Tyra gives me a pat on the shoulder. I can tell she’s excited about having been the one to coax me out of the orchard. The coach pulls me aside and asks where I go to school. She clearly wants me for her team.
“Not from here,” I mumble. “Sorry.” She shrugs and congratulates me on my playing.
I grin and walk away from the field. I can tell the girls are eager for my friendship, standing in a cluster and watching me depart. I imagine a different life for myself, a life like theirs. It has its charms, but I know my place is by Katarina’s side.
I walk back to the motel, doing my best to wipe the grin of victory off my face. I feel a childish urge to blab about the game to Katarina, even though she told me not to play. In spite of myself I find I’m running back to the room, ready to start crowing.
The door’s unlocked and I swing it open, still grinning like an idiot.
The grin doesn’t last long.
There are ten men in the room-Mogadorians. Katarina is tied to the motel’s desk chair, her mouth gagged and her forehead bloody, her eyes filling with tears at the sight of me.
I turn to run, but then I see them. More men, some in cars, some just standing there, all over the parking lot. There must be thirty Mogadorians total.
We’ve been caught.
CHAPTER TWELVE
My hands are cuffed and my legs are bound in rope. Katarina’s are too, though I can’t see her. The Mogadorians threw us in the back of a big rig’s trailer, tied together, so the only proof of Katarina I have is the place where our spines touch.
The trailer bucks wildly and I know we are on the highway, going somewhere fast.
Katarina is still gagged, but they never bothered to gag me. Either they sensed I would stay quiet to keep Katarina safe, or they figured the roar of the road would swallow any sound I made.
I don’t have any idea where we’re being taken or what the Mogadorians plan to do to us once we get there. I assume the worst, but I still murmur soft, soothing things to Katarina in the dark of the trailer. I know she’d be doing the same thing for me if she could.
“It’ll be okay,” I say. “We’ll be okay.”
I know we won’t. I know with sick certainty that this journey will end in our deaths.
Katarina presses her back against mine, in a gesture of love and encouragement. Hands tied and mouth gagged, it’s the only way she can communicate with me.
It’s dark in the trailer save for a small sliver of light shining through a break in the trailer’s aluminum roof. Sunlight dribbles in through the crack. Sitting in the dark, musty chill of the trailer, it is strange to think it’s day outside. Ordinary day.
I’m achy everywhere, sore from sitting and too uncomfortable to sleep. In my exhausted delirium, I have the ridiculous thought that I should’ve stayed behind with the soccer girls. At least long enough to have some of the Gatorade the coach offered me.
Something murmurs inside the trailer. A low, guttural growl.
There is a cage, tucked up against the front of the trailer. I can dimly make out its thick steel bars in the dark.
“What is it?” I ask. Katarina mumbles through her gagged mouth, and I feel bad for asking her a question she can’t possibly answer.
I lean forward, as far as I can, pulling Katarina with me. I can hear Katarina protest from beneath her gag, but curiosity pushes me forward. I stretch into the darkness, bringing my face as close to the steel bars as I can.
Another rustle in the dark.
Another captive? I wonder. Some kind of beast?
My heart fills with pity.
“Hello?” I speak into the void. The person or creature makes low whimpers of distress. “Are you okay?”
Jaws snap with sudden force against the bars of the cage, eyes the size of fists flashing red in the dark. The breath of the beast sends my hair back. I pull away in terror and disgust, the smell so revolting I almost retch.
I try to scoot away, but the huge beast, unappeased, keeps its head pressed to the bars, its red eyes fixed on me. I know that were it not for the bars, I’d be dead already.
This is no captive. No fallen ally. This is a piken. Katarina told me about these beasts before, savage accomplices and hunters for the Mogadorians, but I had taken them for fairy tales.
Katarina helps me nudge us back towards the rear, giving me more space to pull away from the beast. As I back farther away, so does the piken, disappearing into the dark of its cage.
I know I am safe for the moment. But I also know this animal, this foul, fearsome creature, may be pitted against me in the coming days or weeks. My stomach turns in fear and helpless rage: I don’t know whether to vomit or pass out or both.
I nestle my damp head against Katarina’s, wishing this nightmare away.
I fall into an agitated half-sleep, awoken only by Katarina’s voice.
“Six. Wake up. Six.”
I snap to.
“Your gag?” I ask.
“I worked it off. It’s taken this whole time to get it off.”
“Oh,” I say stupidly. I don’t know what else to say, what good it does us to speak. We are caught, without defense.
“They bugged our car. Back in Texas. That’s how they found us.”
“It was my job to think of that,” she says, as if reading my thoughts. “Never mind that. I need you to prepare for what’s coming.”
“They will torture you for information. They will . . . ” I hear Katarina succumb to weeping, but she pulls herself together and resumes. “They will inflict unthinkable torments on you. But you must bear them.”
“I will,” I say, as firmly as I can.
“They will use me to make you bend. You can’t let them . . . no matter what. . . . ”
My heart freezes in my chest. They will kill Katarina in front of me if they think it will make me talk.
“Promise me, Six. Please . . . they can’t know your number. We can’t give them any more power over the others than they already have, or power over you. The less they know about the charm, the better. Promise me. You have to.”
Imagining the horrors to come, I can’t. I know my vow is all Katarina wants to hear, but I just can’t.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I have been in my cell for three days. I have nothing in here with me but a bucket of water, another bucket to use as a toilet, and an empty metal tray from yesterday’s meal.
There is not a speck of food left on the tray: I licked it clean yesterday. When I woke up in my cell three days ago it had been my intention to mount a hunger strike against my captors, to refuse all food and water until they let me see my Katarina. But two days passed with no food or water from them anyway. I had begun to imagine I’d been forgotten in my cell. By the time the food arrived, I was so far out of my mind with hopelessness that I forgot my original plan and wolfed down the slop they shoved through the little slot of my cell door.
The odd thing is that I wasn’t even particularly hungry. My spirits were low but I didn’t feel weak from hunger. My pendant throbbed dully against my chest during my days in the dark, and I began to suspect the charm was
