the miniature demon between my hands. It swivels its camera-face to look up at Cyan. Click! It snaps a picture. I put my second hand over its head. “I think the scientists sent it,” I hiss, “to spy on us...to watch what we’re doing.”

Cyan barely hesitates before he responds.

“We have to get rid of that thing,” he whispers. I nod.

“What do we do?”

“We need to kill it, but keep whatever it’s made of. If Peggy looks at its parts, maybe we can find a way to track down the scientists…”

Now that my memories are trickling back, I know that Cyan has occasional sparks of brilliance. He’s had them ever since I met him back in second grade.

“Let’s get Alaska,” I suggest. “She could probably take everything apart with her strength.”

We go to the second hallway of bedrooms and knock on a door in the back.

Alaska takes a long time to answer the door, but when she finally does, she looks tired. She pulls at the base of her hair, trying to detangle a knot. I show her the spider machine. Alaska muffles a scream with her hand.

“What the–,” she starts.

“Can you take it apart for us?” Cyan interrupts.

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Alaska nods, frightened. “I will, on one condition.” I wait for her to continue.

“Tell me who made this, and what it’s doing here.”

I sigh. “It’s not like we’re sure, but fine.”

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Interchapter 18

[Sometime in 2173.]

Swift blacks out and bursts into a dream.

“Welcome to the Dreamscape!” Cranesbill exclaims, as expected.

Swift opens his eyes to find himself sitting on a brown leather couch in an oval office that looks vaguely familiar. Cranesbill is sitting on an opposite couch, facing him.

She’s dressed in the same floral pantsuit from last Dreamscape session, and her face still bears that familiar bemused expression.

“So what are we chatting about today?” Swift asks.

“You almost seem excited to talk this time,” Cranesbill replies.

“I’ll give you that.”

“Well, since you’re interested, I’ll tell you what we’re talking about.” Cranesbill picks up a notepad from beside her, reads something written on it, and continues.

“Today we’re going to discuss how you’ll get to the Middle Ground. But before we do, I want you to tell me everything you know about the War for Resources.”

Swift clears his throat. “Well… the War started when I was very little. The world was dying, and the Resources were running out, and the nations were fighting over what was left. It was an every-nation-for-itself situation, although there were some alliances.

There were lots and lots of bombings. The bombings destroyed even more Resources....”

Swift scratches his head, deep in concentration,then suddenly gasps and drops his hand as his eyes grow wide. “I remember when my town was bombed.” He places a hand over

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his mouth as he begins to remember. He isn’t sure how much time passes before he begins to speak again. “I almost died. But in the hospital, there were people who took me to a lab, called SuperTex.” He spits the last word. “The doctors at SuperTex saved my life, but I hated them. They gave me mutations – Enhancements, I guess.”

“Yes,” Cranesbill interrupts. “You have the Printing Enhancement. And your

Neurological Radio ability – the thing that enables you to enter the Dreamscape.”

An insight occurs to Swift. “If the Dreamscape is an Enhancement then how come you’re in my Dreamscape? Does that mean you have the Enhancement?”

“No. The Middle Ground renounces Enhancements.” Cranesbill pauses with a look of disgust, then continues. “The CityVille archives contain files, whose significance came to light once we received the reports about the revival of the First Edenites. The files describe your Enhancement. So we know that we can send your brain Dreamscape messages by using a rather simple piece of tech. Right now, I’m attached to a machine that is being monitored by five CityVille scientists. You, Swift, are the only one who can truly experience the Dreamscape. But anyone can send you messages and visions through it.”

Cranesbill waits to see if Swift has any questions. As the silence lengthens, she continues. “You seem to know a lot about the War and its implications for your life, but let me fill in your story from where you left off.” Cranesbill looks back at her notes. “At some point, you and the other First Edenites were put into cryopreservation under a mountain near the WasteZone. And as the War continued, you were all safe. Meanwhile, the rest of the humans weren’t. The bombings – some nuclear, some not – continued.

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The Resources were almost completely eradicated as nations scrambled to grab them.

But I cannot say that humans didn’t expect that. Deep down, they understood that if two sides of a rope are pulled hard enough, the rope will eventually break. But their desire for all or nothing consumed them.” Cranesbill sighs. “And look where all that fighting has left us today. The Earth now has just three isolated communities of people: Eden,

Laeto, and the Middle Ground.” Cranesbill looks up at Swift. Her eyes pierce through him.

