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THE SOUL-LESS LAY SHACKLED to the makeshift gurney, limp and unmoving. Don stood at the foot of the bed, in his self-chosen sentry position, his expression dark and troubled.
Doctor Simon sat on a stool next to her microscope, her head resting on one hand, a sheet of paper held loosely in the other.
“What’s going on?” Garr asked on behalf of the group as they crowded into the infirmary. He looked at the Tracker. “Is she dead?”
Don shook his head, leaning with both hands clasped around the gurney’s frame.
“Not yet, anyway,” he said quietly. For the first time, Amos didn’t think he meant it as a threat.
Aubrey’s eyes held a haunted look. “She woke up and started talking about the Givers again. I think the prod may be affecting her speech. We thought we understood what she meant, but we had it all wrong. Everything—just wrong.”
She paused, rubbing a hand over her face. “She kept saying ‘the Givers expect much’, and something about ‘they cannot be denied’. . .”
Her voice trailed off.
Doc Simon took up the story, sitting bolt upright on her stool, her voice uncharacteristically devoid of emotion. “We’ve always assumed Trackers had two objectives. The first was to get its hands on a Runner’s Implant.”
“Harvest,” Don interrupted savagely. “That’s what it calls gutting a Runner for their Implant. Harvest.”
Doc continued as if she hadn’t heard his outburst. “Failing its first objective, a Tracker will self-donate rather than allow a Runner to escape. We assumed Trackers were so thoroughly brain-washed that suicide was a better option than returning to the Hoarders empty-handed.”
The Runners waited in silence. This wasn’t news—the Trackers’ deadly tactics were common knowledge. The sense of dreadful anticipation was thick. Amos felt the muscles between his shoulder blades tighten into a painful knot.
“Well, turns out we were dead wrong,” Don said. He took a deep breath, his burly hands clasped around the rail. “We should’ve figured it out after we saved the kid. There’s no logical reason for all the Trackers to self-detonate at the same time.”
He stood erect, releasing his grip on the gurney. “Trackers were once human, just like us. They’re as much pawns of the Hoarders as we are.”
He hesitated, shaking his head in disbelief. “As it turns out, they don’t commit suicide to prevent Runners from escaping.”
“The Givers execute them for failing.” Doc finished for him, a bleak look in her eyes. “By remote control.”
Her words fell into a sudden, shocked silence.
“She was terrified,” Aubrey said, staring straight ahead, staring at nothing. “That was the look I saw on her face. She couldn’t sense the Implant anymore, and she knew what the Givers would do.”
Amos stepped closer to the gurney, looking at the Tracker in a new light. Another pawn of the Hoarders, to be used and discarded at their whim.
The revelation did nothing to lessen his resolve.
“I can hate Hoarders for either reason,” he said between clenched teeth. “The Colonel’s right. It’s time we take the fight to them.”
“Wait. There’s more.” Don placed a massive hand on Amos’s shoulder. “When it—I mean she—woke up, I had this idea. Why not try to pass myself off as a Giver? I thought, you know, maybe I could gather more intel if I convinced her to trust me.”
“And?” Jane stepped closer. “What’d she tell you?”
It was Doctor Simon who answered, her voice clinical, wooden. “She wasn’t fooled for a second. She was scared to death, kept begging us to tell her where the Givers were. She was almost incoherent. Aubrey’s right—the prod seems to have affected her speech—but it was clear she didn’t believe any of us were Givers.”
She handed the paper in her hand to Garr. “When she finally calmed down, Aubrey thought of asking her to draw a picture of the Givers.”
Garr stared at the paper. The Runners watched as the blood drained from his face. His hand shook and his gaze shifted from the crude drawing to the limp body on the gurney and back again.
Behind him, Aubrey raised a scarred hand to her face, shivering involuntarily.
When Garr spoke, his voice was hollow and filled with dread. “Are you sure . . .?”
He faltered, unable to complete his thought.
Don nodded. “We asked her the same thing, three times. She was insistent.”
He pointed a thick finger to the drawing in Garr’s hand. “That’s a Giver.”
Amos peeked over Garr’s shoulder, unable to contain his curiosity. His stomach lurched, and his mind recoiled at what he saw.
The Givers were not Hoarders.
They weren’t even human.
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