The problem is: I don’t know where to begin.
After the meeting, I follow Lieutenant Dean out into the hallway. He has composed himself, but I can still sense his anger beneath his calm exterior. He’s as annoyed with the plan as I am. But neither one of us says a word until we reach the elevator.
“There has to be something else we can do,” I say as soon as the door closes. “I know the Developers don’t care about saving the people who were captured, but I don’t think we should abandon them. I won’t.”
“I agree,” Dean says. “But it’s not just the prisoners I’m worried about. The Core was designed to function as a battle station apart from the rest of the planet. But we’ve never been able to test it out, for obvious reasons. The separation bomb could damage this sector too, which is why I was against the idea before. It’s a dangerous plan, one we shouldn’t go through with until we’ve exhausted all our other options.”
“So what are we supposed to do?” I ask.
The Developers are in control of the army, the citizens, the weapons. How can we take all of that from them in the next fifteen hours?
Dean sighs. “I’m not sure there’s anything we can do. But we’ll see. You should stay put, okay? I know you might want to try something rash like last time, but you shouldn’t. Not until we’ve found a real solution.”
“Okay,” I say.
But how can I stay put? If I come up with something to try, I’m not going to wait for Dean’s approval. I’m going to do it.
Dean gets off on the next level, telling me he has to take care of something but he’ll find me later if a solution presents itself. I stare at the buttons in the elevator, trying to figure out where to go. First, I guess I should find Logan and tell him what’s going on. Maybe he’ll have a better idea what to do.
* * *
I wander around the enormous, dark room of Recreation Division, between lit-up games stations where boys and girls fire fake weapons at simulated target screens, wrestle with one another, or float in zero gravity, making a general raucous of noise.
My eyes keep going back to the biggest object on this floor of the arena: the giant Phantom dome, looming over all the other game modules. Inside that dome is the room where Sam attacked me for the first time. I’d gotten an impossible score in one of Phantom’s simulation games and wiped his name off the top of the high scoreboard. At the time, I thought he was ridiculous for caring so much about a score on a stupid game. But it wasn’t just a game—it was another test of our intelligence and ability to react in war situations. And no one had ever beaten Sam before. It was the second time I’d challenged his score on an aptitude test, and he couldn’t stand not being the best anymore.
Sam must not have had any idea I was Mod Subject 7, built to be the better soldier. If he’d known, he probably would’ve tried to kill me the minute he met me.
Tearing my eyes away from Phantom, I look up. The floors of the upper levels are made of glass; the people up there look like they’re floating in the sky. A pod race is going on. The track weaves through open air lit by blue and green and red lights that look like stars or small planets. I’ve never been up there before; I only ever explored this lowest level. And I have a feeling Logan would’ve wanted to check out the pod races.
I take the staircase two steps at a time, checking the time on my comm-band. It’s been fifteen minutes since the meeting ended. We have less than fifteen hours until Fred’s bomb is finished. Already, the clock is ticking.
At the top of the stairs, people crowd around the entrance to the racecourse. Some of them are in line for the next race, while others are simply cheering on the racers. A giant screen looms over the entrance, showing a map of the track. Dots show where the seven pods are located. Pods two and five are neck and neck for the lead. There are forty-five seconds left until the race is over.
I push toward the left side of the entrance, one of the viewing spots for the course, looking for Logan everywhere in the crowd. He should be easy to spot with his crutches. But most of the people in the crowd are Core kids wearing skintight leather suits of varying colors.
When I’m almost to the front of the crowd, I give up and decide to watch the race instead. The pods are making their way back toward the finish line by the entrance. They’re racing so fast on the track, they’re hardly more than blurs of light in the darkness.
I glance back up at the screen. Ten more seconds. Pods two and five are still on top of each other. I grab the railing in front of me, squinting to see them better in the darkness. They might crash if they get any closer.
Five seconds left in the race, and there’s still no clear victor.
Four.
Three.
Two.
At the last second, pod five eases ahead enough to be the first across the finish line. People in the crowd behind me start screaming and cheering, “Yeah, Five! Go Matthew!” I can only assume Matthew is the name of the pilot.
From behind the railing, I watch the rest of the pods cross the finish line. They decelerate to a quick stop, and the pilots climb out one by one. I’m about to turn away and head back downstairs when I notice a worker handing one of the pilots a pair of crutches.
I push through the crowd, closer to the entrance, and wave to Logan as he crosses through the turnstile. I can’t help worrying his leg is hurting him more after this, but he doesn’t seem to be in any pain. His eyes are wild with excitement. His hair is a mess now that he’s taken off his helmet.
“Did you see that?” he asks.
“Some of it. Which pod were you in?”
“Number two.” He’s smiling so wide, I can’t help smiling too.
“You got second place?”
“Yeah!” He holds up a shiny silver coin. “Even got a medal. Wait, how long were you watching?”
“The last forty-five seconds of the race.”
Logan groans in disappointment. “You missed it. I had a solid lead for the first two laps, until number five almost barreled into me.”
“Well, you still looked pretty impressive, from what I saw.”
“Thanks.” He grins. He grabs my hand and sets the silver coin on my palm. “This is for you.”
