“So,” Connery said, regarding me with watery blue eyes, “I hear you have things to tell me.”
I took a shaky breath and let it out. Here we go.
“There are nearly two hundred Path soldiers a little over ten klicks to your east,” I said. “They have armor and air support and they’ll be here just after midnight.”
There was no change in the stony composition of Connery’s face. His thin lips were set and straight. Painful seconds passed and then he turned to his computer. He tapped a key and sent a blue glow over his face.
“Thanks for bringing him in, Dr. Franks. That will be all.”
“Sir,” Dr. Franks said. “Don’t we have to at least—”
“If there was a significant force of rebel fighters on my doorstep, I think I’d know about it.”
“You know how they work,” I said, struggling to keep my voice calm. “They scatter their forces, put them in small groups that can’t be discovered. They only join up at the last minute and then—”
“Son, even if the Path did have a force that size in the area, they’d be headed to Greenfield. It’s a far more strategically valuable piece of land. If you want to control the region, you go there.”
“They’re not trying to control the region.”
“No?” Connery said with a condescending chuckle. “Then why are they here?”
I leaned forward as far as the handcuffs and my injuries would allow. “They’re here to give you the Choice.”
Franks made an anxious little noise behind me and then fell silent. Connery’s chair creaked as he sat back. His hand fell to a folder on his desk. He moved it idly back and forth, making a sandpaper rasp against the desktop.
“And you came here to tell us this out of the kindness of your heart?”
“My brother and I were visiting our mom’s family in Phoenix when we were kidnapped and made to serve the Path. I was nine. James was seven. Since then we’ve seen them give the Choice to Bowling Green and El Paso and Marietta.”
A silence fell, as it always did when someone mentioned Marietta.
“You were at Marietta?”
I nodded. “I’ve seen what Nathan Hill’s men do to people who choose not to embrace the Glorious Path. I didn’t want to see it again, so when I got a chance, I ran. Path security caught me. I guess when I passed out, they figured I was dead.”
Connery glanced over my shoulder.
“Corporal Tate’s men picked him up a few miles from here,” Dr. Franks said. “He was beaten badly enough that if they hadn’t found him, I’m pretty sure he would have died.”
“I left my brother alone with those people to come here and help you,” I said. “So I am not leaving until you listen to me. Your base is dangerously isolated. They’ve got you beat three to one on men. They have four Apache gunships to your one, and six armored Humvees. If you move now, you can evacuate your men and the civilians. Like you said, there’s nothing to be gained here.”
“Look, I’m not about to bug out just because some kid—”
I drew a folded-up piece of paper out of my back pocket and tossed it onto his desk. It was stained with dirt and flecks of my blood.
“I stole their com frequencies and encryption codes before I left,” I said. “If you don’t believe me, then take a listen. They’re out there.”
Connery stared at them, the muscles in his jaw and neck tight as cables.
“Please,” I said, nearly in a whisper. “You’re running out of time.”
He glanced out the window by the air conditioner. The sun was already starting to fall. Connery swept the papers off his desk, then strode past us into the outer room. The door slammed shut behind him.
I sank back into the chair, weak and exhausted, wishing it was over but knowing it wasn’t. What if he still refused to listen? What if he decided to be a hero? Then all of this would be for nothing. I thought of James alone in our barracks, and my head began to pound.
“So, the Choice… it’s really what they say it is.”
I couldn’t turn to face him. “You should take your family and go while you can.”
“I can’t abandon my post,” Dr. Franks said, voice quivering. “They need a doctor. I—”
“Your family needs you too,” I said. “Up to you which is more important.”
The doctor said nothing. Minutes later the door behind him swung open and Connery walked in, carrying a long roll of paper. He passed us without a word and sat back down at his desk. After moving aside his electronic toys, he unrolled the paper in front of me. It was a map.
“Show me how to get away from them,” he said.
It was just after dawn when the convoy pulled into an abandoned parking lot near the shores of a small mountain lake.
We had driven through the night, Connery’s few armed vehicles bracketing a column of civilian cars and trucks and RVs. The Apache that shadowed us throughout the trip had just peeled off in search of fuel, with a promise to return as soon as it could.
When we came to a stop, civilians cracked the doors of their vehicles and stumbled out into the morning light, dazed. I watched one family flee their broken-down RV, the mother and father sweeping two young boys and a teenage girl up into their arms, all of them crying. It was happening everywhere, tears mixed with sudden bursts of relieved laughter. And why not? They had escaped the Army of the Glorious Path. They were all alive. All together.
I was in the lead Humvee with Connery. As soon as he left to tour the camp, I took off too, winding through the parking lot toward the edge of the lake. I was halfway across when I heard a voice behind me and felt a tug at my shirttails. One of the boys from the RV. He was seven or eight, with a pinpoint nose and brown hair in a shaggy bowl cut. He was holding a white plastic box out toward me.
“Here.”
“I don’t…”
“My mom said you were the one who came to warn us,” he said, and turned the case over. On the other side, there was a small glass screen surrounded by brightly colored buttons. “It only has Starfighter 3 on it right now. But it’s still pretty fun.”
He tried to push the game into my hands. “No, you keep it. I didn’t—”
The kid’s brows dropped, making a single confused wrinkle between his eyes. I didn’t know what else to say, so I turned from him and hurried off. He called after me, but I kept my eyes fixed on the dark blue of the lake and strode toward it. Soon, the buzz of the camp faded behind me. The rising sun was warm on the back of my neck. I reached the pebbly beach and started down the length of it until I found a sliver of shade behind a group of boulders. The lake in front of me was vast and slate-gray, perfectly still.
My arm and ribs ached from the bounce of the long drive. I would have killed for more of Franks’s aspirin, but I couldn’t go back to all those people. Not yet. I picked a handful of stones and threw them into the water one by one. For a moment I imagined myself on the shore of Cayuga Lake, surrounded by moss and autumn trees instead of rock and sand. Mom and Dad and James were just a little way ahead, around the bend in the shore. My chest clenched at the thought of them, and I had to snap the image away.
I lifted my hand to throw another stone but froze at a crunch of boots on the sand behind me. The reflection of two soldiers appeared in the lake, dark pillars to each side of me. I threw the stone, shattering their reflections. When the water stilled, they were sitting to either side of me. Corporal Johnson, a beanpole redhead, was on my left.
On my right was Sergeant Rhames.
“Anything unexpected?”
I shook my head. Rhames pulled the mic off his shoulder and reported in.
“Huntsman One, this is Huntsman Two. Bloodhound reports all clear. Repeat, we are alpha charlie.”
“Understood, Huntsman Two. We are go.”
Rhames replaced the radio, shaking his head. “I swear, I never thought it would work. I mean, a commander hands over his entire base because some skinny kid tells him to? I can’t believe it’s taken us so long to beat this bunch of cowards.”