“Questions?”

Swift shakes his head emphatically.

“Then onto our next point.” The left side of Cranesbill’s mouth tugs into a smile that looks like a grimace. She glances up at Swift with an expression that tells him that she expects the next piece of news to elicit a strong reaction.

“The Scientifics are watching you and your friends through spying machines called Arachnids.”

Swift chokes. “Come again?”

Cranesbill resumes. “The Arachnids are bots designed to monitor. They take video and sound recordings of everything that happens in the hotel, collecting data on the eleven of you, the First Edenites. They track the progress of your Enhancements and to see how – or whether – you are all working together as a team. The machines send all of that data to the Edenites. But the Elders of Laeto have been intercepting the data, too, and our contacts there have passed it to us in the Middle Ground.” Cranesbill taps her fingers along the edges of her notepad. “I will remind you that the reason the Ednites

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monitor you so closely is to determine when your training is complete, when to remove you from the Simulation, and when to place you on the battlefield.”

It occurs to Swift, How come I haven’t ever noticed these Arachnids before? But all that comes out of his mouth is: “So my life is being watched like a globally broadcasted reality TV show?”

Cranesbill chuckles. “Exactly.” Then her smile disappears. “The Edenites are listening to everything you say through the Arachnids. And here’s the worst part about that: you’ll never be able to tell your friends about anything we’ve discussed together without alerting Eden to the fact that agents in Laeto and the Middle Ground are plotting on saving you from the Scientifics.”

Swift gulps. “Then how am I supposed to tell my friends about our conversations?

How am I supposed to convince them to go searching for the Middle Ground?”

Cranesbill glances at her notes and looks rather pleased. “This is a perfect segway into my next point.” She pauses. “As I have briefly explained to you before, the Elders will capture you from the Simulation and take you from there to Laeto. They’re planning on ambushing the Simulation. And Eden certainly won’t be prepared to fight back: in their arrogance, they didn’t think to station any Edenites near the WasteZone. It will take them hours to fly from Eden to the Simulation, and by that point the Elders will have already removed you from the scene.”

“Wait,” Swift interrupts. “Even if we did make it to Laeto, why wouldn’t the

Edenites just show up there and take us out of the hands of the Elders?”

“Because the Edenites are afraid of you and your friends.”

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Swift doesn’t understand, so Cranesbill elaborates.

“Your Enhancements are unfamiliar to the Edenites and much, much more powerful than theirs. Think about it. If the Edenites weren’t afraid of your abilities, they wouldn’t have sent you all to the WasteZone to train. Plus, once Laeto secures the eleven of you, even if you did support the Edenites, they could easily drug and brainwash you into their cause – as they do with their own citizens. In that case you would end up fighting against the Edenites, which would cause them a lot of damage and wouldn’t be worth the struggle of pushing back.”

“But I thought you said we’d be safe in Laeto. Not brainwashed.” “If you do get brainwashed – and yes, I did say if – it won’t last long. We have allies among the Elders who will make sure to get you to CityVille.”

Something about Cranesbill’s explanation seems over-optimistic, but Swift keeps his silence as he listens to the Mayor.

Cranesbill resumes. “In your best interest, go with the Elders. But convince your friends to go with them, too. You’ll have to explain to them what I’ve explained to you.

Convince your friends to escape to Middle Ground. But you can’t do that with the

Arachnids watching.”

“So I’ll have to destroy the Arachnids?”

“Yes, but you can’t do it alone. You’ll need the help of your friends. You see, the

Arachnids are programmed for combat.”

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Swift doesn’t know what to make of that statement, but asks a follow-up question anyway. “How am I going to get my friends to destroy the Arachnids? That’s like… impossible.”

Cranesbill smiles. “You have some very smart friends. They’re bound to discover the Arachnids at some point. And when they do – when they begin to fight the

Arachnids – escalate the fight. Destroy them all at once. And once the Arachnids are all gone and the eyes of Eden are blinded, Laeto will come to save you.”

