Division Page 16

  “I’ll go with you,” 00 offered. He didn’t seem to be quite as annoyed with Blue as 62. He enjoyed being up on the top floor, spending every waking moment working with N302.

  “You’d go outside with me? Why?”

  “I want to look for more snake skins. It’d be cool if I could find one that wasn’t irradiated, so I could give it to Hazel the next time I see her.”

  Blue made a show of wriggling in discomfort. Once the shudder passed through him, however, he agreed to 00’s suggestion. “Fine. But I’m not carrying you back here if you get bit. If you get a snake riled up, you’re on your own.”

  “Okay!” 00 said with enthusiasm. “How about you, 62? Want to go with us?”

  “No thanks. I’m going to stay inside where it’s snake-free. Maybe I’ll go find Sunny. I still owe her an apology.”

  Blue and 00 went off together to find their gear, leaving 62 alone in the cafeteria with his thoughts. He finished his lunch slowly, mulling over what he wanted to say to Sunny. It was hard, apologizing, because his views on the matter hadn’t changed. He still felt like Sunny should find a way to share her story with Hanford. Maybe it wouldn’t make a difference, but he hoped that knowing what the Oosa had done would make Girls like Mattie reconsider volunteering the second they came of age. Although Rain said if no one volunteered, the Oosa would simply take their subjects by force, maybe if Hanford knew what awaited the volunteers, they’d fight back. But none of that would happen if Sunny stayed hidden on the hill. 62 frowned. Talking to Sunny was going to be even harder than he’d expected.

  After a few more minutes of thought, 62 realized that while he didn’t feel right apologizing for suggesting that Sunny share her story, he could apologize for upsetting her. He did feel sorry for that. It was so easy for him to feel like he knew what the solution was from his perspective, but he had no way of knowing what the same problem felt like from where Sunny was coming from. Whatever she’d been through, it had damaged her deeper than he could see, and he hadn’t intended to hurt her feelings. Finally, he made up his mind on what he was going to say. 62 collected the dishes left behind after lunch, dumped them in the sink in the kitchen, and made his way upstairs to Sunny’s new room.

  He knocked softly on the door, and there was no answer. 62 frowned, wondering if she knew it was him simply by the way his knuckles sounded on the door. Maybe she was still so mad at him that she wouldn’t talk to him. A pang of worry tightened in his chest as the thought that she might have hurt herself flitted through his mind. He reached through the noisy cloister of bottles hanging over her doorknob and tested the latch. The door swung open. The chain lock hadn’t been fastened, and aside from the swinging of the jars on the doorjamb, there wasn’t any movement in Sunny’s room.

  “Where is she?” 62 asked himself. He wandered to the end of the floor, peering out the window at the greenhouse below. He waited a moment, looking for shadows moving behind the dirt-stained glass, but the enclosed farm seemed abandoned. He checked his room, and Blue’s, to see if she was waiting for the Boys there, and even cracked the bathroom door open and called her name once. She didn’t seem to be anywhere on the second floor, and he hadn’t seen her downstairs. 62 took to the stairs, heading to the top of the building.

  62 entered the computer room with sweat trickling down his back, panting and wheezing from his race to the top of the stairs. He leaned against the open door. There Sunny sat, typing away at N302’s first terminal, seemingly oblivious to 62’s plight.

  “There you are,” 62 said, his voice coming in short bursts between pants.

  “Here I am,” she said in a lilting voice without turning around.

  62 crossed the threshold, making his way to the second table and flopping down in the chair beside it. He held his head in his sweaty hands for a moment, catching his breath and waiting for the pounding of blood in his ears to subside. He’d raced to the top floor because of the frenzied thought that Sunny might need help. He’d been so concerned that something might have happened with the others gone, and no one to help her but him. And now, here she was, perfectly fine, typing away at the keyboard, taking breaks every so often to have a sip of tea from a mug sitting beside N302’s monitor.

  “What are you doing?” 62 finally asked.

  “Talking to N302.”

  “Can I see?” 62 scooted his chair closer, craning his neck to read over Sunny’s shoulder.

