Page 21 of The Infinite Glade
“He is,” Isaac said. “Frypan, himself.”What were they getting at?
He looked at Ximena but she still had her gaze set on the bushes beyond the fire with the pokey prickly things on it. Cian took a deep breath. “WICKED’s biggest lie was that it was good. . . . Their second biggest lie was Ava Paige justifying the deaths of afewto save thousands.” Cian opened his arms up wide. “Look around. Do you see any other humans out here? There’s not even half-Cranks wandering about. It was never about saving the human race.”
“Never,” Erros said so surely that his earnest belief annoyed Isaac.
“They tried,” Jackie snapped at him. The teachers must’ve been more diligent in their defense of WICKED over on the west side of the island. “It didn’t work. Not everything works out.” Jackie threw her hands in the air to mimic Cian’s arm waving. “At least they got the Immunes to a safe place so that our ancestors could rebuild. . . . And we’re here to help the Godhead with a Curenow.”
Isaac couldn’t tell if it was the wordGodheador the wordCurethat made Erros laugh.
Maybe both.
“You guys sound crazy,” Isaac said.
“I told you. The Godhead’s a joke.” Ximena shook her head and looked at Isaac. “Believe me, now?” The moonlight above was just enough to see Ximena’s utter lack of faith. In anything.
“Say what you’re trying to say already,” Jackie said to Cian as she twisted the palm bracelet around her wrist—the one Trish made her before the rest of the group went to Alaska.
Old Man Frypan stood up with his walking stick. “Let it out, we deserve to know.”
Erros nodded, and the fire crackled. “WICKED convinced people it was good, and the deaths of a few were needed to save the entire human race, and all that baloney.” He tore tiny leaves from a branch and put one of them in his mouth. “The same way the Godhead convinced its people that the Cure is needed for Evolution . . .” He chewed like a cow.
Cian leaned forward onto his knees and put his head in his hands. “Look, wanting to find a Cure . . . and the trials were all true, Kletter showing up on your island for you to help is true. But who the Cure is for . . .” Cian paused. “Just leave it at that. It doesn’t matter, Kletter’s dead, it’s done.”
“Exactly!” Erros shot up to his feet and little leaves of something fell from his lap. “It doesn’t matter anymore! We can tell whoever we want because we’re not bound by the Villa or the Sequencers . . . we’ll never get back to them!”
Sequencers?Whatever that meant.
“Snap out of it!” Jackie yelled at Ximena, her eyes still fixated on the bushes.
“Ximena . . . ?” Isaac asked
“There’s someone over there . . .” Ximena replied in almost a whisper. “Someone’s coming.” She spoke louder and this got Cian’s attention.
“Crap.” Cian lifted his bow and motioned to Erros to stay put. “I got it.”
Isaac sat quietly wondering if WICKED was good or bad and what either of those really meant. Frypan just shook his head. “We ought to?—”
Cian’s bow discharged with a loud SMACK. Everyone quieted. It was too dark for Isaac to see, but the lack of any sound from the victim—whatever it was—made Isaac think the shot must have been a clean one.
Erros pulled more tiny leaves from a branch. “The people at WICKED—or above them-–however you want to say it . . . those people were selfish narcissists. There’s no other word for it.” The fire sputtered; the wind blew through the branches above them.
“No other word,” Cian agreed as he stepped back into the light of the fire, dragging a small animal by its foot. He tossed it to Ximena’s feet. “You have good instincts.”
“What is that?” Jackie leaned in closer to the dead animal, a single arrow through its neck.
“Coyote?” Erros asked his brother. Cian nodded.
They didn’t have anything close to a coyote on the island back home. Most everything from this crazy trip didn’t exist back home.
“The trickster spirit . . .” Ximena stood up and backed away from the dead animal. But Isaac realized too late that it wasn’t the animal at all. Ximena was backing up from Cian himself and the shadowed half-Crank behind him. A man, wild eyes, shaggy hair, wearing some kind of robe, though mostly hidden by darkness. Isaac tripped over his own two feet shuffling away as he reached for his knife. He fell with all the weight of his whole body on to the knife, stabbing himself in the calf.
“Look out!” Isaac yelled to Cian. Jackie screamed.
“Hollower!” Cian dodged the figure but only for a moment, when the Hollower pulled out a long serrated knife and sliced through Cian’s clothing as if it were paper. Isaac could only imagine the time that would go into making that sort of blade on the forge. He gripped the handle of the knife Minho had given him, square in his palm, ready to fight.
“Stains of shitstorms!” Erros had jumped to his feet and grabbed a chunk of wood sticking half out of the fire with his bare hands. He swung it like a crazed lunatic, smashing the fiery part of the wood against the cloaked shadow’s head. “Hollowers will get hollowed! You hear me?”
The cloak’s top half caught fire, flashing with bright yellow light, and the man screamed a sound, shrill and high-pitched, then ran away, crashing through the woods. Isaac wondered if it had been a half-Crank, after all.
