38Heat rises through the tall grass, winding its way through the grounds of the old TruCon compound in heady waves as I crouch on the roof of the main office just above. It’s double noon, Avelaine just past her zenith while Evelaine approaches hers, and neither sun seems inclined to show us any mercy, both beating down upon us with unrelenting fire. It’s a fire that’s been building for weeks—since even before we discovered the fallen equalizers—and it’s only getting worse. The terrible storms that came and went over the previous weeks have passed, and with their exodus, the cooling rains have gone, evanesced by a brutal heat that has only risen with each passing day. Drought has taken hold of the land, snaking through the Rainforest in sickly patches of yellow and brown, and even the mighty Shoqua is beginning to course low between its banks. The air feels strangely dry against my skin. And with every passing day, Mercury’s words—This could be the beginning of the end—seem less like theory and more like prophecy.

Licking a bead of sweat from my lips, I check the temperature.

Ninety-three point five degrees.

The knot buried deep down in my stomach tightens even further.

Ignoring it, I lift my eyes from the conglomeration of brush, branches, and stalks twisting over the roof to scout the grounds below. Everything around me looks withered and dying. The grass ripples and rolls in blurry waves, a sickening sea of black-speckled yellow, and even the buildings scattered amidst the flora seem more dilapidated and desolate than I recall. My eyes touch on the others, a dozen in all, as they crouch among the overgrown trees and wild shrubs, waiting for the enemy to arrive. If they ever arrive.

Lifting the front of my shirt, I fan myself with the fabric, for all the good it does. My head is pounding, my body aches, and my skin is so hot, it feels ready to combust. Wiping another rivulet of sweat from my eyes, I ignore the pain and check the time on my chit. Black spots flicker in my vision, a product of my pounding head, and I wait for them to clear before verifying the time again. We’ve been waiting for over an hour, ever since we climbed an obliging tree over the gates to jump down into the grounds below. Breaching the gates was easy; getting into the building, with its high-tech locks and shuttered windows, not so much. So rather than try to force them open, we’ve decided to have the enemy do it for us.

Glancing at the gate for what has to be the millionth time, I’m starting to think the silent alarm we tripped is more of a nonexistent alarm when two vehicles appear at the far end of the drive. I watch them come, rolling through the gates and driving slowly down the road before parking near the building. Several people get out—a couple of TruCon administrators plus a security team, judging by the uniforms. I barely dare to breathe, certain they’ll see us and the jig will be up, but the security team only makes a cursory pass at the most obvious hiding places near the building before escorting the administrators to the door.

Chit hand at my mouth, I watch with laser focus as they work the door, cautioning my team sotto voce, “Not yet. Wait for it . . .”

The administrator swipes into the console, waits as the system verifies him, then—

Click.

“Now!”

Stunners shriek as a dozen students spring from the surrounding grounds and open fire. Tzee! Tzee, tzeee! Almost immediately, three squatters drop, taken down by a barrage of intersecting shots coming from five different places. Within seconds, two more have followed, bodies thudding heavily to the ground as the remaining squatters scream and scatter, some going for weapons while others dive for whatever cover they can find. Sliding to the edge of the roof, I lean over and take aim at a squatter who’s crouching in a bush just below me.

Black spots dance across my vision again, making it impossible to see. I squeeze my eyes shut, shaking my head slightly in an attempt to clear it before once again opening my eyes. To my horror, the squatter divides, one suddenly becoming two as his brawny form slides apart before my very eyes. I blink a few times, disconcerted by the sudden bout of double vision, but before I can try to suss out which one I should be aiming for, the two men merge back into one. Seeing my opportunity, I raise my pistol, finger tightening on the trigger—

Tzee!

The squatter falls before I can shoot. Disappointed, I look around for another target, only to realize:

We’ve got them all!

Victory coursing through my veins, I queue up my com and start giving orders, directing Merc and his team into the building and sending others to loot and tie up the stunned squatters. That done, I jog across the roof to the tree I used to get up here. Grabbing one of the uppermost branches, I swing my legs off the roof, hanging for a split second before dropping to the branch below. Foliage rustles and dying leaves drop, but the wide limb takes my impact with ease. I pause a moment to steady myself, then hand on the trunk, I continue picking my way down, bobbing swiftly from limb to limb as I descend toward the ground. Reaching the bottom branch, I pause as black spots flicker over my eyes once more. I wait for them to clear, then crouching down, I grasp the branch and get ready to swing myself down.

