Mia is so clearly proud that she’s figured this out. She has no idea that the usual rules don’t apply to us—we’re Psi, not human. The classification doesn’t overlap, not as far as the rest of the world is concerned. We can’t be our own guardians. That’s a direct quote, courtesy of the radio station I listened to on my drive through Nowhere, South Dakota to get here. We don’t have enough education and we lack a basic understanding of how life works, according to them.
And maybe…maybe that’s true. I hate that idea, that we can’t take care of ourselves, but…we had our world in the camp, we had our rules, and now we’ve been pushed back into this one. None of it makes sense. Everything changes out here so quickly, I can’t keep up.
The man exhales loudly through his nose. “If he isn’t in the system, he never was—”
“My sister is eighteen….” one begins.
“I have a cousin—he’s nineteen, he should be able to—”
“I searched for every name you gave me,” the man snaps, whirling back toward the other kids. “Either they never made it into the system and are out there, lost to the world, or they died before they ever made it far enough to be sorted into a camp!”
So much for patience, I think, biting my lip.
His temper blows his lid off. The words crash down around them, blasting whatever is left of their world into a storm of flaming wreckage. One of the kids bursts into tears, shattering the shocked silence that follows.
“They took him! I saw them!” Mia protests, jumping to her feet. “I was right there!”
“You’re my ward, and you’ll do what I say,” the man says, bending down so he’s eye level with Mia. “Understood?”
Mia’s face hardens, transforms right in front of my eyes into something so much harsher than all of the sorceresses she used to play in the make-believe world of Greenwood. I’m barely keeping myself still, and it only gets more difficult when I recognize her posture, the way she shifts and her hands tremble at her side. This is the Mia who used to put the forest at her mercy, control the animals, take hostages up in her tower.
Only now her power is real, and I don’t know what the punishment is going to be for her shoving or striking this man, only that it’ll come. All I need to see is the outline of the man’s holster, and any final reservations I have about this melt away like the last of the early spring snow.
“Look, it’s just the way it is,” he says, and I can hear the regret adding weight to those words. He might not have meant for the truth to come out like a punch, but he still has the gall to clap his hands and say, “Come on, quick-quick. I’ll wait here while you go get your things….”
Most stand, casting quick glances at each other as they move to the elevators. The soldiers trail behind them like reluctant babysitters.
Mia slumps back into her seat, resting her elbows against her knees and her face against her hands.
“Sorry,” she mutters from under a veil of dark hair.
“It’s fine, kid,” the man says. “This isn’t easy for any of us.”
Oh really? I think savagely. I can tell how difficult this is for you.
“Are you going to be okay waiting here for a sec?” he says. “I need to make a call.”
Mia nods, says nothing more.
“Good girl. Thanks.” The man hesitates for a beat, then steps out of my line of sight, toward the main elevator bank. I can just barely make out his reflection in the darkening windows behind Mia as I creep back around the corner, and I say a small, tiny little prayer that they can’t see my likeness there, too.
I have a plan. It’s just a matter of getting her attention now, and in the right way. Because if I get caught, then I’m in the same situation as the rest of these kids. And there’s so much more than just my and Mia’s lives riding on this.
Carefully, I peel one of the sheets of the camp roster off the wall. There’s a pen buried somewhere deep in my backpack, and it has one last gasp of ink left to write a single word. I start the S’s curve, only to change my mind halfway through—there are so many Sams in this world, who’s to say she’ll be able to put together