Youngbloods, page 3
As long as you didn’t repeat them when the sun came out again.
‘I wasn’t supposed to talk about it when he could hear,’ Goose says. ‘But it was a birthday wish!’
A sob comes, and I remember the words Rafi used to say to me. ‘It’s not your fault.’
‘But someone came to the door that night. Mom and Dad told me to go to bed, to not listen. The next morning, I woke up in a place called Hideaway. A nice crumbly man said that Mom and Dad were on a trip. But they never came back.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say.
‘Am I in trouble again?’ she asks. ‘For cutting down those trees?’
I shake my head.
‘We used to only to take one at a time.’ Goose is pleading with me now, like I’m the final arbiter of every injustice she’s been subject to. ‘But our supply deliveries stopped, and the minder said we had to get more trees—or starve.’
‘Three months ago, right?’
She nods. The Fall of Shreve.
‘The minder told us it was the only way to get food. We don’t know who takes the trees. We stack them outside, and they’re gone in the morning.’
Someone knew about these abandoned children and didn’t save them, just used them to make money.
If it was my sister, the free cities will cut her off. No more reconstruction aid. Her own people will turn on her.
But Rafi wouldn’t risk it. X and I have a spy close to her, and we haven’t heard a whisper of this.
‘Shreve is different now,’ I tell Goose. ‘We got rid of the bad man.’
She stares at me, not believing.
‘All the old recordings have been erased,’ I say. ‘You can say your wishes out loud now.’
A war of expressions crosses her face—confusion, a flicker of hope, then distrust. ‘What are you going to do with us?’
I take gentle hold of her hand.
‘We’re going to Hideaway to get the rest of you. And then we’re going to take you home.’
Tally pings us an hour later.
‘Found the poachers’ base.’
‘Stay clear,’ Shay says. ‘This could be tricky.’
Tally laughs. ‘You think I’m afraid of littlies?’
‘It’s not what it looks like, Boss,’ I break in. ‘They’re prisoners.’
Tally doesn’t answer for a moment, the line crackling with the noise of repeater towers.
‘Okay, I’ll wait. But whatever’s going on, those little bubbleheads better have a good excuse.’
We lift off toward Tally’s coordinates, each of us sharing our hoverboard with one of the captured littlies.
They seem to be enjoying themselves, staring at the open sky. It’s probably been a long time since they’ve traveled above the cover of the trees.
My mind is stuck in a loop, remembering the night the free cities finally moved against my father, wrecking his army, bombarding his city from orbit. Creating the vacuum that allowed my sister to take power.
Col and I spent most of the battle rescuing Boss X. In the same prison, we found hundreds of people who’d vanished during my father’s rule. For ten years, everyone who threatened or disobeyed him disappeared. Traitors to Shreve.
We should have wondered where their children were.
We land in a steep-sided valley, high walls of stone on either side. A shallow river reflects the stars.
A figure melts out of the darkness in full stealth gear.
Tally pulls off her hood. ‘What’s this about?’
Everyone turns to look at me—the expert on Shreve. The daughter of the man who stole these children.
I’m silenced by the weight of their stares, especially the littlies, watching from outside the circle of Youngbloods.
Tally’s voice softens.
‘Tell me what you know, Frey-la.’
It’s the first time anyone’s called me that. The Youngbloods are a strange mix of fierce faces, lethal bodies, and silly nicknames. They fight like hurricanes and talk like new pretties.
The gentle words unfreeze me. I descend into the awful logic of my father’s mind again.
‘When people committed treason in Shreve, their children weren’t adopted out. The whole family vanished. It looks like the kids got sent here, to Hideaway. For some reason, they weren’t freed after my father fell.’
Tally’s eyes have gone cold. She stares across the dark water to the other side of the valley.
‘What do we know about the defenses?’
‘One of the kids said that there’s no human staff,’ Astrix says. ‘Just an AI minder and drones. Maybe the whole thing’s on autopilot.’
‘But someone must know about it,’ I say. ‘Someone doesn’t want this place exposed, Boss. Remember my father’s dead-man switch?’
There’s a silence.
When the world was finally closing in on him, my father filled his tower with nuclear waste and high explosives. He threatened to blow it all into the air, poisoning Shreve for a thousand years.
My father never lost at cards—not when he could overturn the table.
Tally looks across the water again. Her eyes travel up the far side of the valley, where a large, precarious outcrop of rock darkens the sky.
‘The littlies went through a door under that cliff.’ She turns to Shay. ‘It could be rigged to avalanche. We get them out tonight. Make a plan.’
Shay gives a dry laugh. ‘Tonight? Forget it. We need satellite imagery, more gear, some drone recon. Give me a day, Boss.’
‘You have an hour,’ Tally says. ‘They must be wondering already why the rest of their crew isn’t back.’
‘More reason to be careful, Boss. They’ll have lookouts!’
‘Worse,’ I say, squinting at the rocks across the river. ‘There’s dust.’
Back in Shreve, you could only see the surveillance dust at sunset. All those microscopic machines would give the light a metallic glint. My new eyes are seeing something like it here, a glimmer in the starlight. And my nose can just catch its scent, like soot in a fireplace.
