She decided to try to bluff him, thinking of how Rowan got in and out of New Atlantic. She hadn’t even known there was more than one shielded city until Willoughby had mentioned it during her escape. “I’ve been to a city center before, but I’m not from one of them,” she lied.
“Which one?”
“That’s where I got that PRD.”
“Which city center?” he said again.
She decided not to answer. “I’m not sure. I was just a kid.”
“You’ve been breaking in and out of city centers since you were a kid? How?”
“I didn’t say I’d been breaking into them. I went to one once. I found that PRD.”
He turned it over in his hands. “This looks brand-new, not years old. This is new tech.”
She thought quickly. “It was a prototype back then.”
“How did you get into the city?”
“Some guy got me in. It was a long time ago.”
He turned the PRD over in his hand. Steering with his knee, he popped open the back of it. “It doesn’t have a tracking chip. Doesn’t even have a place for one.”
He reached over and closed his hand on the back of her neck. He forced her head down, fingers feeling along her scalp.
“What are you doing?” she asked, batting his hand away.
“No head jack.”
“I told you that.”
“What’s a chinook?
“Excuse me?”
“Or a Death Rider? If you can tell me that right now, I’ll leave you alone.”
She had no idea what a chinook or a Death Rider was. Never heard of them.
“What’s your name?” he asked again.
She tried to think of a name. “Bowen,” she answered at last, thinking of a character in The Land That Time Forgot book she’d found at the shelter.
He watched her out of the corner of his eye. “That’s an unusual name. I’m Byron. But what’s your real name? Your designation?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re a worker, aren’t you?”
“A worker?” she asked, trying to sound ignorant. She could tell he wasn’t buying it at all.
“And you can get us in.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You can get us into Delta City, through the atmospheric shield.”
“I have no idea how to do that. Besides, like I said, I have somewhere very important to be.”
“And we have something very important to sabotage,” he said grimly.
“I can’t help you,” she insisted. She decided to take a chance. “Listen. An asteroid is coming. It’s on a collision course with Earth. A long time ago it was being mined in outer space, and a disaster happened, altering its course. It fragmented, and some if it has already hit, causing massive damage on impact. There are still three more chunks that haven’t hit, but they’re about to. The first will hit in less than two months, followed by two more. They’ll wipe out whole regions. But that’s not even the worst part. The main asteroid is going to destroy us all.”
He was silent.
“We won’t survive. Nothing will. Unless we can find a way to stop it.”
“What’s an asteroid?”
She frowned. “It’s a huge rock out in space. They can devastate life on a planet if they’re big enough, and this one certainly is.”
“How do you even know about this?”
She looked over at him. “I found an ancient laboratory, a place that studied that kind of thing. I saw the diagrams of how these things are going to strike the earth.”
“Ancient? How do you know what you saw wasn’t malfunctioning?”
Rage flared in her eyes. “I looked at the equipment. It was running. I saw images of how much destruction the smaller chunks had caused in the past.”
He lifted his brow. “And you know how to stop this thing?”
“I’ve got a lead.”
He gave a wry smile. “I’ve heard a lot of stories to get away from the Badlanders before, but that one is the craziest. How could anyone know about this, anyway? No one knows what’s out there.”
“They used to.” She reached into her bag to get her PRD, so she could show him the videos.
He caught her hand. “Not so fast.”
“But I can show you!”
“Yeah, I’ll bet. And stab me while you’re at it.”
“I just need my PRD.”
He slid her bag over to his side of the car, tucking it between his body and the door. “I’ll hold onto it for now.”
“Please just let me show you.”
He stared at her in silence, then sped up to catch up with the others.
“Please let me go,” she begged. “Believe me, the world is about to be destroyed.”
He met her gaze in the glow of the dashboard, his eyes softening a bit. “Sorry, but you’re along for the ride.”
They turned off the highway and took an exit ramp toward a glow on the horizon. Firelight flickered in the distance, illuminating old, ramshackle buildings. A thick haze of smoke hung near the ground, and as they drove through it, she stifled a cough. Then the glow grew brighter, and they pulled into the Badlander camp. She looked out in wonder. About a hundred people huddled around small fires, cooking and talking.
As they pulled into a large lot full of cars, she stared out, frightened, as five Badlanders savagely beat someone lying on the ground. She gaped as the man tried to get away. She turned to Byron. “Shouldn’t we do something?”
He looked at her and laughed. “Sure, if you want to get killed. Wow. You’re really not from around here.” Parking the car, he glanced over at the fight, then leaned back toward her. “Stay put. You do not want to go out there.”
He climbed out of the car, then shut and locked the door. Already the car had attracted attention, as a couple of people—and soon a dozen others—gathered around it, staring at the solar panel.
“Who the hell’s that?” a woman asked, gesturing at H124. Her bright red hair stood in sharp spikes, and a labyrinthine tattoo covered the sides of her face.
“Who cares? Look at the car!” her friend replied, a thin man with greasy
