1. The Artemis Series: Book 1, The Escape
A Novel in Progress
Krista Knauer
Approved:
Amanda Cockrell
Jeanne Larsen
Departmental Honors Thesis in English
Hollins University
Roanoke, VA
May 2015

2. ii
Dedication
This novel is dedicated to my mother, Janet Knauer, my father, Larry Knauer, and
all of my friends and family who have supported me through this process. Mom, Dad, if
it were not for you two encouraging me to read, I never would have discovered my love
of reading and my passion for writing. Thank you so much for all you have done for me.
I love you.

3. iii
Acknowledgements
I would like to first and foremost acknowledge my Senior Honors Thesis Advisor,
Professor Amanda Cockrell. I certainly did not make this process very easy, but you
have been so willing to help me and guide me through every step of the way. I have
learned so much from you.
I would also like to acknowledge my Academic Advisor and Second Thesis
Reader, Professor Jeanne Larsen. I have loved working with you in and out of class since
my sophomore year. You also have taught me so much, not just about literature and
creative writing, but also about myself.
I would also like to thank Dr. Clayton Delery and Dr. Nahla Beier from The
Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts. If you guys had not encouraged me to
continue pursuing my passion for creative writing in college, I would not be where I am
today.
I would also like to acknowledge Professor T. J. Anderson. I have had so much
fun learning from you. You have been so supportive throughout my four years at
Hollins.

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Table of Contents
Title Page ..............................................................................................................................i
Dedication............................................................................................................................ii
Acknowledgements.............................................................................................................iii
Table of Contents................................................................................................................iv
Part 1 ................................................................................................................................... 1
Chapter 1 ......................................................................................................................... 1
Chapter 2 ....................................................................................................................... 13
Chapter 3 ....................................................................................................................... 40
Chapter 4 ....................................................................................................................... 65

5. 1
Part 1
Chapter 1
The Rebels sit around bonfires, yelling and shouting, celebrating a victory. Deer
roast over the fires, and the delicious smell of the cooking meat is wafting through the
camp, making my stomach growl. But Erik, Tor, Elsa, and I hang back. The tent that the
Rebels have assigned to us is on the other side of the cramped camp, far enough away
from prying eyes and ears. The camp sits at the foot of a small mountain in a grassy
plain. A river gushes along the western side of the camp, and a dense forest with a
gradual slope up towards the mountain borders it to the east. The wind rushing down the
mountain blows my hair around, stinging my face, and the ridge reminds me of a
backbone against the darkening sky.
We made our way through the maze of tents, and we are back to ours finally. It
is, without a doubt, the shabbiest in the Rebel camp. The moss green nylon has rips that I
tried to stitch back together last night with strips of a rough blue tarp I found over by the
trash dump. A few of the tent-poles are only holding up by copious amounts of duct tape
that I was able to steal from the stock room.
When Mitch, the Rebels’ scruffy-looking second in command, handed us our tent
and showed us our assigned place, the farthest away from the center of camp, I wasn’t

6. 2
surprised by our lot. The Rebels don’t trust us yet, and we don’t trust them either.
But this is the only place we can hide. Here, with the Rebels, is the only place
where our bio-transmitters can’t send signals to the Military.
The ground is hard and our boots don’t leave any foot prints, but I doubt we
would be followed anyway. A blown up Military drone sits in the middle of the bonfires.
The scene reminds me of ancient celebrations, as if it is a god that they are worshipping.
The fire is casting flickering shadows on the drone like tribal rituals. The Rebels
managed to shoot the drone out of the sky, so they are rejoicing this victory at the center
of the camp. I am sure a feast is being prepared along with the deer and that celebrations
will go long into the night, but I don’t care.
The four us need to talk and figure out what the hell we’re going to do. Erik has
his arm resting on Elsa’s pale shoulders, as if to protect her from some unknown harm. A
gust of wind hits us. Erik’s muscles seem to tighten under his dark skin. It is warm, a
summer night, but the wind is fierce. Tor’s hand jumps to the tactical knife on his hip.
I’m on edge, and I’m sure that they are too. We stop and look up into the air. I’m
expecting to see a Military aircraft whirring above us in the darkening sky, coming to
capture us and bring us back to Fort Bragg. But there is nothing in the sky, not even a
few measly clouds, only wind. Our tensions ease slightly, but we are still on alert. We
have to be. I have to be. For myself. For them.
The wind shifts, and we no longer hear the yells and shouts of the Rebels. Elsa
unzips the tent and crawls in first, followed by Tor. When they are both inside, Erik
flashes me a look. I think we are both uneasy. But I don’t say anything and neither does
he. He climbs in after the other two. By the time that I am in the tent, Elsa and Tor are

7. 3
already preparing the little machine that makes the food packets edible. Elsa pulls the
few packets we have left out of her pack, which is black and heavy like the rest of ours.
It is amazing how someone so small can carry such a big pack.
If we don’t figure something out soon, we are going to go hungry. Mitch made it
very clear that we had to provide our own food; we are not part of the Rebels, which we
don’t want to be anyway. In fact, we’re almost their captives. The camp is surrounded by
an invisible dome that blocks all signals going into and out of the camp. Leaving the
dome is prohibited for everyone except the fighters, who have purple armbands. If you
try to cross the border and leave, you risk getting killed, by the Rebel fighters. The Rebel
leaders said that they would not ransom us, but I don’t trust their word. I mean, why
would I? Up until a few days ago, the four of us were fighting on the side of the Military
against the Rebels. And now we are hiding from the Military in the midst of the Rebels.
A hilarious twist of irony.
Elsa places the white packet inside the machine and presses the button in the top.
We lost most of our Military issued supplies when we were ambushed while hiding out
and running from The Military. The Rebels took us in last night when we accidentally
stumbled on their lookout post out in the mountains while trying to escape from the
Military. The machine, which is actually called a hydradible, begins making its usual
gurgling noises. It works by taking water out of the air and rehydrating the food, which
is often in the form of a powder, so that it makes a sludgy soup. I guess the name comes
from the fact it uses reHYDRAtion to make things eDIBLE. Great naming skills,
Military. I take this opportunity to get everyone’s attention.
“Hey guys,” I say and all three of them turn to me, “We need a plan? We’re

8. 4
almost out of food, and I doubt the Rebels are going to give us any.” I turn on the lantern
and place it in the center of the tent, which is just big enough for the four of us.
Erik repositions himself on the sleeping bags we have laid out on the ground. His
back is to the entrance, and I sit down across from him. Elsa and Tor are on either side of
us.
“Well, we can’t stay here. We need to get one of those signal blockers and then
leave.” Erik’s is staring at me intently. He taps his rough fingers on his knees. He does
that when he’s thinking hard.
“We just got here, Artemis,” Tor says. “You can’t be thinking of leaving
already?” Tor rips a small piece of nylon off the inside of the tent that was already close
to falling off.
“Ashley and Damien said to come here. We’re safe here,” Elsa says pulling her
knees up to her chest.
“Do you think we’re going to be safe if they find out the truth about us?” I ask,
pointing to each of the four of us.
“Artemis is right,” Erik says, looking pointedly at Tor. “We’re only slightly safer
here because of the blockers.”
“They said that they wouldn’t ransom us,” Elsa says. I worry that this is hard on
her. I mean, our whole world did just flip upside down.
“You seriously believe that?” Tor says tearing the piece of nylon into smaller
strips, looking down at his hands.
“I thought that you don’t want to leave?” I ask.
“I do. But we’re safe here, for now. What the hell are we going to do when we

9. 5
leave here?” he says.
“Live off the wilderness,” Erik says.
“Forever?” Elsa asks.
“If we have to,” I say.
“We can learn more about what’s really going on if we’re here,” Tor says.
“I don’t give a damn about this war,” Erik bursts out. “Survive first. That’s what
we have to do.”
“Fine.” Tor drops his piece of nylon and throws his arms up into the air hitting the
wall of the tent, making the tent shake slightly. A giggle escapes from Elsa’s lips. He
drops his hands, looking embarrassed.
“What about Ashley and Damien? If we leave, they won’t know where we are?”
Elsa says after a moment of silence.
“We can’t worry about them right now. We need to focus on survival. For us,”
Erik replies less harshly. He puts his hand on her shoulder.
Tor picks his piece of nylon back up, and continues to stare at it and rip it up. Erik
squeezed Elsa’s shoulder and then lets go. And she gives him a weak smile. It’s like I’m
an outsider watching those I love without really being part of what is going on. I don’t
move or say anything for a while.
“So, we need a plan,” I say after a few moments silence.
“We’ll have to sneak to the perimeter and get one of the blockers,” Tor replies.
“There’re guards at the perimeter. They’re already keeping eyes on us.” My
mouth is dry, and my tongue feels like sandpaper. It’s getting darker outside our tent.
Our only light source is the lantern. This gives everyone an eerie glow to their faces. I

10. 6
know we need to leave, but I just don’t see how. The dome nullifies the biological
transmitters in our bodies. The instruments that block the signals are heavy and set into
the ground. Trying to get one out and then slip past the perimeter would be almost
impossible.
“We can take the bastards,” Tor says. “They can’t stop us.” He managed to hide
his knife from the Rebels when they took all of our weapons, and he pulls it out from the
waistband of his pants, playing with it. His skin is cut and bruised. His red hair is
buzzed close to his scalp, so that he looks almost bald. This gives him an intimidating
appearance and makes him look much older that Erik and me.
“You idiot, we need to stay low,” I say. Tor is such a little teenage punk, thinking
he can take on anyone. “They don’t know what we are, just that we were Military.” I
flash a look at Tor, and then at Erik. He’s the only one that can talk sense into Tor. I’ve
been trying to do it for the last sixteen years, but Tor just doesn’t listen to me. He’s
always been a bit of a brat.
I’m sitting in my room, writing in my journal. My ten year old hand writing
scrawls across the pages. My lamp is on. But the overhead light is off because I am
supposed to be going to bed, and I don’t want Ashley and Damien to know that I’m
awake. I am very tired and start nodding off. I feel something moving, and I jolt awake.
I see my door closing. My journal is missing. I jump out of bed and run out into the
hallway. Tor is standing there, reading and laughing at my journal. I punch him in the
nose and snatch it back. He starts crying. Ashley and Damien come out of their room
and see Tor crying. Tor says that I punched him. I try to tell them that he took my
journal, but they don’t listen. Ashley orders me back to my room.