A wave of dizziness rolls over me. Suddenly off balance, my body shudders and sways dangerously over the branch. Panic seizes me, and I make a grab for the trunk, arm flailing wildly in what seems like the right direction. Time stops as I hang, suspended on the edge of the branch . . .

 . . . and then my fingers grasp the rough bark, my weight centers itself once again, and I remain, safe and sound within the boughs. A sigh of relief escapes my lips. Catastrophe averted, I wait for the dizziness to pass before jumping down to the ground. I catch up with Mercury and his team at the main console inside the building.

“They wiped it.”

My heart sinks at Merc’s disgusted declaration. “Everything?”

“Everything,” he confirms. “The databanks are completely slagged, and from the looks of it, have been for some time. Anything we might have gotten out of here—timetables on their operations, intel on the dam, access codes for the bunkers or spaceport—is long gone, if it was ever here to begin with.”

Slag! The whole point of this ambush was to get something on the enemy: a passcode, a schematic, anything, really, that could help us make a breakthrough in this war. Though I knew finding an accessway into any of our main targets was a long shot, I thought we’d at least find something to make our mission worthwhile. No wonder they were in no hurry to show up once we breached the gates!

My chit crackles, followed by Kieran’s, “We’ve got ghouls on the way!”

I scowl, but even I know it’s over. “You heard him. Let’s get out of here!”

We don’t bother to cover our tracks but just go, fleeing over the fence and into the nearby jungle, the ghouls hot on our heels. It’s close, but luckily there’s a SkyLift in the jungle right outside the compound. Within seconds, the enemy’s scent fades, then disappears, left behind in the forest as we zoom away through the treetops.

It’s late afternoon by the time we reach the lift station nearest our camp, dismounting and walking the final leg to our home base. Even before we set foot inside the shield-line, I can hear the sounds of sickness up ahead, piteous moans mingling with the putrid rasp of retching. Cries and wails mix with the shuffle of restless bodies, while above it all, a bevy of delirious voices babbles and swells through the thickening air.

“Uuhhhnn. My stomach hurts.”

“I-I’m c-c-cold. Does a-a-anyone have a b-blanket?”

“Water, please! I’m so thirsty!”

I pause just outside the shield, a tacit acknowledgement of the contagion that awaits just inside.

It all started a couple of weeks ago when one of the sophomore girls started complaining of being cold—a seemingly impossible feat in the ever-intensifying heat of the jungle. Chills and shivering soon gave way to nausea and fatigue, and by the end of the day, she had vomited up everything she’d eaten and was burning with a fever so high it was all we could do to keep her from dehydrating during the intense bouts of sweating that followed. The fever finally broke, leaving her aching and exhausted, but any relief we might have felt was short-lived. Less than a day later, her symptoms returned—worse than ever—but this time she wasn’t alone. In the short time between one bout and the next, two more fell prey to the same disease, cycling through similar periods of chills, fever, sweats, and exhaustion—and that was only the beginning. Over the course of a two-square, students continued to succumb, falling to the illness like dominoes, one after another. Now nearly half the camp is sick to some degree or other, and though no one has died, no one has gotten much better either.

For a long moment, I simply stand at the entrance to the shield, listening to the sounds of distress within. Then bowing to the inevitable, I chit open the shield and lead everyone in. Vida and Zane are the first to greet me.

“How’d it go?” V asks as soon as I’ve finished dismissing the team.

“The good news is the ambush worked perfectly. The bad news is the enemy had already slagged everything before we got there.”

“Mierda.”

“And you?” Zane asks cautiously.

“I’m fine,” I answer shortly. I don’t mention the part where I almost fainted and fell out of a tree.

A huge yawn rises up in my throat. I stifle it, saying, “Please tell me there’s coffee.”

“Nope, but here.” Vida tosses me some sort of speckled gray bark she pulls out of her pocket.

