He goes inside the hut and emerges with the box I saw them unloading yesterday evening. The woman stops beside the second man as the first places the box at her feet. My pulse quickens when I grasp that something big is about to happen.
I spin on my heel to refer to Guy and find him standing directly behind me, a man of stone. He inspects my face as if he wants to memorize it. I hate him looking at me that way when I know what he really thinks: weak. My jaw snaps together, and I face forward, my question unasked.
“May I have your attention,” the woman says, touching a hand to her blond hair and squinting into the sun. The Contenders quiet. “Since you are headed into the third leg of the race, we want to ensure each of you remains as safe as possible.”
Bull. Crap.
“One way we want to do that is by marking you,” she continues. “This will be entirely painless, just a bracelet around your right wrist. Each color represents a team lead at headquarters, and it’s their job to keep track of you. If one of you doesn’t make it to the next base camp, it will be their job to find and rescue you, if need be.”
I know her words are meant to reassure, but they don’t. Because there weren’t teams in place for the jungle and desert portions, and if they cared about keeping us safe, they would have stopped us from getting speared or almost drowning in the flooding river or subsisting on nothing but unripe, unnamed fruit in the desert for — was it days? Weeks? So the bracelets must mean something else.
One of the men opens the cardboard box and withdraws a bag of blue plastic strips. The woman takes it from him and references her notepad. “If I call your name and you are in the stay line, please step forward.”
The woman announces the first name.
A man in his late twenties approaches the woman, a swan Pandora teetering behind him. The man is built sturdy — strong shoulders, thick, hairy forearms. We all crane our necks to see what happens. “You’ll be on Team Blue,” the woman says. Then, to all of us, “That’s how you can think of it. Teams. That’s fun, huh?”
It’s not fun. It’s not anything. It’s blasted hot outside, that’s what it is. And I’ve got a hankering for a peanut-butter-and-chocolate milk shake. And an air conditioner. And, yeah, I want to know what color team I’ll be on.
The woman asks the guy to hold his right arm out, and she zip-ties a length of blue plastic around it. The man produces a pair of scissors from the box and comes at the guy. The guy jumps back.
Smart guy.
“Don’t be afraid,” the woman says through a laugh. “He’s only going to cut the excess.”
Sure enough, the man does just that. The twentysomething dude and his Pandora return to the stay line. One down.
After that, several more Contenders move forward to receive their wristbands. When Olivia’s name is called, I almost step out in front of her, though I don’t know what I’d be protecting her from.
I glance at the line across from mine, heart thumping wildly. There are only four people leaving the race. They seem more than pleased with their decision to bail, considering this new turn of events. One of the guys leaving is someone I recognize — a Trigger. He meets my gaze before turning away. My stomach rolls as I remember his ex-leader tumbling from the side of a cliff.
The next round of Contenders gets a green bracelet. Both Jaxon and Braun collect one of these before returning to the line. The woman holds up a bag of orange plastic strips, and after a few Contenders are named, Guy gets called. He strides toward the woman as if he couldn’t care less, a powerful lion at his side, and I envy the ease with which he accepts unknowns in the Brimstone Bleed. Finally, the last round is called: reds. Two boys and an older woman are ordered forward. And then —
“Tella Holloway.” The woman must try and fight it, she must, but the hint of a smile still tugs at the corners of her mouth. I march toward her, my hands sweating. Behind me, Madox and Monster whine, but I shoot them a firm, reassuring look that says to stay put. The woman asks me to hold out my right arm. When I do, she wraps the red plastic bracelet around my wrist and zips it tight. The man snips the excess off the end as if he’s working a carnival booth.
I can’t stop myself from staring at the woman. Caught in her gaze, I feel as if I’m standing before a speeding train, horn blaring for me to move off the tracks. But there’s beauty in being so close to death, knowing you can hurl yourself out of its path at any moment. Waiting until the very last moment to leap.
“You may return to your line now,” she says.
I decide I hate this woman.