11. 7
Erik grabs the knife out of Tor’s hand. They both have extremely good reaction
times, but Erik is a bit stronger than Tor. Erik is also a few inches taller by virtue of
being older. “They haven’t figured it out because of those signal blockers. They block
internal signals as well. They can’t use their radios inside the camp either.” The
transmitters record everything about our bodies, our temperature, heart rate, blood
pressure, breathing rate, and even caloric intake and expenditure. “If they do figure it
out, they’ll either kill us or hold us for ransom. Even with our abilities, we can’t take on
all the Rebels. There have got to be at least three hundred of them.” Erik slides the knife
into the waistband of his own pants. Tor’s face begins turning red and he clenches his
hands, but he calms down quickly, probably remembering the last time they fought. The
memory of Tor spread eagled on the ground with Erik digging his knees into him
horrifies me. What would happen if Tor actually tried to kill Erik instead of just trying to
fight? Sometimes with that kid, I can’t tell what is going on inside his brain. He seems
like the perfect example of why adults don’t like teenagers.
“So we leave quietly,” Tor says. “How in the hell are we going to do that?”
“We need to watch the perimeter shifts. Maybe we can find spots that aren’t
patrolled at certain times,” Elsa says as if we are totally missing the obvious. She is
much stronger than her tiny body looks, but she uses her fragile looks to make everyone
think that she is not a threat, and so she speaks very little with people other than us.
“Great idea.” I try to hide my frustration. She is quite intelligent, but sometimes
acts like Captain Obvious. “We have two other problems, Silly Goose. We have no
supplies or weapons,” I say holding up a finger. Putting up another finger, I say, “And
how in the world are we going to move a signal blocker? If we leave without one, the

12. 8
Military will find us instantly.” I begin feeling hopeless. Maybe our only option is to
join the ranks of the Rebels. I push that thought out of my mind. I hate the Rebels only
slightly less than I hate the Military which has spent seventeen years lying to us and
keeping secrets.
The war began almost fifty years ago, or at least that’s what Mitch told us when
he brought us in last night. The Military had led us to believe that it has only been going
on for a few months. I’m not sure what to believe anymore. We four grew up at Fort
Bragg together, raised by two doctors, Damien and Ashley Wilson. But we aren’t
siblings, or that’s what we thought. Damien and Ashley always told us that all of our
parents had died fighting for the United States and the Military and that all four couples
had left their children to be taken care of by Ashley and Damien, should anything ever
happen to our parents. My world has changed in just a matter of days, and the world I’m
in now sucks balls. I don’t even have a real mother. Science is my mother.
The hydradible beeps to signal that it is finished making our food. I open it up
and dish out a portion of the brown stew-like substance onto each of our camping plates.
This stuff isn’t like the meals we ate at Fort Bragg, which consisted of actual food, but it
is much easier to carry than normal military meals. Tor digs into his right away. I look
at each of them silently hoping that we will all make it through this, whatever this is,
alive and together. And I slowly start eating. The stew tastes faintly like beef, but mostly
it’s just flavorless. While it does fill me up, I’m craving the roasting deer that the Rebels
are tearing into.
By the time Erik and I finish cleaning up after dinner, Elsa has fallen asleep,
curled up on her bunched up sleeping bag like a cat lying in the sun. Sometimes, I think

13. 9
Elsa is a cat. She hasn’t slept well since we left Fort Bragg, so I decide to let her sleep.
No use in waking her up and having her be grouchy. Tor is reading a military strategy
book that he has pulled up on his computer tablet. He has always been fascinated with
military knowledge, more so than what they taught the four of us at the Fort. He was
always finding books and records and things that I’m pretty sure the Military never
wanted us to see. I think, before everything that’s happened, Tor had hoped to be a five
star general someday. But now, he’s lost any hope he had to climb the ranks of the
Military. I can’t tell if he still wants to go back to the Military or not. I’m worried that
he will decide to go back. If he goes back, we will all most likely end up dead. And I
really don’t want to die just yet. That’s why I’m out here with a crazy militia. It is safer
than being on our own.
Erik taps me on the knee and nods his head towards the entrance of the tent. I get
up quietly and follow him outside. Tor’s eyebrows furrow as we get up to leave, and he
looks at us suspiciously. We walk near the edge of the perimeter, making sure we aren’t
being followed. If we go too deeply into the woods it will look like we’re trying to cross
the border. Stretching my legs feels good after the tent. There’s barely enough room for
me to lie straight. Erik and I don’t talk for what feels like hours. I think we just both
enjoy a little bit of quiet. We sit down under a huge oak. The bark feels rough to my
skin, but the tree is firm and supports my body. Acorns cover the oak, and a couple of
squirrels scurry among the branches collecting them. The ground is softer here, with
moss providing us some cushion, almost like the tree made seats for us. Some bushes
provide enough cover so we don’t have to worry about being stumbled upon.
“You ok, Artemis?” Erik asks me. He places his hand on my upper arm.

14. 10
His question catches me off guard; I have been expending all my effort to make
sure that Tor and Elsa are safe, and I guess I forgot to think about me. “Not really. We
can’t go back. We have to spend the rest of our lives on the run.” My eyes begin to
water, and I try to blink away the tears before Erik sees them. Always trying to be strong
really takes a toll on you.
Erik must have seen my tears because he says, “It’s ok if you need to cry. I kind
of want to cry, too.” He speaks so quietly that I almost miss the second sentence. For
some reason, his words only want to make me cry harder. Erik turns to face me. His
shaggy black hair has fallen into his face.
That was one thing about Erik that the Military couldn’t control; for the last year,
he had been refusing to get his hair buzzed. At first, the officers would punish him, make
him run ten miles or go a whole day without eating. When they figured that punishment
wasn’t going to work, they began physically holding him down and buzzing his head. It
took several people to hold him down. When Damien heard about this, he realized that
Erik was only going to get more and more enraged. So he convinced the officers to give
up on Erik’s hair. And while they stopped trying to get him to cut his hair, they got back
at him by always giving him the hard or gross jobs that no one else wanted.
Erik is three months younger than me, but it feels like he is three years older.
Whenever I have a problem, he’s the one I talk to. Being seventeen, we are expected to
be adults and watch over the other two who are sixteen and fifteen. And I suddenly
become scared; the only person I can truly rely on is also scared.
He takes me into his arms and hugs me. I put my face into his shoulder, and I can
feel him cry onto my head. We stay like this for several minutes, silently crying with the

15. 11
only noise around us the wind and the squirrels. It is getting much darker. The smells
from the bonfires find us all the way out here and I think about the dreadful stew that we
have just eaten. I am jealous of the Rebels now; they get good food even though they too
are being hunted by the Military. Finally, we both calm down. He pulls away from me,
but takes a blue cloth from his pocket and wipes my face for me, and then he wipes his. I
recognize the piece of cloth as a fragment of an old blanket that we used to fight over
when we were little. I don’t ask about the cloth because I know that if I thought of it, I
also would have saved a scrap of the blanket.
“We can’t be hasty,” he says, replacing the cloth in his pocket. It seems like it
would be so easy to stay here and join the Rebels, but if they found out about us, there’s
no way they would ever trust us. We are engineered by the Military, and they will think
we are spies trying to infiltrate their ranks. “We should stay a little while, just long
enough to form a plan.”
“But we don’t have any supplies. The tent is all the Rebels are going to give us.”
He takes his thumb and rubs the area between my eyebrows. I feel heavy, like a lead
weight has been placed inside my chest, weighing me down into the damp moss.
“We’ll make do. Hunt and forage. Tor can steal what we need.” His voice is
warm and soft, like honey. Even sitting down, he towers over me. But I know that it is
not as easy as he makes it sound. He’s just trying to calm me down, and it works, even
though I am still worried.
“A few weeks ago were sleeping in nice, warm, comfortable beds at home with
Damien and Ashley. Now here we are,” I say, motioning around us, “sleeping in a torn
up tent in the base of our enemies.” I know that Erik is probably feeling the same things I

16. 12
am, and I hate that I’m burdening him with all of my emotions too.
“You were there. You saw what they were planning. They were going to kill
civilians, Artemis.” He knows he doesn’t actually have to remind me; I think he just
finally needed to say it. Ever since we escaped, none of us has brought up the things that
Erik and I overheard. “I couldn’t stand by and just let it happen … let them use us like
that.”

17. 13
Chapter 2
When we four were assigned our first mission, we thought we would be helping
fight on the battlefield, protecting and defending our country from the evil that started
this World War III. The definition of “battlefield” has changed quite a bit since the wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan over fifty years ago.
But when we got to the first Military base camp we were assigned to, we noticed
that things didn’t seem right. The camp was at the base of a large mountain. Even
though it was summer, all the trees on the mountain were dead, just grey and brown
skeletons sticking up out of the ground. The camp itself was laid out strangely. I thought
when we first arrived that all the small, individual structures we were using were built by
the Military. But they had the look and feel of buildings that belonged in a town. There
was a main street of sorts. Everything was kept up nicely; nothing looked decayed or
neglected. The paint on the buildings looked fresh, and there weren’t even any pot holes.
Soldiers and vehicles hustled and bustled all around base. Soldiers chatted as they
walked up and down the streets to their quarters. Armored vehicles growled past those
on the streets.
I pushed aside my curiosity, remembering that my job was to follow orders, not to
question. And I made the assumption that the camp was designed the way it was to make
the soldiers feel more comfortable. I hadn’t even considered the possibility that the camp
had been an actual living town at one point. I guess I didn’t find it too weird that the
quarters we were staying in was actually a house. At Fort Bragg we had lived in a home
instead of dormitories or anything like that. Fort Bragg was a city in itself, and this was

