MY FATHER ALWAYS TAUGHT ME THAT THE TRUTH WAS WORTH FIGHTING for. For him, the price had been enormous—he’d given up his career, lost Mom, hid away in a cabin in the woods. But I still believed him. It was why I’d convinced my brother and my friends to follow the clues Dr. Underberg had left to the lost underground bunker of Omega City, why I’d decoded the radio messages from the numbers station and sought out the secret labs in Eureka Cove.
Now, because I couldn’t stop searching for the truth, my father had been reduced to a pair of twin red lights receding into the inky blackness of the tunnel beneath Eureka Cove. The Shepherds had captured him, and there was nothing I could do about it.
I stood at the door to the biostation, torn in two. I wanted to run after him, but there was no way I could catch up to a truck on foot. Even if I could, did I think I could take on the Shepherds single-handedly?
And it would be single-handedly. Behind me, inside the glowing white bubble of the biostation, my brother and my friends were freaking out, and my mother lay sleeping, half-frozen, on a table. I was pretty sure there was nothing I could do about that, either.
“Gillian!” Savannah shouted, her voice echoing around the bubble-like interior of the station. “Gillian, come back!”
I cast one last look out the door. The lights were gone. Dad was gone.
“Gillian! We need you!”
I swallowed and ran back to my friends. My brother, Eric, was still bent over my mom’s unconscious form, squeezing her shoulder and shouting at her to wake up. My best friend, Savannah, was standing nearby, wringing her hands.
The monitor over the table beeped incessantly to indicate that the cooling system the Shepherds had put my mother into had been disrupted. I’d seen how it worked with the chimpanzee we’d revived a few hours ago. All we needed to do was disconnect Mom from this machine, get her away from the cooling pads, and she’d wake up.
Eventually.
Eric was already yanking the pads out from around Mom’s body. Thankfully, either he or Savannah had thought ahead far enough to retrieve her clothes from the floor and make sure she stayed covered up. I looked at the pile of clothes remaining on the ground. There were Dad’s pants. There were Nate’s flip-flops.
And next to them, his hands wrapped tight around Nate’s General Tso’s Pizza T-shirt, sat Howard. His knees were drawn up to his chest, and he was staring blankly at the floor. I kind of wished I could join him. The Shepherds had his brother, as well as my father. Add that to the list of things I’d screwed up.
“Howard!” I rushed to his side. “It’s okay. We’ll find them.” I touched his shoulder and his elbow shot out, knocking me back on my butt.
“Howard, listen . . . ,” I tried again, and again he flailed, this time elbowing me in the chest. Hard.
“Ow!” I rubbed my sore sternum and glared at Howard. Maybe give him a minute. I stood up, then joined my brother, who was shoving Mom’s floppy arms into the sleeves of her blouse.
“She’s not waking up,” Eric said. “She’s not waking up.”
“It’s okay. It takes awhile, remember? It’ll be okay.” Already, the word “okay” was starting to sound weird in my mouth. I kept saying it, but I no longer knew what it meant. Ohhhhkaaaaay. OK? Why did we say that, anyway? I’m sure Howard would know, if he were in the mood to talk, but at this moment, it seemed bizarre. What a weird combo of letters to mean things were all right.
Because they weren’t all right. At all.
Two days ago, we’d come to the Eureka Cove campus of Guidant Technologies to help my father give a speech about Omega City to the engineers here. But after intercepting a code from a secret radio station, my friends and I had started to suspect that Eureka Cove was harboring the Shepherds, a secret society that had buried Omega City and tried to ruin my dad’s career.
We’d tracked the origin of the code to this island in the middle of the cove, an island teeming with animal experiments, from hives of dead, genetically engineered bees to tanks of flesh-eating beetles.
We’d also found the Shepherds, because it turned out Guidant was run by Shepherds, and they’d lured us here for far more than a speech.
