“Alaska?” Isaac, Trish, and Sadina said all at once.

  “No more questions,” Orange commanded. “It’s not our place. Get cleaned up, use the bathroom, we’ll be waiting at the door. You have fifteen minutes.”

  Isaac and his friends stood up, stretched, made annoying moans and grunts as they did so.

  Sadina pointed at the black, sparkling material wrapped around Orange’s body like a second skin. “What’s with the . . . the weird pajamas? You guys ever take those off?”

  Orange frowned but Skinny seemed willing enough to share. “They’re called artillery suits. Not many Orphans are trained on how to wear them and use them, but we are. Maybe someday you three can be as cool as us. They’re a lot of fun, in practice anyway. Probably not so much if we’d ever have to use them . . .” He didn’t finish and appeared to regret opening his mouth in the first place.

  “It takes a lot of skill,” Orange added, as if implying that none of them had such skills.

  “What are the pockets stuffed with?” Isaac asked. They bulged like elongated tumors on their arms, legs, and down the front of their torsos.

  Orange replied with a condescending glare. “What do you think? It’s called an artillery suit.”

  “Not a lot of artillery where we come from,” Trish replied. “Not many Bergs or giant machines with spiked wheels, either.”

  Isaac found himself completely mystified by the artillery suits, himself. Why would you walk around with pockets stuffed to bursting with explosives? Seemed slightly dangerous, call him crazy.

  “Artillery.” Sadina sounded out the word in contemplation. “So . . . are you guys, like, living bombs? Do they shoot you out of a cannon?”

  Skinny started to say something but Orange cut him off. “Enough of this. No more talking. You have ten minutes so I would hurry if I were you.”

  “I thought you said fifteen?” Isaac asked.

  “You just wasted five of them. Now get on with it. We’ll be right outside. And don’t worry. We’re . . . we’re friends. It’s going to be okay.”

  She and the skinny boy with the unfortunate nose left the room and closed the door.

  The Orphan—that’s what he insisted on being called because Minho would get him into trouble—had asked her plenty of questions so far, none of them very memorable. About the island, about the boat and Kletter, about each person who’d come from the island. Jackie gave him all the details he wanted because none of them seemed to matter all that much. And when it came to Sadina—about whom he was particularly interested—she could be honest and say she didn’t know much. Because she didn’t.

  But there had been something odd in his questioning. He didn’t put much sincerity into the effort, as if he didn’t care one whit about the answers. And he kept widening and squinting his eyes, tilting his head in subtle ways, fidgeting with his hands. She guessed that he was trying to send subtle clues, but the only thing she got out of it was that this guy either had a serious neurological problem or that maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t in league with the people who’d taken them. An attempt to show that he was on her side.

  But she had her own goals. Learn what she could. If she had to be buddies with this Orphan fellow, then so be it.

  He opened his mouth to ask away again but she held up a hand to stop him.

  “No. If you want me to keep going, then I want answers to some of my questions.”

  He didn’t seem to like that, his eyes flickering to the door as if his bosses might barge in at her audacity. But nothing happened.

  “Okay,” the Orphan said. “Go for it. Um, some things I might not be able to talk about. Just letting you know.”

  She dove in. “Where are you from? And these people you work with?”

  “We’re from the Remnant Nation,” he said after a pause. “Our whole civilization exists to fight the Flare and all its variants. And to fight the Godhead, who want to use the Flare to turn humans into an entirely different species. It’s a battle that’s been going on for decades. Not a literal battle, but a . . . philosophical one, I guess.”

  “Seems to me that maybe that’s changing.” Jackie raised her eyebrows.

  The Orphan looked so uncomfortable that she felt sorry for him. “Yeah. Looks that way.”

  “Tell me more about the Godhead. I mean . . . are they supposed to be actual gods? And how has the Flare changed since it first broke out? How many variants are there? Are they all bad?”

  The Orphan started coughing. He kept at it, covering his mouth, not stopping. Jackie thought it was an act, and a poor one at that. He stood up.