18. 14
normal for us. Our lodgings here in camp were in a small home, stark white inside and
out; it even still had that freshly painted smell that burned my nose every time I walked
in. It seemed sterile even though the furniture in the house was old and falling apart, well
used. By who, I wondered.
All the other soldiers kept away from us, and we were assigned quarters away
from everyone else. And we weren’t being sent out to fight. We were always in training.
I thought that this was weird, but our commander, Captain Sirks, who had been our
teacher since each of us was ten years old, instilled it in us that we shouldn’t question
authority. So I didn’t voice my confusion at first, not even to Erik. I was trying to set a
good example for Tor and Elsa.
It occurred to me that everyone else was at least eighteen years old or older, the
minimum age to enlist in the Military. But we were raised on the base and all of our
schooling had been for military training. They had told us that coming to this camp was
going to be our first real test to see whether or not we were fit to become officers when
each of us turned eighteen.
Even if Erik and I were getting close to being eighteen, old enough to enlist in the
military, Elsa sure wasn’t. But it seemed like all of us had been enlisted for a while.
Being in the Military is what Damien and Ashley told us our parents wanted for each of
us, to follow in their footsteps as brave scientists and soldiers. Any time we had
questions about our parents, they said that most information about them was classified,
but they were great friends with our parents and our parents were great people. Ashley
and Damien were very heartbroken about their deaths. So, we had always aimed to
please Damien and Ashley and the parents that we couldn’t remember, and had done

19. 15
everything that we had been told to do to become the best soldiers that we could be. I
always felt a need to live up to the legacy of my parents and so I had committed myself to
the military life, not even considering that there were other options. And Tor was a
natural soldier. Erik seemed like me, like he did it because he knew he had to. But Elsa
had once told me that she didn’t want to be a soldier, she wanted to become a doctor and
save the lives of citizens who were being hurt by the enemies.
Erik and I are playing sniper. One of us hides, and the other uses a laser, to
“snipe” the first person. It’s my turn to be the sniper. I find the biggest tree in the
playground and start climbing it. I can’t find Erik. It’s been almost an hour since I
climbed into the tree. The wind picks up. A big gust hits the tree, and the limb I am
sitting on starts to creak. I begin to shake. I realize that I’m not the one shaking, it’s the
tree. The limb snaps and I fall. But I don’t feel the sensation off falling for very long. I
hit the ground hard. I can’t breathe. I feel pain everywhere. My vision is closing over
but I can see a pale, blonde shape in front of me. I feel my breath coming back. Elsa is
talking to me in a soothing voice.
At breakfast a civilian worker, a young woman of Asian descent, brought us our
food. We did not eat in the mess hall like the other soldiers, which I didn’t complain
about, because hey, breakfast in bed, sort of. One morning she was cut and bruised all
along her arms and face. “What happened?” I asked. She would not meet my eyes, only
staring down at the standard military chow on the ancient-looking trays she carried. Her
skin, which had been smooth and radiant, was now scraped and bruised in places. She
couldn’t have been much older than twenty-five, but now she looked almost elderly, like
her whole life had been drained out of her. The skin of her face gave me the impression

20. 16
that it was sagging off the bone.
“Nothing.” Her voice, which was usually boisterous and joking, was quiet and
scared. I didn’t know what to say; I was not trained to deal with things outside of the
orders I was given. She didn’t say anything else for the rest of the day.
In fact, she didn’t talk when she came to deliver our food for the rest of the week.
Finally, one day as she was about to leave the quarters after giving us our dinner, I took
her hand. She gasped slightly and turned around to face me. I saw fear in her eyes at
first, but it went away quickly when she realized that it was only my hand grabbing hers.
“Are you ok?” I asked her. Her only response was tears that welled up in her eyes. She
pulled her hand free and rushed through the door. We never saw her again.
The next morning I woke up, hoping to apologize to the woman for upsetting her
the day before. But there was someone new standing in front of me when I opened the
door. Another young woman was tasked with bringing our meals. She was dressed
exactly the same, in blue pants and green shirt. I had noticed a lot of people wearing this
same outfit all around the base, but none of them looked like soldiers. They didn’t walk
or talk like soldiers, and the men didn’t have their hair buzzed. “Where’s the other girl?”
Erik asked as he let this new person into our living quarters. He held open the heavy
door with his foot and took one of the trays from the woman’s hands.
She set the rest down on the round card table, whose plastic covering was cracked
and torn, we used for our dinner table. She looked at me with an expression that was
almost pleading, like she wanted to tell us something but was being forced to say
something else. “Angela is sick. I will be bringing your food from now on.” Angela. I
suddenly realized that I had never asked the Asian girl what her name was.

21. 17
“I’m Artemis. What’s your name?” I asked this new young woman. Her skin
was very dark and she had black hair, but she did not seem to be of African descent, or at
least if she was, she was so racially mixed that it was impossible to tell her ethnicity.
“Kayla,” she replied.
“Well, Kayla, it is nice to meet you.” Tor stuck out his hand to shake hers. She
hesitated but finally reached out and let him grasp her hand. Tor was always trying to
charm ladies. He was at least a decade younger than Kayla, but that mattered little to him.
She left as soon as she finished with our trays. Erik tried to make a little chit-chat
too, but she didn’t respond. Angela had been a big talker.
Later that morning we headed to another of the training exercises that had kept us
busy during the day ever since we got there. We walked along side streets, passing the
quarters of other soldiers. Everything was quiet since all the soldiers would already be
out by this time. It felt so serene, and reminded me of the old pictures of the 1950s in my
textbooks.
I figured that the officers didn’t think we were ready to go out into the field yet,
so they made us do more training instead. That sounded like a reasonable thought. We
passed by the office where the workers who dressed in blue and green did most of their
jobs. I was beginning to think they might be civilians hired by the Military to do support
work on the base. It was a small building with only a few moderately sized rooms. It
reminded me of an old library that I had seen in photographs, the kind that housed lots of
real paper books. Because some of the windows were open, we could hear everything
going on inside. I heard Kayla talking to a man, who also seemed to be a civilian.
“Yeah, they stormed her place last night,” Kayla said. “Even threw Angela’s kids out of

22. 18
their beds.”
“Well, she should’ve known better, mouthing off to the Colonel,” the man replied.
He seemed unsympathetic.
“He gave her a good beating then. He didn’t have to come back for her. She’d
learned her lesson,” Kayla said. “I’m just saying. My parents told me stories of what it
was like before the War and Military. Actual freedom.” Kayla seemed annoyed, anger
seeping through her voice.
I had slowed down to listen to the conversation, the others following suit, but then
the sound of a bell filled the air around us, and we knew we were late for our training.
We had to rush to get down to the cursed obstacle course.
The thing Kayla said about what it used to be like made me wonder what she
meant. As I ran the obstacle course, my mind also raced. I pulled myself up a high wall
with only a rope as I went through different scenarios. Elsa struggled up the wall since
she was so small. She wasn’t weak, just tiny. But she was excellent at the barbed wire
crawl, being so small and quick. While I was jumping over a series of hurdles, I decided
I needed to find out what the rest thought about what we had heard, as soon as we got
back to the quarters. Erik was excellent at the hurdles. With his long legs, he could jump
high, but he wasn’t as good on the rapelling. I think he was afraid of heights. Rain began
to beat down on my warm skin as I finished the course with a ten mile run through
woods. I was getting worn out at about mile six, but Tor just kept plowing on, blowing
past me. His stamina was amazing.
“Kayla was talking to that guy about Angela,” I said as soon as the front door of
the quarters closed behind us. I could tell that I was stating the obvious by the lack of

23. 19
surprise on everyone’s faces.
Elsa, who had already climbed onto the dusty couch, looked up at me. Her eyes
were wide, not in a scared kind of way, but in a sad kind of way. She pulled the pony-tail
from her blonde hair and let it cover on her shoulders. She has a habit of hiding behind
her hair when she is upset, like a curtain that she could use to cover herself from anything
bad. She surprised me then by taking her hair and putting it into a neat, tight blonde
braid.
“Unless someone else named Angela also didn’t show up today,” Tor said. He
was trying to sound like he didn’t care, but I could tell by the way he was biting the
inside of his cheek, that he was worried about what happened to Angela. He rarely lets
himself be vulnerable, even in front of us. He’s never let us in, no matter how hard we
tried. And he can be one of the most annoying people you’ll ever know, but he’s not a
total jerk.
“She was nice,” Elsa said quietly. “We should help her.” I realized that we had
never actually had more than a superficial conversation with Angela besides my asking
what happened and if she was ok. Oh, man, I thought to myself, she has a life outside of
bringing us food, and we don’t know a thing about her. I really hope that she is ok. I’ve
never really cared about anyone outside of my family. I never really had a reason to, or
an opportunity to. The only people that I saw regularly outside of my family were
Captain Sirks, our tutors, and doctors. And we never had actual conversations with them.
Why weren’t we allowed to interact with other people normally?
Later, while Elsa and Tor showered, I decided to discuss what happened to
Angela with Erik. We sat next to each other on the saggy couch.

24. 20
“There’s something weird going on,” I said.
“What do you mean?” Erik asked.
“I’m not sure. It just … feels wrong here,” I said.
“This business with Angela just has you wigged out,” he said softly, putting a
hand on my knee.
“No!” I said. “I mean, yes. But this whole place feels strange. It’s like one of
those fake fruits for decoration, nice on the outside, but not real and definitely bad for
you.”
“That’s a stupid metaphor,” he said raising his eyebrows. “Besides, what can we
do about it anyway? We’re not really even privates yet.”
“So?” I crossed my arms, but I was also biting my cheek. Erik did make a good
point. We had no authority, at all.
“If we start putting our noses in stuff that we’re not supposed to,” he said,
“something bad could happen.”
“But what about the truth! Don’t you want to know the truth, Erik?” I had the
urge to get down on my knees and start pleading.
“Of course I want the truth! But we’re not legal adults. We have no say in
anything that goes on.” Erik got up and paced around the small living room. He was at
the other side in two and a half strides. “And if we start asking questions, we might get
in trouble. In fact, we really should not be talking about this, even here. They probably
have this place bugged to monitor us.”
“But that’s why we need to do it,” I said as I stood up and walked over to Erik.
“If we don’t know what’s really going on here, we could be in danger.”