‘Shay,’ Tally says softly. ‘Every minute we delay, the AI worries a little more about being exposed. Maybe it decides to erase this place before we make our move.’
The two of them fall silent, staring each other down. No one else dares to speak.
Not for the first time, I wonder exactly what the history is between Shay and Tally. There’s clearly a deep trust, long silences side by side at the campfire. But every once in a while, a vast anger rumbles between them, like a distant waterfall.
I’m not sure they actually like each other.
For a moment, I think we’re all going to stand here for the rest of the night.
Then the oldest boy speaks up.
‘Are you really …?’
He’s staring at Tally, of course. All of them have been since she appeared, like someone stepping out of a history book. The woman who changed the world, who ended the pretty regime and made the mind-rain fall.
Now that they’ve heard her voice, they believe who she is. Just like I did the moment she walked into my hospital room.
‘Tally Youngblood,’ she says. ‘Who are you?’
‘Tigerboy,’ he says. ‘I know where the big bomb is. Some kid showed it to me the day after I got to Hideaway.’
6. TROJAN HORSE
Thirty minutes later, Shay has a plan.
It starts with Astrix releasing a handful of microdrones into the air, glowing fireflies that wink out as they cross the shallow river. They’ll map the approaches, search for traps and sensors, sneak into Hideaway’s comm system and electrics.
X and Tally head up the river, dressed in full sneak suits. Once they’ve crossed a few klicks upriver, they’ll scale the rocks on the other side. Their job is to take out the ‘big bomb’ that Tigerboy saw.
That’s why this deep valley was chosen for Hideaway—one landslide and my father’s crime is buried. Along with any clues about who kept the poaching business going after his fall.
Once the bomb is deactivated, Shay and Croy will attack Hideaway’s defenses head-on.
My job is easy: lie down and be injured.
We make the littlies build the stretcher themselves so it’s convincingly crappy. It’s made of interwoven branches, with a lifter secured to each corner. It looks like it can hold my weight—uncomfortably.
Not that I’ll be noticing a few pine needles in my back.
I rub dirt into my face, a few leaves in my hair, like I took a hard spill from a fast-moving board. My sneak suit is set to the color of a forest ranger jacket.
I climb on the stretcher and settle myself.
The five littlies take me across the river.
Tigerboy leads us to the shallowest crossing. The other four guide my hovering stretcher, their feet slipping on wet stones. There’s no sign of Shay following, underwater in her sneak suit.
Staring up at the stars, listening to the littlies’ splashing steps, I wonder again about Rafi.
When she took control of Shreve, she learned all my father’s secrets. She’s revealed plenty to the world already—a hoard of ancient Rusty nerve gas, a squad of psychopath Special commandoes, a network of spies left behind in the city of Paz—weekly reminders that she’s different from our father.
But if she kept these children from their parents, all those revelations will mean nothing.
The splashing stops—we’re still on the river, about a hundred meters from Hideaway’s entrance in the rock face of the valley wall.
My mouth goes dry. Even with my new nervous system, I’m not looking forward to the next step of Shay’s plan.
She appears beside me, a sneak-suited shadow in front of the stars.
‘You ready for this?’
‘Probably not,’ I say.
‘Correct answer.’ I can hear the smile in her voice.
She takes firm hold of my left foot—and breaks my ankle.
When my brain comes back from the rush of pain, we’re moving fast.
The littlies are running—they have to reach Hideaway’s scanners before my ankle heals itself. Shay said she’d ‘make it messy,’ so the nanos will take longer.
It feels messy. Behind the shriek of pain is a sickening, bone-on-bone grinding. Every jostle of the stretcher makes it worse.
Combat stimulants are spilling into my veins, but the whiplash between agony and adrenaline only makes me want to puke.
I curse Shay with every jolt. She chose me as the infiltrator because I’m the closest in age to the Hideaway littlies, the most likely to gain their trust—a wounded bird rescued and brought home. But at this moment, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t like me.
We reach the gate. Tigerboy is calling for a med drone.
I hear a long scrape of rock. Light spills across us.
A moment later, the stretcher beneath me is gliding, mercifully steady, its lifters stabilized by the house magnetics.
‘Welcome home,’ an AI says. ‘But I see you’ve brought … a visitor?’
A dozen overlapping answers spill from the littlies in a torrent. But all that reaches my ears is the sound of the AI.
Of course he did.
The minder for these lost children has my dead father’s voice.
7. HIDEAWAY
‘She hit one of our trip wires,’ Tigerboy explains once the rest of them settle down enough for explanations.
Goose bobs her head. ‘You should’ve seen it. She went down so hard!’
The littlies who met us at the door are staring at my ankle, wide-eyed and sickened. I try not to imagine it twisted at a rag-doll angle.
Nanos are already buzzing down there, fixing torn ligaments and ruptured blood vessels. But they’re too tiny to shift the bone back into place. We Specials are trained to do that for ourselves.
I just lie there, the air in my lungs swirling with pain.
‘Can you save her?’ Tigerboy asks.
‘From a broken ankle? Hardly life-threatening,’ the house minder says. ‘You should’ve left her. That’s the first rule.’