And now they’d captured my father, and Nate, and if we didn’t wake Mom up soon, they’d get the rest of us, too. The beeping of the monitor changed tone, indicating that the process had completed. Savannah ran over with some heavy pads. They were warm to the touch. “Try this,” she said. “Maybe they’ll help her warm up faster.”
“Mom, wake up,” Eric said. “Wake up, wake up, wake up.”
“Don’t waste your time,” said a voice. The three of us whirled around.
Dani Alcestis stood at the door, her Omega City utility suit balled up under her arm. She was still in her street clothes, her hair slicked back into a bun at the nape of her neck. “It’s not the hypothermic torpor keeping her unconscious. She was tranquilized before they lowered her body temperature. It’ll take several hours for the drugs to work their way through her system.”
“I thought you’d left with Ms. Mero,” I said, narrowing my eyes. I didn’t care if Dani did claim to be Dr. Underberg’s daughter, or that she was trying to help us. If she were really helping, would we be stuck here right now?
“Change of plan,” she replied, and strode forward. “I told you this wasn’t going to be easy.”
“Where’s my father?” I asked her. “Where’s Nate?”
She sighed. “They’re in hypothermic torpor transport pods.” She nodded to the table. “Like your mom is supposed to be. Like you are supposed to be.”
“Transport . . .” I took a deep breath. “Transporting us where?”
“I’ll get to that. We’ve got bigger problems at the moment.” She pointed at Howard, who was still rocking. He hadn’t even looked up when Dani came in. “What’s with him?”
“What’s with him?” Savannah echoed in disbelief. “I don’t know, lady. You kidnapped his brother and put him in a hypothermic whatsit. He’s a little upset.”
Dani rubbed her temples. “I really can’t handle temper tantrums right now. You guys need to deal with him, or none of you are going to make it out of here alive.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Eric said. “And what do you expect us to do? This isn’t a temper tantrum. This is Howard. He gets like this. And you—you froze the only person who knows how to ‘deal with him.’”
Under normal circumstances, this would be where Howard pointed out that nobody froze Nate—that they’d put him in a state of hypothermic torpor. And that Dani had been eating astronaut ice cream with us when it happened. But Howard clearly wasn’t listening.
And Dani didn’t care. She was the only one who seemed to have the slightest idea what was going on, and certainly the only one who might help us. So fighting with her wasn’t really an option. We were alone in a big tent in an underground tunnel and she was our only way out.
I turned to face her. Her expression seemed stern, but as she glanced at each of us in turn, I realized something. Dani had to be at least twenty years older than I was, but for a second all I could see was that she was just as scared as the rest of us. And she should be. We all knew what the Shepherds were capable of. They’d flooded our house and ruined my father’s career just because he was poking around the edges of their secrets. They’d forced Dr. Underberg to go into hiding for decades. And Dani probably knew plenty more things, because she was a Shepherd.
Or she used to be, anyway. It was all so confusing.
“Okay,” I said again, though it still sounded wrong. “Have it your way. We’re kids and we’re having a temper tantrum. But we do want to get out of here. All of us, and my mom. And we need to get Dad and Nate back, too. So what do we need to do?”
She looked at me. “You need to listen to me, and do exactly as I say.”
“We have been,” said Eric. “And look where we are!”
“Yeah.” Savannah nodded. “How are those plans of yours going?”
I turned to them. “Stop! It’s not Dani’s fault. She tried to keep us from going to the island, remember? When Dad asked Elana about the numbers station, it was Dani who fed them the lie about it being a Eureka Cove student project. She told Howard and me to run when we were up at the radio tower. If we’re here now, it’s because . . .” I stopped and tucked my chin into my chest. “It’s because of me.”
I was the one who insisted on going to the island. I was the one who kept everyone up all night trying to crack the codes. I was the one who went into Dad’s voice mail back home and learned about the invitation to Eureka Cove to start with. Dad never would have known about the trip in time. We were only here because I insisted on going. One last hurrah before Mom moved Eric and me to Idaho.
This was all because of me.