Swift takes a deep breath. “This sounds like a complicated plan. I don’t know how

I’m gonna –”

“The plan is very simple, actually,” Cranesbill interjects. “First, all you have to do is destroy the Arachnids so you can escape the Simulation without the Edenites watching. It will take the Edenites a little while to reach the Simulation when they realize you’ve destroyed their Arachnids. They’re all the way across the planet from the

WasteZone. Eden is powerful, but hasn’t thought through this scenario. Secondly, you will explain what you know to your friends: you need to escape Eden, accept the help of the Elders, then come to the Middle Ground.”

“Well, when you put it that way –”

“Don’t stress. You’ll all be okay. You have two-thirds of the world rooting for you!”

Two-thirds is hardly enough. Cranesbill claps her hands together humorously and opens her mouth to speak, but Swift interrupts.

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“This concludes our session for today, I’m being watched by the Edenites, and I should avoid Mable.”

Cranesbill laughs.

“Actually,” she corrects, “when the time is right, you will want to let Mable touch you, and to transfer your information to her. She can pass the information to others.”

Swift furrows his brows. “But how will I know when the time is right?”

“You’ll know.”

Swift sighs.

“I like you.” Cranesbill grins. “Good luck, my friend.”

And Swift wakes up.

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Chapter 22

By the time I finish telling Alaska about the scientists, their mutation experiments, and the camera on the little bug watching me sleep, she isn’t surprised anymore. It’s starting to seem as though our memory filters are delicate – they shatter really easily.

Alaska grabs the spider machine. Quickly she drops its body on the ground and slams her foot down on it as hard as possible. The machine produces a high-pitched squealing sound when it crunches, and small gears roll across the floor.

Cyan goes to fetch Peggy.

By the time Peggy gets into the room, Cyan has already filled her in. He explained our hunch that the scientists may have been using the bug to watch and monitor us.

Peggy isn’t surprised. Suddenly, she remembers Dr. Vérité and her mutation experiments.

Peggy drops to the ground, and picks up the pieces of machinery scattered across the floor. She drops them all on the desk and examines them closely.

“This is the main control panel,” Peggy says, pointing at a piece that resembles a chip. “And this over here is the camera.”

“Can you figure out where the scientists are by looking at these things?” I ask.

Peggy snort-laughs through her nose, as if I said something stupid. “Certainly not. I’ve never even seen most of this stuff before.” Peggy reaches into her jumpsuit,

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pulls out her pink glasses, places them gingerly on her nose, and peers even closer at the little pieces of metal. “This is astonishing…” For a moment Peggy stares in wonder at the pieces of the device. They all look like metal to me. Then, she points. “You see this part here?” I nod. “I think that’s the tracker. And… you see that little light? It’s on.”

I pause. “Does that mean it’s being tracked right now?”

Peggy nods. “Most likely.”

Cyan smashes his hand on the part. The table shakes and the part stays put.

“Ow!” he yells, clutching his hand. Cyan, although occasionally capable of brilliance, also has a well of stupidity somewhere in the middle of his brain. I look at his hand. There’s a small octagonal red shape on his palm, that rapidly turns into an internal bruise.

I roll my eyes. Typical Cyan.

“Can I crush the tracker?” Alaska asks eagerly, hand raised and jumping up and down.

“That would be best,” Peggy responds, still looking at Cyan condescendingly.

Alaska picks the thing up. She places it between her index finger and thumb, and squeezes very hard. Her face turns bright red, and her fingers start to turn white. She remains in this uncomfortable position for a minute or so. Finally, the tracker sparks and squishes. I cheer quietly for Alaska.

Someone knocks on the door.

Everyone remains silent.

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Swift rudely walks in without waiting for anyone to invite him, looking thoroughly disturbed.

Swift starts to mumble. “I noticed you guys gathering in here. I just wanted to say that I was wandering around tonight, and went to the basement and I heard this weird clicking sound. And I realized I’ve heard the sound before, but I just thought it was old hotel plumbing. But then I remembered how Thomas mentioned a clicking noise before the fire. So I went to see if anyone was awake so I could ask, do you think the sounds are related?”

I feel like Swift knows something that he’s not telling us. He’s been acting like that a lot lately.

“First of all,” I say, “why in the world were you going to the basement?”

“Uhhh – ”

I groan.