25. 21
“We’re in danger if we stick our noses in something that isn’t our business,” Erik
said.
“Yes, but I’d rather stick my nose in and find out nothing sinister is going on and
take the punishment for that, than not know and remain in a lot more danger. Plus, you
saw how sad Elsa looked about Angela. We need to find the truth.”
Erik was quiet for a little while. I didn’t know if I should keep on talking or not.
But just as the silence was getting unbearable, he looked me square in the eyes and said,
“Fine, but we have to play it safe.”
I wanted to find out what had happened even if Erik was worried that we might be
taking too much of a risk. “It’s not like we can ask them ‘Hey, what happened to
Angela?’” I said to him later that night. His bed was a couple feet to the left of mine.
We shared the biggest room in the three bedroom house, and Tor and Elsa each got their
own smaller rooms. Elsa is a light sleeper, and Tor is super obnoxious about refusing to
share a room with anyone. Originally, Captain Sirks had Erik and Tor in the big room
together, and Elsa and I in the other rooms, but Tor had put up a big stink about sharing
his room. So he and I had switched rooms, and since we all had very few personal
effects, Captain Sirks never noticed when he came in to check our quarters. At Fort
Bragg, each of us had our own room at Damien and Ashley’s house. I didn’t mind
sharing a room with Erik. At home, our bedrooms were connected by a shared bathroom
with two doors, one leading to my room and one leading to his. We left the doors open
all the time so that we could talk to each other throughout the night. “Tomorrow’s our
day off. We can use that to our advantage,” I said now.
“There’s an officers’ meeting every morning at 0700 hours,” Erik began. He was

26. 22
lying on his side facing me. His brown skin caught the little light we had in our room.
His black hair was pulled back into a ponytail at the nape of his neck. I washed his hair
once a week for him. He scrunched up his face a bit, lips forming a tiny ‘o’, his
eyebrows pulled together. “If we can sneak into the data room while the officers are at
the meeting, we can try and search for files on the computers and find out what happened
to Angela. If they haven’t deleted the documents, that is.”
“But there’ll still be other people.”
“Maybe a distraction, so that they would have to leave,” Erik suggested.
“But that would alert the officers,” I countered. We both lay there for several
minutes without talking. I kept going over different ways that we could gain access to
the room but each would end in failure. The light from outside the window spilled across
Erik’s bed and just barely touched mine. It was hot and he had pushed his blanket all the
way down to the end of his bed.
I was just about to give up and roll over onto my back and fall asleep, when Erik
said, “You know, we could just walk in there.” He sat up and twisted to face me.
“What?” I pushed myself up with my elbow.
“As long as we act like we’re supposed to be there, no one’ll stop us.”
“And the only people that’ll recognize us are the officers, who will all be at the
meeting,” I said as I sat up fully. We did a weird sort of high five across the gap between
our beds.
I couldn’t fall asleep for a while though. I knew Erik drifted off rapidly by the
sounds of his breath slowing down. I lay there trying to fall asleep, but my brain would
not stop thinking about Angela and Kayla. I turned over again to look at Erik. He had

27. 23
his back to me now. The only movement that I could see was the slow rising and falling
of his rib cage underneath the starched gray blanket. I tried to match my breaths to his,
breathing in when his ribs rose, breathing out when his ribs fell. Once I was able to do it
without thinking, I drifted off into the warm place that is dream land.
I usually love sleeping. My dreams are vivid and totally crazy awesome. But that
night, I had a nightmare for the first time in a long time. I couldn’t really remember
much, just that I felt like I had no control over my body, like someone was pulling a
puppet’s strings. I had a gun in my hand and I was running toward a series of houses.
The gun felt heavy, but I continued to hold it up even though my arms were screaming
with pain. Everywhere was grey except for the houses that lay in front of me. The tang
of smoke tickled my nose and scratched my lungs.
My eyes flashed open. Erik was sitting on my bed next to me. The springs in the
mattress were so old that our body weight together almost pancaked it. Erik stroked my
forehead with one hand and the other was holding my hands. I forgot the rest of the
dream as soon as I saw Erik smiling; there was worry behind his eyes, though. “You
were tossing and mumbling. Bad dream?”
“Yeah.” I sat up and smoothed my brown hair with my hands, which were
shaking.
“Want to tell me about it?” Erik moved so that he was able to rub my back with
the warm palm of his hand. As soon as he touched me, my muscles began to loosen up,
and I breathed in deeply.
I thought for a second, trying to see what I could remember of the dream and if it
was something I wanted to tell him. “I can’t really remember much,” I told him. I was

28. 24
afraid that if I kept thinking about the dream, I would remember the rest, which could
have been something truly horrifying. I didn’t know how to tell Erik about the first part
of my dream anyway. What would he think of me getting so worked up about it? I
mean, it was just a dream. It doesn’t mean anything, right?
“That’s ok. You want me to get you something?” he asked.
I shook my head. “What time is it?”
“About five thirty.”
We still had an hour and a half until we were going to put our plan in action. I
wiped the sleep from my eyes and sat up. “I’m going to shower,” I said.
I saw Erik blush for a moment. But it went away quickly. He brushed his fingers
through his hair and motioned toward the bathroom. The white tile floor was cold on my
feet when I stood up, but it felt good, started to wake me up.
But now that I was thinking about temperature, I just wanted to get in the shower
and let the warm water rush over my body. I hadn’t felt clean since I first saw the bruises
on Angela. I could almost feel the black and blue welts on my own body.
“Ok, I’m going for a jog,” Erik said as I grabbed a towel.
I spent several minutes under the hot water just scrubbing and scrubbing my body
in the tiny fiberglass shower. I was slightly pink now and slightly sensitive, like the
sunburns Elsa gets if she is outside for too long. When I got out of the shower, the entire
bathroom filled with heavy steam, but I actually felt clean.
I got dressed and checked the time. 6:15. Breakfast usually came at 6:30. I
figured that Erik and I would scarf down our food and then head over to the
administrative building where the Data Room and officers meeting would be.

29. 25
Erik was sitting at the card table in the kitchen by himself. He saw my puzzled
look and said, “Turned off their alarms. Figured they could sleep in while we’re gone.” I
nodded. That made sense. This was our first day off from “training” since we had gotten
to the camp two weeks ago. And Tor and Elsa had both been working hard to prove
themselves. Sometimes it seemed like Elsa had to work the most of all of us because of
her size even though she was almost as strong as the rest of us.
I sat down in the plastic chair, like the ones in classrooms, across from Erik. He
was wearing his Class B uniform, not his military training clothes, which we usually
wore every day. He looked so sharp and a little older in those clothes. “How was your
jog?” I asked him.
“Good,” he said, his face flushing again slightly.
We sat in silence for a few moments. He was looking down at the table, picking
some flaking plastic off it.
We heard a knock on the door. I jumped up, knowing it would be Kayla. I pulled
the door open, and there she was with her beautiful dark skin. I looked like a sheet next
to her, even though my skin is quite olive. “Good morning, Kayla. How are you?” I
asked with a huge, and what I hoped was a friendly, smile. She seemed confused and a
little weirded out.
“I’m fine,” she shrugged. She walked past me and put down two trays of food
down on the table and then turned around to get the other two off the rusty metal cart that
she had to push from the kitchen to our quarters. Erik had already grabbed them. Kayla
smiled tightly, nodded her head to both of us and started to walk out the door. The food
smelled good, omelets, and I realized that I was hungry.

30. 26
“Have a good day,” I called out to her. She shook her head and started pushing
the cart back down the walkway.
“What was that about?” Erik asked me as he shut the door.
“Just being nice, Erik. You should try it out too someday,” I replied laughing, but
the image of Angela all bruised up kept pushing forward in my mind.
I sat back down again and shoved my omelet into my mouth, eating as quickly as
my body would allow. Erik just shrugged and sat down to eat with me.
A few minutes before seven, we laced up our shoes. We were wearing our Class
Bs: formal pants, black shoes, and a button-downed shirt, so that we would look more
official and blend in more with the other people in the administrative building.
At 0700 sharp, we walked into the admin building, through the giant doors
between thick columns. There was no security screening since everyone was screened
when they entered camp. The entrance room was small but grand, with a clean and
simple sophistication. The floors, the walls, and even all the furniture were white or
shades of grey. The building felt like a courthouse, and I felt like I was being judged
from the moment I stepped inside.
Erik and I glanced at each other for just a moment before we began making our
way through the maze of halls. In his eyes, I saw support, and I felt safer. I thought I
sort of knew where the Data Room was.
We overheard some officers talking quietly about it during our orientation tour of
the camp the first day we arrived. (The tour was really just taking us from the intake
office where we had been processed, to the areas we would be training in and our
quarters.) Unfortunately, we didn’t hear too much about the Data Room because the

31. 27
officer leading the tour started asking us questions, like “What are your hobbies?” and
stupid shit like that to make us think that he actually cared about us.
But from what we were able to overhear, I gathered the room’s location was
hidden. This piqued my interest, and I wanted to know about it. So I started studying
maps and blueprints of the different buildings, trying to figure out where a hidden room
might be. Eventually, I had narrowed it down to a specific area of the administration
building that didn’t make much sense on the blue prints.
I started down the stark halls and down several cement staircases, until we must
have been a couple stories below ground. There was no artwork or anything other than
white paint on the walls. A light scent of Pinesol wafted through every part of the
building, and there wasn’t a speck of dirt or dust anywhere to be found. You would think
that sound would echo in this empty feeling building, but sound was muffled, as if the
wall were gobbling up sound waves for food.
I was aware of every person, every camera, anything that might be watching or
listening to us. My heartbeat had risen as soon as I entered the front door. We had to
appear completely confident. I wondered if Erik was trying as hard to look normal as I
was, or if it came naturally to him. I concentrated on regulating my breathing and heart
rate and not sweating. At Fort Bragg, we learned to expertly control our bodies, as
snipers are trained to do. (Part of our training was learning to be snipers. Tor was an
especially good sharpshooter.) A few people glanced at us but paid no attention.
Everyone was busy doing whatever things people who work in a military administration
office do. People in uniforms hunched over computer holographs, furiously selecting
things presented to them. I could make out maps and mechanical plans being created on