“The first thing you need to do,” Dani said, “is stop shouting. You’re in a big, empty space in a big, empty tunnel. Your voices carry. I could hear you all the way outside. And if people hear you, they will know that you are not, in fact, isolated and unconscious in your hypothermic transport pods, which is where I told Elana I was putting you.”
Eric, Savannah, and I exchanged nervous glances. Howard still didn’t look up.
“And what’s the second thing we need to do?” Savannah asked quietly.
Dani took a deep breath. “You need to get in the hypothermic transport pods.”
“No,” said Eric. “No way.” He looked back at Mom, still lying on the table, her clothes wrapped around her in a tangle.
“Absolutely not,” Savannah added.
Dani shrugged. “Fine. So much for doing exactly as I say . . .”
“How is that supposed to help us?” Eric threw his hands up in the air. “It doesn’t. It puts us exactly where they want us.”
“It’s the only way I can protect you—”
“I’m not getting frozen,” Savannah said. She crossed her arms over her chest. “You can forget it.”
I said nothing. I had nothing to say. We were trapped. Dad and Nate were captured, Mom and Howard were out of commission. We’d run out of options. We’d run out of time. All we had was Dani, and she said this was our only move.
Eric turned to me. “You can’t be considering this, Gills. Come on. You don’t trust her, do you?” He gestured at Dani. “She’s one of Them, remember? One of the Themmiest Thems there are?”
“Yeah,” I said. “And that’s probably why she knows exactly how much danger we’re in.”
“We’ve been in danger before,” he said. “What about with Fiona?”
When we’d been underground in Omega City, Eric had gone through the air vents to reach the others, and left me alone in the communications room. There, Fiona, the ex-Shepherd, had threatened all our lives. She’d told us that if we didn’t surrender, she’d seal us all in Omega City forever. We’d ignored her and fought our way out.
But that was different. That was Fiona and two guys who were as lost in Omega City as we were. That was Nate, Howard, Savannah, Eric, and me with maps and plans and energy to run. This was the Shepherds’ home turf. We were far outnumbered. And worst of all, I couldn’t even imagine what escape looked like. We didn’t just need to get aboveground, we needed to get away from Eureka Cove. And that still wouldn’t help Nate and Dad.
“If we get in the pods—” I began to say to Dani.
“Gillian!” Savannah cried.
“Shh!” hissed Dani.
“If we get in the pods,” I tried again, “then what? How will that help us?”
“I’m not getting frozen,” Savannah repeated.
“I won’t freeze you,” said Dani.
“I’m not getting”—she waved her hands at the machines—“hypothermic torpedoed or whatever, either.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Dani said. “I’m not going to put you guys in torpor. It’s a pretty complicated process, and it’s not necessary. I do think, however, that I might have to give you a tranquilizer.”
“Put us to sleep?” Eric asked, incredulous. “How is that better?”
“I have to get you in the pods, and I need you to stay still and quiet, no matter what happens. I can’t have you freaking out in the middle of things.” She cast a quick glance at Howard. “But I promise you, this is the only way.”
“No,” said Eric. “You could stick us in the back of a truck and cover us with a blanket. You could sneak us out. We could . . . create a diversion . . .”
“Elana wants you in the pods. I told her I’d put you in the pods. I’m already close to blowing my cover. If I don’t put you in the pods, and she wants to double-check—and believe me, you don’t get to be the leader of the Shepherds and the head of a multibillion-dollar tech company without making sure that the people who work for you are obeying your orders—then we’re all doomed. Do you honestly think you could stay still and quiet if you were just pretending to be unconscious? No matter what they do to you?”
I didn’t have to answer that. I already knew I couldn’t. Maybe Dani was right.
Savannah shuddered, and I saw tears forming in her big, bright eyes. “But we’ll be trapped.”
Good point. I spoke up. “If something happens to you anyway, if you mess up again, we won’t be able to help ourselves.”
“I know,” Dani said. “And I agree, it’s scary. But what the Shepherds are planning to do to you is even scarier.”
Savannah whimpered. I put my arms around her and glared at Dani.