“There are multiple spiders?” Alaska asks excitedly. I look into her eyes, and see one question: smash?

“Maybe there’s a whole nest of spiders,” Peggy suggests.

“We need to find them!” Alaska yells.

“Spiders?” Swift asks in an odd tone.

I stare right at him. Something about what he just did seems off. It’s like he’s not surprised by this information. Swift looks frightened by my gaze. He turns away as I change the subject.

“How will we track them all down?” I ask.

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“We need the help of the others,” Cyan whispers somberly.

Silence settles.

“Spiders?” Swift asks, this time more convincingly.

Unfortunately, when we gathered everyone in the library, we had to explain to them our idea that the spiders have been watching us, and they must have been sent by the scientists. And now we all remember Dr. Vérité and the mutations. The memory filters are shattering.

“How are we gonna track down all the spiders?” Brynne wonders, once we’re all gathered in the library.

“Cyan can do it,” Peggy suggests.

Cyan blinks. “How could I do it? I don’t even know the geography of this hotel yet. I suck at directions!”

Peggy rolls her eyes. “Cyan. You have a talent, remember?”

“Talking to animals?” Cyan asks, puzzled.

“Yes, Cyan.”

Cyan just blinks. So I elaborate for him.

“Cyan… ask the bugs in this hotel where the robot spiders are.”

Cyan’s face lights up. “Oooooh! Smart!” He then places his hands to the sides of his mouth and calls, “Attention bugs! We need your help! Could you please, like…come here...now?” He turns to me and shrugs.

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Long-legged spiders jump off of the bookcases, silver fish begin crawling into the library, crickets hop in from nowhere, and a couple of centipedes come crawling to

Cyan.

Everyone but Cyan yelps and jumps onto the furniture in the library. I get a good view of the bugs from the table, next to Mable.

Glenn looks like he’s about to have a panic attack.

“Hey guys!” Cyan exclaims, looking at the bugs happily. He laughs, and all of the bugs wriggle as if to laugh with him. “I would like to thank y’all for coming today! Much appreciated.” A couple of spiders begin climbing up Cyan’s leg, and he smiles at them. I shiver. “Have you seen any mechanical spiders hanging around lately?” Cyan looks concerned at the bugs’ inaudible responses. “So… where are the spiders right now?”

Cyan listens to the responses, and his face goes blank.

“Guys,” Cyan whispers, keeping his cool although I can tell he’s freaking out internally. “There are one-hundred-forty-nine remaining spiders in this hotel.”

We all gasp, and I think.

If the bugs are watching us, then the scientists must be monitoring them… And we need to prevent the scientists from succeeding in their experiments, because we want them to give up on us and leave us alone. I think for a moment more. But if we destroy the spiders, will the scientists know that we’re revolting against them? And then will they come after us? What will they do to us? I try to shake the thoughts out of my head. No. We have to get rid of the spiders. None of us could live while knowing we’re being watched. Getting rid of them has to be a priority.

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I look at Peggy, and I can see in her eyes that she’s thinking the same as me.

Eventually, the scientists will come back. Soon, we’ll have to escape from them.

I notice Thomas standing on the couch.

“Hey Thomas?” I ask. “Do you know why the scientists gave us our talents in the first place? Why they called us heroes once they gave us the powers? I can’t fully remember.”

Thomas sighs. “I think it’s complicated, Amaranth.”

“We can take it,” Peggy responds.

Thomas sighs again. “To understand why they gave us the talents, you’d have to understand the War. I’m slowly starting to remember it. And even though I remember more than you guys, I can’t remember everything. It’ll take some time, I think.” He pauses. “But I’m not sure we really want to know everything.”

Nobody responds, and I drift into thought.

How long have the spiders been watching us? And for how much longer should we stay here in the hotel before we plan our escape?

Escape… we have to escape.

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Chapter 23

Eventually, we have a plan.

“Here’s what’s up,” I say, trying to sound upbeat. “There are robot spiders in the hotel, and they’re watching us. We think they’re from the scientists – who, by the way, can probably hear everything we say now. So we have to break the spiders. Every single one of them. Once you break them, they can’t watch us, follow us, or track us.”

Glenn raises his hand. “Why do we have to do this now? And if we do manage to destroy these spiders, won’t the scientists realize we’re acting sus and come after us?”