  Sunny lifted her hands to the screen, covering up the text. “I’d rather you not,” she said. “It’s private.”

  “Oh.” The chair made a scraping sound as 62 shoved himself back to where he’d first sat down. “Sorry.”

  “It’s fine,” Sunny said, sighing as she returned her hands to the keyboard.

  “No, I mean that I’m sorry about the last time we talked. I shouldn’t have kept bugging you about going to Hanford. I know you don’t want to, and it’s not my business to make you go.”

  Sunny typed a note into the computer, then turned around in her chair. She looked at 62 with flat eyes. “I understand. I even agree. I agree, they need to know how dangerous it is. They need to stop going with the Oosa. I don’t want anyone to go through what I went through. And I wish Juniper, Skye, and Robin were still alive so they could tell everyone about what happened to them.” Sunny’s eyes glistened with tears, and she twisted her mouth to hold in a whimper. She sat like this a moment, fighting her sorrow until she forced it away. An indifferent expression appeared on her face. “But they’re not here. They’re dead. No one can do anything about that.”

  “I know. We can’t change what’s already happened. But you can change the future. And what about Rain and Hazel? They want to help. They said they’re coming back soon to check on us. Maybe you’ll feel better about things by the time they show up again.” Sunny’s eyes clouded over and her cheeks burned red. 62 could tell he’d said the wrong thing, again. “Or, maybe you won’t change your mind. Even if you don’t, they might have some ideas on how to help you to feel better. And then, who knows? Maybe we’ll find a way to tell people about the Oosa without you having to say anything.”

  “It’s not just that the words are hard to get out, you know.” Sunny glanced up at the ceiling and sucked in a long breath of air. When the breath came out again, her words tumbled out along with it. “It’s hard to be alive. To get up every day like this.” She waved her hands over her skin, indicating that her body wasn’t the form she wanted it to be. “I can’t hide what they did to me. They changed everything about me. I feel like a Woman inside, but look at me! I’d look like Blue if I cut my hair. We have the same figure. And my mind is so scattered, I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

  “You’re Sunny. The teacher from Hanford.”

  She closed her eyes and shook her head. “No, that’s who I was before. It was another life. Now, I’m someone else. Someone afraid of the dark. Afraid of the people I love. I’m lost and alone.”

  62 got up from his chair. He was careful not to look at the screen beyond Sunny, trying to give her the privacy she’d requested, even though the blinking cursor taunted his curiosity. He closed his eyes and moved forward, hugging Sunny gently. “You’re not alone. We’re here. And I know you think we’re just a bunch of kids, but we care about you and want to take care of you.”

  A snort erupted in 62’s ear. “Take care of me? None of you even knew how to use the radiation counter. If I hadn’t figured it out, we’d all be dying of radiation poisoning.”

  “Nah, only Hazel and 00. They’re the ones who were playing with that irradiated snake skin. I didn’t touch it. If they’d died, I’d still be here to take care of you.”

  Sunny chuckled. “Thanks, 62.”

  They pulled away from their embrace and stared awkwardly at one another. 62 cleared his throat to break the silence, then asked, “Hey, I know you were talking to N302, but do you want to play a game?”

  “What kind of game?”

  “The bot’s got a game called Pyramid that was
programmed into it when we first got it. But 00 said that N302’s been making up new games for us to play.”

  “Sure,” Sunny said with a less severe frown than before. “Let me finish talking to N302 first. Then, I’ll ask it to get a game for us to play.”

  “Okay!” 62 tucked himself back into his chair. He listened patiently to the quiet clicking keys as Sunny finished her conversation with the bot. Without warning, words and symbols scrolled across the second computer’s screen, loading a game. It was one of the new ones, 62 noticed, a puzzle game N302 had designed. The bot hadn’t told them how to play it yet. 62 watched the main menu of the program appear. His excitement over the new program wouldn’t let him sit still, so he selected the start command and pressed the enter key. As the game started, a sentence appeared on the screen.

  You are lost in the desert. There is sand all around. What would you like to do next?