  “Sorry, I need a break. Need to use the bathroom. Do you?”

  For the first time, all the weird things he did with his eyes, trying to say something without saying it, clicked for her. He had a message to give, and it was killing him that he couldn’t come out and spill it.

  “Yeah, I do, actually. Gotta pee real bad.”

  “Come on. It’s close.”

  He opened the door and waited for her. They stepped into a narrow hallway and she followed him ten feet or so to another door. He was just about to open it when he leaned toward her, close, his nose almost brushing her ear.

  “We can’t let them get all the way to Alaska. It’ll be too late if we make it that far.”

  She pulled him into a hug, hoping that anyone who watched might think they’d made a connection during the interrogation. She’d heard of that before in school—something called the Stockholm Syndrome, where the captive gains a closeness to the captor. She banked on it, now.

  Whispering back to him, she said. “You’re going to get us off this ship?”

  “Yes.”

  “Me and all my friends?”

  “I’ll try. We’ll try. I’m gonna need your help. But we have to do it in the next hour. In the next hour or never.”

  “Okay,” she said, unsure of exactly what she was committing to, trusting this weird guy who called himself the Orphan. “So . . . how?”

  “Two of my friends are on the other Berg. I didn’t know they were coming, but they came. And that changed everything. Gave us a chance. Roxy is over there, too. Just be ready.” He quickly pulled back from her hug and looked down the hallway at a man approaching. Much more loudly, and a little too formally, he said, “We appreciate your willingness to help. Would you like to go first?”

  It took her a second to realize he meant the bathroom. She nodded, thanked him, and opened the door, stepped inside. She really did have to pee, anyway.

  He didn’t know how he felt about this Skinny and Orange, the two guards with the funny names, but they moved several notches up the rankings when they put a plate of steaming hot food in front of him. There was meat. There were beans. There was something that looked like a blue potato. It could’ve been worms for all he cared. As famished as he’d ever been, he tore into the meal and greedily drank from the metal cup of water he’d been given.

  It was a reunion meal, of sorts. Some of the others had joined him, Sadina, and Trish in the room with the table and chairs—Timon the Gentle Giant, whose face was covered in bruises, and Letti, who had a bandage wrapped around her head. Neither of them so much as met Isaac’s eyes, not even once. Also there was Carson and Lacey, their friends from the west side of the island. And, oddly enough, the lady who’d stood frozen on the bridge for so long. Roxy was her name.

  But no Jackie. No Dominic. No Miyoko. No Ms. Cowan or Old Man Frypan. No Wilhelm or Alvarez.

  “Where are the others?” Sadina asked, even as Isaac tried to swallow an enormous mouthful of charred beef without choking. They’d been expecting everyone to join them but that hope had been quashed when Skinny closed the door. “Where’s my mom?”

  Orange replied in a voice without the slightest hint of emotion. “They’re on the other Berg, flying next to us. The other ships have gone on, well ahead of us. Mommy’s okay, so chill your bones.”

  Isaac reached under the table and squeezed Sadina’s leg before she could explode. “I’m sure they’re okay, just like us. Eat. It’s really good.”

  That earned him a death-stare but even Sadina couldn’t ignore her hunger for long. She and everyone else at the table dug into their food, manners forgotten. Carson and Timon looked big enough and hungry enough to eat everyone’s dinner between them. Maybe they could’ve been friends in another life. As for Lacey, Isaac didn’t know her very well, and she’d always been quiet, but she looked so sad as she ate that it broke his heart.

  “Why’re you guys here?” Sadina asked, pointing her fork at Letti. “Wasn’t this all a setup by you? Shouldn’t you be in a suite, having your feet rubbed while you eat grapes?”

  Letti’s eyes were bloodshot and she winced with every move, even the workings of her jaw as she spoke. “It never pays to be a traitor. A lesson people always learn too late. Including me. Looks like our friends that, um, I’m sorry, but the ones that helped us take you from that house . . . Well, it appears they weren’t friends after all.”