When I get back in place, she announces a few more names and then makes her retreat. As she paces toward the hut, her kitten heels digging into the sand, a hesitant voice rings out. She spins around, and the beauty I glimpsed before vanishes. In its place is something a bit darker. “Did someone say something?” she asks with a tight-lipped grin.
A man in his late forties raises his hand. He’s in the stay line, six people back from where I stand. “Not all of us got assigned colors.”
The woman lays a hand against her chest, fingers brushing the sky-blue blouse she’s wearing. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she says. “I should have explained. The last team is flesh colored. No need for a band at all.” The woman grips her chunky gold-and-white necklace in the palm of her hand, squeezing. Her eyes flick back to me for a moment, and she smiles warmly before striding away.
This woman likes me. Or maybe it’s that she prefers me over the others. She looked at me as if she knows me in some way, has found favor in me, perhaps.
After the woman has disappeared behind the blanketed door, one of the Brimstone Bleed men bends to open the trunk at his feet. The chest is the same as before — carved wood with a latch that glitters emerald. From inside the box, he withdraws a mammoth syringe filled with green, swirling liquid.
Ah, old friend. How I detest you.
I roll up my sleeve and wait for the sting as those in the leave line watch. The man reaches me quickly, too quickly. His breath smells like cigarettes, and he plunges some of the blasted green liquid into my arm. I want to tell him about Altoids. Or York Peppermint Patties. Or Bubble Tape. Before I can, my mind begins to spin, and the back of Braun’s head blurs.
A noise behind me steals my attention, and I whirl around. Now the two Brimstone Bleed men are rounding up stray Pandoras that the Contenders leaving won’t need anymore. The first guy hooks a rope around the Pandoras’ necks and secures it to stakes in the ground. The other man reaches for the creature he tagged with red spray paint last night, an iguana. He secures a rope around its middle and begins dragging the creature away from the others. What is he doing with that one? What are they doing with any of them?
My skin tingles, both because of the serum and because I’m terrified for the iguana Pandora.
I’m not even sure what I’m going to do when I say, “Wait.”
My voice sounds like I’m hearing it played back to me on a recorder. It’s a strange sensation that’s chased with a desire to ask, I don’t really sound like that, do I?
I say it again, louder. “Wait!” Contenders gawk at me, and the man who had the syringe tells me it’s too late to change lines. But I don’t care about that. I care about where the Brimstone Bleed man is taking that Pandora. Even though it must be 110 degrees, I’m chilled to the bone thinking about it.
He shouldn’t drag the Pandora behind him like that. He shouldn’t be taking it somewhere we can’t see. And I’m certain the Pandora’s back shouldn’t be marked with a haunting red stripe.
I stumble in the Pandora’s direction, my steps labored, boots catching the sand. It’s hard to walk, hard to stand, but I have to do something.
“Get back in line,” the man pulling the iguana orders. His voice sounds funny, too. So does the one coming from behind me. It sounds like Guy’s voice. Well, he can eat it. I’m a girl on a drug-infused mission.
I reach for the rope, and the man yanks it away. “Let me keep it,” I plead.
The man scoffs, and my eyelids grow heavy. Madox leaps around beside me, and every once in a while his paws knock the outside of my knee. He weighs next to nothing, but right now it’s almost enough to take me down.
“Let me keep it,” I repeat. “You guys have let other Contenders take Pandoras before.” It’s true. At the end of the jungle base camp, Titus and his Triggers took Levi’s ram Pandora, among others, and the two men working the race did nothing to stop them.
The man seems as if he’s considering it, though I can’t be sure. His face swims in and out of focus. Madox barks, and it sounds like it comes from a giant hellhound instead of a baby fox. I catch sight of a large brown mass waddling toward me. AK-7.
“No,” the man says with finality.