  62 fidgeted in his seat while he waited for Sunny to key in her farewell on the other computer. Finally, she moved her chair beside him and looked at the screen.

  “What would you like to do?” 62 asked, pointing at the screen.

  “I don’t know. Look around, I guess?”

  62 typed in Sunny’s answer.

  You are lost in the desert. There is sand all around. What would you like to do next?

  “What if we move somewhere else?” 62 asked.

  “Can’t hurt to try,” Sunny said.

  62 typed that he’d like to move forward. They waited for N302 to register the instructions. The cursor jumped down the screen a couple of lines, and a new message scrolled across the screen.

  You are lost in the desert. There is sand all around. What would you like to do next?

  “Did it move?” Sunny asked.

  “I guess so. But we’re still lost in the desert,” 62 answered.

  “How are we supposed to know where to go next?”

  “We’ll just keep moving forward,” 62 said, typing in the command. “We’re bound to find the edge of the desert eventually.”

  The hours passed with 62 and Sunny enthralled by the game N302 was playing with them. It had taken some time, but they’d crossed the virtual desert, found their way into an abandoned village, and were now exploring a temple in search of a make-believe treasure.

  “We found something!” 00 burst into the computer room late in the evening, his skin red from scrubbing down in detox and his breath rasping from the run.

  Sunny turned away from the computer game. 62 begrudgingly pulled his hands from the keyboard and dropped them to his lap, giving 00 his full focus.

  “What is it?” 62 asked.

  “Another building. Blue and I wanted to find out how far we could see from the top of the mountain, so we hiked all the way to the top. When we got higher up, we saw this giant tower up there, so we went to check it out. There’s a building at the bottom of it, and of course Blue had to break in to find out what’s inside. It’s full of equipment! Electronic equipment, I mean.”

  “Like the place where we found the computers?” 62 asked, eyes bright.

  “Not really. The stuff up there is way different from anything we saw in Hanford. But it was getting late, so we came back for the night before we really had a chance to dig in and figure out what it all does. We’re going back up there in the morning. You should come with us!”

  “I’m in!” 62 grinned. It had been so long since he and the others had any kind of real adventure, and after spending the afternoon playing video games with Sunny, his thirst for adventure had grown. He was excited to get out and explore the mysterious building his friends had found.

  “I don’t think I’m up for a hike,” Sunny said abruptly. 62 looked at her, worried. “It’s okay though. You all go along. I’m sure I’ll hear all about it when you get back.”

  “You bet,” 62 said to Sunny. Then, he looked behind 00 to the empty hall beyond the room. “Where is Blue, anyway?”

  “He went to the greenhouse. Said that he wanted to take care of his plants before it got too late.”

  “Well,” Sunny said, leaning back in her chair and stretching her arms overhead. “I guess we should tell N302 goodnight and I’ll go make something to eat. You Boys get to bed early so you’ll be rested up for tomorrow’s adventure.”

  “I can’t wait.” 62 grinned.

  CHAPTER 27

  It was no wonder the Boys hadn’t been able to see the tower from the jailhouse. It stood on the opposite side of the mountain’s rounded peak, and it took quite a bit of effort for the Boys to follow the contours of the mountain to get to it. Although the mountain looked smooth and low from down on the desert floor, its sides were steep, and sections of the mountain’s face were made up of loose sand and gravel that slid underfoot without warning. Eventually, their efforts paid off. 62 could see the peak of a thin metal tower poking above the summit.

  The structure was straight and narrow, but 62 thought it looked unfinished. It was really nothing more than a tall metal frame, and if there had been walls over the crisscrossed beams, they’d been pulled from the building by people, or time. Up at the top, a few long poles jutted out from the tower’s crown. When they approached, they found a squat box of a building settled to one side of the tower’s base.

  “Wow,” 62 said as they moved closer. He craned his neck as he looked at the tower stretched high overhead. A few bird’s nests had been built along the higher beams, and a large, black-eyed bird squawked down at them as they passed underneath it.