I don’t know what to answer. As for when to deal with the spiders, now is a better time than ever. Everyone agrees that we won’t be able to live on in the hotel, knowing we’re being watched, and perhaps manipulated. But Glenn is right. If we get rid of the spiders then the scientists will have an incentive to remove us from the hotel. And we don’t want to go back to captivity.

And if we let the scientists keep watching us, things could only get worse. Our powers could spiral out of hand, we could run out of food, we coul...

Peggy answers for me. “We’re doing this now. Any other questions?”

Everyone takes Peggy’s decree as law, although we notice her half-answer to

Glenn’s question.

Cyan asks the next question: “Do we need to destroy all of the trackers?”

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“No,” Peggy responds. “You just need to destroy the robots. Don’t focus too hard on the trackers. As long as they can’t follow us, they can’t report on us.”

“Any more questions?” I ask. Silence.

“Alright,” I say. “Since there are no more questions and we have nothing else to do today, let’s go get those bugs!”

Each kid leaves the library in a different direction.

I go to the basement.

When I get to the lounge, I open the trapdoor. I look into the hole and hear clicking noises, like the clicking I heard on the walls of my room. The clicking of metal needles against smooth surfaces. Like the clicking of talons.

I lower myself onto the ladder in the basement, and climb down into the pitch blackness. It’s kinda scary in here. It’s dark, big, musty, intimidating, lifeless. Somewhere to my left, I see a faint smear of light blue behind a tower of cans. I wouldn’t notice it if I weren’t looking. Ha! Found one. I move behind the tower of cans. My short hair begins to levitate restlessly. The chill of the basement turns into an intense cold. My fists clench, my jaw locks, my eyebrows furrow. I concentrate. The shadows in the basement – the many, many shadows – start to vibrate, like animals trying to break free from their cage. I fix my gaze on the spider as the basement turns into a fuzz – a smoke – of rumbling shadows. I reach out with my freezing hands, wiggling my fingers before me. I stretch them out wide, and grab the shadows in front of me. They are cold in my palms. I feel their emptiness wash through me.

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So I begin to pull. I pull the shadows of the basement towards me like bedsheets.

It’s hard: the shadows are heavy tonight, and I am out of practice. But eventually, I gather them in a pile before me, leaving the rest of the basement an empty bluish gray, free of their shadows, but also free of light. As I stare at the rumbling pile of shadows before me, and the gray void of the basement everywhere else, I feel strangely calm.

When I hear a soft clicking noise I snap back to attention.

I grab from the pile of shadows before me and with my hands form a ball of blackness. I take a deep breath.

Quickly I pitch the shadows at the spider.

The ball hurtles across the room, reaches its target, and engulfs the spider, which kicks to resist. With my mind I direct the shadows as they squeeze into every groove in the machine. The shadows enter the spider body through the holes around its six legs. I feel the machine start to crack. I clench my fists one last time, pressing as hard as I can to pour the shadows into the little monster.

Suddenly, the shadows condense.

The spider screeches and then blows apart. Tiny pieces of metal fly around the room. One tiny metal shard runs past my cheek, slicing a cut that I barely notice.

I sense this may be the first time that I’ve used my talent since the day it backfired – the day I killed Cutter – which feels like a very long time ago. Using this power feels good. I feel alive. I don’t see any more spiders in the basement, so I wander back to the lobby.

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Chapter 24

In the lobby, I am appalled by what I find.

There are over a hundred spiders. A writhing sea of metal, blue light, and needles.

And it seems as though all of them have gathered here, along with my friends. I hear Mable’s baby screams and Glenn’s panicked noises. I hear Peggy yelling directions and Alaska’s battle cries.

The room is filled with noise. The screams of the children, the clicks of the spiders. The bugs are continuously taking pictures, collecting data – that’s what the clicking signifies. And they all click in unison, too. Like one big countdown. On top of the clicking, there’s this digital, high-pitched, nearly vocal scream that the spiders produce when one of the kids goes after them. They’re enough to give me a headache on their own.

My ears pound.

Once again, my hair starts to lift, and the room becomes cold. I concentrate on the shadows in the lobby. I pull them towards me, into a pile at my feet.