I lunge toward the rope. I don’t know what I’m doing. Or maybe I do. Maybe I should have lunged on someone, anyone, long before now. Maybe I needed something to dull my senses before I could think clearly. These people ordered us to kill one another’s Pandoras. This race isn’t just about giving us a chance to fight for those we love. It’s about their infecting those we love, ordering us to risk our lives, and giving us sadistic objectives along the way, like murdering innocent animals. It doesn’t matter if Pandoras are genetically engineered. They bleed and hurt like real animals. They care for their Contenders as pets care for their humans. And they risk their lives for us.
My fingers are numb from the injection. My words slur together, but I gather that I’m screaming, prying the rope from the man’s hand, running. Someone grabs me around the middle and tackles me to the ground.
“Hush now,” he says. “Remember Cody.”
Fox tongue against my cheek. A grizzly bear on his feet, roaring a warning. An iguana flat on my stomach. I don’t have much time before my thoughts are gone from me. So I fill my lungs, and I think of Caroline. And Dink. And of Ransom and Levi and all the friends who aren’t here for one reason or another. I think of Harper, too, of whether she’ll make good on her promise to return and help me win.
I squeeze my hands into fists. I close my eyes. And I whisper my brother’s name inside the folds of my mind: Cody.
Cody on the last day I saw him well. He was drinking pickle juice from the jar and wincing from the sourness. Has he always liked pickle juice? I can’t remember, but I want to see him drink it again. I want to see him drink anything without the use of a straw and small sips. I want to take back every bad thing I’ve ever said to him and replace it with this: I look up to you.
The woman appears. She says something. She’s holding something. She lifts her slender arm into the air to show the men her prize.
I narrow and widen my gaze, trying to see past the drug’s fog.
And then I know exactly what she’s holding.
It’s a life jacket.
I could sleep forever to this sound. It’s a lullaby I wish I could bottle. Place the glass jar next to my ear and give it a shake whenever I wanted. Whoosh, slurp, whoosh, slurp.
My eyes open slowly. The sun is stiff midsky, overeager as always. Though I’m warm, a subtle chill rushes across my exposed skin, and when I breathe in, I’m greeted with the satisfying kick of salt in the air. I’m being rocked side to side, gentle as my mother’s arms.
I sit up to find myself on a moving boat, Monster to my left, Madox on the right. I’m not sure Madox has done much in terms of adding body heat, but the bear certainly has. When he rolls to one side like an oversized Labrador, groaning, cool air whips across my cheeks, whispering of early October days.
There’s a blue squishy pad beneath me, and even more spread along a wooden deck, studded with sleeping Contenders. Some Contenders are fully awake, standing against a cream-colored railing with their Pandoras nearby, staring into the distance. The two men working the race are on the other side of the boat, arms crossed. No one ventures in their direction.
The boat is massive, big enough to handle dozens more Contenders and their Pandoras, too. There’s a Noah’s ark joke somewhere in here. I’ll have to work on that later. Behind me is a glassed-in area, and above that are white poles and cords I know nothing about, though I bet Guy does. I have to stop myself from looking for him among the Contenders. I won’t look for him.
I remember at once the scene I made at the desert base camp. I’m surprised they didn’t send me packing. My eyes scan the area in my direct vicinity, but I don’t see —
And then I do.
The iguana.
I get to my feet, relief coursing through my veins. The creature cocks its head in my direction as I near it. Gingerly, I reach out and stroke the animal’s side. It closes its eyes to the touch of my hand. I inspect the red streak on its back; the streak’s not going anywhere, I suppose. “How you doing, girl?”
The iguana’s eyes open, and her thick pink tongue darts out, tasting my skin, smelling me. I lift her back leg and then the other before I find what I’m searching for. FDR-1 is tattooed in black ink on the underside of her clawed foot, so small I can hardly read it. I’m overjoyed at finding her here. It’s a victory I never expected.
And that makes me incredibly nervous.
“Tinker Bell, you’re awake.”
I abandon my new Pandora and turn at the sound of Braun’s voice. He’s standing along the railing with his pig, BK-68, and the other Contenders who have woken. I sidle toward him, and when Madox pads after me, I mentally ask him to stay put. He whines but lies back down. I don’t want to leave FDR-1 alone quite yet, and God knows Monster isn’t waking up anytime soon. Judging by how sleepy both — er, all three — of my Pandoras look, I decide the men who work the race must have injected them with the swirling green serum after they did the Contenders.