Dani grimaced. “I probably shouldn’t have said that, huh?”
“Put it on the list of things you shouldn’t have done,” Eric replied. “Starting with joining the Shepherds.”
“And ending somewhere before I threw away my entire life to save you and your family?” she shot back.
Eric’s mouth clapped shut.
“Um, can you excuse us for a minute?” I said.
Dani stamped her foot. “We don’t have time for this. If someone comes in here and catches me with you—”
“Just a minute!”
“Fine.” She turned and strode for the door. “I’m getting the pods.”
As soon as she was gone, the three of us huddled up.
“What about Howard?” Savannah asked.
I shook my head. It was like he’d shut down. But no, that wasn’t it. He wasn’t a robot. But he wasn’t paying attention, either. If Nate were here, maybe we could figure out how to talk to him, but meanwhile, we were running out of time.
“We can’t wait for him to snap out of it. We have to take a vote.” I raised my hand. “Who votes to follow Dani’s lead?”
“I can’t believe you, Gills,” Eric said. “Why? Because she’s an Underberg? We’re just going to voluntarily let her put us to sleep and take us somewhere?”
“What’s the alternative?” I asked.
“Run?” he suggested. “Now, when her back is turned?”
“And what about Mom?” I asked. He looked down. “And Dad?”
“Yeah,” said Savannah. “What about your dad? And Nate? We have no idea what the Shepherds plan to do to them.”
“And we have no way of finding out from here. We can’t run with Mom passed out and Howard . . . doing whatever Howard’s doing.”
Eric thought about this. “So basically our choice is surrender to Dani now, or get caught by the Shepherds later.”
Savannah blinked away a fresh set of tears.
There was a third option, I realized, though it was one I wasn’t happy to share with the group. If we refused Dani’s offer, she might be forced to capture us herself and turn us over to the Shepherds, for her own protection.
“I don’t trust her,” I said, “but I can’t think of any other way. Not a way that helps Mom or Howard, or Dad, or Nate. I’m sorry, Sav.”
“Why?” she said. “I love them, too. And you’re right. I can’t think of a way to escape this place, either.”
Dani returned, wheeling a car loaded with four long gray boxes like coffins—the pods.
I turned to her and squared my shoulders. “Okay.” This time I sounded like I meant it. “We’ll do what you say.”
She beckoned to me. I came close, and she pulled a small syringe dart out of her pocket.
“Wait, needles?” I said, shying back.
“What did you think it was going to be?” She ripped open a foil packet and pulled out an alcohol swab.
“I don’t know,” I said as she tugged at the neck of my utility suit and wiped down a patch of skin. “A pill or something.”
“Takes too long,” she said. “This will have you asleep in a minute.” I felt a prick where my shoulder met my neck, and a harsh burning sensation shot through the area and spread out across my chest.
“Ow!” I clapped my hand over the spot, then swayed on my feet.
Dani caught me and boosted me into the first of the pods. I lay back against soft, grayish-black padding on the inside.
“She’s going to be able to breathe in there, right?” Eric said, hovering over me.
“Yes. The top is full of vents. See?” I looked, but I didn’t see anything. She was attaching seat-belt-like straps over my shoulders and across my thighs.
“Iz allride,” I slurred at Eric. I tried to make the “OK” sign like in scuba diving but my fingers slipped. Dani pushed my hand into the pod, then flipped a switch near my head.
Was it me falling asleep, or was the padding around me suddenly getting . . . thicker? Softer? I could feel it inflating around the form of my body to hold me into place. I tried to turn my head and couldn’t.
Above me, the outline of Dani was growing fuzzy. Her voice floated down to me as if from a great distance. “You know, you were wrong about what you said before.”
“Whaaa?” I asked. I think.
“If you’d done what I said yesterday,” she whispered, “they’d have you all by now, just as they planned. Our chances were never very good, Gillian, but at least this way, there’s still some hope.”
I didn’t have the energy to respond. Could barely even nod. And the last words I heard were:
“You’re the reason you’re all still alive.”