32. 28
some displays as I walked by office after office. There were no doors for most of the
offices, so we could easily see in, but we didn’t have time to stop and figure out what
people were doing.
Finally, we made our way back to an area where there were doors closing off
certain offices. They were heavy and made of metal, with electronic key pads on the wall
next to them. We ended up at what appeared to be a dead end. Behind us were a few
doors on each side of the hallway, and we faced a blank wall.
This is where the Data Room should be, I thought, looking over at Erik. He just
shrugged. I was trying to look for some sort of security access panel or something that
we could try to hack to get into the room. But there wasn’t one. Erik began running his
hand across the wall. I assumed he was looking for a hidden access panel as well.
When his hand got to about shoulder height near the left corner of the wall, he
stopped. “Found something?” I asked.
“This spot, the wall feels softer,” he said, putting emphasis on “softer” like he
wasn’t sure that was exactly what he meant. “It’s like sand, but harder.”
“See if it opens up an access panel,” I said.
As Erik pushed on the little spot on the wall, we heard several clicks and beeps.
And suddenly, the wall in front of us dematerialized, like just gone, like it was never
there. We were standing at the entrance to a circular room the size of a warehouse. The
walls were cement, as was the floor and ceiling, probably to keep signals from entering of
leaving the room so it couldn’t be spied on. Harsh artificial lights were the only light
source. The room felt like a large sealed tomb, with a musty smell.
I looked at Erik, confused; there had been no other security measures required to

33. 29
get into the Data Room, which seemed strange. Wouldn’t you want to make sure not just
anybody could access the room if it held such sensitive material? Erik looked back at
me, and reading my expression, just shrugged. I figured that maybe they thought that if
you had gotten this far, you had been told about the room specifically, and were therefore
authorized to be there.
Holographic computers and storage servers were laid out in a series of rings. In
the center sat a control hologram and the main overhead hologram. There were people
attending the different computers in the concentric circles, but there was no one at the
main control computer; I figured that was usually for the officer on duty at the time. The
air-conditioning was pumping on high, and I could feel the temperature change as soon as
the wall vanished.
We walked forward a couple of rows of computers and turned right down one of
the passages. After a few steps into the passage, the vanishing door, reappeared behind
us silently, cutting off the air trying to escape, and therefore, removing the possibility of
us leaving quickly. No one even looked up from the displays, busy typing and tapping at
their controls. They seemed robotic, like worker bees. This thought made my skin
prickle.
We found an empty station and Erik sat down in the chair in front of it. The
station next to it was also unoccupied so I grabbed the chair from it and sat myself down
next to Erik so that we could look at the computer together.
Thankfully, the stations weren’t password protected or anything, but this was just
one of many things that didn’t make sense to me about this place. We were able to pull
up the employee database easily. Erik typed “Angela” into the search bar. He looked up

34. 30
at me before starting the search. (I realized that we didn’t know her last name or even her
age to help narrow down the results. There would probably be a ton of Angelas in the
system since there were hundreds, if not thousands, of people who worked in the camp.)
Erik and I had not said a word since we entered the administrative building. We rarely
ever need words to communicate with each other. I just bit my lip, raised my eyebrows,
and shrugged my shoulders at him. He made a grimace, then hit the search function and
it started bringing up files of people. “Angela” did in fact seem to be a very popular
name.
When the engine had completed its search, we began opening up the seventy-
eight files one at a time to find the Angela that we were looking for. Each time we
selected an entry, a life-size holographic 3D picture of the person’s head appeared before
us. We got to the twentieth file, and I began getting frustrated. It felt like we were never
going to find the right Angela. Erik closed that file and let out a low grunt. We sat in
silence for a couple of seconds. I waited for him to open up the next file, but he just
placed his hands in his lap with a sigh.
I reached around him and selected the next file. We both took in a breath and
sighed with relief when the 3D hologram that popped up was the Angela that had brought
us our food. The hologram had none of the cuts or bruises that I had seen on Angela
before she disappeared, but she also didn’t look happy.
I began scanning the text that floated next to the spinning image. Name: Angela
Robin. Age: 24. Position: Terminated. My eyes stopped there. What the hell does
“terminated” mean, I thought to myself. I flicked my eyes to Erik. His eyebrows were
knitted together. There was no other information on the display about Angela. But there

35. 31
was a small note at the bottom. Last Updated: 4 hours ago. Shit, we’re too late, I
thought.
“Why isn’t there more about her? If they just fired her, why would they delete
everything?” Erik whispered in my ear.
“I have a feeling that ‘terminated’ doesn’t just mean her job,” I said under my
breath trying so hard to be only loud enough for Erik to hear. I was praying to every
deity that I learned about in classes that she was safe somewhere, but I felt like there was
a rock in my stomach, and another one began forming in my throat.
“I wonder if we can recover the data,” Erik mumbled. He began furiously hitting
controls. Erik has the highest computer aptitude scores out of the four of us; he once told
me that the logic of computers made a lot more sense than the illogic of humans to him. I
thought that he had just been less social than me, but I eventually saw that he just got
computers. They always did what you wanted, and if they didn’t, you could find an exact
problem and fix it. Humans, though, could not be so easily fixed. After a few minutes of
tapping at controls, Erik threw his hands down into his lap again. I looked over at him,
eyebrows scrunched up in questioning. “They erased everything too cleanly. I would
need to hack the admin accounts. Their firewalls are too advanced for me.” He bit his
bottom lip and looked up at the ceiling.
I started to think that we had hit a dead end. “What the hell did they do to her?” I
looked at Erik and he just shook his head at me. What kind of place was this, I thought.
We heard a loud beep and then a voice over the intercom. “All Enlisted Personnel
are to report to the Atrium for the end of week report.” Everyone at their stations stood
up and began heading back towards the hidden door we had come through. Erik nodded

36. 32
to me, and we walked down our row to join everyone else, hanging back so that we were
the last people in line. We stepped through the threshold of the now vanished wall,
paused, and let the others get ahead of us. Then we slipped back into the room before the
wall rematerialized. We waited a few moments until we were sure all the others had left
the hallway and were not coming back for us.
“Now what?” Erik looked at me.
The officers would still be in their meeting, I realized. Maybe we could find out
more information on Angela if we could overhear them. We stood in silence for a
moment. Now that there was no one in the room with us and the computers were in sleep
mode, I could slightly make out voices coming from another room off the hallway, but
we needed to get closer. I started to walk along the wall closest to the room where the
officers were meeting. The wall was circular so I wasn’t sure how far I could go before I
started pulling away from where we were trying to go.
“Where’re you going?” Erik started to follow me.
“If there was one hidden door, there might be another,” I said. I was sure Erik
knew what I meant since he reached up and started running his hand along the wall. I
hoped that another hidden door would lead us to the Officers’ Control Room. It seemed
like a long shot, but I was going by my gut. I closed my eyes and started imagining the
layout of the building. I could see the maze of hallways and even the Data Room just
like I was standing above a 3D model. I knew there had to be a secret hallway that
connected the Data Room and the Officers’ Control Room. I have always been good at
figuring things out, especially geographically, like it is a puzzle. I opened my eyes again
and crouched down so that we could cover as much surface area as possible.

37. 33
After walking a few more feet, I felt a little chink in the wall about two feet above
the floor. I realized then what Erik had meant by the wall being softer. It thought if I
pressed too hard, my hand would sink right into the cement, like this part of the wall was
made of compressed sand instead of concrete or stone. At first, it seemed like just a
defect in the wall, but as I applied more pressure to the spot, I felt something move
behind the wall. I heard some clicks and the door just vanished, leaving my hand hanging
in the air. In front of us, there was a small hallway, almost like a tunnel. The ceiling
couldn’t have been more than a few inches taller than Erik and not much wider than the
two of us standing shoulder to shoulder. It was entirely made of carved stone, so I could
feel a noticeable difference in temperature just sticking my arm through the threshold.
The data room had already been cold to compensate for the heat that the computers gave
off, but this hall was freezing. Goose bumps raised up on my arms. The tunnel was
slightly damp, and I could see the beginning of stalactites forming. Erik started down the
hall. I was not sure exactly where it was going to lead us, but I figured it would get us at
least closer to where we wanted to go. The voices became gradually louder and more
distinguishable. The hall never branched off. If you’re going to have secret passage ways
in a military camp building, I thought, then why wouldn’t you have it lead to a bunch of
different places. Seemed like a waste.
Eventually, we came to a dead end. The door out of the hallway was probably
like the door at the other end, hidden until you pushed on it in the correct spot. But it
didn’t matter that the door wasn’t easily accessible because we could hear the officers’
voices clearly. They were talking about random stuff, their lives, sports games, their
favorite beers, and so on. It did not actually seem like they were doing any work at all.

38. 34
It felt like forever that we were standing behind this wall. Standing there in the
damp, dark, and cold passageway sucked. I actually began to get goose bumps after a
while, and the cold usually doesn’t bother me.
Finally, we heard the door on the other side of the room open and close with a
deep thud. Someone else entered the room with the officers, who all fell silent.
After a few seconds, we heard a deep, gruff voice say, “At ease.” I recognized
that voice instantly, Captain Sirks. He had smoked for years, making his voice scratchy.
“I received a report that the GenMods seem to be getting too … shall we say … curious.
What are we going to do about it?”
Another voice spoke up, “Sir, maybe it’s time we sent them out into the field.”
“It’s not time to use them yet. They are our best assets. We need to save their
talents for when it really counts,” Captain Sirks replied. “But if we don’t give them
something soon, they are going to start getting unruly. Four curious, strong, fast,
intelligent teenagers will be hard to handle.”
I breathed in sharply. Four teenagers. He had to be talking about us. Looked like
we came into the conversation at the perfect time. But I was not sure what he meant by
us being their “best asset.”
Captain Sirks started speaking again after a moment of silence. “Anderson, I
want you to take them with you into the field tomorrow. Tell them that they have
finished their training. Have them raid houses, some of the ones we’ve already cleared
out. Tell them that we are searching an ambushed town for survivors. Make sure they
don’t get suspicious. If they start snooping around, we will have a hot mess on our
hands.”