Frustration burns the rest of my grogginess away as I reach Braun. But when Olivia swings out from beside him and offers her hand, I can’t help but smile.
“Slap me one,” she says.
Come again?
Olivia wriggles her fingers. “Lay your skin on my skin, woman.”
I give her a high five or, in this case, a low four. She grins a wide toothy grin and claps me on the back as if we’re old pals. The gesture is very un-ten-year-old-like.
She and Braun are both dressed in the same thing I am, a black wet suit of sorts. The wet suit has a matching short-sleeved top and shorts that end at the knee. On the right breast of the shirt is a pocket depicting a coiled gold serpent, tail rattling. I pat the pocket on my shirt and feel a small bulge — my device, no doubt. On our feet, we sport black wet shoes that make bowling shoes seem fashionable. No joke.
“You have to admit it’s beautiful,” Braun says.
I realize that he doesn’t mean the outfit or the shoes. For the first time, I turn my face to the sea.
The blue swallows everything. It stretches out before me like an open palm, and the sky embraces the tide like a lover. There aren’t any clouds overhead, as if the sun scratched his chin and said to himself, Not today, today we let the great ocean shine.
Waves roll across the surface, and as they crest, one after another, it almost seems as if the sea is moving. I mean, I know it does move, incessantly advancing and receding from the shore. But the way I see it now, it’s more like a herd of purple stallions barreling across the earth, covering ground, searching for something beyond the horizon. It’s enough to make you reach for a saddle and reins.
“It’s beautiful,” I say, and in my peripheral vision, I catch Braun nodding.
But maybe I claim it’s beautiful because that’s what I’ve been taught to say. Because when Mom and Dad took Cody and me to Long Island every summer and we gazed out at the water, that’s what we said. It’s beautiful.
In actuality, Cody and I were holding our breath, wondering how much longer we had to stare at the water before Dad said we could go get lobster rolls and sweet-potato chips. As soon as he turned his back to the water and grumbled that we might as well go eat because his children will never properly appreciate God’s gifts to humanity, Cody and I would pump
our arms and hiss, yes!
Now that I see it as a Contender, with the sun acting like a spotlight, my mind ticking through the challenges the ocean will bring, I think I may have been wrong before.
“Actually,” I whisper, “the ocean is terrifying.”
Olivia holds her arms out to her sides. “What have I been saying this whole time, Braun?”
I glance at Olivia, and in a rare moment, I see the little girl behind the bold words and fast talk. I try to reach for her, to reassure her it’ll be okay, but she brushes off my attempt. So I turn and search for Guy instead, proud it took me this long to look for him.
I spot him across the deck, sitting on his spongy blue pallet, his lion lying nearby. He’s got one knee cocked, and he’s resting his tanned forearm upon it. And he’s talking to Jaxon. He doesn’t notice me watching, which also means he isn’t searching for me.
Once more, I find myself gazing into the distance, searching for a girl with blond hair and a bombshell body. Searching for Harper. She isn’t out there, and my heart cracks just a little, because I’ll be going these two legs of the Brimstone Bleed without her. If she had shown, it would have given me hope. It would have told me there are rules to be broken, and that if she could finagle the system and return, then anything could happen.
But disappointment is part of this race, and I have to accept that and plunge onward.
The scuffle of feet moving draws me from my thoughts. The Contenders are rising from their pallets and walking toward the back of the boat. A shiver works its way down my spine while I watch them and realize the boat is no longer moving. Olivia takes hold of my hand and her elephant, who made her way over moments before, swishing her trunk with agitation. A few Contenders move aside, and I finally see what everyone else does. One of the Brimstone Bleed men is holding his right hand up and out.
A device is in his palm.
And the red light is blinking.
I find myself looking to Guy without thinking. He’s looking at me, too. Twenty feet separate us. It isn’t much.