Ten spiders notice me at once and scamper in my direction, their eighty needles tapping on the lobby floor as they move.

I panic. I crumple to the floor, turning the shadows into walls around me like a cocoon. I watch as the spiders try to get to me. They crawl up the side of my shadow

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walls, slip, and fall back down onto their backs. They hiss, rock back to their feet, and try again. Eventually, they give up, and all ten rush to bully someone else.

Why would the spiders even want to attack us like this?

Then it dawns on me. Maybe this is another experiment. I leap back to my feet. The shadow walls roll off me and gather again in a pile. I grab them and mold the darkness into ten sharp spears. I throw the points like harpoons, to peg the spiders. I get one as it dashes towards me. I send the shadows into the crevices of its body, and the spider snaps into pieces. Two more run for me, and I do the same to them.

Blaze accidentally zips right into me, knocks me over, steps over me, and speeds off. Two spiders crawl up my leg. I knock them off, destroy them with shadows, and then wrap myself into a shadow cocoon so that I can take stock of what is happening.

I look around the lobby and see a battle raging between the kids and the bots.

Alaska stands in the center of the action, stomping and crushing the beasts with gusto. A bird flies overhead, dropping objects on the machines. What the heck?! It accidentally drops a lamp just to my side, and I flinch. The bird flies into the sea of spiders to where

Cyan stands, surrounded by a small army of bugs, squirrels, birds, and other animals, who are fighting the spiders with him.

I spot Mable and Peggy brandishing kitchen knives. Their blows don’t cause any damage to the spiders, but they do manage to whack them away.

Glenn, who shrunk his body to be about five inches tall, is riding one of the spider robots, which bucks as he jams a sewing pin into one of its circuits.

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I see Goldy grab a spider and toss it to Alaska, who stomps on it. Blaze seems to be zipping towards the hallway, holding a couple of spiders… It seems like he’s going to the pool. Maybe to drown the machines? Swift seems to be conjuring weapons from his imagination, although whether or not the weapons are right for the job is another matter. He throws a flamethrower to Goldy, who scorches a few spiders that scurried to her feet. The flamethrower doesn’t seem to be doing much damage, but Goldy looks satisfied, anyway. Thomas is swinging around a club. He looks happy about it, too. I roll my eyes.

I glance back to Thomas, who’s fighting with the club. He doesn’t notice as two other spiders crawl up his leg. The spiders link together and abruptly stop moving.

Suddenly, they start to spark. Thomas spasms and falls to the ground.

I don’t know if he’s hurt or dead.

This is not okay.

The walls of shadows disappear and I run into the chaos. But suddenly, the spiders all retract at once, and gather in the center of the lobby. Stretching out their legs, they collect into a web of needles, and advance towards me. Before I have time to react, they cut through my boots with their needles. I howl in pain, and quickly, they retract and turn towards Mable and Peggy.

Peggy runs off. Stunned, Mable stays put.

They stab her, too, and as her high-pitched screams fill the lobby I run towards the mass with Cyan and Alaska.

Once again, the spiders retract.

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My heart starts to beat louder than before. What’s going on? I have a bad feeling about this.

This time, the remaining spiders condense into a metal sphere, and point their legs outwards, forming a spiked ball. Before I can stop to think, the sphere begins rolling, scratching the marble floor as it goes.

The spiders roll towards Glenn, who scrambles to his feet and stretches to his normal size before he notices what’s happening. The orb knocks him to the ground and rolls over him. Glenn screams. Goldy wails, watching Mable, Glenn, and Thomas who lie motionless on the floor.

The robot orb starts to roll in my direction. I scream and run. Swift grabs Peggy’s hand and runs her to the other side of the room, towards Brynne. Blaze zips over to

Alaska. Cyan moves closer to his army of animals. I’m all alone.

Eight of us are left standing.

This feels more and more like a countdown.

I turn to run, but the metal sphere notices my movement and changes its course, zipping towards me, its needles squirting out a black liquid. I run out of the way, but the liquid hits me, trickling down my left arm.

For the first three seconds, it feels like water.

Then my arm bursts with pain, pulsing as if with the sting of a dozen bees. The black makes my arm burn and itch at the same time. I lose my balance and fall to the ground, into more of the liquid, hands first. I wail.