39. 35
“Yes, sir,” came the reply.
“When the time comes,” Sirks continued, “we will bring them out on to the
battlefield and let them hunt out the insurgents. This war has progressed quicker than we
imagined and we just can’t wait until they get older. We’re going to need them soon.
Thankfully, the scientists say that we can control their minds the way we need them.
They will do what we tell them when we finish their training and put them in Agent
Mode.” What the fuck does that mean, I thought. Captain Sirks stopped talking for a
minute. I could hear him tapping at some controls. “Alright. I think we’re done here
today. Dismissed.” I heard one of the heavy metal doors open and the other officers
began filing out of the room, their footsteps echoing slightly. Erik and I didn’t move
until we heard the last pair of boots exit and the door shut back into place.
Captain Sirks had told us he was given orders to come out to that base camp and
lead the initiative that was going on there, and that we were going to come with him to do
rescue operations, saving citizens from the soldiers of the Enemies, the other countries
that we’re fighting, and the Rebels. What a load of bullshit that seemed like now.
“Think it’s safer to go out this way or go back?” I whispered to Erik.
“Probably this way. The other people will be back from the meeting. Two
random people coming out of the wrong wall will definitely raise suspicions.” Erik slid
his hand across the wall, stopped after a second, and pushed. The wall disappeared to
reveal a fancy conference room. In the center was a large table with chairs around it, and
a bigger than normal holograph projector. But I didn’t really want to stay and look
around. I wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. My heart rate was starting to
rise. At any moment, one of the officers could come back. I was surprised that we had

40. 36
been able to go this long without being caught.
I took Erik’s hand and pulled him to the heavy metal door that led out into the
hallway where we first entered the Data Room. We began winding our way back through
the maze of hallways in silence. At any moment we could run into Captain Sirks. Would
he know, I thought, that we had overheard what he had said about us?
It seemed like it took us much longer to get back to the main entrance than it had
getting to the data center. As we passed the open offices, I made sure to look straight
ahead so that it looked like I knew where I was going, like one of the worker bees in the
Data Room. I was much more nervous about trying to get out than I had been trying to
get in. There was a lot more at stake now.
But no one saw us or at least recognized us and realized we weren’t supposed to
be there, and we eventually made it out the main entrance safely. As we headed back
down the road, I was finally able to take a deep breath of relief. I saw Erik’s shoulders
loosen up. We still didn’t say anything to each other. People passed us on the road. No
one stopped to talk to us, thank God.
When we reached our quarters, Tor and Elsa were sitting on the stoop. They
stood up as soon as they saw us coming. “Where have you been?” Tor asked when we
got closer. Erik just nodded his head towards the door. Tor raised his eyebrows but
didn’t argue. He turned around and opened the door for Elsa.
Before she went in, she said, “Captain Sirks came by looking for you guys.” My
spine froze, like it had been replaced by a solid steel rod. Ah, fuck, I thought.
“What’d you tell him?” Erik asked. He flashed me a look, warning me not to
panic.

41. 37
“That you were out for a run and we didn’t know when you’d be back,” Elsa
replied.
“Did he buy it?” I asked. My heart felt like it was going to tear itself out of my
chest.
“I’m not sure.” She turned around and stepped through the threshold. “He
seemed kind of annoyed.”
I followed Elsa, racking my brain for any slip-ups that Erik and I made. She went
over and sat down on the saggy couch. I sat down, and the boys each pulled up a chair.
“What’s going on?” Tor looked from me to Erik and back again. Neither of us said
anything for a few minutes. What in the hell do I tell them, I thought.
“We were trying to find out what happened to Angela,” I began. Elsa was staring
at me. It felt like she was burning a hole right through me.
“We went to that Data Room. The one that we heard people talking about on our
first day?” Erik said. Tor nodded. Elsa was looking at Erik now, staring just as intently
at him as she had looked at me. Sometimes it seemed like her stare could kill an
elephant.
“How did you get in?” Tor scrunched up his eyebrows at Erik. He hated being
left out of anything.
Erik, Elsa, and I are sitting around the dining room table playing Scrabble. Tor
is upstairs in his room, sick. I can hear him coughing. Erik imitates Tor’s coughing, and
Elsa and I burst out laughing. Tor screams, “shut up!” Elsa runs to Ashley and
Damien’s office. She tells them that Tor yelled at us. Ashley and Damien come into the
dining room. They tell us to not be mad at Tor since he is sick, and he is probably upset

42. 38
since he can’t come downstairs and play games with us.
“There weren’t any security measures on it,” Erik said. “No one even questioned
why we were there. They barely even looked up from their consoles. We found an
empty station and started looking for info on Angela.”
“What’d you find?” Elsa asked in a quiet voice.
“Nothing. That’s the thing.” Erik shrugged his shoulders.
“All it said was her full name’s Angela Robin and she’s twenty-four.” I stroked
Elsa’s hair. I loved playing with her hair. Since we were young, I would always wake up
a little bit early so that I could fix Elsa’s hair for her. It became a ritual. When it wasn’t
in a bun in military fashion, I was always coming up with new ways to style her hair.
She couldn’t really care less about her hair, but she knew I liked playing with it, so she
tolerated it. Playing with her hair gave me a small sense of normalcy.
Tor asked, “That’s it?”
“The only other thing it said was “Position: Terminated.” Erik moved his finger
in air quotations.
“What does that mean?” Elsa inquired.
“We’re not sure,” I said cautiously.
“I think it might mean something other than being fired,” Erik added.
“You think they killed her?” Tor’s eyebrows raised.
“I don’t know. But it’s a possibility,” Erik replied with a grimace.
“That’s not all,” I said. “We overheard Captain Sirks talking with some other
officers. He was saying some weird things about us.”
“What’d you mean?” Elsa asked.

43. 39
“They want to use us for something. It didn’t sound good.” My voice had gotten
lower, so that I was barely talking above a whisper. When I wasn’t speaking, I clenched
my jaw.
“I think that they want us to kill people, not enemies or Rebels,” Erik ventured.
“Civilians?” Tor asked.
“Yeah, that’s what it sounded like.” Erik’s face was sad. I reached over and
touched his knee. We hadn’t come to this camp to agree to kill our own people. Erik
always tried to save the innocent. He would sometimes lose at the military games we had
to play as part of our training because he would try to save as many imaginary people as
possible, which usually ended up with him sacrificing himself instead of letting one or
two people die.

44. 40
Chapter 3
I knew we needed to know more. We couldn’t trust anybody at that base camp to
help us get more information or else someone would figure out that we were snooping,
and who knew what they would do to us then.
“We should talk to Damien and Ashley,” Erik suggested. We couldn’t just call
them up and tell them what we had heard, obviously. There were people who monitored
all communication in and out of the base. I figured now was the time to use our family
emergency code.
When, I was eight, most afternoons Erik and I played in the front yard while
Ashley put Tor and Elsa down for a nap. We would play hide and seek in the huge
bushes that dotted the yard. Or we would try to climb the large oak tree that sat on the
line between our property and our neighbor’s. I wasn’t very good at climbing, the rough
bark scratching my skin, but Erik could climb to the top in less than a minute. That was
until the day he fell out, broke his leg, and refused to climb the tree ever again.
One exceptionally hot day, a tall woman and her equally tall male companion
walked up the front door of the house. I was used to seeing military people come over to
the house. I mean, Ashley and Damien were military doctors, and we lived on base. So,
Erik and I just ignored the pair, at first.
The woman’s dark hair was pulled back into a tight bun that sat at the nape of her
neck, just below her hat, in correct military fashion. Her uniform was crisp and without a
single wrinkle. The man had short blond hair under his cap, and his uniform was only
slightly less pristine than the woman’s. They seemed like completely normal military

45. 41
personnel coming to talk to Damien and Ashley. But then the man reached out toward
the gray front door that was just like every other front door in the neighborhood. I
thought the mysterious man was going to knock, but he grabbed the doorknob instead and
turned it. They walked into the house and shut the door. People always seemed to
respect our adoptive parents. They treated them like high-ranking generals. Why did this
woman and man think they could just walk into our house?
I grabbed Erik’s hand and pulled him to the front door. “Who’re they?” I asked
him. I tried to turn the knob, but it was locked. I ran around to the back door, but it was
locked as well.
Erik led me over to a window that looked into Damien and Ashley’s office.
“Here,” he said. We could see the two strangers, Damien, and Ashley standing in the
office, talking.
“You’re too attached. They aren’t your children. They belong to the
government,” the strange man was saying. He was holding a picture of our family.
“Remember that. Or someone else will do the job.” He carefully placed the photograph
back on Damien’s desk.
“You’re military employees; you have duties,” the woman added. “You’re not
civilians with a family.” She was looking at Ashley. Damien’s face was turning red, and
I could see Ashley squeezing his hand. She glanced over to the window. Before I could
duck all the way down, I made eye contact with the strange woman. She glared at me
hard. Erik took my hand again, and we ran back to the front yard, and tried to act like we
were still playing.
After a couple minutes, the man and the woman came out the front door. They

46. 42
glanced at Erik and me, got in a black car and drove off.
After the car left, Damien came to the front door. “Artemis, Erik, inside.” I
grabbed the toy dump truck I was playing with. Damien’s light brown hair was messy,
like he had been running his fingers through it. We went into the living room, and Erik
and I sat down on the couch. Damien sat down in one of the chairs in front of the couch.
No one said anything. Ashley came into the room with Tor and Elsa, each holding her
hands. Elsa was rubbing her eyes. Her nap had been cut short, and she was just barely
awake.
“If anything ever happens, we’ll use a special code to let each other know that
something’s wrong,” Ashley began.
“Who were those people?” Erik interrupted her.
“People we need to watch out for,” Damien said. I could see his hand clenching
and unclenching into a fist on the arm of the chair.
Ashley shot Damien a hard look. “Erik, what’s the name of the imaginary friend
you used to have? Aaron?”
“Yeah, why?”
“We’re the only ones who know about Aaron, right?” Damien asked.
“Yeah…” Erik said while fidgeting with a tear in his pants.
“Well, it’s our own family secret. Nobody, except for us, will know that we are
talking in code if we talk about Aaron.”
“Make it sound normal in conversation,” Damien added. “We need you to
promise to not tell anyone, anyone, about our secret code.”
“What’s going on?” I asked. I was eight years old, for Pete’s sake. I shouldn’t

