they pull out a small handheld device and fumble to turn it on, I know to look straight into it as it takes a photo.
The soldier working it, a young Asian woman, relaxes when my identification file comes up on the screen. Of course. Like the snatchers demonstrated, no one is ever scared of a Green. They don’t think we’re fighters.
But I’m not…am I? I can’t claim I’m one, not anymore. I lean forward and press my forehead against my knees, ignoring the way it pulls my shoulders painfully with my hands behind my back. I drove around and around for an extra hour, wasting gas to lead the snatchers off my trail, and I still managed to bring them home with me. I basically surrendered to the snatchers instead of trying to get us all out of there. I didn’t try to fight these soldiers.
I wanted to bring Lucas back to the people who made him this way. I am a coward. I’m not a lion, I’m not a knight. Out here, I’m nothing. I hate myself.
I turn, watching as the paramedics take Lucas’s vitals and put an oxygen mask on him. I don’t know if I should be grateful or terrified that he’s still passed out. He was already weak from exhaustion, from not eating nearly enough, and I know the fires must have taken what strength he had out of him, but…
What if he doesn’t wake up?
What if they do take him away?
What is wrong with you?
It might be the smoke still coating my lungs, the aftershocks of what happened, but my stomach heaves, and I have to close my eyes and swallow hard to keep from throwing up.
He saved us. Lucas…he…I shake my head. No—there wasn’t anything in his expression. He was just reacting to the sound of gunfire. His instincts told him to fight and protect himself.
“—to the hospital!” One of the paramedics has been fighting with the soldier in charge for the last fifteen minutes, since they tried to run Lucas’s photo through the system and nothing came up. After hearing the officer in the hotel tell Mia that there was no record of Lucas that he could find, I’m not sure why I’m so surprised by this. I guess I’ve always thought of the government and military as one big body; I didn’t realize that they could wall off sections of themselves when it came to keeping secrets.
It makes me think that Mia is right, though. Maybe there is no record of him because the other Reds have already had their records purged, and the kids have been…dealt with.
And you wanted to give up and give him back.
I squeeze my eyes shut harder. I want him to live. I don’t care how. I want him to live, and I can’t help him—
“No, not until he’s been positively ID’d.” I don’t know what the soldier’s rank is, but he’s lording it over everyone else around him, to the point that even the woman who identified me stops to stare at him. He’s broad-shouldered, tall, a huge presence with his red hair. The neighbors actually scrambled back to their homes when he barked at them to stop gawking at us. If I hadn’t dealt with his type every day for seven years, I might have been impressed.
Firemen are still fighting the blaze across the street. Mia ignores the woman snapping her photo and watches as the flames devour the small house. She won’t look at me, and I can’t think of anything to say to her. So neither of us try.
I did this.
The skin on my neck and arms still feels like it’s on fire, burning down layer by layer. When I was a little girl, my mother once tried to pretty up my hair with a curling iron before church. I couldn’t sit still long enough for her to finish, and the barrel accidentally brushed my neck; all Mom could say was You did this to yourself. I feel the same small agony with each burn on my skin now.
It must have happened when I was trying to push myself onto my feet, after I got out of the back of the truck. Holding on to Lucas was like embracing a furnace, but there’s no way his skin could have been that hot…right?
I don’t know what I believe anymore—I can’t shake the idea that there is someone out there, a God that created us. My father used the Bible as an instruction manual for