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To my horror, I see Cyan covered in the liquid as well, on the other side of the room. Only, he’s not moving. So I run over and drag Cyan out of the poison, to a spot near the side of the room. I hope he’s okay. Sweat drips down my dirty face, and my heart is beating irregularly. I run back to the center of the lobby, and feel a steely resolve. We can take down these spiders. I’m sure we can.

But just when I think things couldn’t get any worse, they do.

The spiders shoot fire from their needles. Blue fire.

The fire catches on a puddle of the black liquid, which acts as a fuel. The flames slither around me. I manage to step into a circle of shelter, a place where there are no puddles of poison, and no fire. But the flames are boxing me in.

I see a hellish scene around me. The whole lobby is on fire. The searing blue forms a barrier between me and the remaining pockets of children. I start to pass out, but then snap back to attention. Where are the spiders? The spiders have vanished by the time something dawns on me. The fire, the one from before, in the hallway… It must have been started by the spiders. I gasp. The spiders lit the chandelier in the bedroom, too. The chandelier was a sign. That’s why it bugged me so much. It was a sign that the scientists were watching. A sign that the hotel wasn’t really a home. The scientists want us to know on a subconscious level – or maybe more than that – that we’re being watched. That the hotel is being maintained by them and it isn’t just here for us to enjoy. That this hotel is only a temporary living arrangement. They want to keep us on the edge, anxious, alert….

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My fear turns to anger and my anger turns to hatred. I barely notice Peggy run into the lobby with Swift, a blurry figure in the distance behind the flames. Peggy uses a hose that I’ve never seen before to spray water from the kitchen onto the roaring fire.

Swift must have produced that hose. The flames sizzle away. And now I can see the spiders. The metal insects spark under the water, and fall out of their spherical formation, a couple meters to my left. They were in the process of rolling up to me. If not for Peggy and Swift, they might have hurt me by now. They might have trampled me. They might have killed me. I look around. There are only six other kids who appear to be conscious, dispersed throughout the lobby. Swift, Peggy, Brynne, Alaska, Goldy, Glenn.

The spiders begin to separate. There are still at least a hundred of them. Was it a bad idea to fight these things? Did I make a mistake in urging us to do this? Am I a bad leader? With difficulty, my legs still aching from the spider jabs and the poison, I run toward the others. They have the same reflex. We gather on one edge of the lobby. As the scientists had hoped, we become one unit – one fighting force. I glance at the others, then back at the writhing mass of spiders in the center of the room. If there’s one thing that the scientists were right about, it’s that there’s strength in numbers.

The bugs lurch towards us. They surround us quickly, clicking and whistling.

They produce a loud whirring noise, like a computer overheating. The spiders’ blue lights turned red. Does that mean something, or is that just to intimidate us? Alaska tries to stomp on them, but each time she tries, the spiders squirt some of the black

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liquid towards her, and she recoils. It’s funny how the spiders are simply threatening us now. I have a feeling like they have the power to kill us, but they just aren’t using it.

The spiders start inching towards us as we huddle. We grab for each other, for support. There’s strength in numbers, but there’s also something weak about being in a team. When you’re in a team, one blow can take you all out. The blow will have to be huge, that’s for sure. But it’s harder to take down many individual threats than one big one.

I clench my fists as the room suddenly becomes cold. My hair rises slightly into the air. I laugh as the power of shadows surge through me, and every object in the room seems to flicker as I play with the darkness. The lobby looks like a hallucination as the shadows dart towards us, leaving gray absence everywhere else.

The shadows form a protective bubble over us, so that when the spiders leap at us, they only ricochet off. I laugh. I expand the bubble slowly, until the seven of us don’t have to huddle anymore. The spiders are pushed away.

I jerk my arm suddenly, and a blade of shadow slices through the sea of bugs, splitting their bodies in two. I slash repeatedly, knocking out about twenty of them.

Then I remember how I killed the first spider I saw. I concentrate. I close my eyes and envision the hotel. I imagine myself running through every room in this hotel, collecting the shadows like daisies. Then I open my eyes to find the thickest pile of blackness I’ve ever seen, lying obediently at my feet.

“Let’s do this,” I whisper.