  Timon grumbled and darted a hard look at Sadina, then at Isaac, but soon returned to stuffing his mouth with meat and beans.

  “Does anyone know what happened to Minho?” the woman named Roxy asked. She seemed a sweet, matronly lady, and the concern in her eyes also hurt Isaac’s heart. He set a goal to stop looking at people altogether. “Anyone? I haven’t seen him or heard a thing about him.”

  Orange stepped up to her, put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “He’s fine, ma’am. On the other ship and totally fine. I bet you see him soon.” Her eyes found Isaac as she said that, staring at him with intensity. Trying to say something but he didn’t know what. “But if I were you I wouldn’t call him Minho while the bosses are around. They don’t like that sort of thing. You know, names and such.”

  The other guard, Skinny, stood by the door, fidgeting and rocking back and forth on his feet. The bulky, sparkling, tight-wound suit that he wore creaked with all of his movements. Artillery suit, Isaac thought. What in the world does that mean?

  “Why would you do this to us?” Trish asked Letti. “Why would you kill Kletter, take my friends away, lead us to all this?” She gestured at whatever it was that ensnared them within its belly. “How could you do that to such innocent people? I wish you’d died when that guy whacked you over the head. I hope you still die, and I’m glad you were betrayed by your so-called friends.”

  “Hey!” Timon shouted, spitting out a tiny bit of food. “Easy for you to talk like that, growing up on your safe little island. Things aren’t so easy in the real world. We’ll see how you get along, kid. We’ll see what you do when it comes down to it. You or them. It’s not a hard choice. So shut your mouth until you’ve lived a real life.”

  Sadina wasn’t having any of that. She stood up, threw her plate at Timon’s head. He ducked, picked it off the floor, threw it back. Trish knocked it aside right before it struck Sadina’s face. Then there was a lot of yelling and Isaac didn’t hear a word of it.

  He stared at a spot on the far wall, lost in thought. Something was going on. Something to do with Orange and Skinny, and that guy who either was or wasn’t named Minho, depending on who you talked to. Something was about to happen.

  As if she’d read his mind, Orange was suddenly kneeling right next to him. He met her eyes, and she smiled, along with a barely perceptible nod. She squeezed his arm.

  “What . . .” he began without finishing. He didn’t know what to ask her.

  “Just be ready,” she whispered. “And when the time comes, find something to hold on to.”

  His heart rate leaped so hard he could feel it in his throat. “What . . . how will I know?”

  She stood back up, softly speaking as her head passed his.

  “Oh, you’ll know.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  According to Plan

  It was happening today at noon. Finally. After a solid month of meticulous planning.

  Mannus sat in a chair, just a few feet in front of her. No one else was in the room, and only Flint still remained in the residence, waiting in the front hall. The amount of deceit, the amount of stealth and secrecy, the amount of sheer guts—all that had been expended and risked in the last month was almost beyond her Flare-enhanced comprehension. It truly surprised her that she hadn’t been caught, that her head wasn’t on a pole somewhere, like in medieval times, glaring with rotted eyes at the people as a warning.

  Medieval times. That gave her a whimsical thought.

  “Mannus, you know what? In ancient days, I hear that kings would often say, bring me their heads. Do you think that’s true?”

  He looked at her like she’d lost her mind. MADNESS! She imagined him thinking it. The word was like a wounded animal inside her head, screaming in pain, pulsing with its own heartbeat. Madness. The greatest fear she’d ever known.

  “Just answer the question, Mannus.”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, seems like I read that somewhere. What the hell? Shouldn’t we be finalizing things? Not doing history lessons?”

  She bristled at that. This man had been given a lot of leeway—she needed him far more than he could even guess—but it still bothered her greatly. Once this was all over . . .

  “Careful, Mannus. My point is this—that’s what I want. I want you to bring me back his head. It’s the only way I can know for sure. The only way.”

  His eyes found the floor, and she assumed he was trying to hide his frustration. “The Coffin won’t be enough to prove it? That he’s dead?”

  “No. It won’t. And I may need something like a head for proof to others. I’m starting to think they knew what they were doing way back then.”