‘But she’s breathing wrong!’ Goose cries.
I put some extra effort into my gasping, like I’ve punctured a lung.
‘Very well,’ the minder says in my father’s bored voice. ‘Clear some space for the med drone.’
As the littlies pull back, I wonder how this AI was programmed to deal with intruders. My father never used machines that were clever enough to think for themselves. They were only extensions of his will, not sentient beings in their own right.
Probably the minder will contact a human to decide what to do with me. It won’t just murder someone in front of its young charges.
I hope.
The med drone arrives and starts with a standard body scan—passing over me from head to toe. As if delirious with pain, I flail an arm, slapping a nano patch onto the machine’s underside.
The drone shudders in midair as the nanos spread out across its innards.
The microscopic battle lasts only seconds. Astrix’s nanos overwhelm the drone’s self-diagnostics, and it continues down my body, ignoring my ceramic bones and plastic muscles, my toughened skin. All the things that make me dangerous.
‘You have a badly broken ankle,’ it says.
The AI might have surveillance dust and a hundred layers of defenses, but this med drone is programmed to fix sore throats, acne, and broken arms. As Shay expected, hijacking it was simple.
‘The bone needs to be set,’ the machine says. ‘This may hurt.’
‘Let me do it.’ I sit up.
The littlies recoil, like I’m a corpse coming back to life.
When I see my ankle, a fresh wave of nausea rushes into my throat. My foot is pointing ninety degrees away from true. I’m going to have to talk to Shay about overkill.
But my nervous system locks down the wretch-making feeling.
I give the ankle a sharp twist, then fall back screaming.
The littlies throw a bash.
Out comes a swirl of dessert rations—chocolate bars, milk and cookies, cupcakes capped with spiraling towers of icing. A pink drink that smells like cinnamon and maple syrup. For the older kids, jars of jalapeños are passed around.
They may be too young for bubbly, but sweets and hot peppers make a party.
Soon the littlies are sugar-rushing, squealing at the tale of hoverboards bursting out of nowhere, the poaching party having to flee.
Forest rangers! Trip wires! A wolf-man!
I can’t blame them for being excited. In all their years of poaching, it’s the first time anyone’s actually come after them. And they got away—at least that’s the story. Shay and Tally were worried that our five littlies would spill the truth to their friends in Hideaway. After all, they’ve just met the most famous rebel in the world. But these are the children of Shreve dissidents.
They know better than anyone the price of leaked secrets.
They leave me lying in the middle of the party, like a fallen Viking warrior at her own wake. My ankle is almost healed, but I pretend to be half-conscious, knocked out by painkillers. The med drone checks on me every ten minutes and pronounces me too fragile to move.
Now all there is to do is wait, while Tally and X defuse the self-destruct system.
It’s taking longer than scheduled. In the big picture window that faces the valley, the sky is starting to turn red.
‘What’s your name?’ one of the littlies asks me. He looks about fourteen, on the older end of the littlies here.
I’m tired of false names, so I play the tough prisoner. ‘What’s yours?’
He hesitates a moment. ‘Spider.’
‘Do you all go by animal names here?’
‘Sure—we aren’t city kids.’ He stands up taller. ‘We take care of ourselves. The minder barely does anything. I’m basically in charge.’
I look around at the chaos of the party, the chipped furniture and carpet stains that cleaning drones can’t fix. The walls are marked with the gouges and scars of past parties.
It looks like no one’s in charge.
‘Someone told me that a nice crumbly man shows up now and then,’ I say.
Spider shrugs. ‘He hasn’t been here for a couple of weeks.’
Two weeks, not three months. So it’s not just the house AI on autopilot—someone in Shreve is still running this place.
Maybe someone in my sister’s government.
‘Like I said, we take care of ourselves,’ Spider says, earnest now. He takes his responsibility for the other kids seriously.
Just like me, when I was little. I was a captive in my own home, brutally trained to serve my father’s purposes. But protecting Rafi was my only identity for sixteen years, so I clung to it.
Until Col saw something more in me.
‘Sometimes it’s okay to be afraid,’ I say softly.
Spider frowns at me. ‘Of what? You?’
‘You’re a bunch of kids.’
Spider narrows his eyes, and for a moment, I think he’s going to argue. But then he laughs in my face and leaps up onto a chair.
‘Hey, everyone! Let’s show our guest some tricks!’
A ragged cry goes up from the littlies, bubbly with sugar and having stayed up all night. They form a circle in the center of the room.
One of the girls sings a high, clear note, and the others join in. It sounds like an orchestra tuning up, dozens of voices gathering around one pitch.
Spider waves for silence, then counts off four beats. The littlies start a quick-tempo song, the same gibberish syllables that they were singing out among the trees.
Sparkles appear in the air, fizzing to life over our heads. As the singing firms up, the lights grow steadier.
A burnt smell reaches my nose, and I notice that a few of the lights have drifted to the edges of the room. They bounce gently off walls, leaving scorched marks.
Of course—the poachers controlled the tree-cutting nanos with their voices. The littlies must practice here at home, learning to bend the tiny machines to their will.
The nanos fill the air here in Hideaway, like weaponized dust.