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I throw the shadows at the sea of writhing bots. As I do so, I remember the first spider, from the basement. I remember how I could feel each little groove and screw and dent in its surface as I ran the sleek shadows over it. I remember the little surge of energy I felt as I pushed the shadows into its body and snapped its body to pieces.

I let go of the protective bubble around us and push all of the shadows into the spiders. I can feel hundreds of grooves, screws, dents. I chuckle.

I clench my fists with some effort, and all the shadows condense at once.

With one final round of digital whines, the spiders burst into smithereens.

In shock, I let go of the shadows, and they violently dart back to their spots in the hotel. In the process, a shadow punctures the chain attaching the lobby chandelier to the ceiling. The chandelier breaks off and crashes to the floor, its glass parts flying across the marble floor, adding chaos to the scene.

Nobody dares to speak.

I stare at the state of the lobby. It manages to be beautiful amid the chaos and the debris of the fight.

The pain returns.

Peggy takes my hand.

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Chapter 25

We all sit in the library, healing. Alaska brought us all here. Peggy is bandaging

Mable and Glenn’s wounds, where the spider legs punctured them, and Goldy is tending

Cyan and Blaze’s injuries from the stinging poisonous liquid. Thomas is recovering well

– in fact, he seems to feel fine – and I’m not hurting much anymore, as I run a cool towel over my wounds.

Swift, however, isn’t doing great. He’s been looking distraught ever since the spider battle ended.

I wipe my knees with the towel and watch him pace around the room as if he’s trying to figure out what to do. I give Peggy a look as Swift starts to mumble to himself.

I’m about to open my mouth to ask Swift what’s up when he beats me to my question.

“I have a really important announcement,” Swift says.

I raise an eyebrow.

“No, Amaranth, I mean it.”

Swift sounds like he’s almost pleading. And for once he looks… sincere. My face straightens.

“I know why we’re in this hotel,” Swift stammers. “And I know that the people who left those Arachnids – those spider bots – in this hotel were trying to test us and

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train us. And now that we destroyed the Arachnids – the only way that we’re being monitored – those people will be coming to get us.”

Peggy looks up from her work. “What do you mean, people are coming to get us?”

“I have an ability called Neuro-Radio Enhancement. When I pass out, I get messages from other people. And I’ve been contacted by a kind woman who’s trying to save us from what’s about to happen.” Raking his fingers through his hair in a state of panic, Swift starts to pace back and forth, while speaking in an agitated tone. “She explained how the people who put us here are coming to get us. They wanna take advantage of us, and use us.” His words speed up as he notices our quizzical stares.

“And right now, there’s kind of like a rescue force that will be here sometime soon to save us from the Scientifics who put us here. And we have to go with that rescue force, for our own good.” Swift looks like he’s about to cry. He stares directly at me.

“Amaranth, I know that I’ve been difficult sometimes, but you have to trust me.”

I laugh. “Swift, nothing about what you just said makes any sense whatsoever.”

Mable stands up from where she lies next to Peggy, wrapped in bandages. Peggy protests, but Mable bravely pulls herself to her feet and hobbles towards Swift. And he walks up to her. I watch Swift grab Mable’s tiny hands and stare into her eyes desperately.

Mable’s face slips from utter confusion to astonishment to fright to desperate hope. And in that moment, everyone in the library gasps.

I look at Peggy and Peggy looks at me. Something important is happening.

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“We need to go searching,” Mable whispers in her baby voice as tears pour from her eyes.

“Searching for what?” Peggy wonders.

Silence fills the library as Mable drifts towards me. I rush over to her. She grabs my right hand.

A force rushes from her heart to her fingers, and up my arm to my heart. I reel backwards as the force knocks the breath out of me and as a flood of understanding hits.

A series of new words and images flash through my mind: Simulation, WasteZone,

Eden, Laeto, the Middle Ground. I look at Swift in horror.

“We have to escape from here, Amaranth,” Swift says pleadingly.

And I believe him now. Because I understand.

“We need to go searching,” Mable whispers once again as she hobbles towards

Peggy, and grabs Peggy’s hands.

“Searching for what?” Cyan asks, lifting his head from where he lies on the floor.

“Searching for the Middle Ground,” Peggy responds breathlessly.

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To be continued...

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