I examine it curiously. “What is this?”

“It’s Iletha bark. A few chews of that is worth two cups of coffee.”

At the word “coffee” I immediately perk up. Raising the bark to my nose, I take a careful sniff. It smells a bit like cinnamon. Nothing trips my inner radar, so I carefully stick the end in my mouth and take a few chews. Almost immediately, adrenaline rushes through me, yanking me out of the stupor I’ve been in for the past week.

“Wow.”

“Yeah, my bisabuela swore by it—chewed it several times a day. Of course, she’s also the one who went a little”—Vida spins her finger in a little circle at her temple—“so don’t chew too much of it.”

O-kay. Hefting my pack higher on my shoulder, I head for my tent. “So what’s the situation here? Any problems? You know, besides the usual.”

“Nothing’s really changed,” Vida reports. “According to Megumi, the malaria strain we’ve developed is a new mutation, which is why it’s been so resistant to all the drugs we’ve used. She still has a couple more left to try, so . . . fingers crossed.”

Though inwardly my heart sinks, outwardly I merely nod. “Good. Check in with Megumi regularly and keep me posted.”

Vida nods and peels off to attend to camp matters, but Zane stays with me, striding by my side as I cross the grounds and enter my tent. Only when we’re alone does he speak.

“Are you sure you’re not pushing things too far?”

Dropping my bag, I immediately go over to my desk, grab my stylus, and start checking surveillance feeds on my tip-pads. “What do you mean?”

“This is your fourth ambush in less than two weeks, and that’s not counting the raids for meds. Half the camp is sick, and the other half is exhausted from picking up their slack. Hell, you’re sick—don’t think I don’t know it!—and yet you still insist on continuing the war as though everything is normal.”

“Everything is normal,” I argue. “Ever since the Specs came, we’ve pretty much been under constant assault from some quarter or other. If it’s not ghouls, it’s squatters. If it’s not squatters, it’s starvation. If it’s not starvation, it’s the Rainforest or jungle rot or the fraggin’ plague! If we stop fighting every time something happens, we’ll never fight at all. Besides, we’re doing well! Four ambushes, as you pointed out, and not a single casualty! We can’t stop now.”

“Yeah, and what if the enemy does it for you?”

I frown, not quite taking his meaning. Zane tosses a tip-pad down on the desk in front of me. “See that?” he asks as I silently watch the SD feed he plays for me. “Those are stun mines the enemy is laying! They’re setting a trap for you.”

A slight smile plays around my mouth as I watch the footage play out. “Good.”

Zane blanches. “Good?”

“They’re threatened by us,” I explain, “and they should be. Don’t you see? Setting these traps means we’re hurting them. If anything, we need to push harder, not pull back.”

“But the stun mines—”

“We have SDs on every important target in town. As long as we make sure to review all the footage, we’ll know exactly what they’re doing as soon as they do it. We’ll slip right past their traps without them even knowing it.”

Zane falls silent, considering my logic, and reluctantly nods. “Okay, but how long do you think it’s going to take for them to figure it out?”

“Hmm?”

“About the SDs,” he clarifies. “There are only so many traps you can elude before they figure out you’re working off inside knowledge. All they have to do is go to the survey office and take inventory, and they’ll know.”

I shrug. “Maybe, maybe not.”

Zane frowns at the answer, and with a sigh, I put down my stylus. “Look, I’m not going to walk straight into an ambush just to prove I don’t have a few drones. If they figure it out, they figure it out. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

“Besides,” I add after a moment, “what are they going to do about it, anyway? The SDs are in stealth mode. Even if they do manage to find them, what’s the worst they can do? De-ack them? We’ll be no worse off than if we just don’t use them at all. We might as well make the most of them while we can.”

Zane slowly nods. “I suppose you’re right. So what do you need me to do?”

“Exactly what you’ve been doing: going on missions, helping Vida with the camp, watching the feeds.” A rueful grin, genuine for all its crookedness, twists my lips. “Giving me unsolicited advice.”

At that last one, an answering smile lights his face. “Okay,” he agrees. Then he turns and leaves the tent.