  When he looked up at her again, he’d composed himself. “Okay, Goddess. We’ll bring back both things. Can we put the head into the Coffin? Make it easier to carry?”

  He was joking. She knew he was joking. And he knew she knew. But it was still the most dangerous thing he’d ever uttered in her presence.

  “Mannus, I’ll know if you, if any of you, open that Coffin. You can’t imagine the punishments that will define the rest of your life if you allow such a thing to happen.”

  “I understand. I’m sorry.”

  She allowed her anger to show, allowed her face to flush, allowed her eyes to rage. She could’ve hidden it with the Flaring discipline, with a quick recitation of the digits, but she wanted it to be seen.

  “I can’t say it too many times. There is pain and suffering that you can’t begin to fathom, Mannus. The Coffin is not to be opened. If it is, there’s not one spot on earth in which you could find a hiding spot. Is that clear?”

  She’d shaken him. A rarity. He nodded and bowed his head low.

  “Good. We’ve gone over the plan. All the people are in place. Mikhail will not be in the picture today, nowhere near Nicholas. You have the codes, the weapons, the passwords, the muscle. Is there anything we’ve left out or not considered?”

  He hesitated, still shaken.

  “Speak freely, Mannus.”

  “It’s all there, Goddess Romanov. We’ve been through every single detail a thousand times. It will go exactly according to plan. I swear it.”

  Things rarely did, but she thought that this time it just might. The Evolution had never brought her so much certainty and comfort. And it was the Evolution that she served.

  “Well, then that’s that,” she said. “You can go.”

  He left quietly, the mission begun. In a few hours, she’d have two very precious gifts that would change the world forever. Two simple things, really. In fact, the head would probably be the hardest part.

  She released her mind into the Flaring before the impatience could creep its way in. She closed her eyes.

  “Go back into your room,” Skinny said, very firmly. They stood outside the door to where they’d been earlier, lying in beds like a cruise vacation on Old Man Frypan’s rickety homemade yacht. “Orange will come in and lock you back up. For safety.”

  “Now wait a damn minute,” Sadina almost shouted. “I thought we were all on the same team now? Something like that? Prove it by not chaining us up.”

  “Please,” Trish added.

  Isaac was running completely on hunches, now. On guesses. But a lot of small things over the last hour had built up inside him. Each one, left alone, would mean absolutely nothing. But put together, he had an overwhelming feeling that something special was about to happen. Maybe scary, maybe terrifying, maybe deadly. But something that was good. That was for them.

  Trish and Sadina had sulked their way into the room and sat on their beds, resigned to the shackles. Isaac hurried to sit next to them. Feigning a hug, he pulled them close enough to whisper into their ears.

  “We need to be locked up. Buckled in. It’ll be for our own good.”

  “What’re you talking about?” Trish asked.

  “Yeah,” added Sadina. “You’re acting weird, Isaac.”

  “Trust me for once, guys. Listen to me. I think that Minho and a couple of his friends have a plan to get us out of these stupid Bergs. I was told to hold on really tight when it happened, and to . . . be ready.”

  He probably deserved their looks of doubt, but he didn’t know what else to say.

  “Let’s just see what happens,” he muttered. “Hope for the best. Just humor me and hold on tight to the restraints, okay? Promise me?”

  That earned him smiles this time, and then Trish and Sadina leaned in from both sides and gave him a good wet kiss on each cheek. Because of course they did.

  Orange had the duty of locking up the shackles and it all went smoothly. Clinks and clanks, rattles of metal links, the click of engaged locks. Soon the three of them were as comfortable on the small beds as you can be while strapped down with chains.

  Orange held her hand out as if she wanted to shake Isaac’s hand. He obliged, although a little embarrassed at the awkward way he had to do it, the chain pinching his arm as he pulled to loosen some of the kinks. They finally grasped hands in a firm grip, and Isaac felt the cold press of metal against his palm. Orange let go, giving the object one last push with her index finger to make sure Isaac got it and knew he was supposed to get it.