  Although 62 had no way to know how ancient the metal tower was, the building looked to be about as old as the jailhouse. It had similar signs of wear; a brown exterior that matched the sparse landscape, cracked and crumbling bricks here and there, and windows so coated with debris that they could hardly be seen through. One window, near the structure’s door, had been wiped clean. Blue walked up to it, wiped the glass with a towel he’d brought, and pressed the goggles of his mask to the glass to peer inside.

  “Still empty,” Blue announced. He tossed the dirty rag on the ground, atop another one that had been left in the dirt some time previously.

  00 grabbed the door’s handle and yanked hard. The door didn’t swing freely. Instead, it jutted open only a few inches. 00 yanked the door again and it scraped the slab of concrete below it, protesting as it opened a few more inches. 00 kept dragging the stubborn door until finally it opened enough that the Boys could enter the building one at a time.

  It took a moment for 62’s vision to adjust to the dark room. The only light inside came from the one clean window. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust. 62 turned his attention to Blue. The eldest Boy pulled off the satchel he’d carried with him, set it on the floor, and pulled their radiation counter out. He angled the device toward the light so he could see it better and turned it on. He swept the room with the wand, staying head down and facing the window so he could see the device’s needle jumping on the box in the dim light. The box made an intermittent ticking sound, which 62 understood to be a good sign. A steady stream of chatter was when things got dangerous. Blue pointed his wand in every corner of the moderately sized room, then craned his head toward an interior door.

  “Might as well check it all,” Blue said. “Come with me?”

  62 nodded, opening the brittle door so Blue could go deeper into the building. The handle broke off in his hand and the wooden door was so soft that when he gripped its edge to steady himself, a chunk of it fell off. He dropped the crumbling splinters to the floor and followed Blue into the next room. 00 trailed behind, distracted by the various boxes of equipment stacked up along the walls, resting on tables, and wired devices strung through the center of the second room.

  “Hey, I can’t see anything in here. Grab a candle and a match out of my bag, will ya?” Blue waited for 62 to follow his orders.

  Once 62 held a lit candle overhead, Blue checked the second room and passed through yet another door where they found a small, cramped, and long-forgotten ba
throom. They backtracked a bit, passing through another door in the second room to find a small office space. There was just one desk, a computer that looked identical to the ones at the jailhouse, and a metal chair toppled on its side behind the desk.

  “It’s clear in here,” Blue finally announced. “Barely any readings, really. This place must have been shut up tight.”

  “Until you came along and broke in,” 00 joked.

  Blue set down the radiation counter and pulled his mask off. His grin twisted in the wavering candlelight. “Well, I couldn’t very well just leave this all sitting here, could I?”

  “I can’t believe there’s another computer here,” 62 said after taking off his mask. He moved around the dimly lit office to the back side of the desk. He righted the chair and sat in it. He lowered his hands to the computer’s keyboard and pressed the keys on the lifeless Machine. “I wonder if it works?”

  “There’s no power up here.” 00 tucked his mask into his back pocket as he talked. “We found that out yesterday. But there’s loads of cables, so it must’ve had an electrical hookup at some point.”

  The Boys went back through the rooms to the front entry. Blue put the radiation counter away in his bag. He retrieved a few more candles he’d brought along and lit them, one by one. Soon, candlelight cast a warm glow throughout the strange place.

  “What do you think all this stuff was used for?” 62 said in a loud enough voice to be heard in the neighboring rooms. He was picking through the cramped second room. Small, crane-like devices were propped up on a pair of desks. The cranes held small rods with mesh heads pointing at where a person might sit. Cables ran from the ends of the rods, winding their way along the edge of the desks to some metal boxes. The boxes had hundreds of controls from what 62 could see, although it was too dark to tell what any of the knobs or buttons might do in the faint candlelight.

  “Don’t know,” 00 responded from the front room. A moment later, he came back to where 62 was flicking dead buttons on one of the devices. 00 reached out to touch one of the strange metal rods held above the desks and it fell to the desktop with a clang. The crane-arm drooped suddenly, as if the cobwebs clinging to it had been the only thing holding it together. 00 bared his teeth as he cringed. “Oops. Didn’t mean to break anything.”