“But Logan, you won it. It’s yours.”
“I won it for you. No arguments.”
I turn the shiny coin over in my hand. One side is etched with the figure of a small race pod with a half circle of stars around it. The other side has the words SECOND PLACE in bold letters, with smaller words and numbers around the edges of the coin stating the date and time of today’s race.
“Thank you,” I say, slipping the coin into my pocket. I touch Logan’s shoulder as he starts to hobble past me. “Is your leg all right?”
“No worse than before. I only needed my hands to steer and power the engine.” He takes my hand again. “Come on, we should get out of here.”
The crowd is only growing bigger, so Logan leads the way through on his crutches. A few onlookers clap him on the back, congratulating him on his almost win. He grins and thanks them.
Though I’m happy for him, I can’t help feeling a pinch of jealousy, and wishing I could’ve shown off my own flight skills in the race. But I shove the feeling aside. After all the times Logan’s disability has kept him from being the one winning praise, he deserves this.
When we reach the edge of the crowd, we slow down a bit. Logan seems to remember what was going on before all this. His face turns serious. “What happened in the meeting?” he asks.
I hesitate, not sure where to begin. “Nothing good.”
“Tell me everything.”
I wait until we’re well away from the crowd, and then I update him as quickly as I can. I tell him about the electric pulse-bomb dropping; the Mardenites capturing all the child workers and soldiers and taking over the Surface city; and the Developers’ plan for how we’re going to escape and simultaneously destroy the Mardenite fleet, along with all the people they’ve taken.
There are hard lines around Logan’s mouth. “They feel the deaths of thousands of people are necessary casualties, I’m sure.”
“They already sent them to the Surface knowing they could die. And if their deaths will save the rest of us, what does it matter, right?” I shake my head, clenching my hands in agitation. “We can’t abandon all those people. We have to rescue them, somehow.”
“How, though?” Logan asks, running his fingers through his hair. “The Mardenites took the Surface. If we send more troops up there to try to get it back or target the battle stations, chances are the Mardenites will drop another electric bomb and we’ll lose even more people.”
I hate that he’s saying exactly what Commander Charlie and the other people in the strategy room said. I also hate that I don’t disagree.
“I don’t know, Logan. Maybe there isn’t a better solution. But I don’t think that means we should give up. Our friends were taken prisoner,” I remind him. “Beechy, Sandy, Uma, Paley, Mal. All of them. After everything Beechy has done for me—for us—rescuing us from Karum, giving us a safe place with the Alliance, and helping me come from the Surface mission … I just can’t leave him. Not without at least trying to bring him home.”
Logan is silent, his lips pressed together hard. “So you want to work out a plan to rescue them, even if it means potentially screwing up Commander Charlie’s current plan?”
“Yes,” I say. “Will you help me?”
He closes his eyes briefly. When he opens them again, he looks at me with a steadier gaze. “I’m in. How long do we have until Fred finishes building the bomb?”
“A little less than fifteen hours.”
Logan exhales. “Great. Should be plenty of time. Do you have any idea where to start?”
“I think we need to simplify our problems before we can start thinking of a solution.”
We list the problems as the two of us head down the stairs to the lower level of Recreation Division.
Problem one: The Mardenites are in control of the Surface. Any troops we send up there could easily be shot down or crippled by another pulse bomb. Even more people could be captured.
Problem two: the battle stations. We don’t know anything about their design or their weaknesses. We don’t know where the prisoners are being kept, or how to get them out.
Problem three: time. We need more time to study the Mardenites and learn their weaknesses, to strengthen our army so we can attack their fleet. Unless we can convince the Developers to postpone detonating their bomb, we only have fifteen hours.
Which brings us to our biggest problem: the Developers. They’re the ones in control of the citizens, the army, and the weapons. As long as they’re in control, we can’t send troops anywhere without their permission. Our hands are tied.
“But all we need to do is get the Mardenites to stop fighting, right?” Logan says. “Force them to surrender. Then we wouldn’t need to set off any bomb. We wouldn’t have to run.”
I chew on my lip, considering. He’s right. We don’t necessarily need to rescue the prisoners; we just need to overpower their captors. But how? We’ve taken out forty of their raiders, but they have thousands of ships in their fleet.
There has to be a missing piece, something we’re overlooking. A way to discover a weakness of the Mardenite army we could exploit.
It doesn’t hit me until Logan and I are almost to the cafeteria for lunch. We’ve been silent for the last few minutes, both of us deep in thought, still not much closer to finding a solution.
“You know what I really want to know?” Logan says, his brows furrowing.
“What?” I ask.
“What the Mardenites want with us. We thought they came here to slaughter us, but they captured everyone instead. And they’re setting up settlements. Why? I think there’s something more going on with them we need to understand. If we knew what they wanted from us, we’d have a better idea how to deal with them.”
I gasp. Just like that, I realize what I’ve been overlooking: We have one of the Mardenites in captivity. The leader we captured in a war long ago; the alien god. The Developers promised me a visit with him.
I’m sure they’ve already tried to extract information from him, but that doesn’t mean I can’t try. It’s the best lead we’ve had so far, and I’m going to take it.