47. 43
have had to worry about two strange people coming into our house.
“Nothing to worry about, Sweet Pea,” Damien said standing up and ruffling my
hair. His voice was calmer, and his face was less red.
Ever since that day, “Aaron” became our family’s secret code. We had never had
to use it, but Ashley and Damien would make us practice working it into conversations so
that it would sound normal.
The night we overheard Captain Sirks and the other officers, I called our house at
Fort Bragg. We had permission to talk to Ashley and Damien once a week for five
minutes each.
Ashley answered after a few rings. “Hello,” she said.
“Ashley, it’s me, Artemis.”
“Hey, sweetie, what’s up?” Her voice momentarily put me at ease, but then I
remember why I was calling.
“Training. I really miss you guys.” I paused for a moment. “Erik had a dream
about his old imaginary friend, Aaron, this week. He didn’t want me to tell you though.
He’s such a baby.” I tried to laugh casually.
I heard Ashley take in a sharp breath. “Wow, I thought he didn’t even remember
about Aaron.” Her voice was slightly shaky. “That reminds me of when we went
camping, and he wanted to bring a sleeping bag for Aaron.” She tried to chuckle.
Damien and Ashley used to get permission to take us out of Fort Bragg to go
camping as a family once a year. We always used to go to the same place along the
Appalachian Trail and stay for a week. It was always my favorite week of the year.
There was a nice little wooden shelter on the peak of a mountain. You could see for

48. 44
miles around when you stood up there. The crisp mountain air smelled like fresh apples.
“Oh yeah,” I said. Camping was another one of our code words. If we ever
needed a place to meet, we had decided the place where we usually went would be the
easiest for all of us to navigate to, wherever we were. “I miss camping,” I said hoping
that I was reading into what she was saying correctly.
“Me, too. The sunsets were always so beautiful,” she replied. I took me a
minute, but then I became pretty sure that she meant that she wanted to meet us at sunset.
Another one of our code protocols was to use the position of the sun to set times, instead
of an actual time. But I didn’t know what day. We certainly couldn’t make it there by
sunset that night. It would have to be the next day.
“Hey, aren’t you and Damien going camping tomorrow?” I asked, hoping she
would get that we would meet them the next day.
“As a matter, of fact, we are,” she said with a slight chuckle, probably to try and
seem natural.
“Well, I better let you guys start packing then,” I said knowing we needed to end
the conversation quickly so nobody would be suspicious. “I’m glad we got to talk,
Ashley. I love you.”
“Damien and I love you too, dear,” she responded. “Please tell the others that we
love them as well. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” I said.
I hung up the phone then turned to the others. I didn’t say anything for a moment.
I just looked at the three of them and wondered if it was a good idea to try and go meet
Ashley and Damien. I hesitated to say anything, but they needed to know. “Ashley wants

49. 45
to meet with us, where we used to go camping, by sunset tomorrow.” No one said
anything, they just nodded and looked serious. “Start packing up some hiking gear, and
get some good sleep tonight,” I told everyone. I hated to have to use my “mommy voice”
as the boys call it. I inwardly cringed as I heard myself speak. “We’re going to have to
hike a while tomorrow.” I pulled up a map on the holographic computer that we had been
given to use in our quarters and began looking for the camping spot.
The rest of the day, we spent packing and planning how to get to the meeting
point. “How are we going to sneak out?” Elsa asked. “They watch us like hawks.”
“It’ll have to be predawn. 0300 would be best. If we wear our Class Bs and have
our hiking gear packed and hidden away, no one should get suspicious,” Erik offered.
“They’ll suspect something if we are not there for our morning PT,” Elsa added. I
nodded. We were going to have to get as far away as possible before they noticed that
we had left camp.
“That’s just a chance we’re going to have to take.” Erik looked at me. His face
already looked exhausted and we hadn’t even started hiking.
“We’re going to have to steal a car. There’s no way that we can get to the trail on
foot; that would take at least two days, which we don’t have,” I said. I turned to Tor. He
knew all about different kinds of vehicles and how to get them to work without the keys.
He had learned to build a scrambler that would confuse the electronic locks. He was also
an extremely good driver; he had spent a lot of time learning defensive and offensive
military driving.
When he realized that I was giving him permission to jack a vehicle he shouted,
“Yeah, finally get to put some of that practice into real use!”

50. 46
“Just this one time,” I cautioned him. “We’re only doing this is because we need
to talk to Ashley and Damien.”
There was a knock on our door. We all jumped and looked around at each other.
The door opened. I stifled a sigh of relief as I realized that it was only Kayla coming to
take away our breakfast things and bringing us our lunches.
We ate lunch in silence, all of us staring down at our plates. What the hell did
they do to Angela? I didn’t want believe that something was going on here. The Military
had treated the four of us wonderfully since our parents died, and I had come to trust the
leaders and follow their directions and orders and know that they were doing what was
right. But this, everything that has happened in the past week, had me questioning what
was going on. The Military was supposed to protect the people of the United States, but
what Captain Sirks said seemed like the Military was not actually protecting its people.
We are fighting a war on two fronts, Captain Sirks had told us. The first being the other
countries that had formed alliances against the US and its allies, and the second, Rebels
groups that had been created by radicals from our enemies who were able to convert our
own people.
When we had all finished eating we decided to split up tasks to get everything
ready to leave early in the morning. “Tor, you and I’ll go find a vehicle,” I began.
“I’ll go look for some leave papers to snag,” Erik said. “Elsa, can you start
working on the packs?” Elsa nodded. She was the queen of packing. I had once heard
of an old computer game called tetris where you try to make rows of blocks from
different shaped blocks, getting them to fit nicely. It sounded boring to me, but I figured
it was similar to what Elsa is able to do with packing.

51. 47
Tor and I headed out to the lot where the trucks were kept. We tried to act casual,
like we were just taking a walk down the main street of the base. Offices that looked like
they were once shops lined the road on both sides. There was no evidence of what
exactly each of the buildings was before the Military came here. They had all been
painted white and gray, except for the brick buildings, which had just been left in their
red brick state. Everything was so neat and manicured, like no one had ever lived their
lives here.
We stayed on the street to avoid attention and didn’t stop or even slow our pace
when we approached the huge rectangular lot. I wondered why there was such a huge
parking lot here, but as I approached I could just barely make out through the
indentations in the hard ground that once a very large store sat behind the lot. There were
a total of about fifty trucks and Humvees. The ones closest to the road looked like they
were most used, taken care of but not blemish free. There were a few vehicles in the
back that were more beat up and a little older than the others. They still seemed drivable
though. “The one farthest to the back,” Tor said softly to me.
The one I figured he was referring to looked to be the oldest, most beat up, and
least used one. “Will it work?” I asked.
“I can make it,” he responded. And that was it. While Tor could be a pain in my
ass at times, I trusted his knowledge about cars and things. We didn’t turn back right
away. We still needed to look like we were just out for a walk, so we continued walking
around the camp. We wound our way back to the house.
By the time we got back, Elsa had already finished packing everything, and the
packs were waiting in her room so Kayla wouldn’t see them when she came to deliver

52. 48
dinner. The three of us sat down and started planning our route to the trailhead while we
waited for Erik to come back. Interstates were out. Someone would surely be able to
find us if they put out a Be-on-the-Lookout on the truck that we were going to steal. We
needed to get to the trailhead as soon as possible because we would have a long hike.
Just as we were finalizing our route, the front door opened. My head snapped
around. It was just Erik, thankfully. “What’d you find?”
“I snuck into some random guys’ quarters while they were at the mess hall and
found some leave papers in their desks,” he replied holding up for pieces of official-
looking paper. “I almost got caught. One dude wasn’t actually at the mess hall but just
in the bathroom. Luckily, I heard the toilet flush and got out of their quickly. Cut myself
on the window sill, too.” He held up his forearm for us to see at two inch cut. “If we
play it right, the guard won’t notice that they aren’t for us.”
“Oh come on. Our names aren’t,” Tor said as he snatched the papers from Erik’s
hand, “Joseph Goldstein, Thomas Clayson, Cory Trout, and Nick Sanders. The guards
will never believe this.” Tor seemed like he was losing his resolve to do this. The
military has always been his home. To disobey it was one of the hardest things we could
ask him to do.
“You’ve seen how the guards barely even look at the papers,” Erik said. “As long
as it has the US Military seal, they’ll let us through.”
The four of us are sitting in the living room, playing virtual reality games. Erik
kills Tor in the game. Tor starts shouting at Erik. They pull off their helmets and stand
up, chest to chest. Tor punches Erik. Elsa screams. Damien comes running into the
room. He pulls Tor and Erik apart.

53. 49
“Ok, relax, you guys. We’ll make it through this,” I said. “We should go to bed
as soon as we finish dinner.”
It wasn’t long before Kayla came to deliver our food. She didn’t say much, as
usual. I wanted to say something to her, like goodbye or something, but that would seem
weird.
After she left, we ate in silence, and then, one by one, starting with Elsa, we made
our way to bed. I was the last one up. Before I crawled into my own bed, I wanted to
take a peek at Elsa and Tor. When I slowly opened to the door to Elsa’s room, she was
already asleep. I tiptoed to her bed, careful not to make any noise since Elsa is so
sensitive to noise and light when she sleeps. I kissed her pale forehead, the only part of
her body that wasn’t cocooned in blanket. “I love you,” I whispered, stroking her hair.
She shifted slightly in her sleep, and I headed back to the door.
I turned down the hallway and saw that Tor’s door was open. He was lying on his
side reading. “Go to bed, Tor,” I whispered. He turned back to the door and set the book
on the side table. I closed his door.
When I got into Erik’s and my room, he was sitting up in his bed waiting for me.
I got into my bed and pulled my covers up.
Erik also lay down. “What if we’re making the wrong decision? We don’t have
all the information yet. We haven’t even asked Captain Sirks. Maybe there’s a good
reason for what’s going on. We’ll get in trouble for leaving. We’re putting Elsa and Tor
in danger. I’d never forgive myself if something happened to them.” He took a deep
breath, finally getting that all off his chest.
“I know, me too. But it feels wrong here. The only people we can trust are

54. 50
Damien and Ashley,” I said, not entirely even sure that I was believing what I was
saying. I was scared out of my freaking mind, thinking about what we were planning. So
much could go wrong. It was possible that we wouldn’t even make it out of the camp
without getting caught, let alone be sure that we could make it to the meeting point
safely.
We lay in silence for a while. I couldn’t fall asleep, my mind going over every
detail of our plan over and over. Finally, I got so frustrated that I just sat up.
Erik turned over, hearing my rustling. “Come here,” he said, pulling up his
covers to make a space for me. I only hesitated a minute. If I couldn’t sleep, I could at
least not be alone in my sleeplessness. I got up and crawled into bed with Erik. His body
was nice and warm.
We lay side by side for a while without speaking. Slowly, my mind started to
drift. Erik took my hand, squeezing slightly. I took this as reassurance that it was ok for
me to fall asleep.
I jumped when the alarm went off at 2:45. Erik was already up, putting on his
clothes. “What time did you wake up?” I asked him as I sat up in bed. Erik turned
around to face me as he was buttoning up his shirt.
“Just a few minutes ago. How’d you sleep?”
“Ok, I guess. Bad dreams, but I can’t remember them,” I replied. “What about
you?” I stood up and began putting on my pants. Getting dressed in front of any man
besides Erik would be embarrassing, but it didn’t feel weird with Erik.
“I don’t think I got much sleep.” He didn’t say anything else for a minute while I
finished getting dressed. “Long day ahead of us. Come on.”

