But for what?

On the outside, I could still barely move my fingers. But inside I was a full-on riot. My mind not working right but all looping around. And I thought again about the damn story about a meat trade, that the rich freaks in Vega liked to mix up their meals. But if it was meat they were after, then why were those agents testing each of one us by taking our blood? Because that’s what they were doing — sucking the red stuff into small plastic tubes.

From what I could tell, there were two possible things that could happen once the agents ran their tests. Two options for all the bodies that had been taken.

First option was the agents grabbed your blood and ran the test, and then off you went. Gone. No idea where you were dragged to. But it was better than the alternative. Much better.

Because the second option was the agents grabbed your blood and ran the test, but then they just looked right through you.

And then they burned you.

Middle of the staging area they had some furnace sunk in the ground. A pit full of flames.

And that was option number two. So you can see how the first one became so appealing. Especially after you spent a day breathing in the ashes of all those poor bastards who’d been fried.

Could have been longer than a day. Could have been it was just an hour and each minute felt like twenty. The drugs we were on kept things silent. For the most part.

Every now and then a low moan would howl, escaping out of someone’s lips like they were trying to wake themselves up.

I was awake enough already, though. On the inside. I was trying to figure out what the hell was going on as I watched the poor bastards who had to take their turns before me.

A woman with one arm tested positive and the agents dragged her away. Next up was a blond kid who failed, and I clenched my eyes shut.

And it kept going on like this. One after another. Those purple suits threading through the crowd and calling out numbers, hauling off bodies, and stoking that fire pit in the middle of the room.

It just kept on going, and what started off horrifying only got worse. Any wall that my mind had built or the drugs provided, that wall pretty soon got blown into bits, reality piercing like a razor on bone. It got so bad I started longing for my own turn to be tested, just so I wouldn’t have to witness no more. Watching some kid get pulled from his mother, or some woman being took from her man. All these unknown faces. These strangers.

But then the purple suits changed even that. Because from out of a corner, they gathered up someone I knew.

It was Crow. His top half hadn’t ever really healed from the burning, and his bottom half wasn’t even there at all. Gone. Lost in the jaws of the duster. The agents carried Crow’s torso to the staging area. And as they jabbed his arm with the needle and siphoned his blood, some twisted part of me wanted to shout out at him.

Hey, little man. That’s what I wanted to yell.

Sick, right?

Must have been the drugs.

Crow passed the test and they hauled him out of view, and I wondered how they’d stopped him from bleeding out in the cornfields. I wondered where they were taking him now. But I didn’t have long to sit there and think about it, because next thing you know, the agents had Sal up there, and I could tell by their faces that the poor bastard had failed the test.

The sight of Sal being hoisted toward the flames did something to me. It broke into my skull and shattered down the back of my mind, and I could move again. But as I stumbled up and staggered toward the purple suits, it was like someone was working my muscles for me, as if it wasn’t my mouth that was screaming. As if it wasn’t my friend about to be burned alive.

Is that what he was, then? My friend?

I honestly don’t know, but yeah, I like to think that he was. Which is why it must have hurt him when his eyes recognized me for a moment but all I was shouting was “The numbers, the number. Tell me what it is.”

And maybe that’s all we’d been to each other, anyway. Not just the fat kid and me, but Crow and Alpha and Zee. The whole damn lot of us. All we’d wanted was to find those trees.

Something to believe in. To bring us back home. Something to make us free, maybe. Or just something to sell.

The agents were all over me, blocking Sal from view. But the strength I’d saved while I’d been under, it all came racing to the surface now. I pushed and kicked at some bastard in a purple suit that I’d never seen before, but here he was trying to control me. Trying to hurt me. Trying to murder my fat little buddy right in front of my eyes.

I must have been spitting, I was crying so hard. And for a moment I reached him, somehow Sal was next to me, we were breathing in smoke from the fire, gloved hands all over us.

That kid stared at me like his eyes were windows and he was trapped inside there somewhere, tired of hiding.

“The number,” I said to him, or I tried to say it anyway. And what good was it? Now everything was lost.

But the kid surprised me. His voice popped out.

“There was no number,” he said, the suits lifting him up, shoving him at the flames. “I made it up,” he said, as he disappeared from me forever. “So you’d take me with you.”

And then he was gone. Still high, I reckon. Because I never even heard him scream.

I felt the hands working me over, and I thought that was it. Thought I was just going to burn right then. And all I could think was how Frost must have already made it. He had his coordinates. His GPS. And somewhere, he was out there. And my father was out there, too. Surrounded by trees and murderers.

“Wait,” one of the agents was yelling. “He should be tested.”

They yanked me to my feet.

I didn’t do a thing. I couldn’t even feel the needle go in or the blood coming out. But I watched it, that deep dark red. And because of the blood draining out of me or my previous show of strength, whatever it was, I was suddenly empty. And as they pulled the needle from my skin, I sank inward as every light inside turned black.

Weirdest thing about whatever they’d doped me up with — awake you felt like you were dreaming, but pass out and no dream would come. It was a void. The darkest night. Untouched by the motion of the world or the swell of whatever you kept hidden inside.

Sometime on the boat, though, they let us come around. And somehow I knew that meant we were almost there.

They fed us. Juiciest damn corn I ever tasted. They gave us water and then they stripped us of clothes and shaved off our hair. I waited. Still coming back to life. Shielding my eyes from the neon lights. But soon as I could, I stumbled across the giant cargo hold we’d been allowed to wake up in. I made for the exit. And I found my way onto the deck.

I don’t know what time it was. Early morning, maybe. I stood alone, bony beneath the plastic sheet they’d draped across my shoulders. It was so cold out there, made me feel brand new and old as anything, both at the same time. The cold hurt, too. I almost turned back inside with the others. But I just bit at my tongue as the freeze enveloped me. I watched my hands shake and my toes turn blue.

I found my way to the center of the deck and I watched the water and I stared around at the boat. A cockpit sat on top of the cargo hold and above that was a gun tower. Everything black and silver. No purple. No GenTech logos. It sure wasn’t the biggest boat I’d ever imagined, but it didn’t need to be. The water was flat. And it stretched in every direction for as far as my eyes could see.