55. 51
We walked out into the kitchen. Both Tor and Elsa were already up and eating a
couple of energy bars for breakfast. I nodded to them. No one said anything for a while.
After several silent tense minutes, with all of us watching the clock, waiting for it to turn
3:00, Erik finally said, “Time to go.” I took a deep breath and stood up. I grabbed my
pack from Elsa’s room. It was very dark outside. There were few lights on. All good
soldiers were in their beds. The four of us walked between buildings, staying off the
road, just in case we passed someone.
We reached the vehicle lot, and Tor ran ahead to the truck that we had agreed on.
He had started jimmying with some wires underneath the steering wheel. As the rest of
us climbed in, Tor got it to purr to life. He jumped into the seat and put the vehicle in
drive. My heart was beating fast. I was hoping that there was no one outside to hear the
truck start. “I disabled the GPS tracker on the car,” Tor said as he drove slowly to the
gate. There was a security guard sitting in a shack.
Erik handed the leave papers to Tor, who then handed them to the guard when he
pulled up to the shack. I gave everyone a hard look to make sure no one said anything
unless the guard asked questions. The guard looked at the papers and then back at us. I
got tense for a moment and held my breath, until he waved us through the gate.
The drive took us several hours, since we took back roads to the trailhead. No
one spoke the entire drive, except for Erik giving Tor directions. Every time we saw
another car, my muscles tensed and my heart pounded. If we got caught, I had no idea
what we were going to do or what would happen to us.
The route we chose took us through old, run down towns. In one, there was a post
office with a rusting mail truck sitting out front. In peeling paint, on the side of the truck,

56. 52
I could just barely read “United States Postal Service” along with a logo with a funny
looking eagle. The small, winding roads were cracked and potholed, and the truck kept
bouncing, sometimes making me almost fly out of my seat, and the paint strips on the
road were faded from weathering. But the towns weren’t just defunct, they seemed
abandoned. We did not see any civilians, or any people at all. Only a few beat up cars
every now and then. The world felt empty. Where the fuck is everybody, I thought.
After several hours of driving, I could tell the others were getting restless. Elsa
kept squirming. I had suggested to her to take a nap, but I think she, along with the rest
of us, was too tense to rest.
Finally, we reached the trailhead. It was just a small dirt parking lot at the top of
a long dirt road, which was barely able to hold our truck without sending us rolling down
the mountainside; a small beaten down hiking path led into dense trees, presumably to the
trail. Erik, Elsa, and I jumped out of the truck as we pulled into the lot. “Tor, find a
place to park the truck. Hide it as best as you can,” Erik said as he shut the door. He,
Elsa, and I headed up to the trail to be hidden while we waited for Tor. The sun was up
in full force, and my skin felt nice and warm as I changed out of my Class B uniform into
my hiking clothes.
After several minutes, Tor found us. “It is a lot harder to hide a truck than you
would think,” he laughed as he walked up from the path. We all released tense chuckles.
He clasped Erik’s hand, and they “bro” hugged. I threw his pack to him.
“Here, get changed. We can’t stop for chit-chat.” But I laughed as I said this.
We started hiking. I had forgotten that the hikes that we took to go camping were
through mountains, and it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Thankfully, all

57. 53
four of us were in really good shape. Woo, for military training.
Steep and slippery slopes made it difficult, and sometimes we almost lost the trail
because of soggy leaves covering everything. It had probably stormed the night before.
But that also meant that less animals and insects would bug us.
We stopped for short breaks every now and then. I had made sure to tell Elsa to
pack some rations since I knew that we would probably be hiking all day. We talked a
little while hiking.
“Do you think we made the right choice, sneaking off to meet Ashley and
Damien?” I asked Erik as we climbed one particularly rocky area. Erik stuck his hand
out. I grabbed hold, and he helped me over a large rock. The conversation from the night
before weighed heavily on my mind. And we rehashed it.
“I’ve been wondering the same thing,” he replied. “What if we over reacted, and
there is just some simple explanation? We’d be in so much trouble when we got back to
camp.” This did not ease my mind at all.
“You heard the same thing I did. There’s definitely something going on.” I
needed him to be sure of this trip. If he wasn’t then my resolve would falter.
“Yeah, but we didn’t even ask Captain Sirks about it,” he said.
“You know just as well as I do, that Captain Sirks would never tell us the truth.
He expects us to follow every order without question,” I replied firmly. I’m not sure who
I was trying to convince more, Erik or myself.
“I think we’re doing the right thing,” Elsa said. Even Tor, who was the most
dedicated soldier I had ever seen, nodded when Elsa spoke. I looked at Erik. His
shoulders relaxed. I realized just how tense he was. He nodded, but his face was

58. 54
screwed up into a grim smile. Elsa took my hand, and we kept hiking.
I heard a helicopter in the distance. I froze. Looking up, through the dense
canopy of trees, I could just barely see it. I grabbed Elsa and darted off the trail into the
underbrush. Erik and Tor did the same. We lay very still. The helicopter lowered as it
flew over us, and I held my breath, not just because I was scared, but also because I was
lying in what appeared to be a fresh pile of bear shit. Crap, crap, crap, they’re going to
find us, I thought. After couple of tense minutes, it flew off, and I crawled out of the
brush all cut up and covered in mud and bear poo. The rest of our hike was tense since
the helicopter came back three more times.
Shortly before sundown, I started to recognize the trail and forests around us. I
began to know every switchback we took, every rock and tree we passed. Ashley was
waiting for us on top of one of the peaks of the trail, at the hiking shelter we used to camp
at. There, massive boulders protected us from wind and kept us out of sight. The
wooden shelter looked like it had taken a beating since the last time we camped there;
one side seemed to be falling inward.
Damien was with Ashley, each holding two black bags. Seeing them there with
those bags, I began to get worried. What were they going to tell us? Elsa ran straight
into Ashley’s arms, almost knocking her over.
“I knew that the Military couldn’t brainwash you guys. We made you intelligent
and perceptive,” Damien said.
“What do you mean ‘made’ us?” Erik asked, taking a step back after hugging
Ashley.
“There’s some things that we need to tell you.” Damien stepped off the path,

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scaling the slope a bit.
“Where’re you going?” I asked. He didn’t reply. I glanced at Ashley, but she just
motioned for us to follow Damien.
When he got to the other side of a large boulder about fifty feet off the trail, he
began brushing leaves away and revealed a wooden door set into the slope. He reached
into his pocket and grabbed a key. It was the old kind of key, made of metal with
notches. I had never actually seen one in real life, only in the books we read for class.
For as long as I can remember, keys have been electronic with varying degrees of
security. Sometimes you just have to wave your ID stick in front of a sensor. Sometimes,
you also have to stick your hand on a surface, and it will read your DNA to confirm who
you are. He stuck the key into a hole at one side of the door and turned it. I heard a
clicking sound. He lifted up the side where he had placed the key to reveal a wooden
staircase that led down into the side of the slope. “Not out here. Follow me.” And he
stepped down onto the staircase and began making his way down the stairs.
Erik hesitated for a second but followed Damien in. I helped Elsa up the slope,
even though she really didn’t need my help at all. But she let me, knowing that it made
me feel useful, like I’m doing my job as the oldest. I saw a light come on down at the
bottom of the stairs, but I couldn’t see much else. After Elsa, Ashley entered the
staircase. “You go,” Tor insisted. I knew he was trying to make sure that we had not
been followed, so I stepped down onto the first stair. The old wood creaked slightly as I
put my full weight onto it. I felt sure it was going to snap and I would fall through the
staircase. But it held up, and I climbed down the flight of stairs. When I got to the
bottom of the stairs, I saw a huge room dug into the rock, like a cave. It had a couch, a

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lazy boy chair, a hologram projector, a bed, a small kitchen, and other various things. I
was standing in a bunker. Various rugs covered the stone floor. There were even some
hanging on the walls. Tor finally came down the stairs after closing the door and turning
a lever to lock it. The coldness of the bunker made my skin prickle. Or maybe that was
just my nerves. But I am sure my nose tickled from the damp smell of the cave. It
smelled kind of like what I imagined wet dog nose smells like.
Damien motioned for us to sit on the raggedy corduroy couch placed up against
the cave wall near the staircase. But I didn’t feel very much like sitting. I was on edge.
Elsa sat down on the couch and pulled her knees up to her chest the way she usually did
while reading at home. Tor sat down next to her. I motioned for Erik to take the chair.
“Go ahead,” I said when he didn’t sit down.
“No, you,” he said, looking down at my hands. I looked down as well and
realized that I kept clenching and unclenching my fists, a habit when I’m stressed. I
decided that maybe sitting would help me relax, so I took the chair. Erik stood next to it
facing Damien and Ashley, who were now standing behind the hologram projector.
“We’ve been lying to you,” Ashley began. What the fuck, I thought. What a way
to begin a conversation.
“What do you mean?” Erik asked. His voice became gruff.
“Damien and I are scientists, as you know, and we work for the United States
Military,” Ashley continued.
“Yeah…,” Tor said.
“Your parents didn’t die in combat like we told you,” Damien said.
“Then how’d they die?” Elsa asked.